We left Taupo for Rotorua on 17th September. The journey only took an hour or so. It was really sunny so we decided to camp to save some cash. The lady at the campsite warned there were going to be thunderstorms but we didn't let that put us off. She was wrong anyway. We set up the tent and headed into town for a look around, a bit of internet and shopping. The town is quite small and smells like egg due to all the volcanic activity. In parks and fields all around you can see smoke or bubbly mud it's quite strange. Smells bad though. We didn't do much else that day, just booked up a trip for the next day to the thermal volcano wonderland. We decided to only stay here two nights as we are pushed for time.

In the evening we cooked up a big chilli and had a couple of bottles of wine. There was a big group of kiwis staying in the hostel for a works do getting pretty rowdy so we hung out with them for a bit, and stayed up until about midnight. That night we were nice and toasty in the tent, it was easily warm enough. It's definitely spring here now.

We had to get up early to catch a bus. We tried to get a quick breakfast but it was difficult as loads of school girls on a trip had taken over the kitchen. We managed to fight our way to the toaster and grab a cup of tea before the bus arrived to pick us up at 8.30 ish. It took us about half an hour and then we had a short stop at a massive bubbly mud pool (biggest in southern hemisphere apparently) The stuff was flying everywhere. Weird. After that we went down to a geyser which goes off everyday at 10. It was ok but it expected it to shoot up in the air more,but it was actually a gradual build up. It went really high though to be fair, best geyser I've ever seen anyway. Alan though it was good.

After that we were dropped of at Wai-O-Tapu, which is a big thermal park, where we spent a couple of hours. You walk around a track and you see various multi-coloured steaming craters, pools and mud. It was an interesting place, and everything was really colourful, stinky and quite bizarre. There is an area called the Champagne Pool which is really orange around the edges and famous in New Zealand. My favourite was a bright lime green pool. See photos as its quite hard to describe. After that we got the bus back to the campsite.

It was a really sunny day again and we chilled out in the tent for a while. Wewalked into town again and got some internet done and sorted out travel to Waitomo the next day. In the evening we cooked up a big curry, had a few glasses of wine and watched some TV before bed. Again the tent was fine. We were pleased as we'd been carrying it around for some time so it's nice to get a bit of use out of it. We hoped to use it throughout the rest of New Zealand to save money as it is generally about half the cost of staying in a hostel.