Hi everyone,

We left Breckenridge at around 10.30 am on Sunday morning after a nice breakfast outside accommpanied by Sydney the cat and speaking to VB on the phone. The drive down to Rotorua only took about 21/2 hours which was pretty painless.

Found the lodge, Accolades which is about 12km outside of Rotorua, so it doesn't smell as much! Kath showed us around and its a lovely big spacious house ith views over Lake Rotorua. By the time we had unloaded the car it was gone 2pm so we drove into Rotorua and found a deli for lunch.

After lunch we went to Te Puia a Maori cultural centre and site of geothermal activity. We spent the remainder of the afternoon walking around and it was fascinating. We save bubbling mudpools, the ground steaming, a very active geyser, Kiwi birds, the carving school and weaving school, representation of a Maori village and a very interactive exhibition on Maori culture and geothermal activity. Being the geographers Mum and I are, we throughly enjoyed it, I think Dad was more concerned with the smell!

In the evening we stayed at the house, and just got take out Chinese, a bottle of wine and watched TV!

Monday we had an early breakfast and hot the road early to Wai-O-Tapu the largest area of surface thermal activity in the hydrothermal system in Taupo volcanic zone. It took us about half an hour to get there so we were in plenty of time for the geyser erupting at 10.15am!

After we had our tickets we wnet down to the geyser and awaited the guy to put the soap flakes down the top! The soap suds reduce the water's surface tension and superheated steam and water are relesed in a jet. It was quiet impressive but with so much steam it was hard to see how high it was being ejected!

After we had exhausted the geyser we spent several hours walking around the park, check out the captions on the photos to find out more. It was very prehistoric and hostile environment, you almost expected to see a dinosaur stroll across the landscape! Beneath the ground is a system of streams which are heated by magma-the water is so hot that it absorbs the minerals out of the roack and transports them to the surface as steam where they are ultimately absorbed back into the ground as coloured minerals. The vegetation is also covered in this birght orange algae called Trentepohlia. On the way out the park we stopped at these huge bubbling mud pools.

Stopped in Rotorua on the way back for lunch at the Fat Dog! Spent the afternoon at the house.

Just a few more stops then home.

Love Hayley x

Love Hayley x