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So with a belly full of Bolognese after MercuryBay it was off to the pungent Roturoa or 'SulphurCity'. The place is littered with geysers and hot pools that give the whole place a rotten egg stench. I mean you get used to it after a while but it's still fairly unpleasant for the first 5 minutes you wake up in the morning. So first of course we visited the thermal reserve where we did our own self-guided tour (because we're cheap backpacking scum). There were loads of stinking hot pools and bubbling mud pools and funny cloured rocks that it gave the pretense of some alien plant. We stayed until we saw the main active geyser spurt steaming hot water 20m into the air which was quite dramatic. So after taking way too many photos (again) and sufficiently absorbing all the stench into our clothes, it was off to the luging. This was our first true adrenalin rush of the NZ leg and insanely fun. You take the gondola up to the top of this hill where you can then race down various tracks in these sledge-like luges with wheels. Kind of like go-karting but more extreme. I say race, you can just cruise down casually and admire the scenery, but of course that wasn't going to happen with us. So we did each course, scenic, advanced and expert all at full pelt with minimal breakage. Of course I was the only one to come off, trying to pull off an overly-ambitious overtaking maneuver to go past Rich but instead losing control and flying off the track, smashing into what was fortunate to be grass but still ripping my arm and leg to s***. Ah well. Ben will say he won each race, but technically there were mitigating circumstances involving start positions and other racers on the track, but you try telling him that. Anyway later that night, I decided to go to this cultural evening thingy, which was to be fair bloody expensive so Ben and Rich opted out. You basically get taken to a replica traditional Maori village where natives act out various aspects of their history and do lots of dances and teach you how they cooked and fought and stuff like that. It was pretty interesting, and the huge Maori lads dancing around in loincloths screaming and grunting at the top of their voices whilst bulging their eyes and sticking out their tongues was entertaining. They put on a huge feast for us with traditional Hangi, when they cook meet in big furnaces in the ground, which was the highlight. I made sure that I ate more than my bodyweight in food to justify spending the money, it was all pretty delicious anyway. However, going out afterwards when I got back wasn't the best idea, but still I had a good night and got to know the people on our us better. But then we left them all behind as we decided to stay in Roturoa an extra night so that we could go white water sledging the next day. It's basically when you go down rapids on a small water sledge rather than a raft. We were originally planning to do it in Queenstown but it's more expensive and apparently a lot more tame than Roturoa, so of course we went for the more extreme option because we're such badasses. So a tad hung-over, we geared up in rather fetching wetsuits and jumped in a cold river clutching these plastic sledges and proceeded to plough through the rapids at pace. It was immense fun although unbelievably knackering. I'm sure being relatively unfit didn't help, but you have to constantly kick your feet super hard to make sure you aren't swept away, and even harder when you go up to `surf`´ against the rapids (where you skim the sledge across them at the drop for as long as you can before you run out of steam and get dunked head first and emerge further down on your backside with lungs full of water barely clutching onto the sledge which you'll be lucky doesn't smack you in the face during the whole process). So by the end of it my calves were spent and I could barely walk. But it was definitely worth it and we were buzzing for the rest of the day. But no rest for the wicked as they say because the next day it was off to Waitomo on a new bus with new faces for Black Water Rafting. This is actually not as it sounds. It's basically touristy caving. Again in more superhero black wetsuits, you abseil down through a tiny hole into a dark cave where you then fling yourself over to a ledge on a zipline in the pitch black darkness, which was pretty cool. From there you can see the glow-worms on the ceiling of the cave system. They don't look real they look like little green LED lights it's pretty weird. It's like looking up at the stars, but in a cave. So you jump down into the underwater river and float along on a rubber ring and stare up at the thousands of glow-worms. Yup it was pretty f***ing magical (a tad different to Laos tubing). You then get out of the tube and walk along the river (occasionally spotting an eel which scared the s*** out of the girls we were with, it was hilarious) and as you get towards the exit, you start having to climb up crevasses and through little tunnels which was good fun and makes you feel a bit less like a tourist and more like a caver. By the end you're actually rock-climbing up through a waterfall to get out which was awesome! All in all the whole thing was definitely one of the best experiences I've had on the trip so far, and luckily not too taxing, the hardest part being trying to get to my penis through 3 layers of skin-tight wetsuit to take a piss. Okay so I lied I'll have to stop there and the next blog can finish off the North Island and hopefully start the South if I don't babble too much as usual. Otherwise I'm going to fall massively behind and the facebook photos will be even more out of synch with the blog. Of course that's if anyone is actually paying enough attention to notice these things which seems unlikely haha!!
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