Next chapter. So we finally made it to Taupo, which by the way is the site of the largest volcanic eruption in the past 5,000 years, and the lake is the crater it formed, its 40km by 30km basically like a little sea rite in the middle of New Zealand, Its wher eall the rich folk live aswell. Rite enough of the Geography lesson, on with the adventure!!! We got here at about eight on the night ish, We tried a couple of holiday parks and they were pricey and full, so that was out of the question, didnt look like we would find anywhere for the first night, being demoralised from the epic car journey, we went to our last chance, a place called Burkes Backpackers, classy i know. Guess what 1 bed left, in a all girls dorm, so that was great, but as we were leaving he said "There is a free camping site 3 miles down the road" How perfect is that just what we wanted literally somewhare to pitch a tent. found our way there without mishap, for a change! Set up and had a pretty good nights sleep and an even better lie in as we didnt have to check out at any stupid time. When we eventually surfaced, we decided to pay a visit to Huka Falls. It is described as the most visited natural site in NZ, sounds good we thought but as we soon found out it was basically a wide river pushed through a narrow gap for a few hundred yards, super! Our random waterfall that we found was much more impressive. We then made our way up to Orakei Korako which was a thermal reserve. Stunning in a weird way, but the smelll, oh my God it was honkin!! Sulpher and stuff like that. There was a cave there which they called Aladdin's cave, the legend has it that if you put your left hand in the water and make a wish it is guaranteed to come true, so long as u dno't tell a soul! We'll see if my wish comes true at the end of the season. lol. It also had special properties for cleaning jewellery (hence the before and after photos of Jade's rings- not that you can see much, but trust us they were cleaner). The cave was 1 of only 2 geothermal caves in the world!!! and we was there!!! Camped at the same place again, by the way, the toilets are shocking!! Just like the ones at Puketi but add 200 people taking a dump in it. lovely! Today we got up and went to the "volcanic activity centre". Jade is really into this sort of thing and insisted we went, don't get me wrong very interesting, but after an hour and 48 minutes it got a bit old. felt like I was back on a school trip. never mind Jade enjoyed it. We then went to "Honey Hive" which made everything from normal honey to bee-nut butter honey, to hand cream, and also wines and liquors. by the way random but there are so many liquor shops and churches in NZ. We got to try all of these produce free of charge, even better! The Japanese seem to have stuck to Auckland, haven't seen any in ages. The Mauri tatoos are amazing, they have full body and face tatoos, and these are just regular people roaming around on the street. Anyway, that just about brings us up to where we are now. We are going to head down to Wellington either tomorrow or the following day so we will probably write our next blog when we get to the south Island. Love you all as usual xxxxxxxx P.S. we have TWO chips on our windscreen thanks to some bird who's dying wish was to leave us to have to pay a $250 dollar excess, CHEERS!!!! Thank God we took out the insurance! P.P.S. We have only just found salt and vinegar crisps after 2 weeks of looking; God how we have missed them!! xxxxxxxxxxx