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I have just about come to the end of my whistle stop tour of New Zealand's north island and later today we are heading across the Cook straight to the south island. It has been none stop since we arrived and we have only had two days of rain which is pretty good for over here! After leaving Auckland we headed up to the Bay of Island and New Zealands most northerly point, Cape Reinga. It is a beautiful stretch of coastline, even through the mist! Whilst there we did some sand boarding which was actually quite scary! The sand dunes are really steep and on wet sand you really go some! From the Bay of Islands we headed back down through Auckland to Rotoura which is a thermal area as the earth's crust is at it's thinnest. It is the most amazing place as there are natural thermal rivers and steam rising from the ground, you can even feel the heat touching the floor. We went to a real Maori village where they live in an active thermal area so they cook their food in the ground and bath outside etc, we saw bubbling mud and geyzers (sorry if spelt wrong!) there too, it was great. The only problem here though is that you constantly smell of egg from the sulphur, pleasent! In Rotoura I also went white water rafting which was amazing though a little scary! We rafted the highest commercially rafted waterfall in the world, I was holding on for my life, but it was fantastic!
The next stop was Lake Taupo which is a stunning volcanic lake. We only had an afternoon and night here but it is beautiful, it is surrounded by three volcanoes, the furthest was in the Lord of the Rings which people got very excited about! Here I went a bit crazy and decided to do a sky dive, it was the most fab thing ever! I have never been so scared but once your out it is fantastic and it was a great place to do it as the views are amazing.
And so now I am in Wellington and just about to head to a Museum on earthquake activity, Mr Bowen would be proud! Hopefully I can get some photos on but my technological skills are great so will see!
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