Good Morning from Lake Taupo!

Well quite a bit has happened over the past few days but fortunately, nothing quite as bad as what happened on 90 Mile Beach! Last Thursday we travelled down the Western side of the North Island stopping to see the Mauri's sacred and famous Kauri Trees, the ones we saw were the biggest in New Zealand. From there it was back to Auckland to watch Snow Patrol which was great fun, really good concert. Friday it was down to Raglen to catch some surf, and wow was it big surf! Bigger than anything I could handle! There was a big Raggee festival going on but we gave it a miss at $140 each for entry! Instead we had our own little party! We bumped into friends of Sez and Salt (guys they met in South America), Wes and Naomi which was great and with them were George and Elliott from London. We had a great night sleeping next to the sea once again, we've been so jammy with our views each morning!

From Raglen it was down to Rotorua where of course we decided to go Black Water Rafting and Glow Worm spotting! It was so much fun as you will see from the photo's! We had wet-suits on (notice that the guys had to wear swimming costumes over theirs!) and went rafting on inner-tubes 65 ft underground. It was pretty cold but great fun! We jumped off waterfalls and drifted through the caves looking at the amazing glow worms which covered the roofs of the caves. The trip finished with a hot shower (first in 6 days by this point, first hot shower that in, we're not that minging!), bagels and soup - perfect!

We camped up at Rotorua quite late that night and decided to stay in a lay-by (no more sea views for a while, now being inland ). All was fine until Liz came back saying she could hear bubbling and hissing in the park. We were interested to find out what it was... then we came across 15 geyzers all steaming and bubbling boiling hot mud! What a find! It was what we had come to Rotorua to find and we ended up camping in the middle of it! The place did stink but was amazing to see. We woke the next morning so see them in day-light and were very impressed. Then spent the rest of the day hunting more geyzers, zorbing (for those of you who don't know what this is; 3 of us had to jump inside a huge inflatable ball which had water in it... and we were then pushed down a hill where we bounced and fell over one another all the way down, its great fun!!), and eventually we came across a gorgeous natural and free hot spring literally in the middle of a forest, off the beaten track, but it was worth it!

Down South to Taupo then which is where I am now. And today at 12.30pm, in less than 3 hours that is, Im jumping out of an aeroplane 15, 000ft up and Sky Diving over Lake Taupo! Hopefully I'll live to tell the tale and will update you of our progress in a few days time..

Sorry for the delay on pics, the computers are very slow at uploading here.

Lots of love, Sara xxx