Yesterday we arrived at The Park Travellers Lodge in National Park Village which is in the Tongariro National Park. And today it was back to reality and work!!!!!! Lucky we managed to get settled in well to our lovely PRIVATE room!!! No more dorms for us for the next 6 weeks. Both have lovely double beds with me upstairs and claire downstairs in our loft style room. Another luxury is having our own toliet and shower. We also have a fridge for our food and beer. On the housekeeping team there are two girls and a guy from Canada Jen, Jess and Sean, a girl from England Stef and one guy from Germany - Henrik (who we keep calling Heimlich like the german catipillar from 'a bugs life'- whoops!). Plus Taylor and Sue in the kitchen who cook our free evening meal. Yum nice homemade burgers last night and roast pork tonight with roast potatoes.

As for "The Village" the girls took us on a driving tour of the village last night and it took all of 10 minutes and 8 of those minutes were spend buying bread and milk in the petrol station. So there really aint much to do out here. We do have a stunning view of Mt Doom from Lord of the Rings( well thats if the cloud decides to disappear) The weather is a bit rubbish, cold and rainig with the odd bit of sunshine. Wish i had brought warmer clothes now. As for the jobs we are mainly doing housekeeping, cleaning rooms, changing beds ect plus other things that need done. Mum would be proud of me today i cleaned at least 5 bathrooms and hoovered. The Lodge is pretty quiet at the moment as the Ski season is over but the lodge gets alot of trampers( aka walkers) staying while they do the Tongariro Crossing which is one of New Zealands best one day walks where you climb up next to a Volcano and stuff. Maybe we will attempt it before we leave.................

.......................................................

Yup so back to the day job- it's a great place......what a room- own double bed, wardrobe, fridge and bathroom!!!!!....it's like the Ritz of backpacking!!!! The works not too bad either!- we get to use a vacuum cleaner that you wear on your back- we look like something out of ghostbusters!!!!....welcome to the secret and glamorous life of a backpacker!!!Claire