We left Waitomo at 9.30am on Friday morning and arrived in Rotorua at around 1.30pm. We hadn't booked any activities in Rotorua for the Friday afternoon so after checking in and getting settled in our 8 bed dorm we headed out for a look around town. We weren't sure what to expect as we had heard that Rotorua stunk due to the geothermal activity in the area which releases sulphur but we were more than pleasantly surprised. It always helps when the sun is shining and there wasn't a cloud in the sky all day long. We had a nice walk down to the lake where we watched a sea plane take off and then had a walk around the town which is small enough to navigate.

We spent the rest of the afternoon playing in the pool and getting to know everyone from our bus.

We returned to the hostel and decided that we would have a good few drinks in the bar next door with the rest of our group. We had our tea of beans on toast and all day breakfast on toast respectively, then got our gladrags on and went to Lava bar next door to the hostel. The bar was pretty busy and their was an excellent local on a guitar singing various acoustic versions of well know snogs which was pretty good. We got 5 dollar drinks until 11 so we necked as many as we could and had a good night. We weren't too drunk by the time we went to bed at around 12.

It wasn't a too early start on Saturday as we left the hostel at 9.30am to go to the luge track. We jumped in a gondola which took us up to the luge track were we donned our helmets and flew down the 3 different tracks. It was absolutely brilliant and we really enjoyed reaching ridiculous speed in the tiny karts. Beth took her time the first time but absolutely loved it as well. Our bus was going onto Taupo today whilst we were staying in Rotorua so we said goodbye to everyone although we will see quite a few in Taupo for Christmas.

We made an executive decision to head to Pizza Hut for dinner where we could get the pizza buffet for 10 dollars each. So we munched down as much pizza an ice cream as possible before we stumbled out barely able to walk!! Beth spent the rest of the afternoon in the pool with Leah from the US who we are travelling with. I spent the rest of the day sleeping off the pizza before tonight where we are just planning to stay in the hostel and have a simple tea before we go for a walk through a local forest tomorrow morning.