Victoria Lodge Rotorua

... tantrums we decided we should use the cheap accomodation week to find a flat and jobs in Auckland (biggest city in nz so more opportunity) and work there for 6 months, saving up again, buying an empty van, putting in the bed and everything ourselves and then travelling for the last few months.

So far we have had a good result. Heading back to Auckland tomorrow as in one day both got 3 job interviews! We also have 2 fully furnished apartments to look at right in the city. The best ...

... and it went on for miles and miles. For lunch we stopped at a cafe in a small town. I ordered a toasted sandwich and bottled peach tea. Robert got butter chicken and rice, which looked really good. As we were eating outside on the patio, it began to rain and I mean hard. Unfortunately, the rain decided it was going to stay for almost the rest of the afternoon. We finally ...

... What, were we working the next day?)...

Holy pancakes, the place was PACKED. It was loud and hot with cheap beer and terrible music - we loved it. One drink became two became three became four and suddenly we - meaning me, Amanda and four of our new best friends - were the last ones in the place. We were an odd mix - three locals, three travellers - and I've no recollection of how any of us started chatting, but it was just such a brilliant night ...

... we went to some mudpools for lunch. The Luge in Rotorua is unexpectedly much longer than the Queesntown one. Here you have a coice of 3 tracks, 2 different starting points for each track and one of them splits in 2 halfway down. We did the scenic one first, obviously slower than the others but it took what seemed l;ike hours to get to the bottom. The Intermediate track was my favourite. The advanced was obsceneley fast ...

... lap. And it did just that! On the bus I decided to kill a few minutes and flick through the guidebook and found this amazing rafting was right here where I was headed. So before we'd found our accommodation or anything we headed straight to the iSight center and booked our rafting for the next day. Grade 5 and with the highest commercially raftable waterfall in the world we were on track for some more adrenalin pumping action. And it was just that. The following day we arrived ...

We had a very busy and varied day today! First we went to another thermal area called Wai-o-Tapu. It is a park that has paths running through it to explain the various thermal features of this old volcanic area. It was a very nice park. We explored the first bit of it, and I have no idea what the technical terms are, but basically what we saw were mud pools, steaming areas, holes, caverns of volcanic rock with steam and mud in them, and other such ...

... going to be with - if a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing properly) and merrily rolling down a hill, probably breaking every bone in my body in the process and giving myself whiplash, only to dash back to the top of the hill and do it all again. I've been looking at the other activities they offer at the Agrodome, where the zorbing takes place, and I am also intrigued by the Agrojet (vrooming round a water course at high ...

... picturesque community into a mudslide and waste land forever more. The result, apart from devastation, is of several remaining homes, literally buried halfway down in mud which you can visit and read about the traumatic event in a museum. It's an absolutely beautiful place and to see the last few 1-storey homes remaining, standing at odd angles half in the ground is quite alarming. You can go inside the homes and there are tree roots growing under the roof. We walked around the ...

... bakery or quickly ducking into the post office. But then again, this was a small town in a rural area and you just never know how tiny the gene pool is in these kinds of places, so I should have looked a bit harder.

As well as its new found love for the Lord of the Rings, NZ is world renowned for its long established love of sheep. So along with countless other bus loads of international tourists we gathered at The Agrodome to watch a sheep ...