Kia Ora!!

Wooooahh - I can't beleive it's been almost two weeks since my last confession. It's fair to say I've been kept really busy though. After leaving Whitianga we went to a place called Rotorua. To put it mildly the place stinks of s**t. There are various sulphur pits dotted about the city caused by the lava which runs underneath that heats the water and creates these mud pits. I didn't have time to visit but apparently the hot pools were amazing. My time in Rotorua was spent white water ratfing over a grade 5 river. This included a 2 metre drop followed by a 1 metre and then finishing off with a seven metre drop. Our raft driver thought he'd be funny and on the final drop he deliberately tipped us over. It was so funny but for a couple of seconds I didn't think I was getting out from under the raft. Really good stuff though. I also went luging as well which is like a bobsleigh but on concrete and on a go-cart type of thing. Really good fun to feel like a 12 year old!!! To finish off Rotorua we hired bikes and headed off on a 15km mountain bike ride around Redwood Forest. We biked all the way to a place called Blue Water. Getting back was slightly easier as it was mainly downhill.

After Rotorua we headed to a place called Waitomo. Waitomo has very little to offer accept amazing caving. Most of the caves have glow worms in and the caves are just covered in an illuminous green colour. It sounds really cosy until the guide informed us that glow worms are more like maggots and the green glow comes from their poo. Nice!!!!

I left Waitomo the very next day ( with a sore head as I was getting fed up with 18, 19 and 20 year olds getting drunk every night so thought I'd join in ( I was the only one that night :-( )) I headed to a quiet surfing town called Raglan for a weekend on the surf. In brief, it was a really chilled out weekend. I had a surf lesson and finally managed to stand up on my surf board. That was such an amazing feeling. I then had the following two mornings out on the surf and they were also really great! I hadn't realised but apparently I was known as Jellyfish Dan as when I did manage to get up on the surf board my arms were all over the place!

From Raglan we headed to Taupo which is where I am now. The plan to do a skydive in the morning and a bungee in the afternoon didn't quite go according to plan as the weather wasn't good for the skydive however I did do the bungee jump. I was soooo scared and at the last minute I was ready to back out but I was pretty much pushed out onto the ledge and did it - wooohhhooooooo. Check out the video at;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDbXH94qjLk

I have since been to the East Coast and had a blast but will save that blog for another day as running low on internet time.

To make you feel better you'll be pleased to know it's chucking down in Taupo at the moment but on a positive I'm about to cook chilli con carne, oh yeah!!

Hope everyone is good - sweet as bro!!

Dan xxx