After Paihia we eaded back to Auckalnd again for one night before heading off to Rotorus. We did however make time to meet up with one of Marias old work colleagues and we hada really nice evening in a Mexican restaurant.

We arrived in Rotorua in the afternoon. Its in a very volcanic region so its surrounded by geysers, hot pools, craters BUT stinks of sul[phur (rotten eggs to you!). Apart from that its cool! We stayed in a really nice hostel- probably the best yet. The netx day we went up on the cable cars to see the town from up jhigh. The city itself is in the middle of a volcano's crater (active!!!) so its cool to see it from up high and get the fear that it could go off at any second!! Apart from the excellent views theres also a luge at the top (the real reason we wanted to go up!!!). The luge is a flat board on wheels with handlebars and some brakes which sometimes work!!! There were three tracks to go on so we worked our way up form the Scenic to the Advanced!!! I nearly crashed on the Scenic one (and scared a few small children as well!!) on my first go and didn't get any better on the harder courses. Of course i won although Maria did put up a good fight once she realised how fast you could push the luges!!! They were really good fun though- we've never done anything like that before.

Rotorua is also a very prominent Maori area so we took the opportunity to go to one of the cultural shows they had on offer. they picked us up in the evening and took us out of town to a place where they had reconstructed their original villages of hundreds of years ago. First we were taken through the jungle area to a river where men dressed up in traditional Maori costume came rowing down the river in a Waka (Maori war boat). they were all very convincing and bloody scary! We were then taken to the village where they put on a great show with singing and dancing and some fighting techniques ending with the traditional Haka that we all then had to do which was a bit embarrasing. We just don't have the same convincing menace! After the show we had a massive buffet dinner which was unreal. roast chicken, lamb, potatoes, sweet potatoes, salads even gravy. Maria came back with the biggest mound of food which she proceeded to try and pile onto my plate when she realised her eyes were bigger than her stomach and she looked like a greedy pig! Didn't stop her going for a mound of chocolate cake for dessert! After dinner, when it was dark enough, we were taken down to a natural spring where apparently 25,000,000 llitres of water bubbled up from the ground a day, to see the glow worms. It was a great night.

On our last day in Rotorua we just hung about the hostel and watched DVDs. Too much action over the past few days wore us out!!