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Last day in the north island today...
Left this morning and drove round the grand lake in taupo and up onto the desert pass 1000ft above sea level...as we drive along we passed mount doom from lord of the rings which means nothing to me but was really stunning and looked so strange being not much higher than us (who were in the sunshine) and being covered in snow, as if it had been moved from somewhere else and dropped on our path. We went through a town called bulls where all the shops were called 'unbelievabull' or 'adorabull' and the local police station said 'come in and see the constabull' (that's one for all you dads out there, the majority of our coach was really unimpressed!), and then through to wellington where we found out we are currently on the intersection of 8 fault lines and earthquakes are common, in fact, this morning there was 1 in the south island measuring 4.5 on the richter scale and could be felt up here...that's 3 in 2 weeks!! yikes!
We also found out that the south island is flooding all the time, earthquaking and is 400m deep in snow in some parts...so yes, looking forward to that one! Besides all this we went to the museum today and I have to say it's so interesting to see where we are on the faultlines...we're on the san andreas fault line but it is called something else I cant remember here as well as the other 8...awesome! All the buildings have their foundations build on ball bearings so that they can withstand the tremors (according to mangu...but hmmm?!). Back to the hostel for a curry and to prepare ourselves for our ferry crossing to the south island tomorrow which is meant to be hugely windy and hopefully not to wavey argh!
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