Mon 24th Nov Rotorua to Waitomo
It was another fairly early start this morning and once Rich was on the bus, he announced to us that he’d not slept very well that night. Before he could go on, I noticed a very shamefaced couple sitting not too far away from us. It turns out that Rich had gone to bed and could hear a couple getting very amorous in the pool right outside his window. He’d tried to ignore it but he said they were so loud that in the end he thought he’d have to say something. He was on the ground floor and looked out of the window only to find the couple going at it on the bench right in front of him. Rich was a bit taken aback but chuckled to himself and just let them get on with it and it wasn’t until the morning that he became a bit more annoyed. Not realising until then, he’d left his boardies on that bench and this couple were going hammer and tongues at it on them so he thought he’d share the story with the rest of us as punishment!

First stop was Te Puia, a thermal park where it was optional to do this or go to the Redwood Forest for a walk instead. Since I’d seen amazing geysers in Bolivia, I decided to do the walk instead and it was well worth it. The Redwoods are not native to New Zealand (they’re from America I think) and they were introduced as an experiment to see how well they would grow. It would appear conditions were perfect and the trees grew a bit too well! The weather had been miserable with that fine rain but as soon as we started to walk it brightened up a bit, not that it mattered as we had plenty of shelter from these huge trees.

Once we’d picked up the others from the thermal park, we headed to an adventure centre where you could do jet boating, pedal monorail(?) and bungee jumping but we decided to save our pennies and just watch instead. Rich sorted out a bbq here and we all had sausage butties for lunch, even the ducks who I’m not sure are supposed to eat sausage but they definitely enjoyed it. It was the zorb stop next –rolling down a hill inside a huge inflatable ball, which I’d thought sounded like a good idea when first mentioned and signed up. Now I changed my mind, the windy roads had left me a bit travel sick and I didn’t fancy seeing those sausages again.

Instead of the zorbing, I went to a local farm show instead and it was definitely the best choice. It was one of the most entertaining things I’ve done on my travels so far! We missed the first bit (us? Late? Funny that.) and walked in to find a man on stage with about 20 different varieties of sheep on platforms behind him. I didn’t even realise there were 20 odd types of sheep! Highlights of the show included him shearing a sheep in super quick time, herding ducks with the help of his gorgeous sheep dog (probably called shep or something similar), having his dogs jump over the disinterested sheep and sitting on their backs, feeding baby lambs and finally a sheep auction. He told the audience there was a sheep bid going on and any movement of any kind was to be taken as a bid. I sat on my hands so as not to make a false bid and it got up to $2,000 with all these people unwittingly bidding. Just as I thought it was over, I reached into my bag to grab my camera and he pointed at me and told me I was the winner of the sheep and I had to go up and collect my prize. Mortified I slowly made my way to the stage and had to explain I had no money to buy a sheep and he told me I’d have to take my shoes off, then my bag then my jumper so he could value them to pay for it. Kate had come back from the toilet half way through this to find me taking my clothes off on stage and exclaimed that she couldn’t leave me alone for 2 minutes! It was all good fun but extremely embarrassing, especially when he said my shoes were worth $2 cheeky sod! Anyway in exchange for this humiliation I was given a free toy sheep made out of wool. Marvellous. Once the show was over, I went to have a look around the farm and went to the wool show which was more interesting than it sounds….no honestly! Also I got a bit overly excited when she pointed out the machines were from Huddersfield, hmmm.

Back on the road, Rich pointed out more indicator cows and it was only then that I realised I was indeed either extremely stupid or very gullible but I shared in this with Elizabeth who I also realised didn’t get it either. She also had a rather strange theory on squirrels, but we won’t go into that. So this is when we bonded with Elizabeth and Kathleen, the LA girls who we realised were as nuts as us. That afternoon we made it to Waitomo where we were staying in some lovely rooms made even better by the fact that we didn’t have to share with anyone, what a luxury! We cooked tea with the very limited pots and pans and then went to the one and only pub. We had a few drinks but left Kathleen and Elizabeth in their challenge to drink all the different types of beer for a free pint pot. Hmmm, not too sure it was worth all that effort but they got the pint pot plus the bonus of a free hangover the next day.

