Hello again, well after the disapointment of Taupo it was time to head to Rotorua! The Sulphur city! We'd heard rumours of this cities stench and it certainly lived upto it, the whole place stinks of rotten eggs! Nice!

The good thing about Rotorua is that it is the home of NZ's best invention 'The Zorb'! Definately on my to do list! The first day we got there it happened to be St Patricks day which happens to coincide with Leeroys birthday which therefore meant we had to go out for a few beers. We'd previously met up with a few of our mates that we'd met on our travels so there was a good bunch of us out and we had a class night out (face paints involved and everything! I didn't get in till 7 in the morning!

Anyway after a full on day recovering it was time for us to go and have a Kiwi cultural experience in the form of visiting the local Mauri tribe. The village was a replica but was still very authentic and everyone there was dressed in traditional Mauri costumes and there were warriors and a traditional welcome ceremony it was pretty cool and very convincing. They even did the Haka which was pretty cool to see in the flesh. After the evening of ceremonies and looking around the village they dished up dinner which was a huge buffet with chicken, pork, gravy, sweet potatoes, carrots, etc, seriously the food was never ending, and delicious! It finally cured my hangover!

After a relatively early night it was time for me and G'bo to go caving! This was pretty exciting and one of the major activities we had been looking forward to in the north island. To begin with they kitted us out in all our gear which involved another wetsuit, (I might as well live in one of these) and some fashionable white wellies. We then headed to the cave. To ease us in gently there was a small matter of a 35m abseil through a small gap down into a massive cavern, oh yeah and its pitch black, nice! It was pretty cool though and the gloworms down there were amazing just like star constellations! After our abseil we walked through the cave for a short while until the leader asked us all to turn off our lights then one by one she attached us to some device then all you could hear from the person in front were their screams, it turns out that she ties you to a zip line and you go off shooting into the darkness before landing on safe ground, pretty cool! Then it was time to get in our rubber rings and jump off a 4m ledge into a freezing cold underground river, we're 60m below the ground at this point so you can imagine how cold the water was and apparelty there were eels and some other crazy stuff living in it, sweet! We had a little swim around checking out the gloworms and generally having a laugh until it was time to carry on walking through the caves. This was a pretty dangerous activity as the ground is so uneven you felt like you could break your ankle at any time with only a torch light guiding you. You had to crawl through tiny gaps and around corners and jump off stuff and slide down stuff it was pretty good fun! As we were nearing the end the guide gave us the option whether to go for another walk upto the exit hole or to climb 2 waterfalls of doom, as she called them. We naturally opted for the waterfalls. They weren't very high waterfalls but it was still pretty cool none the less and it was a relief to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Quality day though, loved it!

With one more day left in Rotorua it was time for the zorb and street luge challenge! This was Leeroys birthday treat! We got on the bus to the street luge and had three attempts at getting down the hill, it was a pretty fun ride trying to get past your mates and I think we all enjoyed it but the best was yet to come...... the zorb! We arrived at the place and we decieded to go for a zorb that had water inside (to stop friction) and one where all three of us would be inside, carnage. The hill was pretty big and the balls are huge when you see them upfront. We all jumped in through the small hole and you can't see anything through the ball so your totally oblivious to whats going on around you! On three we all all had to push forward as if we were running and we tried to stay on our feet for as long as possible, which lasted about 1 second before we were rolling around crashing into each other, G'bo clocked me in the nose but other than that we came out unscathed just very dizzy, zorbing is well recommended from me, so much fun!

After we returned back to the hostel we strolled around the park looking at some geysers then it was time for bed as we had to get up to go to Auckland the following day, this is where I am now! Although we are heading to another dive site tomorrow, sweet as!