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Well hello,
Sorry guys that it has been a little while, what can I say other than we're just too busy having so much fun!!
Gonna be a pretty long blog I feel as we haev so much to tell you about...
So we left Auckland and headed to the coastal town of Hahei on our bus.. luckily the bus/bus driver / fellow travellers all seemed really cool which was a big relief as I was a little worried (not surprising ay!!) about it all! Hahei is most famous for "Cathedral Cove". We chose the cheaper (free) option of hiking there...which owas about 1.5k! Unluckily it happened to be one of the warmest days since we arrive in NZ so the walk was tough to say teh least!! But my word was it worth the pain when we got there! Check the pics!!! We spent a couple of hours there and then had to make teh return trek!!
That evening we headed over to a hot water beach where you dig a hole in the sand big enough for everyone to lay in and the water is heated up by the thermal currrents from underneath...anyway it was really cool apart from when you step into what you think is an empty pool and realise its empty cause its about 70degs!!! oh oh oh i nearlly forgot... Dev, Usha.. after being in the hot water Jay needed to cool of abit so decided to go for a little swim in the sea... when he comes out and we head back to the bus he says 'Nik do you know where my sungalsses are?'...'No why would I have them?'...OH S*** THEY WERE ON MY HEAD!! ...thats ray ban pair number three is it?!?!
Then we had a group bbq which was really cool to get to know everyone on our bus!
Next day we headed to Raglan which is on the west coast and is mainly an surfing town.. still trying to be tight with our budget we decided to not go with eth surfing lessons and instead had a chill out afternoon at 'Whale Bay'.. wasn't a bad location tho!! We had dinner cooked for us again that evening, went up to lookout point to see the sunset.. unfortunatley it was a little too cloudy and the sun setting behind some trees didn't help but it was cool!
Woke up the next morning to it absolutley chucking it down! Bring on the matching raincoats...what geeks!! Today we were heading to waitomo to check out some caves so the rain diodn't matter too much. We did a tour of two caves one of which was amazing as the celings are covered with glow worms... worms that actually glow!! Hopefully you will be able to see how amazing they looked!!
We didn't stay over in Waitomo as it's a very small village with only 45 ppl living there! Instead we headed over to Maketu for our cultural stay in a Maori family home! Firstly we were fed loads with the most amazing Pavlova I've ever tased for desert.. and then we were given a Maori show which we also took part in. The girls all had to lean the Poi and the boys had to learn the Haka... we have a fw pics and will hopefully have a small bit of a video... Jay's performance was outstanding....!! :) We stayed the night in like a big hall with all of the other people on just a mattress.. but it was the best night sleeps I've had so far..:)
Next day we headed to Rotorua where we are now. That morning we went staright to a rafting place where we went white water rafting which involved the largest commercially rafted waterfall drop in the WORLD!! 7M!! It was SO UNREAL.!! We did a 2m drop to begin with before the big one and that scared the life out of us! Luckily though we didn't fluip over and everyone stayed in the raft. I got a bit of confidence and decided to swim down the next drop/waterfall/ That was pretty cool apart from when you are underneath it and cant seem to find any air!! Pretty much an amazing morning!!!
We had decided to stay in rotorua where as most of our other new found friends where heading staright on to the next stop! It turned out well though cause we ended up spending tiem with the five people that also stayed and had a really good time!
Lazy b.u.g.g.e.r.s that we are, we decided to have a little lay down when we first got to our hostyel and ended up sleeping for about 4 hours!! we woke up just in time to meet the guys at about 8pm!! We had a great night out with them at what turned out to be a togo party! Crystal was keen to dress up as the prize for best dressed was a skydive...but throwing together a bedsheet and few leaves we ripped off the plants wasn't going to beat the girls who had planned all day (losers!) and turned up half naked!
NExt day I had a cracking headache (surprise surprise) but managed to get up with jay for the everton match...and then we both went back to sleep till about 4pm!!! What alife!! :)) Spent the evening with the guys and went to see the hot mud pools in rotorua park!
Next day we hired a car and went to Wai-tapo thermal wonderland and waimangu volcanic valley which were both really spectacular...all from natural volcanic activity!
All in all we walked about 7k which is all good training for the 17k walk that we have to do across Tongariro national park tomorrow!!! ARGH!!!
Anyway, we'll post the pics asap and let you know if I survived the trek tomorrow!!
Love to you all....keep the messages coming, they're so great!
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