It's May now, (how that happened I don't know) and we are nearly leaving nz. A whole month has passed with us being here. I've had a fantastic time.

So since Wellington, we've only stopped at a couple of places but generally for more nights.
So as we were on our way to Taupo, we asked if it was possible to stop at river valley.
Fortunately, although we had to wait a few hours we made it to River Valley. We stayed in the most beautiful lodge in the middle of nowhere (we had to go in a fancy private room as the bookings went wrong, how sad for us). It was so quiet and peaceful facing a waterfall with a huge river at the end of the lodge. It's one of the few commercial grade 5 white water rafting places in nz. So obviously, we had to do it. Although difficult at times, the rafting was so much fun. I managed to fall in a record number of 4 times, I don't even know how I managed that but it was great fun. The next night, the whole lodge was ours as no kiwi buses were stopping there that day, so it was nice to get some quiet time in such a peaceful place.

Eventually we made it to Taupo, but on the way, we stopped at skydive Taupo where we all chose to jump out of a plane attached to a random person who I depended on to survive the jump. Seems ridiculous, right? But still, that's what I did and although the free fall was terrifying, when the parachute was released, the views over Lake Taupo were so stunning that you couldn't believe it was a real place. I even got to control my parachute and drive it around a little bit (it's more difficult that you expect). Emma and I got to do the last jumps of the day at sunset, which all the professionals said was the best time to jump, so that made it even more special.

Finally we made it to Taupo, where Emma and I explored while Josie did the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. Apparently it was really good but a 6-8 hour hike really doesn't appeal to me. Instead Emma and I went to a stream that was heated by hot springs, so it was like a bath, even though it flowed into a lake which was really cold. It was an odd thing to encounter but very cool at the same time.

After Taupo, we stayed at Rotorua for 6 nights. The hostel we stayed at (crash palace) was a family run one and is my favourite hostel as of yet as you can tell they care about the hostel and their customers. It did fun activities most nights and the staff were so helpful.
So 6 days in Rotorua, what did we do?
A lot of exploration of the town as it is the geothermal area of NZ so there are a lot of mud pools and craters and lakes and hot pools to see in the area. We went to a Maori experience one night which was so fascinating to learn all about their culture and how it has changed over time. We were served traditions Hangi food, which is cooked underground, and it was absolutely delicious and we were also shown a performance of how to use traditional Maori weapons, as well as poi dancing and the war dance of the Haka. It was a fantastic evening.
One day, I explored Roturua alone as the other two went mountain biking in the Redwood forest, which I was not interested in doing but they seemed to enjoy themselves.
On our last day, we did a tour which was run by our hostel which took us to mud pools (we got to cover ourselves in the hot mud; apparently it is good for your skin), to a much bigger hot water pool than the one in Taupo, and to a bright blue crater lake next to Rainbow Mountain while he taught us all about how they were formed and why they are there etc. etc. It was a really enjoyable tour.

Today we got our last bus. We are officially finished on our Kiwi Experience and made it to Auckland in one piece. It was a fantastic way to see New Zealand. We would have had no hope by ourselves. We made a few friends along the way and didn't want to kill each other by the end of it (if we got a campervan, we might not have been as lucky on that note). I would recommend to anyone considering it that the Kiwi bus is a fantastic option. It mad everything so simple and showed us places we never would have dreamed of getting to without the bus.

So that's us. New Zealand =pretty much done. Three days and we're off to Fiji and while we're there we will be halfway through our travels.
Time has flown by, but we've done so much that I feel like I've bee away for ages as well. It's all very odd.

Bye for now
Xxxx