We didn’t have an alarm on until 8am so a lovely lie in was on the cards, however we left the radiator on last night and I woke up in such a sweat with the feeling oh, almost suffocation.

So I gave it half hour before I got out of bed and went for a shower and what not just to get some fresh air really.

Packed up our lemons and left for hobbiton movie set!

The set was based in a farming land, some directors of Peter Jackson’s team came and knocked on a farmers door to ask if they could look around his land and that’s how they found it. It was so cool (even though I haven’t actually watched the hobbit yet) the little town had all the exact same set built into the hills, after walking around he set for a while and getting caught in a huge downpour of rain. We went to the Hobbiton pub called green dragon or goblet I think and got given a free cider at part of the tour - brilliant!

Afterwards we got driven onwards to Rotorua in the hobbiton movie set bus to catch up with the rest of the guys that didn’t want to see the place.

Rotorua smells of eggs from the sulphur. Not just boiled eggs but as if someone has eaten eggs let them brew and farted them out. Absolutely disgusting. Not everywhere but in the parts where there are geysers spurting out of the ground. It’s the most volcanically active area in New Zealand with magma only 7km underneath them where as the rest of New Zealand is 30-40km deep underground. There’s just loads of steam coming up from lakes and holes in the ground in amongst trees or drains, apparently they can just randomly appear in places where ever they want so they have to go around the town very often to monitor the ground. Wouldn’t that be great waking up in the morning, going for a wee half asleep and burning ya’ bits on a geyser coming up through the toilet pipe. Or pegging the washing out and falling into a mud pool that’s just a 100 degree pool of sinking mud.

We had to name one of the guys a chief of our group to welcome us to the Maori tribe we were staying with and then we had to sing part of a song to welcome us to their tribe. We chose black eyed peas ‘I got a feeling’.
Haha bloody hard once the music was off and we had to memorise it. It was only about 20 seconds of the song but still...

They all sound like Korg from Thor and Avengers, I can’t get it out of my head every time the talk lol.

Our chief introduced us to the Maori chief and thanked him for ya being there. Then we did our song and had a mini afternoon tea with small slices of cake and shortbreads - right up Ellie’s street! They did some Maori/New Zealand cake which looked like a puffed up donut but really greasy that you put cream and jam on, that wasn’t up my street at all but Ellie (MISs sweet tooth) on the other hand had her helping to a couple. I stuck to shortbread biscuit and a slice of red velvet cake.

Afterwards they showed us our Maori hut that we would sleep in. It had 20 beds in two rows facing each other. Let’s hope nobody snores tonight!

It’s supposed to be spring, I don’t know what they call spring but this temperature is definitely winter. We were bloody freezing, shivering we were so cold! Then we had to stand in the cold and learn a Maori song which was very basic thankfully and very catchy, only to be told that we all had to perform it for the rest of the gang tonight at dinner.

Then the lady chief who was pregnant with her sixth child.... taught us a few sticks games which were so much fun but so bloody hard trying to throw big sticks around in a circle and catch the one to your left flying at you at the same time.

After finally warming up doing the stick game for about an hour and half we went over to the main Maori village that was built in a forest and for a welcome by the tribe, their scare dance basically with spears and scary eyes and noises. The rest of our gang turned out to be another 125 or so people coming for that the dance and dinner. The first thing we all thought of was crap... we have to sing in front of them all!

We seen the haka tonight too which was so bloody good in person and we weren’t miles away in a rugby stand we were front row seats about 2m away from them. Loud, powerful, scary and intimidating which is what it’s meant for. Your not allowed to show any emotion as it’s very disrespectful and it shows the tribe that you have a weakness and aren’t confident and true to your word that you come in peace. It’s a war dance and I’m not surprised that a war is what they get when they sing it on the rugby field.

Dinner was delicious, a buffet of all you could eat roast lamb and a salad part with humongous fresh mussels, prawns and fish. Holy moly, the mussels were delicious and the lamb melted in your mouth! All cooked in the ‘hangi’ I think it is? (The underground oven).

There was pavlova for desert which apparently originated from New Zealand even though Australia claim it’s theirs?. I much preferred the custard and a mini slice of some sort of cake that tasted like sticky toffee pudding.

The only thing left to do was to sit this bloody song, I managed to get behind everyone. I had a solo though! I had to shout ‘Timata!’ after the chief to start our tribe off. Bloody hell what do we get our selves into! The song was Maori language but it was the tune of “cutie cutie, stop picking on meeeee”.

Thankfully it wasn’t that long, they of course loved us! And then they could all leave not so long after so that we were able to go in the hot tubs and have a cheap glass of wine! In there till midnight, it was actually lovely and warm even getting out at because we were so hot from the tubs. Not sure we got to sleep until about 2am chatting and winding each other up but what a good night! And it’s one of the top trip advisor tourist attractions in the north island of NZ.