Evening all, Thought I should update my journal as I am getting a bit behind with it this week. Last time we spoke I was just about to go away for the weekend to Lake Taupo. Taupo is righ tin the middle of the North Island and has the countries largest lake (616sq km, 185m deep) famous for its monster trout! It was formed around 1800 years ago when the Taupo volcano erupted 24 cb km of rock, debris and ash and covered the North island in a thick layer of pumice which now forms the beaches (At least tens times more ash was produced than Krakatoa and Mount St Helens combined!). This eruption was dated at 186 AD because the ash was ejected so high in the atmosphere that the Romans recorded that the heavens turned blood red and the Chinese noted a blackening of the sky. As the magma chamber underground emptied a large steep sided crater was formed which now forms part of the lake. It is now considered dormant but volcanologists use the surface of the lake as a spirit level and any tilting could mean the building up of magma below the surface that might cause an eruption. I went with Rik and John (Cardiff medic) for my birthday celebrations. We hired a lovely Nissan Sunny for £8 a day and set off on our 5 hour road trip to Taupo. The scenery was amazing as soon as we left Wellington with the motorway, state highway 1, taking us around a lovely coastal route. The roads in NZ are different from UK because their motorways are normally 1/2 lanes and once your on it you can go hours without seeing a road leading off it, so you have to be vigilant so you don't miss your exit! Something I may have done one or two times in the past!! We got to Taupo at around 3 o'clock and went to find the hostel Rik had stayed in when he had travelled the North Island with the Kiwi Experience bus in August. The hostel was right in the middle of Taupo and was called the Urban Retreat. It was such a nice place, I didn't think hostels were like that at all. There was a bar, pool tables, TV's, a big kitchen and loads of rooms, ranging from small to large dorms, communal showers to en-suites. We were lucky, we got a room with en-suite which had 2 bunks in it, so with one extra bed I got a place to spread all of my stuff out! After putting our bags in we decided to go and look around Taupo. Firstly we went to the Huka falls, known as 'great body of spray', where the full flow of the Waikato river, one of NZ's most volumous rivers funnels through a narrow chasm and then falls over a 10 metre shelf, at 400 tonnes a second. We then went to what is known as the 'Craters of the Moon' which is a geothermal area that came to life in the 1950's after the construction of the Wairakei geothermal power station altered the underground hydrodynamics providing hyperactivity of steam and bubbling mud, that smelled of gone off egg! Our 3rd stop was the geothermal spas that naturally sat in a public park. That was amazing because it's not in the tourist guides and so only a few people know about it. We so sat in the gorgeous therapeutic water of these pools looking out across the river, occasionally having to dip your toes in the freezing cold lake waters beside the pools while chatting to a few people who were relaxing in preparation for a mountain bike competition the following day, cycling 6 or 12 hours continuously around the park. I have no idea why?! We left the park as it was getting dark and went in search of food and a few drinks, well I had a few drinks, the boys decided to buy 7 miniature Jegermeisters from an independent rep, which they drank with red bull and finished off the lot in an hour! Meanwhile I was nursing the same handle (they don't serve pints in many places here, a handle is about ¾ of a pint) during the onslaught! One of the Jegermeister reps gave me a temporary tattoo of their logo, a stag, and I managed to convince Rik that this was an absolute must for his forehead! There is photographic evidence attached! We then went to another place for a boogie and then back to the hostel, it was about 1 o'clock and as it was now officially my birthday (in NZ time), I would open my cards that I had been carrying around since I left the UK. I couldn't believe it when my aunties had put in NZ dollars, very clever and very much appreciated! I woke up early on Saturday and went to a little café near the hostel to have some coffee and birthday breakfast with a paper. Then I went for a little walk down to the lake to admire what a gorgeous place I was in. All this time spent on my own wasn't good, I got very homesick wanting to be with all my friends and family. I decided that I needed to pull my self together so I went back to see what state the boys would be in....not pretty! We had tried to arrange lots of activities to do including the Torgariro river crossing but because they were expecting gales, all of these things had been cancelled. However, I had come to Taupo to do a sky dive on my birthday and after being cancelled 3 times that day because of cloud I began to think that even that wasn't going to happen too, but it did, the company 'Freefall' rang to tell me they would be picking me up from the hostel to jump at 3. I was so excited but so scared at the same time, it was