Rotorua to Waitomo

Heading out of Rotorua this morning we went to Te Puia which is a thermal reserve. Basically it has geysers and boiling mud pools and stunk of Rotten Eggs!

The tour started with a look at maori crafts, we saw the workshop where the blokes make the totem poles and such. We then saw hown the Maori women would make the grass skirts and weaved items. This was pretty fascinating as they use flax which is green, they use the hot thermal pools to boil out the green colour leaving it a natural wheat colour!

We then headed to the Kiwi Sanctuary where there are two kiwi birds. Kiwi birds are very rare in NZ as they have been killed by humans in the past for food and at the moment Possums which have been bought over from OZ are threatening their existence. The Department of Conservation are currently culling thousands of Possums a year to ensure the Kiwi's survival - you'll quite oftem see dead Possums on the road side, many NZ drivers try to run them over as much as possible! The kiwi is a wingless nocturnal bird with a massive beak - get out your kiwi shoe polish cans and you'll see one!

After this was the main attraction, the geysers! they basically spout loads of hot water and steam out of the ground! There are boiling mud pools here as well which are pretty icky! We sat down on some rocks which were very toasty because of the thermal activity!

Back on the coach we headed to Waitomo with a stop at the supermarket as we could either have a BBQ or buy Pizza tonight. i decided to buy Pizza and get some wine!

The hostel is the Kiwi Paka YHA and with my YHA membership they gave me a towel! Yeah! Towels are nice because I don't have to get mine wet and in turn put it into my suitcase still wet!

I opted to go and look in the caves on a guided tour - Waitomo is where you come to look at caves! I got picked up from the hostel and we went to Ruakiri Cave. When you arrive there's not much there but when you go inside there's this massive spiral walkway down! it's quite dark - only lit by small lights at the walkway edge! We descended and then went through a very james Bond like tunnel, it's like you about to enter a secret underground Mi5 bunker! We went through and there was the most amazing Stalagmite formations with curtain like rocks formed from the limestone, it was amazing! Better than Cheddar Gorge!

The walk lasted around 2 hours, there were only 4 of us and the guide so we got a really interesting and informed tour. One of the girls that was doing the tour worked for the company that owned Black Water Raftting and Ruakiri Caves and she was on a fam trip. THL - Tourism Holdings Limited owns Kiwi Experience as well! It's a big conspiracy theory!

After our tour we went back to the hostel where I caought up on the net and then went and sat on the terrace and drank some wine with some the bus group. It was freezing cold so we opted to go straight for dinner. The Morepork Cafe which is part of the YHA does Kiwi Experience specials so we got $20 pizzas for $15 (6-8 pounds). Very nice!

After the wine I didn't last long and headed to bed about 11.00pm, the rest of the dorm followed me in!