The following day we headed off to Rotoura, famous for it's thermal activity. The drive was about 3 hours and very scenic with green hills and rivers. To drive in New Zealand is very easy, the roads are quiet and everything is well signposted. Our van is also an automatic so it helps. In Rotoura we headed to Kuirau Park where you can see thermal activity for free! We saw mud bubbling and volcanic gases escaping from the ground. There was a horrible smell of eggs in the town because of the sulphur released. We decided not to pay to see the really big geysers as we had already seen a lot in Bolivia so we got back on the road and headed to Taupo.

Taupo is a town next to Lake Taupo, New Zealand's biggest lake. The water of the lake is so blue and the mountains surrounding it make it very picturesque. We found a campsite and had an early night after the long drive. The following day we decided to walk to the Hukka Falls an hour an half out of town. The route runs along the Waikato River through bush. The bush is a lot more tropical than we expected it would be in New Zealand. The colour of the water is beautiful, so blue it could be in the Caribbean. The falls are more like rapids, it was mainly the colours which made them impressive. We had our picnic at the falls before heading to the Honey Hive nearby to get some honey icecream and to test out all of the natural hand and face creams made with the bees wax before heading back to Taupo. We took a slightly different route back which took us a long some small hot water beaches along the river. We were exhausted from the walk; we covered around 18km throughout the day, so when we arrived back in Taupo we headed to the town for a couple of well deserved drinks.

The next morning we were up early to go to the Spa Thermal Park, where there are natural hot pools. Due to our early morning wake up we had them all to ourselves. The water was so hot, hotter than any jacuzzi we have been in and it was very relaxing. There was a mini waterfall to add to the setting. After some time we headed back to the van and cooked some bacon sandwiches before our drive to Wellington.