hey whanau and bros!

thanks for all the messages on the message board, we're good and really enjoying thanks.

we actually left Raglan and made it safely to Rotorua! passed back through Hamilton and a small town called Tirau on the way, other than that it was all mountainous and very green. first impression of Rotorua...man its smells soo bad but you kinda get used to it. because its one of eNZed's most dynamic thermal areas, you keep getting hit by a strong smell of sulphur. its a pretty cool town/city with loads of cafe's and restaurants. we've been to Te Whakarewarewa o te Ope Taua a Wahiao & Te Puia, its a thermal reserve and moari cultural attraction. the best geyser/hot spring there is POHUTU, and every hour it erupts spurting hot water upto 30 meters skyward. there should be loads of photos of that up on our blog to show you, also there are boiling mud pools to look at. other than that we've been chilling out in our camper down by the lake or wandering around, nothing too stressful a. the thermal pools are soo nice, they're in more or less every campsite & motel but the real nice one's are in spa's around Rotorua. we've just been sitting in them relaxing after a long day of doing nothing...man its tough out here! we're still enjoying living in our camper but as you can imagine, its getting a little bit messy now. after we've given it a bit of a clean, we'll put some more photos up of what its like inside.

we're now making a short trip south to Taupo!

goodbye

phil and rhi

xxxx