Its an early start (yet again! not much of a holiday so far if you ask me, ha ha), in order to make a quick pit stop via 'hot water beach' to dig our own hot baths on the beach. There is a thermal outlet located by the cliff face, which expels hot water into the sand/sea. Its just a matter of finding a hot spot, digging and mixing it with some cold sea water if necessary - depends how you like your bath.

Back on the bus again for another two hours until we stop for lunch in Matamata - home of Hobbiton from Lord of the Rings. We stop briefly for lunch and a few pictures.

The final stretch for today is to 'Rotorua', which means 'second lake' and is just a description of its founding. The town is also known as Sulphur City, Rottenrua or Rotovegas, due to the town smelling of rotten eggs, nice huh? As you may have guessed this area is full of geothermal activity and here the sulphur dioxide that is created by this activity causes the town to have a very distinctive smell. Really nice!

In the afternoon I went Zorbing with Jen and Robbie, which is basically a huge plastic ball that you climb into and then roll down a hill. Good fun, especially the wet one (whereby you have water inside the ball with you, so you end up feeling like you are in a washing machine!). After the Zorbing, we went for a bit of luging down 5km's of tracks and trails in our own personal little luge cart. There were a few races, not that I won - they go bloody fast and the only protection you have if you fall off is the clothes on your back and a crappy bicycle helmet!

The three of us also did this enormous swing type thing, whereby we were strapped into this cage type device, hauled up about 100metres above the ground and then released. You basically had about 3-5 seconds of freefall before you swung out over the hillside. Scary but a laugh and as we were the only ones who did it, it was especially fun!

We spen the evening in the hostel bar and relaxed with yet a few more bevvies - as is the way most of our evenings are spent!