Ok, sorry about that. 

I had intended on catching you all up on our New Zealand travels in some back to back blog updates. However we flew to Fiji, got on a boat to I tiny remote little island and found they had no WiFi. Obviously. But now we do so it’s time to crack on. The girls have been pestering me on an hourly basis too, so it’s about time we got back on track. I mean they’re pestering me with some rubbish everyday, just recently it’s been about the blog. In order to catch up this will be a rather long one. So perhaps call your boss and take the day off for it.

Oh oh, and I had my birthday the other day and was totally unable to respond to anyone’s birthday wishes. So thanks if you did. If you didn’t send any then now you have an excuse as I couldn’t have received them anyway. Ta.

So where were we? Are yes. Waitomo and the freezing cold glow worm caves. Our one and only night there was spent in a really nice four bed room in a country style lodge. It also had a pretty cool bar out the back where they brewed their own beer on site. Something we couldn’t possibly miss out on. Soph, Courtney and I, accompanied by our new friend Tommy went down there after our pot noodle dinner to grab a cheeky drink. It was actually a really good evening where we chatted away with the friends we’d made at the glow worm caves. When you travel around from place to place, meeting new faces everywhere you go, you do end up telling the same stories about each other each time. How I left my job at the hotel, how Courtney came out to meet us in Melbourne, how Soph skipped the Indian gene. After a while everyone stops asking and just gets on with their lives without needing to know these things. However it is quite interesting hearing about all the life experiences these 18/19 year old kids think they’ve had. I’m 27 now. These wee youngsters don’t know a thing about life. Now where are my slippers?

Stop 3 was a little town called Rotorua. Unlike Hot Water Beach and Waitomo, Rotorua was actually a town. It had all the things you’d expect to see from a normal town. A supermarket, a park, a McDonald’s drive-through. Yet again, like all the stops in New Zealand, it was famous for one very special thing. It’s geothermal activity. The whole town was under a cloud of hot steam escaping through cracks in the Earth’s surface. Effectively it was where the planet exhaled. Earth’s nostrils if you will. In fact scrap that. It was perhaps more like the planets backside because this town stank like rotten eggs. You could be happily walking down the high street, just about to take a bite into your Quarter Pounder when a stink bomb smacks you right in the face.

I really want to get across the smell of Rotorua, so imagine this if you will. A tale completely made up and 100% not about anyone I know…..You’ve decided to take up a few gym sessions while away at university. With this you start taking protein shakes. You make one but happen to get a call from your dad to say he is outside and ready to pick you up for your Christmas holidays. Unfortunately you forget about your fresh shake and leave it on your window seal in direct sunlight. Upon your return 3 weeks later you discover your now mouldy shake and go to the sink to wash it out. The second you open the lid everyone in the entire city of Portsmouth collapses. The overpowering smell you get from that shake is exactly what Rotorua is like on a daily basis. Apparently you get used to it. We didn’t.

However it was still a really interesting place to visit. With clothes pegs attached to our noses, we walked around in awe as the floor exploded into life all around us. Pools of mud boiling over as jets of water shot up from the ground high above our heads. We’d never seen, or smelt, anywhere like it.

We were lucky enough to spend 2 nights here and enjoy the not quite fresh air. During our first evening Courtney went off with the majority of the bus to an evening of Maori culture. The Maori people were those who settled in New Zealand before Captain Cook came over with all his European cronies. That little dance the All Blacks do before each match, that’s from them. Anyway Soph and I hadn’t the money to join in so we took ourselves into town to see what was going on in Rotorua that evening.

It wasn’t long before we found ourselves in the midst of a Chilean food festival with some live entertainment from Bruno Mars. Obviously it wasn’t him, but this kid was just as good! We tried a few different types of food and Soph got her favourite street dessert of Churros before we headed back to the hostel via the town’s huge lake. Rotorua sits on the edge of the biggest lake I’ve ever seen. It’s so big you would be forgiven for thinking you were by the sea with just a faint glimpse of land on the horizon. But with the weather now wet and horrible, we decided to return to our room.

Next stop was the slightly larger town of Taupo. Our bus was leaving pretty early again and this time we would have a new  driver. Catching a new bus is a bit of a nerve racking thing each time. I imagine it’s a bit like your first day at a new school where everyone has already made friends and the teacher already has their favourite. Our new bus driver was called Wazza. Stupid name. He was alright. But he was quite obviously seeing one of the 18 year old girls travelling with us. Her name was Princess….even the name is enough to make you want to smack her in the face with a pan soaked in honey and a thousand killer bees stuck to it. Her and her friend, who was in total denial that she had in fact turned 40 a few years ago, were the type of people that talk just to be heard. Nobody cares what they are chatting about but we have no choice but to listen as they speak louder than the entire bus combined. You all know those types.

Anyway you may have notice we weren’t their biggest fans. Mainly because they got special treatment wherever they went. I thought about flirting with the bus driver myself but decided I’d rather not become that person the whole bus hates.

So Taupo. Home to more geothermal activity but without the eggy smell. Home to an even larger lake than that of Rotorua, and the North Island’s main adrenaline filled destination. We had arrived on one of the town’s main annual events, Ironman day, so it was busy in town. We arrived pretty early so wanted to make the most of what was currently a pretty sunny day. We grabbed our stuff and a map from reception and headed for what we heard was a must see in Taupo. The hot springs.

