We had to wake up fairly early to leave Whitianga and make our way to Rotorua, so that we could make the most of our time in the geothermal and cultural centre of NZ! En-route to Rotorua we stopped off and visited the Karangahake Scenic Reserve, a free little trip so we were all pleased to go. Damo dropped us off and told us to follow a gorgeous 1km path that followed a river through a gorgeous bush-clad gorge, crossing over 2 rather rickety swing bridges and 1km of long, scary, dark tunnel that used to be used in the days of gold mining. The views down the gorge were stunning and following the old railway track was a real adventure, only being able to use mobile phones for a light source kinda freaked the girls out i think. Eventually we got back with just about everyone on the bus, we departed the gorge and made our way further down south through a small village called Paeroa, famous for it's 'unique' (actually pretty disgusting) Lemon and Paeroa spring water soft drink, Arber bought a 2 litre bottle of the stuff because funnily enough it was the cheapest drink in the shop, and after he attemped to drink it you could see why!

We stopped off in the town of Hobbiton, which as we could guess from when we arrived, it's clame to fame was having the infamous 'Lord of the Rings' filmed extremely near by, in fact many companies had various tours taking you to 'Middle Earth' and the village used by the hobbits in the film, I don't think we had any Lord of the Rings enthusiasts on our coach, so i don't think anyone went but it was a nice enough town, with a very nice sign and a statue of a goblin next to it, of course we all qued up and had photo's next to it, we had to apparently according to our driver Damo.

We arrived eventually in Rotorua, and it STINKS!! majorly bad, it really does smell bad and you know how in movies situated in New York you always see steam coming out of the water drains, well this happened in Rotorua, and the whole village smelt of rotten eggs according to Damo it was the sulphur. We settled and booked ourselves into our hostel, but not too long after putting our bags in our room we had to get back onto the bus and head towards a big big hill in order to do some luging. We payed our money, jumped into a gondola pod and made our way to the top of the hill, at the top we had some great views of Rotorua, we could see steam from the geothermal parks. The luging was such a laugh, it was a little three wheeler tobogan that went down an awesome concrete track. Of course us boys from the bus got very competative and had 3 races down the advanced track, it was pretty fast! Apparently Fi got stuck when she was going down with Liv and they found it rather hysterical, that being because it's practically impossible to get stuck, but somehow she did manage to do it! There were also some pretty bad crashes, Matt (our really cool American friend) totally wiped out a few times and pretty much wrecked his nice jumper by sliding along the grass on his arm with his cart on top of him!

After some fun at the luge track we made our way down to the spa pool under the stairs at our hostel, so soothe our aches and pains! It's such a hard life travelling! hahaha! After about 30mins in the spa pool we all had showers got ready and the made our way down to reception.

We were in for a night of traditional Maori culture, everyone on the bus had put their names down to go on the Tamaki Maori Village experience. Our bus driver was hysterical, singing 'She'll be coming round the mountain' whilst circling round a roundabout 8 times! We arrived at a re-creation of a traditional Maori village from the 1600's, we were greated in traditional Maori fashion which entails a viscous, scary challenge set by the Maori to determine whether or not you are friend or foe. We then walked round their village being able to see how they used to live and their everyday chores. We then watched a performance explaining in depth the way they used to live, how they used poi to keep their wrists supple for battle, all about the weapons they used and why and also about the history of the Maori and how they came to settle in New Zealand. Next we had a massive buffet dinner. ''All you can eat'' is a dangerous phrase to use around travellers, and the roast, veggies and then pudding all went down very very well! It had all been cooked in the traditional maori way, underground. They dug a very deep hole and lit a fire at the bottom, when it was red hot they out big boulders in, and when they were red hot they began lowering the food down. Meat and potatoes first, and veggies last. Then they covered the hole up with sheets and stones, and let it cook all day. It was so yummy and we got gravy too - whihc should never be left out! Feeling very very full we climbed onto the bus where our crazy driver was wating. He could speak to every nationality on the bus in their own language, pretty talented guy. He then did a name call to make sure all 30 odd of us were there. Without a list he recited all our names perfectly and where we were from! Once we were dropped we went for a drink at the hostel bar with everyone fromt the bus and eventually went to sleep!