6th Feb - we left Hot Water Beach early and headed to Paeroa which is called "World Famous in New Zealand". This is because of the unique lemon and spring water soft drink that was originally made here - L&P. It's pretty amaze! We stopped off at a bakery in the morning and got to Waitomo in the afternoon. Me and Hannah decided to do black water rafting the following day which is an extreme caving experience. We were told that this was rated as the number one activity to do in New Zealand by Kiwi Experience travellers so we had to do it! We checked in at the Legendary Black Water Rafting Company to sign up for it and handed over our dollars.
Unfortunately we were doing the caving at 7am the following morning though.. eurgh! As there was a four of us up early the next day for the caving, we got a 4 bed cabin to ourselves. It was awesome!

A group of us went with Steve (our driver) to play volleyball. I'm not gonna lie, it was a bit of a struggle... I definitely didn't imagine doing anything active when I woke up in the morning! We played proper volleyball for a good few hours with only quick breaks which surprisingly sorted my hangover and headed back to get showered and eat dinner. We chilled out for the rest of the evening and watched a cheerleading movie. Yeah! We grabbed an early night, ready for caving the next day. Eeeek!

7th Feb - Oh hiya 6am! How you doing? Me, Hannah, Stuart and Ben dragged ourselves out of bed to go... Black Water Rafting! Black water rafting is one of New Zealand's famous inventions in action sports and is done underground. Basically, it involves wearing a wetsuit and caving helmet (complete with head lamp) and sitting on a large rubber inner tube. I was s***ting my pants about it cause the trip that we had chosen involved some deathly heights. Not exactly the best news if you have a phobia of them! But, I was willing to push myself out of my comfort zone and try to overcome my fear of heights!

We got picked up at 6.45am and got taken to the caving site. We first got loaded up with our gear... Wetsuits, booties and jackets. Once they were on, we got given our safety belts for the abseiling. Eeek. Nervous was an understatement.

We got driven to the caves, stopping off to pick up some food! Woo! When we arrived at the caves, we were taught how to use the abseiling ropes and we were all made to have a practise beforehand. Oh and the good news was that we were going to do the abseil first! Get the worst out of the way. I was sooo nervous but had to man up and do it otherwise I wouldn't get down into the cave. I abseiled 35 metres and, well... I've never been so glad to touch the ground. But, I did it!!! :D

After we had all abseiled down into the cave we whizzed down a flying fox. For people at home, that means a zipwire; it was so much fun! We were then given hot chocolate with biscuits before we had to jump into the freeeeezing cold water in our rubber tubes. We made our way down the cave in our tubes and stopped off to gaze up at the beautiful glow worms. We all linked up in a chain and got pulled down along the cave by our instructor who told us about the glow works and sang to us. Stuart also serenaded us with a few songs.

We gave our tubes back and started wading and swimming through the cold water! Ahhhh! We climbed up waterfalls and crawled through small rocky holes. It was brilliant!

We finally crawled up out of the cave emerging into the Waitomo forest. It was such a good experience!! I want to do it again! So maybe when I get back I will try and do some caving.

We had a quick shower and ate some soup before getting on the bus again to make our way to Roturua. We made a very important stop off at a 'liquor store' (as they're known to be called in NZ) and started playing drinking games from 1pm. I think we were all pretty steaming by about 3pm!

We arrived in Rotorua in the afternoon. Roturua is known as sulphur city, Roto-Vegas and Rotten-rua. The Maori people call it Whangapipiro which means an evil smelling place. And that, it is!! As soon as we arrived we smelt this awful stench! We found out this is because the sulphur dioxide gas created by the geothermal activity causes the town to smell. Roturua has many hot springs which let off tons of steam; it looks pretty damn cool!

We stopped off at Tamaki Tours to book a place for a Maori cultural hangi (traditional Maori meal) and concert. We were told that this was a must do in New Zealand and a great way to learn about the Maori people and their traditions.

We arrived at our hostel and carried on drinking before leaving to go to the Maori meal and concert. We got picked up in a coach by a Maori who was hilarious and taught us some of their language on the way to the village. When we arrived at the village, we experienced a traditional welcome ceremony by the Maori's. We entered the Pre-European Maori village nestled within a 200 year old native Tawa forest. They got people up to learn the haka, play stick games and have a go at warrior training.

We then saw our Hangi meal being lifted from an earthen pit where it had been cooking on hot stones for hours.

We got taken to their Ancestral Meeting House to watch a performance and learn about the last 150 years of their history. In the performance they sang and played instruments whilst dancing.

We all got taken to the dining room where we had a traditional hangi buffet meal. Omg I ate until I couldn't breathe!! The food was amazing. There was even roast lamb which was incredible!

The evening ended with speeches of farewell, song and dance. We got taken home by our driver again which was the funniest bus journey ever! He took us round and round the roundabout, twice!!, with us all singing 'She'll be coming round the mountain when she comes.. Yee ha!'. Haha!

We got back to the Hot Rocks hostel but due to the abnormal amount of food we'd all eaten, everyone was feeling pretty tired so we had a pretty quiet night.