Day 61 & 62: New Zealand, North Island

Day 61: Rotorua has an awful smell that smells like ‘rotten eggs’ this is due to the sulfur in the air. It’s nickname the ‘Sulphur City’. We spent the day in the heart of where the smell comes from in the Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland (means ‘Sacred Waters). We saw geothermal pools, sulphur coated craters, and bright mineral colorings. We even saw a geyser. I met a nice Dutch girl, Jantien, and we spent the day running around seeing everything as we had limited time, unfortunately we got back to the bus late, since we were late the punishment to the group was Jantien and I singing a song, we decided to sing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’. Needless to say we were never late to the bus again. Jantien and I found out that we shared the same roommates in Bay of Islands only a couple of hours apart, we figured we were destined to meet.

Then went to place called ‘Rock and Ropes’ and tried the giant swing. Basically it is a harness that goes around your waist and you step off sideways from a high up platform and then you swing back and forth. It was pretty fun and a good adrenalin high. We then headed for some jetboating. Jetboating is basically doing fun tricks in the water in a boat. They do a lot of quick turnarounds. Unfortunately, I bumped my already aching arm on the side of the boat. Then we headed to Lake Taupo. At Lake Taupo, Jantien and I headed to get some yummy Kaumri chips with some blue cheese dressing. The Kaumri chips taste alot like the yummy sweet potato fries my good friend Pete makes. We also tried some cream cheese pizza with pesto and chicken it was quite tasty.

That night Scott our tour guide got all of us to get together at a local bar. The tour group was a fun group, which consisted of Matt and Richard the Brits, the Irish couple (Clare and Johnny), Peter and Jantien, the Dutch, Ashley and Diana the Irish and the Scottish, Silvo the German, and the German family. The tour group was a lot of fun and everyone seem to get along. This is the second time during my trip that I have really enjoyed my tour group. I tried some Moneiths Red Celtic beer which was quite good.

Day 62:
Today we are off to Wellington (the capital), which is the sister city of ‘San Francisco’. Before we got to Wellington we stopped to take photos of Tongariro National Park, this is where the volcano from the ‘Lord of the Rings’ is. Wellington is pretty hilly and green and looks like a small version of San Francisco, with houses on the hillside and a small wharf area. Even the streets were sort of narrow with tall buildings like San Fran., I felt like I was at home. I took a quick cruise through the national museum, which primarily held stuff on Maori’s. Then took what they call a cable car, up to the top and got a great view of Wellington.