Okay so for those of you who dont know where Taupo is, if u look at the north island its that big lake right in the centre. I checked in to my hostel after doing circles to find it and within 20 minutes of droping my bags off i was getting ready to skydive! They say when the weather is good just go for it! Or else you'll miss out o doing it!

My tandem skydive instructor was only about 5 and a half foot but that didnt seem to bother him at all! We jumped in our hot pink aeroplane andheaded up at a whoppingly steep ascent, we climbed and climbed all the way to 15,000 feet! And we jumped out, i wasnt scared at all, i dont think even the adrenilin kicked in at all! But it was again (totally different to the bungy) the most fun iv evr had. A ful 60 secs of free fall!!! I pulled some dance moves on the way down for the dvd then we did a few spins and we just kept on falling it was fantastic! It felt like so long, definetly want to skydive again!

We landed with a smooth standing up landing and my ears evetually poped back into equal pressure and i was on a high for the rest of the day!!! HIGHLY RECOMMEND SKYDIVING!!!!!!!

The next day was at the Tongaririo crossing, this is a cluster of three volcanoes all different ages. It was a 17km day walk, we started at one side of the mountai with small shrubs growing round us, it then dramatically changed as we got higher and higher! The plants disappeared and only rocks were around us! After the first climb we reached a flat plain, then the second climb revealed to me that the flat plain i just walked through was a giant crater! Atop the second climb we could see where they filmed the landscape for mordor in Lord of the Rings so bascially imagine that (no CGI needed for that movie hahaha looked exactly like Mordor this place did) Then the other direction revealed what was i think the most stunning part of the welk, the red crater! Our bus driver told us that we will know it when we see it and we sure did! It was a huge crater with one side bright red then fading into the other side which was pitch black, it was amazing iv never seen anything like it at all! Then coming down into central crater where the emerald lakes are (three sulphur bright aqua lakes) was a challenge in itself because we wer a foot deep in gravel, so i kinda cross country skiied down this hill in my hiking boots only to fill em up with small rocks!

It was then off to Blue lake for lunch, a fresh water lake which we erent allowed to swim in because its way too cold! Lookuing back at the volcanoes we could see steam coming out of them so that was kinda sacary, the lst eruption was in 2001 and theyare expecting anohter one soon but they got monitoring equipment all over for that, and a warning siren (somehow if u did happen to hear that siren i doint think it would do u much good, kind of hard to outrun a cloud of ash!) but anyway we descended down the other side past some springs and a hut then into forest, the landscape changes so dramatically at the different heights!

That night i arrived back at the hostel for a free BBQ! SCORE!!!!!! I had a few beers and just chiled out with the swedes and germans at the hostel!