Rotorua has the highest population of Maori people so tonight we treated ourselves on a trip to a traditional Maori village to experience some of their culture, Tamaki. Our guide, Mark for the night picked us up from the hostel and greeted us all with 'Kia Ora', which in Maori terms means several things, mainly, 'hello and goodbye'. Mark translated this into over 50 languages which was pretty impressive to say the least. There were 4 coaches arriving at the T...

Wai-O-Tapu (Sacred Waters) is NZ's most diverse volcanic area with geothermal activity, lakes, craters and steam vents. Lady Knox Geyser (not pronounced 'Geezer') which erupts daily (with the help of organic soap) and reaches heights of up to 20metres was our first spot before we made our way around the area which took us past huge volcanic craters, mud pools and steaming hot pools which all have an amazing variety of everchanging colours, from illuminous green...

Woke up to the lovely smell of rotten eggs this morning and with the weather not looking too good we spent the day around the hostel and in the lounge

Still on a high from yesterday but with nothing much else to do in Taupo we set off north. About 5 minutes later on the road we passed 'Shaun the Prawn' farming park, where we soon learnt that we could fish for our own prawns! So we hired a rod and bought some bait and settled ourselves on a bench beside one of the pools - home to 25,000 prawns, surely we'd catch something! 30 minutes later we had! A nice large prawn, but we with not really knowing how to tak...