Colonial Court Motor Inn Tauranga

... also bustling as it just opened for the season.

Last night I sung karaoke for the first time of my life. And quite possibly the last. I was so annoyed about being told to go up and sing that I did it just so that they would stop. My first choice of a song was Les Champs Elizees; unfortunately it was in the book but not in the computer system. I opted for Dancing Queen, Abba, instead.

Did I mention that I watched the movie "Hostel 2" the ...

nach uns**** ankunft und lang** wartezeit am flughafen (d** busfahr** musste noch
auf and**e passagi**e warten und und und) ging es dann endlich los nach Mount Maunganui, direkt zu uns**** host-mum. wir wurden freundlich begrüsst von ihr, jedoch wurden wir etwas von d** wohnung üb**rascht.
irgendwie hatten wir uns das ein klein we***** saub**** vorgestellt.ich will nicht gross darauf eingehen....ab** es war wirklich eklig. und ...

We spent four nights in Raglan and it was fantastic. We really didn't want to leave. We rented wetsuits and surf boards one morning, the one day that wasn't pouring down rain and windy. Because of the recent stormy weather the waves weren't that great but it was still a good time. I was the first time we surfed together too! We drove across ...

Greetings from Rotorua, the cultural capital of New Zealand. In an hour we will be taken to a Maori Hangi ceremony and concert. I'm excited because our bus driver Day-mo (I think his real name's Damien) told us there is excellent all you can eat food. And there will be some fun Maori stuff, I'm sure. I just hope that unlike Derek Zoolander I don't run into two Finnish dwarves as well. We've only been here three full ...

... that!) which is the kiwi fruit capital of the world and visited a kiwi orchard - Kiwi360. This is described as a 'theme park' but is actually a full blown working orchard which was really informative and I now feel like a kiwi fruit expert! They grow on vines, like grapes, and have to be protected from frosts. They have to be thinned and pruned by hand, so their permanent workforce is 6000. They hire huge ...

... the village then and now. The village came to the spot they now are in after a volcano erupted and they had to leave their other village. They use the thermals for baths and cooking. And he said that they have such good skin because of the thermals. Food is cooked by the steam in the ground in boxes that are dug into the ground. He called them their microwaves! We also got to see a cultural performance of singing ...

... is in fact something to do with fruit, kiwi fruit for a man named Dave. In other news Jovana left yesterday and we had pizza! I cycled with it through the most horrendous rain and managed to keep it both dry and flat. With the only slightly bizarre consequence of my hand swelling up, for which I could discover no reason, its gone down again now and the sun has come back out so all is well. Watch this space for a review of kiwi thinning vs. fish packing.

... dragging the girls into our boat. The drama! We kept our boardshorts on after rafting and went straight to Zorbing which involves hopping into a big plastic ball of water and rolling downhill. Really good fun, albeit the fun is over really quickly for the price! We headed to Amy Royston's gaff that evening and had some dinner with herself and Mike who were kind enough to let us kip in their spare room for two nights. The next day we went to the blue lake which is outside Rotorua ...

Today I woke up around 10am. The other person who was sleeping in my room left really early, probably around 7am to catch a bus, so now I have the entire room to myself oh yeah! This is the first time all trip that I've had a room of my own and it is quite nice. After waking up and jumping on all of the beds in my room, four total, I got dressed, ate breakfast (eggs, toast, and OJ) then headed into town. I met up with a few people who I met at the hostel ...

... like volcano that is Mount Maunganui. But all too soon it was time to leave again, but not before I found another deserted golden soft sand beach to leave foot prints on. This week finished in the most stunning and jaw dropping sunset I have ever seen anywhere in the world. I really wish I had a film camera to capture the colours and formations cast in the sky that night, or that I was a poet and could actually describe what I saw in ...