Day 26- Taupo to Rotorua- It was up early to pack as the girls in our room had fallen asleep and turned the light off in our room and packing in the dark with a torch was too much effort! After a spot of breakfast and checking out, the morning consisted of catching up on the FA cup and watched the Man City vs Man Utd game, followed by the Stoke vs Bolton game-well Scott watched all that game- I went on the internet for a wee while firstly to find out the score of the game to save me watching it as I still dislike Stoke for knocking the Albion out of the cup! The hostel was freezing this morning so it gave us an excuse to go out and buy tim tams and teabags and to try out the trick 'drinking tea through a tim tam' what you have to do is bite off the opposite corners of the tim tam then place it in your lovely warm cup of tea before trying to suck it through melting your double chocolate tim tam from the inside out! Heaven! It's hard to believe but it makes the already amazing timtam even better. All the fun in one morning made the day fly by.... well so we thought when we were called by katie on reception that the bus was here, it couldn't surely be 2:40 already could it... no it decided to show up at 1.30pm instead. So after checking that there wasn't another bus coming through, we did a quick pack and made for the bus! On the way out we passed Dan and another guy still attempting to hitchhike to Rotorua also-so we gave them a wave and went past-despite our bus being empty, the driver had no desire to pick them up. An hour later and we arrived. It was a 10minute walk from the drop off to the hostel- and in that 10minutes the blooming heavens opened. Scott stopped to out on his wet weather gear- I personally couldn't be bothered to unload and then put the dam backpack back on so I went for the soggy look! 5minutes after arriving there were blue skies outside and no more clouds- was as if someone had a watering can in the sky and thought it would be funny to soak me! The funky green voyager hostel we were staying in was just like bieng at home-you had to take your shoes off before you went in, there was a dining table and living room, and a conservatory! Nice and cosy...well apart from the fact there was no dam central heating-so we were relying on the sun for warmth! We wandered into town and to the lake which like Taupo had a volcano underneath it! We soon came back quick though as we got frozen by theh sharp wind that came with Rotorua, and also the strong and distinct eggy smell too-if we thought the moon craters were bad yesterday-there was no way of getting rid of the smell here-it well and truly follows you around! Lets just hope the clothes smell egg free by the end or thats more washing to do! So we came back, jumped into bed and thawed out, before dashing to the kitchen and making dinner! Sausage pasta was on the menu this evening-stupide sausages burned before even cooking-mmm charcoal! At 7.15pm we wandered back into town as we were meeting back up with Sophie and Chris, and some weirdo they'd met on the bus. She had said to meet at base which was apparently central...we soon found it to not be central and after getting directed to it twice, we found we had walked a little too far! Time for a drink- good job they had free drinks vouchers or they would have been in serious trouble! At 9.30pm we found the pub was discretely kicking us out (maybe because we only had our free drink in there) but they turned the heaters off in the marque we were sitting in, and we soon found ourselves freezing! So we called it a night and me and Scott ran all the way back to the hostel (partly because it was cold and partly because the town was so deserted I was slightly scared!) I didn't enjoy the deep breathing in of the eggy air-it really does smell here!
Day 27- Rotorua- I like bieng a bum and a lady of leisure-roll out of bed at 9am and have a boiled egg on toast! Thats the life. Blue skies outside meant we couldn't waste the day though, so we walked to see the redwoods via sulphur even more eggy smelling point. We were planning on hiring bikes, but we found out you had to be rich to do that so walking it was! Didn't think the smell could get any worse but apparently it could! There was steamy smoke everywhere! And according to the sign, the magna here was only 5-10km underground...that explains the smell! An hour laster we came to the information centre and to the start of the redwoods trail. Scott was excited to see the trees, and I was excited that we had found somewhere in Rotorua that didn't smell of egg! Wahoo! We decided to do an hours walk round them in preperation to go see the redwoods in California which he hasn't stopped going on about since we arrived! Apparently they are more than just a bunch of trees, so we will see! Turns out they were pretty tall- as I'm sure you are all excited to know-photos are on facebook! At one point we thought one was going to fall on us as it was rocking from side to side, creeking as it went! Twas a long way up to fall down! We walked an hour back into town via Countdown to buy in some supplies and get some hot cross buns in preparation for easter weekend!- think it was the closest we were going to get to an easter egg as they were still overly expensive dammit! After dinner we met up with Sophie, Chris and mr weirdo George for a free drink using their vouchers again! Not a bad place to hang out for free! As we'd finished out free drink, a waitress walked past after cleaning a table carrying a plate of food- so George decided he quite liked the look of that, so offered to finish off the leftovers with his helpers Scott and Chris. By this point I was hiding under the table because embarassment had just walked throught he door looking for me! They informed me it was vegetarian lasagne...well that doesn't make it any better- you could have at least taken something a little more worth it! So after we finished being scavvy-we left in a hurry before they started to look for more free food and we get billed for what they had eaten! How embarassing!
