DAY 5 - the road to rotorua I am late for the coach, another night of very little sleep. i do get a cheer as i make it onto the coach though. i am feeling a tad hungover, which is nice. we have a new tour guide mandy who has taken over from chrissy. we do some more intro's and embarrassing stories on the way. we head south an stop for a welcome break in huntly on the banks of the waikato river. a small dodgy looking town with a big coal power station which suipplies only 3% of NZ power. why bother? meet some of the new guys, seem ok so far. next stop is the small township of Waitomo, where we stop for some optional activities. i choose to do quad biking over rolling fields and mountain tracks. i was joined by steve and joony. we head off trying to avoid the numourous sheep, started to rain a little but no matter the scenery is awesome. i dont think joony has been quad biking before as we head off following the guide and he shoots off in the wrong direction after failing to make it up the hill. myself, steve and one of the guides were in hysterics watching him, and things were only going to get worse. we rag around for a while on these tracks with some big drops of the edge so no going off piste. doesnt stop us trying to get the back end out though. at every gate we stop and wait for everyone to catch up. we stop for a while to look in some caves, damn it was dark in there, i hit my head on a rock, but at least i still had the helmet from quad biking still on. we continue on driving round a few pond which joony had great difficulty avoiding as he heads straight towards one nearly tipping the bike over, then stops just in time before accelerating straight into the pond, im crying with laughter now, if only my camera was handy. well we carry on for about hour before heading back to the coach. just enough time to play a bit of pool and order pizza. it really started to chuck it down with water now as we get soaked running to the coach, which was nice. lucky i brough a good jacket before i came out. next off to the smelting pot of rotorua. we settle into our accomodation, the alpin lodge. we have a natural thermal spa pool in the garden of each room, which is nice. we have dinner all together, some curry dishes, although very mild. a number of us decide to head into town, let the drinking commence. we get a mini cab in and start on the good old 2 for 1 offers. we decide to start a few drinking games. basically you have to take a card and depending on what card you pick up i could give various reasons to drink, make rymes and catergories that everyuone has to follow or they drink. however there is a jug in the middle of the table and every time a king appears they have to poor a drink into it, the person to take the final king has to down the jug. with 5 cards to go this would not be a good time for nick, our driver to go to the toilet. i organise the cards so that it works out he gets the last king, he had no idea and is pretty mashed by the time he had downed it. a good time now to add some random drinking rules. we start again this time i decide to be evil and put a shot of baileys into the lager / alchopop etc mix just so it curdles. unfortunately for kevin he gets the last king but is unable to even attempt it, so naturally i cant let it go to waste and i decide to cane it. which was nice. kevin manges to steal a space hopper from the bar on the way home. another late one, we finished about 3. i am really enjoying this tour now. some fgreat folk here as well. out tonight was the 3 american siblings, kate(watch out for wormies), laurel and kevin. neil, andrea, jenny, jenna and nick. my memory is too fuzzy to remember much else. i can tell i am going to enjoy some nights out with kate, shes a great laugh. we stop on the way back for some supplies, my intention was to buy some water and some chrisps, however i return to the minicab with mayonaise and a baby congratulations card. this was supposed to be a birthday card for steve, who's birthday is on the 27th but my focus is poor. anyway now to prepare for tomorrows white water rafting and no doubt some more boozing. oh i didnt mention that rotorua stinks of eggy farts all the time. this is the sulphur as this place has one of the thinest earth crusts in the world apparently.