Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening

Since I last wrote, I started the bus tour. I'm doing the tour with a company called Magic. Its a hop on-hop off kind of thing, so you never quite stay with the same people. You can get off at a destination and stay a couple of days, do whatever you want to do and get another bus a couple of days later. The bus (driver) takes us to places of interest and does a commentary along the way - the quality of this commentary varies somewhat. The other passengers on the bus have tended to be English/Irish - which is somewhat ironic, considering I had intended on meeting new people and travelled to the other side of the world to do so. Fortunately most of them seem to be OK and one or two actually rather nice people.

As some of you know there are endless ways of occupying yourself in New Zealand. Since I got on the bus I've been to and done quite a lot of things, for example -

Waitomo (or the Glowworm) Caves - they are kind of regular caves but have the added attraction of glow worms that shine their lights in the dark caves. Its really beautiful and serene. However when you get told what the glow worms are actually doing to create the light it is a little off-putting. I have been a couple of these cave tours and its funny how the tour guides alway make the same jokes - its like they've all been on the same training course.

Roturua - Its a quiet little "city". I use the term loosely as these place are tiny in comparison with UK cities. Like many places in New Zealand there is a heavy reliance on tourism - a town where they take advantage of the local resources - in this case the landscape and its geothermal pools. All over the place there are plumes of steam, that smelly ever so slightly eggy. It's sulphur apparently. In the town - erm sorry city, there are several places where you can soak yourself in mineral'ed geothermal waters. I took the opportunity to do this as I had failed to treat myself on my birthday as I passed out - unless you do include flying 20000 miles around the world and globe trotting for four months as 'treating oneself'...

I also took myself luging (riding a cart down a big hill), and doing a 'cultural Maori experience' The 'cultural experience' is a way of getting the outside world to understand the 'history' of these people - however as New Zealand is a developed country, it is hard to believe that they live as they did 'back in the day'. It feels as if the Maori people and the 'europeans' are quite integrated. Both accept each other and seem on the surface to accept and the europeans embrace the Maori culture and language. I know its not perfect and there's bound to be inequality under the surface, but in some ways this is one of the closest places I seen to London, but a hell of a lot more chilled and relaxed.

We also stopped off in Taupo. It was prety cold there and the hostel I'd chosen, wasn't the best. It felt a little unfinished - probably a great hostel in good weather - but trust me it was chuffing cold. Less said the better in this case.

So now I find myself in Wellington; however its Sunday night and Sunday is never a good time to arrive anywhere. Wellington seems like a city where things could be happening - if it wasn't Sunday. To be honest I'm pretty knackered as the bus journey to Wellington from Taupo was very long - about 8 or 9 hours. I'm getting the boat to the South Island tomorrow, which I'm looking forward as I've been informed it is stunning. The journey down from Auckland has been fine, very green, lots of sheep but getting progressively colder - more clothes may well need to be bought soon.

Will write again, after I've done some of the South Island. Catch you soon... x