We couldn't leave rotarua without doing one more activity. Well.....maybe two. After waking up the morning after the toga party with a mild hangover, we thought what better way to cure it than to roll down in a hill in a big ball! We had always planned on going zorbing so it was really great to be actually doing it. For those of you who haven't heard of it, you are taking up to the top of a hill to a place of lots of options. You can either be strapped to the inside of the big ball, or nt be and be at the mercy of the rolling ball. You can also choose to have water put inside it. We both the water option and to not be strapped down. It was so much more fun. We also both went down the zigzag course and were thrown all over the place, getting soaked in the process. You just couldn't control yourself!
After zorbing, the obvious next thing to do is t go shweebing right? We went to a place just down the road from the zorbing to a place called aggro-adventures, a mini theme park with about 5 or 6 things to do. Shweebing is where you pedal yourself around in a tube hanging from a track. Its like a rollercoaster except yu get to control the speed, although the idea is to go as fast as you can. Me and chris were able to race against each other which was great fun. After that it was on to Waitomo, which is where many of New Zealands best and most impressive caves are. It was quite expensive to go on the caving trip so unfortunatly we didn't go, but we had managed to walk through some in a trip to karanghake gorge earlier on the trip. It was a good experience, especially walking through a series of dark tunnels, where at some points you could not even see your hand in front of your face!
Next morning we were off to Taupo, where we spent two days. there was an opportunity to go bungy jumping or on a high swing, but we thought we would go bigger and save it for when we are in Queenstown, the birthplace of tghe bungy jump and other extreme sports. We had a free day in Taupo so we just explored the city and played some mini golf. Nice hole in one there somewhere!

Left Taupo this morning. On the way to our stop for tonight, River Valley, we stopped off at Tongario National Park, home to Mount Doom form Lord of the Rings and ther scenery from the film. Something we missed out from our last blog was that we also visited 'Hobbiton', which was filmed around a town called Matamata. We didn't actually see where the shire was filmed because a lot of the set isn't there anymore but we did get a photo with gollum!

We are in the middle of nowhere at our hostel tonight, but are once again lucky enough to be surrounded by stunning landscape. Seriously, everywhere you go in this country you are greeted with breathtaking views. Can't wait for the South Island!