mercury bay to waitomo

hello everyone,

all is going well in new zealand, no photo's again though, sorry. once we get to a place where we can upload some we will do, though it takes up a lot of time so even then it may only be a few... you'll have to wait till we get back for most of them.


anyway, from mercury bay we set off to rotorua, which smells of eggs. it's a geothermal area, with a large amount of sulphur, boiling mud pools and geysers. quite cool but also very smelly. we also got to see a kiwi bird while we were there.

on the way to rotorua we stopped off to go on a walk in an old gold mining area. we got to walk through the old gold mining tunnels and saw some amazing scenery.

we spent our evening in rotorua at a maori cultural evening. we visited a typical maori village where we saw and learnt all about how the maori's originally lived, and got to see lots of dancing, singing, chanting and even the infamous haka. we had a meal cooked traditionally in a 'hangi'. an earthed maori oven, the food is cooked under the ground over hot volcanic rocks. the meal was really nice.

today we drove up to waitomo and have just been chilling out in the sun at the hostel... suprisingly it's really hot here. pretty much the same as australia! and it's meant to be like this for the next five days. we were talking to our driver and she said that even in the south island it's still hot during the summer.

tomorrow before we head to taupo we are going black water rafting, which is basically walking through caves and then jumping in the water into a ring and paddling through the caves. there are glow worms and things to see too. should be good.

after that we head down to taupo where we are staying for three nights. while we are there we plan to do the tongariro crossing, a 17km walk where you get to see the emerald lakes and mt. doom from 'the lord of the rings'!

we'll be in touch again soon.

hope everyones well. x x x