Today was another packed day in the Rotorua area. We started early Andrade our way down to Wai-O-Tapu to see the thermal area.

We started with a wander around the fumaroles and mud pools of the main complex with the delightful aroma of rotten egg joining us! We then went to see the spectacle of the day, the Lady Knox Geyser. It erupts once daily at about 10:15. They can time it so perfectly because it is helped along with the use of surfactant to break tension. Usually it erupts on a 24-72 hour cycle so they have to help it along!

After enjoying this spectacle and the rest of the thermal park we headed back towards Rotorua and to the Redwood Forest. Having never been lucky enough to see the Californian Redwoods it was lovely to see these and they were an truly impressive sight to behold. It was raining pretty much the entire time we were there but it never got to us on the ground thanks to the canopy many feet up in the air.

We then headed north of Rotorua to a place called Rainbow Springs that I had previously visited on my last trip to New Zealand. Here you can see examples of native wildlife including the kea, tuatara and most excitingly, kiwi! They have one of the largest programmes in the country for hatching Kiwi and returning them to the wild. Without intervention, there is only a 5% success rate for chicks, at the centre it is 70%. Even with this we read in the local news later that evening that kiwi could be extinct within our lifetime. We opted to do the 'behind the scenes' tour and got to see the hatchery and saw two chicks that had hatched in the last few days. We then got to see some of the adult birds they had and they really are the strangest looking creatures!

With that it was another long day over and back to the hotel to recover! The jet lag has not been too bad, I think our history of night shifts helps align our body clocks!