3rd July 2009

We were up and out of our campsite by 9 this morning heading further South of North Island to Rotoura. We drove back through Auckland city centre and over the harbour bridge and stopped in a town called Newmarket to buy a new camera. It turned out to be quite a nice town and pretty big, so after a brief stop here and a few hundred dollars later (sad times!) we had our camera and continued our drive.

We arrived in Rotoura just after lunch and stopped at Skyline Skyrides on our way in. After a quick lunch we bought tickets for us to go up the cliff on a gondala and then 5 rides on the 'Luge". The luge is similar to tobogganing but a bigger trach and you sit in more of a sledge type thing with wheels and you steer!! There are 3 tracks which vary in difficulty, winding all the way back down the cliffs. So after getting our sexy helmets we went on the intermediate run first. You go so fast and have to make sure you steer around the corners otherwise you fly off the edge and that was a long way down! When you get to the bottom you get a chairlift back up which takes about 5 mintues and has amazing views over the whole of Rotoura and beyond. Our second run was the 'Advanced Track', which was harder and much faster and more funny than the first. Third time round we took the scenic route, where there are little lay-bys you can pull over in to take pictures in, which me and Mike found stupidly funny having to pull over in our little karts! It want long before we got competitive and raced down this one, trying to take each other out, I won!! Miek wouldnt agree but I was a much better driver!!!!!We both survived this, including Mike! We both loved this, it was so much fun!!

From here we found a cheap campsite for the night and then went to look at the thermal springs. You know when your near as it stinks of egg! They are really good to see though (if you hold your nose!), there is loads of steam and bubbling mud. We got some good pictures.

Our parking spot tonight at the campsite was literally a space inbetween aload of bushes! I opened our airvent when I cooked dinner and got half a tree stuck in it! When we needed the loo we had to step out the passengers door into a bush and walk along the bushes to the road! Our tourch also decided to die on us so we could see where we were going, it all added to the fun of it i guess!

We were in bed early tonight as we are leaving for Taupo early to hopefully do a skydive!!