Smelly City

After we'd done the diving in the Northland it was time to head further south.....Rotorua...sulphur city as it's known (smelly city as it is!!) It's built in volcano land and there are geysers everywhere and hot pools and bubbling pools of mud. It's all very odd. Everywhere you look there are clouds of steam appearing all over, even out of drains!!! There's also a strong smell of eggs in air, it's not a pleasant aroma!

In Rotorua we started off by doing some Zorbing.....rolling downhill in an inflated sphere!!!! We went in one together and had a couple of buckets of water chucked in for that washing machine effect......it was loads of fun!!!

We also took in some geysers, a maori concert, sat in some hot pools, visited a Mauri village, walked around the city and went to the museum where we saw a very funny film. Don't think it was supposed to be funny, it was the story of the volcano erupting in 1886. It was like a carry on / disaster movie / documentary and I 'm sure Bob Mortimer was in it. Rich reckons they guy who played Jango Fett was in it too....but I dunno....not that familiar with every Star Wars character! Saw some Kiwi's, not in the wild though, that'd be very unlikely as they're so endangered.

At the campsite we were staying at they had a thermal cooking pot, where you chuck your food in and leave it all day....so we did!!! We treated ourselves to some meat....did I mention how expensive food is??? Even though we're not eating out, the supermarkets are dear and so we've not had any meat yet!! We chucked in some chicken and loads of veggies....it was a feast and would probably be eating it for days. That afternoon, while it was cooking away, I was making some curtains for the van as the ones in it were awful and Rich was cleaning out the van and laying a new carpet! That done he went off to the kitchen to get us a beer and he comes back saying he'd just bumped into Claire Parkins and her husband Darren!!!! Bloody hell......it really is a small world. For those of you that don't know, Claire used to work for RMC, she was on the SAP project that Rich and I both worked on in Rugby!!! They were there on their honeymoon and were darting round New Zealand! We invited them to join our feast which they did and we had a very enjoyable 'dinner party'!!! It still makes me chuckle everytime I think about it, if Rich hadn't gone to get those beers we probably wouldn't have known they were there!

After about 5 days it was time to leave Rotorua