The first thing we did when we arrived at Taupo was book ourselves in for a skydive, something we'd both been looking forward to for ages! We booked ourselves in for the next day and retired to our room wondering whether we were doing the right thing!

We had a morning dive and were pleased to wake up with the sun shining, a perfect clear sky so we had awesome views as we hurtled towards the ground. We were picked up in a limo and driven to the dive site. We watched a short intro film and decided how high to jump from. We both chose the 12,000ft dive package which included a DVD, photo CD and t-shirt. We then had to choose the songs to go on our DVD which didnt really have a great deal of choice! Then we were called out with our instructors, Hannah was to be strapped to the front of Alex, and i was paired with Ollie, who to my dismay was French! We kitted up, had a brief safety talk about what to do when we were flying and then we were squeezed into a bright pink plane with 2 other jumpers! It didnt take long to get to 12,000ft, and the 2 other people went first, it was obvioous then there was no turning back. You really didnt get much choice as to when to jump or even whether you wanted to. I shuffled along with Ollie strapped to my back leaving only Hannah to jump. I dangled my legs off the edge and the ground seemed a long way away! And then before you can say "actually im not quite sure about this" your thrown off the edge. You fall soooo fast, that might seem like an obvious thing to say but you cant quite fathom how fast unless you've done a jump yourself. It only feels like you're actually falling for about 5 seconds, after which you get enough speed up to feel like you're just floating, and the ground doesnt appear to get any nearer. We actually had 45 seconds of freefall, though it didnt feel that long. We then had a awesome parachute down over Lake Taupo, the weather was so clear we could see all the way from the east coast to the west. Both of us really enjoyed it.

The next day was a far cry from jumping out of a plane. We had a leisurely guided kayak trip down the Waikato River, stopping off at a natural thermal hot pool, something Hannah was very pleased about having had no bath since Bangkok (Hannah would like to point out she has had a shower in this time)!

On the tuesday we went to the Craters of the Moon, a natural thermal park with bubling mud pools and the like. Following this we stopped off to see Huka Falls before venturing home.

Finally today we went to Taupo Adventure Park. We arrived to find that no-one else had decided to go, so we had the entire park to ourselves! We had a go on the Quad bikes and?go-karts, got lost in the maze, and visited the animal park.

And that is all. We leave tomorrow for Rotorua!