A surprisingly un-grumpy morning was made significantly better by an excellent nights sleep, not hitting my head on the ceiling of the bedroom and finding my missing sock in the laundry. The morning news updated us on all the issues which mattered to New Zealanders, primarily rugby, cricket, the failure of Australian politics, the Volvo Ocean race and concerns over fruit flies at a local vegetable growing contest before a cursory mention of a double homicide in Wangherai...

We reloaded the enema and booted South to Wai-o-Tapu, passing increasing numbers of towers of steam as we approached the 'geothermal wonderland.' Our excitement was curtailed slightly by the overwhelming beige colour scheme chosen by the majority of our fellow geyser admirers. As we sat, patiently awaiting the 1015 eruption of the Lady Knox geyser, the volcanic surroundings filled up with all the stereotypes including the rude German couple who squeezed themselves into the 4 inches between myself and the 3ft camera lens wielding, face mask wearing Japanese army to my right.

At 1025 a very nice man appeared to risk life and limb by standing next to the quiescent chimney to tell us that the geyser had not yet erupted as he was yet to add the ignition ingredient... A bag of soap. The resulting frothing, steaming crescendo finally climaxed in a 15 meter high towering cascade of silica laiden water with much ooing and ahhing from the wrinkly beige onlookers (and us, of course).

A mass exodus then headed to the geothermal lake park, we however did not follow the crowd and smuggly made a round of hot drinks in the back of the enema and scoffed meganuts bars in the carpark, waiting for the queues to subside.

The wonderland could have been dreamed up by Roald Dahl, with numerous different pools of varying iridescent shades of colour, all bubbling, fuming or erupting away merrily at the bottom of various craters. A brief stop at the mud pools on our way back provided a small amount of boyish entertainment but we were soon back in Rotoroa sorting out our future excursions!

Lunch at CBK, a local craft brewery, was very nice but the icing on the cake was pudding from Lady Jane's in the form of combinations of kiwi ripple, hokey pokey and mint choc chip ice creams. We meandered down to the lake and watched a seaplane lumber into the air before said sky released its watery burden.

We spent the afternoon in the Polynesian Spa making friends with the army of Japanese tourists who had scarred Bob for life by, en-mass, revealing all in the changing rooms. The soft soapy green water ranged from a chilly 38 degrees up to a par-boiling 42, in a variety of pools, all looking out over the steaming geyser field. Once thoroughly pruned we headed back into town for the lack lustre evening street market which was struggling to get going. Fading fast we retired to our campsite and completely failed to produce an edible meal from the tortellini and sauce which had been following us around for the past 5 days. After a replacement bowl of cereal we were back in our delightfully close quarters to prepare ourselves for the excitement that the next morning held...