The car park we were in last night turned out to be the wrong companies car park so we arrived just as the bus came to pick us up (it was only a bit up the road from where we were before but we maybe didn't leave ourselves long enough to eat breakfast and get our stuff together- I forgot to bring all important water so had to buy the bus drivers water off him for $3). He took us to the other side of the walk, and it started off a bit chilly as we were up so high in the mountains, but soon warmed up. There were some parts that didn't seem too safe- we had to scramble up rocks, slide down gravel (at which point I fell down and scraped my arm and hand), and there were no barriers where there were steep slopes to the side, but some of the views were spectacular, especially the blue pools. I kept making Alice take photos of me with her ring pretending to be Frodo, but it didn't work too well as we didn't go up 'Mount Doom'. We're very glad Alice did buy new shoes as flip flops would definitely have not been a good option. The end section took less time but was more kilometre's (as it was downhill), but it seemed like it took forever- we were bored of the view by the end and wished it didn't tell us we were 45 minutes away when it already felt like we should be back. Finally we arrived back in the car park after 19.4 km's of walking and celebrated with a cup o coffee.

After that we drove to Taupo, and the first stop was what we thought was Hot Water Beach, although since digging in the sand didn't seem to bring up any hot water, we moved on to the naturally heated spring. The lake that it flowed into was cold in some places, but the cove where (unfortunately) everyone was, was surprisingly really warm. We moved on to Huka Hive- the honey shop. We arrived 30 minutes before it closed so couldn't read all the information, but I tried mead, ginger mead (I didn't know beforehand that mead was honey wine) and various honeys- we liked the peanut butter flavour, and lemon and ginger flavour. Alice got a honey ice cream and I got a tasty ginger nut one, and also an apricot and macadamia nougat piece.

We drove to Rotorua and parked back at Base Backpackers. I realised I hadn't seen the key ring in a while (the other day Alice snapped off the key from the part that you unlock the car with a button with) and so I'm a bit worried- I think it may have fallen out of my pocket when I was in the bus earlier. We took advantage of ladies night, but went to sleep early- knackered after our walk and getting up at 5.30!