By the time we arrived at the springs we had already fallen in love with the town. We had spent a while watching from the top of a river valley as people with much more courage than me jumped off the cliff face attached to a bungy rope. The water below was stunningly blue and the trees along the edges of the river formed the perfect postcard setting.

Having walked down the hill to the hot springs we were now by the edge of the river. We sat down just above it and stared curiously at all the people treading carefully in the knee high water. We saw a large group of people getting up and noticed they all had horrendous sun burn on the backs of their legs and back. It’s barely even been sunny so how on Earth they managed to get that we had no idea. But the second we stepped foot in the water we knew. That wasn’t Sun burn. That was water burn. Just like in hot water beach we could barely keep our feet on the ground. It was unbelievably hot water in the middle of a fast flowing river. There was like an invisible line that split the boiling water and the cold river water so that you could hop between the two when you fancied a change. It really was a strange place but one we couldn’t get enough of.

Feeling energised from our day of lazing in hot spring water we decided to go on a walk further down the river the next day. We travelled high and low along the river’s edge, watching the turquoise water make its way down hill. Along the way we bumped into an elderly couple from Kent, of all places. They were a super nice couple who had moved to New Zealand over 60 years ago and had their children and grandchildren on this side of the planet. I mean they seemed like they hadn’t seen another living person in that entire time because they talked and talked like it was their last day on earth. Which it may have been, they were pretty old. But it was lovely to hear about their adventures together and it certainly put a big smile on our faces.

After what seemed like a lifetime of walking we eventually arrived at the end of our trek. Huka Falls. A group of the most beautiful waterfalls smashing below our feet as we stood on a bridge above them. It was a tough walk in the heat to get there but the view was definitely worth the severe dehydration we suffered from later. Although it didn’t stop us from celebrating one of our newly made friend’s birthdays over a couple of jars that evening. And by jars I mean glasses of water. It’s not cheap out here you know.

Ok so moving on. Our next stop was a rather random place called River Valley. You can probably imagine what was there. A river valley. We were here for just an evening so some people could participate on some kayaking or some horse riding if they so wished. None of us were really bothered by the kayaks and only Courtney was even remotely interested in riding a horse, so we didn’t do much else but eat and sleep here. Personally there isn’t much else we’d rather NOT do than ride a horse. Lots of people, including Courtney, love a good horse. We on the other hand would rather sit in a locked room wearing Lady Gaga’s meat dress while watching a group of hatching T-Rex eggs, than have our coccyx bones beaten to a pulp by a horse’s back. But that’s just us.

What we did do however was sleep in a 32 bed dorm separated only by a makeshift wall from another 32 bed dorm. And these beds were simply a row of matresses positioned next to each other. Nicknamed the orgy room, this was certainly an experience to say the least. Thankfully everyone on our bus was more up for a good night’s sleep that anything else. Almost everyone.

Surprisingly this 64 matress show room turned out to be one of our best sleeps on the island. Funny how things turn out. Quickly moving on we headed for our next stop and our last on the north island. Wellington. The capital city of New Zealand. Having stopped along the way to go on a few different hikes, we only managed to arrive here late in the evening. The usual schedule designed by the Kiwi Experience would have us stay just the night here and leave at 6am . Obviously not enough time to explore such a huge place. So we made sure we had an extra day here to see the place. It was here that we made new friends with a lovely lady called Claire and a great lad called Greg. They’ll be more from them in the next blog.

Having now fully caught up with Courtney’s sister, Ziggy, we met up with her and her group of friends to go on a walk up a hill that would allow us to look over the entire city. Unfortunately the weather was miserable and by the time we had reached the summit we had been swallowed by a giant cloud. So basically we couldn’t see a thing. But instead of moping about we decided to immediately head back down and towards the city’s iconic museum. Something we hadn’t done in any of the different places we’d visited while away.

Of course it had nothing on the London museums but this place really was a superb attempt. There was a ton of stuff on the history of the country and the different animals native to it. Lots on the destruction caused across the country by superstorms and earthquakes. And it even had a cheeky bit of free WiFi in the cafe area. Something all good museums need. And thank goodness they did. While chilling out, checking the Backpacking Live Facebook, Courtney and Soph had received a message from a girl who had been on our bus but had left that morning. Apparently the bus driver Wazza expected us to be on his bus this morning. This was not good news. Surely we hadn’t made a mistake. Surely we hadn’t missed our bus!

Soph was the one in charge of the schedule so we were all looking at here when we heard the news. But she was adamant we hadn’t made a mistake and that we were 100% meant to be on the bus the following day. We rushed back to the hostel to check our paperwork. A walk that felt like a marathon. Soph shaking at the thought of her being wrong. Mainly because of the write up she would have got the the blog if she was. So was she right…

…she WAS! She had been right and it was Kiwi that had mucked up. Thankfully all was rectified by a quick and stern call to the office. Well done Soph, never doubted you for second. Courtney did, but I didn’t!

Unfortunately we hadn’t the time in our schedule to stay any longer in the city so had to move on the next morning. We spent our last evening walking around the main streets in search of a place where Courtney could get her roots done, or something like that. I’m still really not sure why she was so desperate to partake in some gardening when so far away from home but I suppose we all have different interests and hobbies don’t we. We never did find the weed killer she was after but I reckon we weren’t truly looking in the right places.

Anyway so that’s that. Hope you managed to get this far. I am finishing this at around 2am UK time and will post it as soon as possible. I will spend the rest of my day writing the next part so it can go up the next day. But don’t worry about me, I’m sure I’ll get through it sitting here.

Thanks for following x