Greetings :-)

We arrived into Taupo around lunchtime after a brief visit to Hooker Falls. We left some of our group here as they were due to be picked up and head of to do a sky dive. It was an awesome day, quite hot and clear blue skies, but a few of us had already done this so we headed into town to our hostel and planned on spending the afternoon at leisure.

On the way to our hostel our driver suggested heading to the Waikato River which has a natural hot stream running into it, so myself, Amy, Hannah and Riccardo decided this would be a nice relaxedafternoon. We arranged to meet an hour later and Rich, our driver would take us all there on the Kiwi bus....so obviously we headed to the supermarket for a bottle of wine each...hot day, hot river, free transport, sounded like a perfect day to get drunk!!

Somehow we ended up losing track of time, and by the time we made it back with our wine, Riccardo and Rich had already set off (we was quite late!!) however this didn't stop us, we grabbed our swimmers and set off on the half hour walk. Ten minutes into the walk we decided to try hitch-hike and get there quicker! It only took about 5minutes, if that, for somebody to pull over, we found it all quite amusing, it was a youngish guy who was running late for a bike race which was taking place right next to the river so it all worked out great! Bonus!

We got there and met up with Riccardo and Rich who were just getting out but decided to come back in with us. We all spent a couple of hours chilling in the river, the stream was unbelievably hot in places, to the point where you couldn't be in it for long before moving further in and towards the colder parts! We had a bottle of wine each, so ended up slightly tipsy!

Rich and Ricardo got out first and went to fill up the bus with fuel. We arranged to give them 15minutes before getting out and walking up to the car park to meet them for a lift back. I'm not sure if we were late or early but an elderly couple who we passed said they had just seen the bus pull off, so they offered us a lift back into town. They were really cute and had a small dog with them. They were from England originally but had lived in New Zealand for a long time!

We returned to the hostel late afternoon and met up with the rest of the group who had been skydiving. We had a light dinner (pot noodle!) and some more drinks in the hostel before getting ready to go out and the watch the England Rugby game.

We started off in the hostel bar where we got two for one drinks, located the face paint and ended up with drunkern, un-appropriate things written on our heads (thanks Hannah! Haha) It was an awesome night out, a really good laugh but the next day was spent in bed nursing a rather crappy hangover before taking advantage of the free hostel BBQ. We watched the first part of the Wales game before giving in and heading back to bed for an early night!

Next stop....River Valley...