This morning was spent at Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Park, although we're a bit annoyed at Bo, the lay at Peter Pan's who we booked it with, because the leaflet she gave us was for the park itself and so we thought we had just brought the entrance for it. However it turned out we had paid, presumably considerably more, for transfers there, which, given she had just booked a campervan for us, she should have known we didn't need. I was maybe expecting the driver to at least give us a tour around, but no- although this may be a blessing given he was a whole lot harder to listen to than Dennis last night. He was weebling on about all the tourism things you could do, and at one point told us about how he was a postman, and whenever he drove on that particular road, the pigs would run into the bushes. On the way back he told us about his favourite pub and the cafe were all the mountain bikers would hang out. We only had an hour and 45 minutes at Wai-O-Tapu, which was dot on the time it said it would take to walk around and see everything, so we were kind of rushing around to make sure we saw everything before the bus left, and had we drove ourselves, could have stopped at the nearby hot springs and manuka honey shop. I didn't particularly think Wai-O-Tapu was that spectacular anyway, although I did think watching the mud bubble was quite satisfying. Maybe it was because I remembered doing the geyser and thermal park from before as to why I wasn't that fussed.

When we arrived back in Rotorua, I dropped my laptop at Mike's office where he made me feel more hopeful about it by saying it doesn't recognise the hard drive's there (on the grand scheme of things I don't mind too much about the laptop, it's my photos and blog that matters).

I got both our hopes up by saying that I really wanted there to be a Fix (convenience store that sells coffee for a $1) In Whakatane, which a drive all around it revealed there wasn't, and from that moment we both couldn't shake off the idea of finding one (we didn't succeed).

I got a bit hysterical when we stopped for a toilet break, and I came back and could tell Alice had been outside by how windswept her hair was, but we weren't so amused when it got as windy as it did. We were going to go and camp nearer to the lighthouse so we wouldn't have to drive as far in the morning to see sunrise, but we thought it'd be safer to stay in Te Araroa as the wind was rocking the van, it was so strong. When we drove through the village, a dog started chasing us and we drove past it again and its eyes look possessed, which spooked me out even more.

The place we parked to get more shelter than the beach front turned out to be someone's drive, so we moved back onto the beach front, staying locked in our car, hoping it wasn't a cyclone. The DVD player wasn't working 100%, but we watched a crackly version of Lord of the Rings, until falling asleep.