Day 28- Rotorua- We visited our good friend Maccy D's for some free internet before rocking up to cactus jacks hostel to find the others. We arrived to find that not only was George a scavvy with food, but today he was covered in bed bugs also! So we made it our job to avoid standing near him for the day! We did however keep thinking we were itching all day at the thought of the bed bugs! Maybe they do fly! First stop of the day- we walked up to the lake to what appeared to be the local creche. Well we say that but it was two inflatable balls attached by a rope to the moore with kids inside it falling over-was like zorbing on the spot! Second stop was to go and see the parliament buildings-something to fill up the day with. We never thought that two older ladies playing croquet outside the buildings could be so entertaining to watch-they were bashing the balls as hard as they could and wern't really getitng anywhere at all! With the croquet and bowls green...it must be the hub of excitement in Rotorua! Right outside the Parliament buildings we stopped for a picture and discussed taking a tour around until we saw the price-decider of everything- $12 for a tour-are you having a giraffe! So we walked round the lake, past the smelly sulphur eggy point and to the pak and save where Scott bought a muffin and some chocolate chip cookies and I had a milky bar and some tim tams! That should sort us out for the next day or two! We also got an eeny weeny pizza to share for lunch! For the afternoon session, we went to the thermal spa which is apparently ranked int he top 10 in the world! There were 7pools to go in ranging from 38-42 degrees, 3 were good for aches and pains, and 4 were good for your skin! Awesome, hopefully I'll come out a new woman! We made our way through the 7 pools spending around 20mins in each, just enough to get the benefits and not too wrinkly! The first pool was the biggest and probably the least favourite, the first 5seconds were heaven, 38 degrees felt so good until you got deeper into the pool and the lovely smell of egg hit you right in the nose! This one we didn't spend long in from the fear of smelling like an egg for the rest of our trip! Not a good smell! The next few pools were lovely and relaxing with a few happy snaps in the bottom pool which looked accross the lake...beautiful. Our peace was well and truly shattered when 2 coach loads of chinese over 50's synchronised swimming team turned up! They pretty much took over the place by sheer numbers, they just kept coming and coming! The team decided to jump in our pool which we tolerated until one particular lady turned up exposing more than she should of! Lets just say if she waswearing a wig, it had slipped a bit too much and a bit too low for our liking (maybe it was a turn on in China!) Those funny chinese! If that wasn't enough one of the synchro ladies decided she was a little warm, and because our bottle of water was on the side, she would help herself and pass it round her friends! Scott was in the toilet at this point, but when he came out he took much delight in explaining to the group of bewildered chinese that it was not their drink and they should not have had any, and they might aswell finish the bottle off as he didn't want to touch anything they had used! It was very funny to watch as these ladies didn't understand a word! This was our time to leave...well via the changing rooms where I found it to be taken over by even more chinese ladies all feeling the need to walk around and have conversations in the nuddy! I was well and truly scaarred!
Day 29- Rotorua- It was a lovely morning- we sat outside and had our breakfast! After doing our first proper travel wash-horrah! We decided today would be the day we would run off all of those millions of tim tams! Not quite fancying having to do a marathon to accomplish that though we decided to run to the redwoods and back via sulphur point- this was going to be a shock to the system. I'm well and truly in holiday mode! 30seconds running 30seconds walking was the plan of action for the way there-I felt quite good until it came to the journey back! Too much too soon I'd say- I reckon you could have walked backwards faster than I was walking forwards! All that running and we felt rather pleased with ourselves- so that meant lunch and tim tam time-wahooooo! Thursday evening in Rotorua was market evening. So we wandered down to find out what all the fuss was about! Turns out it was all rather food orientated- think Scott was a little gutted we had already eaten our main dinner...still there was still room for a dessert, so we trotted directly to the cake stand and borrowed teh last two brownies- we had been for a run today so this was totally exceptable! Haha! Scott took things a bit too far though when on our way back to the hostel we had to go back to the cake stand for seconds! I really don't know how someone can have room for so much food! I really think I'm going to have to rename him dustbin! Still! Back to the hostel and we had to try and reload all our crap back into our eeny weeny bags-made even harder by all that Australian air we were still carrying! Then as soon as you'd locked your bag, you would always find something you've missed! We have also accumulated so much dam food-we now not only have a cool bag but a box and a carrier bag of food too-mind you, nothing exciting in there though!