Six On Union Motel Rotorua

... and attention to getting their branding right &#8211; and succeeding judging by the number of people planning to jump.<br><br>After viewing a short video about the jump &#8211; our group of four split into two. The other group of two were first up meaning Jordan (not the one I blogged about in Hong Kong &#8211; instead a 16 year-old from Gisborne whose family were there to watch!) and I had to wait for another 30 minutes before jumping. Nothing like a bit of extra time to question ...

... seen in previous visits. <br>Too late for a birthday breakfast so made do with coffee and muffuns.<br>Last chance for Bron to look for souvenirs to take home.<br>After lunch we headed north to Mount Maunganui through the kiwifruit growing area of Te Puke.<br><br>

Heading into the top thermal site in the country, we knew just one thing - the rotten egg smell was only going to get stronger.  The whole are resulted mainly from a volcanic eruption about 700 years ago.  First part of the walk was among deep craters with sulfur gas streaming out.  Beyond that, we found the main Champagne Pool in the middle of the park.  Each pool had a slightly different color due to the minerals mixing together.  

... geyser which then erupted maybe 5 metres in the air but to be honest the one in Lanzarote is more dramatic. Jack not impressed at the 30 dollar entrance fee for this natural wonder, as they only needed 30 cents worth of detergent! but the rest of the park was much better, lots of geo-thermal attractions with bubbling mud pools, steaming lakes, bright greeen lakes etc etc, so all in all worth going to. Later on, as we ...

We stayed in Auckland last night and are now staying in a small town called Whatanake in Bay of Plenty on the East coast, but today we passed Rotorua and the pin had to go on the map as we had a great experience. More on that later, first we'll go back to yesterday where we left Paihia, Bay of Islands early and drove down the West coast to Auckland. The trip ended up taking 6 hours, due to winding roads through ...

... off i went it turns out that only 2 of us were making the trip so me and a 23 year old swedish girl named nina went round the track of the waimangu park together taking in the views and the pools etc with me taking pictures in the rain it was only a matter of time before the camera packed up so i had to resort to camera phone pictures as well ...

... 20 seat propeller plane in Rotorua and took off for Auckland.  I think they're changing it so they can have international flights to Oz, but as of now, the Rotorua airport doesn't have security for you to go through before you get on the plane.  It reminds me of my teenage years at the Duluth airport, except much, much smaller.  Just the trust that shows makes you feel good about being there. I was sad to go and very not ready to go home.

... describes it as the Southern Hemisphere's Pompeii. The eruption was huge and blew the top off the mountain. People in Auckland 200km away thought that New Zealand was being fired upon by a Russian warship. If the same happened now, the effects would be catastrophic. It makes you realise how fragile your existence is. The village was buried in a mixture of ash and mud from the nearby lake. The dead were dug out at the time but the ...

... the way i stopped at the local bike park for an afternoon of biking. i had been informed that a scottish lad said that the tracks were poor. i don;t know where he went but this was some of the best biking i have seen! 2 hours of single track of various gragients and technicalty, cool. Today i am off to float down the Kaituna on a body board. chould be good and prepare me for a winter of swimming in Scotland given i havent been on a river in a while.

... too.<br>Then we head back to the main building and do the actual tour through<br>the rancid sulfuric rotten egg smelling thermal park, reaping with<br>vulgar photo ops. The most amazing thing was the champagne pool with<br>coral colored rim, and then the lime green pool called Devil's Bath<br>pool which gets its color from the mixing ...