***Long blog alerrrrtttt***

It took a while to get to Rotorua but when we did we sprung into action plan; find hostel, dump stuff, make plans. However this time making plans was a little bit trickier. We had 2 days in Rotorua to fill up, however there seemed to be endless things we could do (all the time prices being a little ridiculous!). 2 hours later we managed to book up a Maori Experience for that evening, a day trip to Waitomo Caves for the next day, and for the last day - a gondola up the mountain, luging and a geothermal spa... immense!

The Maori experience was really interesting. The Maori are the indigenous people to New Zealand, the evening was presented to us by modern day descendants who obviously do not live like Maori now but put on the show to share their culture with others. Its all a bit staged but it was interesting nonetheless and the show we saw with dancing and chanting and singing was really fun. It takes place in the jungle in the mountain where their ancestors actually lived and we even see the warriors come though on a Waka which is a canoe thing. They make our dinner the traditional way with a hole and steam and stones etc. and we had a big buffet dinner :) the host himself was really funny and we met some interesting people on our table.

We paid a little extra to go to a nature reserve after, stopping just before to learn about the sacred water and see glowworms, eels and rainbow trout. The glowworms are really cool! The guide told us they make their bums glow to attract the opposite sex and they are about the size of a dot. The nature reserve was worthwhile doing because kiwi birds are nocturnal - we managed to a see a few of them! Theyre adorable and a bit creepy at the same time...a bit odd.

The next morning we woke up really early (again!) and went to Waitomo. The caves there are stunning! The first cave we went into, Ruakuri had stunning stalactites and stalagmites everywhere. Its all a little nerdy but when youre down there (its pretty far underground) all the formations are really cool and the lighting is all done really well. There's fossils and people do blackwater rafting down there. When we were there we regretted not doing rafting a little but apparently the water is freezing and it does get pitch black down there... its all a bit pricey and there'll be other chances to do crazy things. We had enough to do anyway! We also managed to see some glowworms in this cave and learnt a lot more about them. It would seem it wasn't their bums that glow but their poo, and they use it to attract bugs and stuff in the caves who get drawn to the light. There's like sticky threads (like spider webs) they then use to catch their food. This seemed to make a fair bit more sense...

The next caves we went into kinda just went over really similar stuff however was a little less pretty and touristier. There were some absolute t*** on our tour as well who decided to quote Little Britain for the whole thing... I don't really get why 'Dont like it' is funny the 20th time... We then got told by the tourguide that glowworms can turn the glow on and off when they like... Melly and I got a little confused how they turn their poo glow on and off so I asked about where exactly the glow comes from and she said it was some kind of chemical reaction in the stomach of the glowworm??? Haha I gave up trying to learn anything about glowworms after that. We also got told by her that they're about 3cm long....! We plan to Wikipedia glowworms at some point...Very cool I know.

The tour became very worth it in the last 10 mins when we got taken on a boat through a dark bit of the caves and suddenly the ceiling of the cave was lined with thousands of glowworms. Seriously it was incredble! Who would have thought maggots would be so beautiful!

That evening we came back to find that the guys had checked into our hostel too so we gave them their camera back and chilled for a bit before heading out to a bar for a while. It was a really good bar! But today I'm feeling a little rough haha....

We woke up early (Again!!) to head to the gondola and make our way to the luging. It is SO much fun! I seriously felt like I was in a mariokart game :). We all looked very special in our helmets too... The sights from the top of the mountain showed us just how big Rotorua really is! Its got a massive lake and is really quite pretty. We jumped on another bus and had time for lunch quickly before heading to Hells Gate geothermal springs.

Its got loads of smelly bubbling steaming pools and mud pools and even a hot waterfall. It was pretty amazing but we had to do a 45 min walk around it before they let us have a mud bath. Very good times! Although we only had 20 mins in the mud bath it was really fun! Then after that we spent a while in the normal hot spring pool, however we got a bit hot after a while. We tried out the hottub in the hostel the night before and nearly cooked because it was so hot, so we weren't really up for sitting in a really hot thermal pool for ages again.

And that's been a crazy couple of days! We're now back at the hostel and Zohan is finishing! Were not doing ANYTHING tonight! And our bus to Taupo tomorrow doesn't leave too early so alls good! The next few days are going to be full of travelling and one night stays in hostels so we have our work cut out for us to make use of our time in each place. Hopefully we'll be able to do some watersports at some point and meet up with Sharon and Dan, my friends from South America in Wellington. But we'll see! Thats all for now from the longest blog in the history of blogs...... love to home from us all! All the messages we've been getting have been so nice thanks everyone so much :) xxx