Tue 25th November Waitomo to Taupo
A very early start in Waitomo (Wai meaning water and Tomo meaning cave), which has beautiful countryside hiding caves underneath that it would be rude not to go and look at.I decided to take the option of black water rafting with the Legendary Black Water Rafting Company who developed the original experience at this very spot. It was first created in the 1980s by Peter Chandler –cavers were already using the route to float through after caving to clean their muddy gear hence the name Laundry Trip. We chose the original experience, the Black Labyrinth which was a three hour long trip with one hour in the caves. The mini bus took us to the centre and we met dumb and dumber who we were horrified to learn were our guides for the day. Luckily since there had been so much rain the day before the rapids were strong and we had to take two more experienced guides out with us. To be fair once they were in the caves they were a lot more sensible.

We donned wetsuits, booties, a helmet and life jackets and had our photo taken doing some silly posing. The wetsuits were still wet from the previous occupants making them extremely difficult to pull on. Once we had all our gear on, they took us to the starting point of the rafting and picked up our rubber inner tubes. We were told to jump into the very cold river and then to get out again and that wasn’t the start at all, just a practise! The start was at the entrance to a cave, which we had to climb down and into a chamber where we all sat in a circle, introduced ourselves and told everyone our favourite tv show. It was pitch black in the cave so we had our head torches on but couldn’t look anyone in the face when speaking to them for fear of blinding them! The water here was ankle deep and not too cold, the guides led us through the first cave into waist deep water and the next hour was some walking, some jumping into rock pools from a waterfall, sliding on the inner tube and floating. The water current was extremely powerful and we had to hold on tight. One girl lost her tube to the water and a shoe! It was really easy to fall off when sitting on the tube and going through the strong rapids. The best part (apart from the fast rapids) was lying back on the tube, linked in one long line with everyone else, floating down the laundry trip with the lights off and staring at the thousands of glow worms on the roof of the caves. All this whilst eating a marshmallow chocolate fish given to us by the guides! Elizabeth and I agreed it didn’t get much better. Nature is amazing. It was tiring but so worth it, as was the hot soup and bread they gave us back at the centre.

Since we had decided to do the black water rafting, we missed the Angora rabbit shearing…it sounded bizarre and when Alex showed us the pictures, it really was just as weird as it sounded. They stretch the poor rabbit and shear it whilst it’s on these two poles. Apparently it doesn’t hurt them but the audience were warned not to try it at home as it was a technique the rabbits had to be trained in….Anyway we headed towards the Tongariro National Park after lunch and en route we saw the cone shaped mountain Ngauruhoe used in the filming of Lord of the Rings for Mount Doom. After two attempts, I still haven’t seen this film all the way through (sleep was just so alluring) but I still took photos anyway. We had a short walk opposite the mountain to check out the Huka Falls (Huka equals foam), which are 35ft high and the channel has been naturally formed by an ancient earthquake. Rich told us we weren’t supposed to jump –just before he took the plunge himself. Some of the others followed but it was a bit cold for getting in the water so I just watched. There was only one girl who did it called Frankie and she did an amazing somersault but disappeared in the falls and for a split second my heart was in my mouth. Much to everyone’s relief she appeared unharmed if a little shaken.

We left here to go to Lake Taupo, which is the largest lake in Australasia and at 616km2 is big enough to fit the whole of Singapore in. Once we were settled in the hostel we went to the supermarket for tea and had a wander around the town. This hostel was fairly new and we took advantage of one of the sanctuary rooms, which are dorms for girls only with free shampoo etc. There were exactly six of us so it was perfect for one of these rooms and they are all such lovely girls. Randomly we bumped into Simon and Alex the crazy Irish guys who we’d met in Bolivia on the World’s Most Dangerous Road bike ride (they were the ones who had been late, had seen our names on the sheet and were looking for a 6ft vegetarian and her friend!). We met up with them that night for a drink and the only bar with any life was the hostel bar so we stayed there. The barman took a bit of a shine to me and kept giving me free drinks. Kate was sensible and left early, I was still there at 3am drinking bourbon and cokes and thinking I was the world’s greatest dancer! We were last out and luckily didn’t have far to go to our dorms.