Well the time is almost upon us when we come to depart New Zealand. We've had a really good time and done loads of cool stuff. The past 7 weeks here have been incredible, and it was the perfect amount of time to see the whole country and do everything that we wanted to.
Anyway, since the last update......
We went to Tongariro national Park and did a 6km trek to Taranaki Falls, past Mordor and Mt Doom. Mt Doom really is a scary looking volcano!
We had really good weather for the walk and it was good to get some exercise as we've been pretty lazy the last few weeks! The waterfall was really nice until a hairy traveller decided to strip off naked and have a bath in it!!! We had to wait for him to finish before we could take anymore photos!!!
After Taupo, we headed North to Rotorua which is stinky to say the least. This is due to large thermal activity they have here which emits sulphur over the whole town. There is a lovely rotten egg smell that sweeps over the town and really clears those sinuses!!! We called into a thermal park just outside Rotorua which had a huge geyser and some other funky weird hot things including a natural fluorescent green lake, bubbling mud pools and steaming sulphur water holes.
We then had rather an adventure packed day here with white water sledging (basically body boarding through the rapids down the Kaituna river), then white water rafting (over the largest commercially rafted waterfall in the world - 7m drop!), then we went zorbing!
The sledging was awesome fun but very hard work, especially when they make you rapid surf which is swimming toward a rapid and heading upstream to surf it! Very tiring on the legs! Jade didnt do the sledging as she heard a horror story from this girl we met who broke her leg doing it and was off her feet for 6 months (wimp!)! We both did the rafting which was on a grade 5 river which is an extreme river - not for the faint hearted! The waterfall was by far the best bit of this with the 7m drop. Me and Jade were put at the front of the raft and so were the first to go under the water on all the rapids and the waterfall. From the photos that we will try and put on soon, you will see that our raft goes completely under the water and surfaces a few meters further down river with all of us hanging on and gasping for breath! It was great fun and would definitely do it again.
Zorbing was next and that was soo much fun! For those of you who dont know, you are put in a huge inflatable ball at the top of the hill and pushed down!!! Ours had water in as well which made it mission impossible to stand up, so we were all over the place. It didn't help that we were on a zigzag course either!!! A definite must do for any of you that get the chance!
After Rotorua we headed to the coast to Tauranga in the Bay of Plenty, which is a lovely little town with an amzing beach. The weather wasn't great here so we couldn't take full advantage, but you can take our word for it!
Then off further North to the Coromandel Peninsula, where we stayed in Whitianga. Again lovely place with the most amazing beaches all the way up the coast. We visited "Hot Water" beach where you dig holes in the sand and sit in pools of hot water, then the Hahei beach (which was our favourite), then off the Catherdral Cove.
We then had a 7 hour drive up to the Bay of Islands to Paihia. Another place to be when the sun is shining, which it was for us (temp reached 30 degrees)! Loads of lovely bays and beaches. We took a day trip up to Cape Reinga which is the northern most point of New Zealand and the point where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean. It is supposed to be stunning views from here, but when we got there it was that foggy that we couldn't even see one of the oceans, let alone where the two meet! Typical!
We still had a really cool time body boarding down the huge Te Paki sand dunes! Now this was awesome, if not the most knackering thing we have ever done!!! It made us realise just how unfit we were, although each dune was the size of Mount Everest!!! We picked a dune that was about 3 times the size that everyone else was doing and the walk up made us realise why, although the trip down was more than worth it! We were absolutely hurtling down these dunes, nearly landing in the stream at the bottom!
Jade also had a little accident that was most probably the funniest thing I have ever seen in my life! I was soo busy laughing I forgot to take photos of it!!! Jade decided to go down the last little sand dune sitting on her board, but the thing she didn't realise was that all the weight then went to the front digging the nose in and forcing her to face plant BIG STYLE in the dune while still sliding down. Her legs were nearly bent over backwards touching her head as she ate sand all the way down. I literally nearly p*ssed myself laughing! I've got before and after shots for proof, so will put those up when I get a chance!!! Jade is telling me off for writing this, which is making me want to do it even more! :o) You'll all see the photos soon anyway!!
That moment was worth the 6 hour trip there and back alone!
After Paihia, we headed down to Auckland, where we are now, for our final stop before heading out to Sydney on Thursday. Not much to say about Auckland, it's just quite a nice city, with normal city stuff to do. We are off to stay with family for our last two nights here, which will be nice to stay in a house instead of hostels for a change.
Well that's our last post from New Zealand, will update next from sunny Oz when we have a break from throwing shrimps on the barbie! Just to rub it in, it reached 40 degrees there last week! :o)
Speak soon
K&J
xxx