filling out next of kin details and the 'we take no responsibility' spiel that made me think, what am I doing? Also doing the sky dive were 4 other girls from Manchester who had taken a year out after working following their degrees to go travelling and had never jumped either, so we sat on the bus in blind panic, signing our lives away. We got to the airfield and they assigned us an instructor. The girls were going up first because they were having the whole jump filmed so required a cameraman to jump with them. I decided against this as I already knew what my expression and choice of vocabulary would be falling out of a plane! So I opted for a DVD of before and after the jump. The girls went up and we were left to get ready. We were kitted out in a red jump suit, buckles, life jacket (!), sick bag (!!), hat, gloves and goggles. We were then introduced to our instructor, mine was called Damo and he looked hard as nails with rather too many piercings to be aerodynamic! He told me to hold onto my buckles as we fell out of the plane and then he would tap me on the head to outstretch my arms during the freefall. We walked towards the little yellow plane, was this the right time to mention that I am a slightly nervous flyer? No? Thought not! The guy filmed us getting into the plane except that the crutch on my jump suit was around my knees and so instead of stepping onto the plane I had to crawl into it, I am so elegant! Damo got in and sat up the front, facing backwards and I sat next to him, alongside the pilot, oh great! Everyone else got on, packed in like sardines, there must have been over 15 of us. We had to get up to 12,000 feet which took about 15 minutes, it was a lovely view of the lake and surrounding area, I hadn't quite got to grips with the idea of jumping out of the plane yet though! We hit 12,000 feet and the bench felt more spacious, oh my god, they had started jumping, someone could've warned me, I kept thinking when is Damo going to attach me, has he already attached me, should I ask?! I realised I was attached as we slid near the door, I was properly panicking now, before I knew it my feet were dangling outside the plane, and I looked down to see clouds beneath me, Damo says 'shall we tumble out of the plane?' Errrr ok, don't really have much choice with regards to my fate now. Then we fell in a tumble, I saw the plane disappear, what was I doing?! This is not normal behaviour!! Many expletives then followed sorry mum dad! I felt a tap on my head and I adopted the free fall position. We fell for 45 seconds and went through the clouds to see the lake, it was the most incredible thing I have ever seen. Damo pulled the parachute and we went hurling upwards and suddenly what was loud noise, panic and adrenaline, was now calm, still, silence. We floated above the lake doing twists and turns before he handed me the controls, you do know I have never done this before!! We seemed to float for ages, I kept trying to put everything in context, but it all seemed so surreal. I was pointed to where we would be landing and as we approached 2 of the other instructors caught us as we landed perfectly. Damo went to do a high 5 and I was so overwhelmed that I was still alive, I gave him a massive hug which took him by surprise! The camera person then started filming us in our jumping around screaming hysteria which when I look at it now makes me cringe with embarrassment. What an experience though, I have never experienced so many emotions in such a short space of time, incredible. The only question that remained unanswered was; when can I do another one? I was on an adrenaline rush for hours afterwards and was keen to go out and celebrate my birthday, but the useless boys I went with were having Jegermeister palpitations at the thought, rubbish, so we sat in the hostel bar until close. The following day started in my favourite café around the corner from the hostel where they served bowls of coffee, perfect! The plan for the day was to go Jet Boating just up from the Huka falls where we had been the day before. We sat on a speedboat with about 15 people, mostly Japanese tourists, while the drive raced us around the rapids of one of the tributaries that led to Lake Taupo, making enough power for 60% of the North Island. Of course this was no ordinary speed boat ride, there was spins, jumps and a lot of deliberate soakings!! Good fun though. From here we decided to keep on the road and go to Rotorua which has a famous stench of hydrogen sulphide from the natural vents in the regions thin crust, which you get used to quite quickly. We had a look around the city which was quite quiet as it was a Sunday, and then got on a cable car so we could view Lake Rotarua better. At the top we luged down on a course that had tracks ranging from scenic to advanced. I naturally wanted to get a feel for my luge, although it had a mind of it's own, and was enjoying a leisurely luge, when I got rammed by a 12 year old!! After chair lifting back up the mountain, which was more frightening than the sky dive! Next route, advanced, much shorter basically because it had huge drops in it and my luge actually got air at one point! Great fun! Kisses to everyone, x x x x x x