August 4th (Tuesday) - Day 156 - Rotorua and Taupo
Once the driver had picked everyone up he took us over to the Rotorua Government gardens. We had a quick photo with a building (no idea what the building is for) and with a statue. Next on the list were some mud pools. Not overly exciting. We then got to spend the next few hours at a geothermal wonderland called Wai-O-Tapu. The first thing to see there was the lady Knox Geyser. This erupts each day at 10:15, mainly because it is helped along by soap powder. It can go over 20 metres high but only reached about 5 while we were there. We then headed into the main area. There are almost 30 unique geothermal wonders within a few square kilometres. I won't go through them just look at the pictures when I get them up. One bit worth mentioning was the Champaign pools. They were so hot plumes of stream were raising and we almost suffocated from the steamy sulphur. We pushed on down toward Taupo and stopped just north of the town. There were a number of attractions here including a speed boat (which we didn't do) and some rope/swing thing that didn't look overly interesting. The only other option was a honey shop. We of course took the most of the free samples and treated ourselves to an ice cream. Once we reached the town we stopped at NZ's highest water touch bungee and watched a few people jump. It is worth mentioning at this point the bus driver we had was once again crazy - I am sure it's in the job description. He was being really mean (in a jokey Kiwi way) to these two girls saying "You no take part - all you do is sit on bus and take photo". We only really needed one full day in Taupo but the only option was zero or two days. Hence we picked two and as such set off around town to see what there was to do. The bus driver had told everyone about a pub quiz taking place that night and everyone seemed up for it on the bus. But when it came to it no one seemed that bothered. Sarah and I thought we were the only ones from our hostel going until at the very last minute a German girl called Sabrina said she'd come with us. At the pub one other person joined us - a girl from Aus (can't remember her name (you kind of stop learning people's names if you're never going to meet them again)). The bus driver made such a big thing about it and didn't even show up himself! As expected we didn't do too well but we didn't come last. The MC kept having little breaks to play games which were quite amusing. Once the quiz was over we stayed until quite late. My one last memory is watching Sabrina lying on the floor, in the hall of our hostel trying to get Sarah's email address. She had to leave the next day and I wouldn't have wanted to get up!

August 5th (Wednesday) - Day 157 - Taupo
Funnily enough we didn't get up to early. When we did we wandered over to a bike hire place. The day before we'd stopped for like 30 seconds at the Huka falls. A really impressive horizontal waterfall (it will make sense from the pics). It was not that far away but we were told about a really good mountain bike track so decided to take that route. It was great to start off with. I was having great fun throwing myself down the steep grass banks in the park but once we hit the main track we found that it was quite narrow and really steep in places. The steepness would not have been too bad but the bikes we had didn't have the world's greatest gears i.e. they would not change quickly enough - because of that we ended up walking huge parts of the track. When the downhill parts came it was great fun! We reached the falls after about an hour of setting off and they did not disappoint. The waterfall is over 100 metres long and drops quite quickly with one final large drop at the end. The book said it had 200,000 litres going over every second. We had a good look around and then stopped for some lunch. I have never seen so many tiny birds in my life. Hundreds of them appeared from nowhere once we pulled the food out of our bags. I know you're not meant to feed them but it was really fun watching them fight/play with the food. After lunch we decided to head back into the town and ride round the lake. Shockingly we opted for the road back which took us about a third of the time. We rode for ages around the lake before stopping in a little park. I spent a few minutes chucking stones into the lake - when I say stones it was pomegranate which I later found out was worth hundreds of pounds in the shops back home. The ride back to the shop didn't take as long as we through but once we handed the bikes our legs had turned to jelly. We went to grab some dinner from the supermarket then spent the night in the hostel.

August 6th (Thursday) - Day 158 - Taupo
We really could not decide what to do. I fancied doing some kayaking but the price was more than we were willing to pay. Instead we sat by the lake taking in the lovely spring day. It's the first time I have been warm and outside for months. After lunch I found a lake cruise so we opted to do that. The boat itself was built in the thirties but had been restored a few times. Our skipper was a typical Kiwi making jokes about how he'd been ripping us tourists off for years (to be honest it was really cheap for what you got!). He was such a nice bloke. We set off and followed the shore along the edge of the town. By this point the sun was really beating down and it was a perfect day to go sailing. Once listening to some jokes about ho-bo's (we were going past the richest point of town) we turned and headed south towards the main part of the lake. The lake itself is as big as Singapore. About an hour later we reached some huge rock carvings done in the seventies by the locals. We then turned around and headed back. Then I got the chance to drive the boat for almost an hour. It was so much fun but kind of easy as I only had to point it at a few land marks turning once every so often - still a great experience. The guy had to take back the controls once we reached the harbour. We had one last walk around town and headed back to the hostel for the evening.