Saturday 10th Nov

Finally, an extra hour sleep than usual before getting the coach to go to River Valley at 9:30am. When we woke up, we did struggle to get up because of the pains on our legs from yesterday's walk!

Before going to River Valley, we went to Tongariro National Park (again!) but in different area. We thought to go for a walk for a short while but we gave up after half an hour and went back to the coach. It was supposed to be for two hours walk. While we were waiting for others to arrive from their walk, we had our lunch on the coach.

We arrived to River Valley at 5pm but unfortunately the coach couldn't get to the entrance of the hostel due to the limit access on the track so it was nearly 5 minutes walk to the lodge. Luckily, the staff used her truck to take ours and others' bags/rucksacks to the lodge, to save us hard work to carry it down!

The views were beautiful, very similar to Lake District. The lodge was middle of nowhere, beside the river and you can see the waterfall from the hostel. There wasn't much to do in the evening. We were hoping to borrow the dvd to watch but unfortunately the hostel don't provide them! After trying to think what to do to keep us amused, we decided to prompt for the hot tub to relax for 45mins. From the tub, we had the view of the valley too, but the annoying side was that we had plenty of insects flying around which caused us hitting our faces so many times!! We stayed in the tub during the dusk. It got dark by the time we finished the tub and luckily for us, it started to rain after we left the tub!

The lodge do provide activities such as White water rafting, Horse trekking, golf etc. We decided to not to do anything cos we wanted a day off to recover from all the adventures we had, especially for Lisa who still got sore blisters around her feet! She struggled to walk, acting like a old woman!! We are hoping to go to the Sauna in the morning as we have got the morning to ourselves till 1pm before getting the coach to Wellington.

We decided to have an early night as there wasn't anything to do in the evening.