Gid day!

After seeing Auckland, it was time to put our wheels to good use, and start the road trip! Ben had heard that Rotorua was a good place to head to that was packed with allsorts of things to do, such as lugeing, thermal hot pools, kayaking and other outdoor activities. It was just four hours drive from Auckland, but very different all round. When we move from hostel to hostel, we usually just look up in the directory the night before to sort where we will stay next, starting with the cheapest obviously! So we ended up getting checked in at the funky green voyager! Maybe they got the name because they had strict recycling rules?! lol

The guy who owned the place was sound as a quid! Called Gerard Telfor..he also fancied himself as an amateur movie maker, and showed Alex and Al his first attempt at this, which wasn't that good, but just incase he gets famous (as he said) then atleast we saw the first ever Gerard Telfor movie right?! lol

Our Hostel was close to all the shops and a couple of supermarkets, which gave us no excuse to get some cheap shopping done and cook some meals for four..but lets not get into that, and we'll just say we wont be taking it up as a prefession when we get home, but we're getting better!:)

On our second day we headed to the luge tracks. There were three tracks to go on, and two in the making, but we had the choice of 'the scenic route', 'intermediate' and 'advanced'. When we got there, we could buy different package deals, because to get up and down you had to take the gondola, and there was also a 'sky swing', which you could get up to three people in (a metal caged ball with seats and harness belts!) that had cables attached to two sides of the ball, and two huge pillar frames, and got cranked back up into the air at some stupid height, and you had to pull the release cable yourself to let the ball drop and start swinging out into nothingness! This was all captured on our hand held camara with Alex and Al being the only ones up for risking there necks for a 20 second rush haha!

So after the swing, and after Ben and Ryans first luge track (scenic route), we all met up with 2 luge tracks left each..and no messing! You could actually really hurt yourself on these things if you're not too careful! We'll leave you to guess if anyone did get hurt, and if so which one of us! lol Its all over pretty quick, but its a great day out, for the lads especially!

After a tiring day at the luges, we made one of our many dissasterous meals lol and got recomended to go to the Polynesian Thermal hot springs. This was only a 15/20 minute walk away, but feels longer in New Zealands outdoor temperatures! When we got there, we were probably the only white people..it seems to be a hot spot for the south east Asian tourists (Asian invasion! lol). The Spa was $25, so about a tenner to you guys back home..and worth every penny! There were 6 different pools that we could go in, at different temps, but if you payed more you could go in others, and private ones. The hottest one we got into was around 45 degrees, so hot enough for us! and it was really exhausting too, so you didn't really want to stay in that long, plus, the sulpher makes you stink like egg..mmm!

We only stayed in Rotorua for 3 days, so on our last day we headed to the lake, as it was probably the brightest day we've seen in New Z! So that was a nice way to end our stay there, before moving on to the next place:)

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