We arrived in Rotorua on Sunday 10th. We had an early bus so we arrived at lunchtime. We stayed at Crash Palace Backpackers, which was awesome..though the staff were a bit mean at times! We didn't really do alot for the rest of the day. We went to Pak n Save and then watched White Chicks.

Monday we walked around Kuirau Park. As Rotorua was built on the site of a volcano, the park was full of geothermal activity, such as hot mudpools and steam coming out of the ground. Due to this (the hydrogen sulphide apparently) the whole of Rotorua smells like a stink bomb! Its lovely, though you do get used to it after a while. Anyway, this park had free hot water foot pools. However it was raining so we didn't really fully appreciate the park. We also went to the lakefront to find a Marae, we weren't (and still aren't) really sure what one is, so we didn't find it!

Tuesday we went to Hells Gate, which is a spa resort thing. Firstly we had a tour of the grounds, there was an amazing amount of geothermal activity going on. This was because whereas Rotorua was 10km above the earths magma, Hells Gate was only 2.5km above. Scary! After the tour, we made wood carvings.Mine was pretty awful.After that we had a mud bath, which was more watery than I imagined it would be.I thought it would be thick mud we were sat in.Then we had a sulphur bath.

In the evening, we got pizza and watched Shrek the Third. Which I wasn't that impressed with.

Wednesday we went to the museum, which used to be the old bath house. There was also a viewing platform at the top, and you could go and see the pipes etc underneath the building (we even had to wear hard hats) It also has sections on the volcano that erupted and WW2. In the evening Kate went to a Maori event, where they made food using a traditional Hangi (i think thats what it was called) I stayed at the hostel and then went to the Lava Bar (by Base Backpackers) with some people from the hostel.