The Coromandel, Raglan, Waitomo and Rotorua

After being picked up by Dodgy Dave and a quick tour of Mount Eden in Auckland, we were off to our first destination, Hahei, on the Coromandel Peninsula. The rain quickly subsided as we took our first walk out to Cathedral Cove, a good way to chat to the lovely girls as well as Neil, Thomas and Derk. We settled down to a barbecue in the evening with Derk telling some cool riddles which made my head hurt, so I went to bed.

Raglan was the next port of call, the surfing capital of New Zealand. It would have been a pity to have gone there and not surfed, so of course that's what Derk and I did. Fair play to my Dutch compadre, he was better than me at picking it up! But a great day nontheless. And after our large steak and kumara dinner, we all popped up to the 'Flying Fox' zip wire in the dark and all had a go - good fun.

Waitomo is famous for its glowworm caves, so we were off spelunking! A couple of us did silly things like 'cave squeezes' - trying to fit through a small hole in the rocks and climb out somewhere else. Turning off your helmet light and trying to walk around is pretty good fun considering you can see absolutely bugger all, but Kel was easy to follow, leaving her perfume scent behind so i could dodge the stalagmites. Oh and we also sang 'In the Jungle' as we gently floated downstream in our rubber tubes.

As you may notice, we're not in places for a long period of time, it's all activities and change, which is great. So our next stop was the geothermal activity centre of New Zealand: Rotorua. We arrived at our hostel, which smelt pretty much like the rest of the town.. bad eggs. That's because of the sulphr-rich steam coming out of the ground and mud pools to fill the air. Nice to look at, but a bit stinky. That evening we were invited to a Maori family's home to talk about their history, culture, have a go at some traditional games, and of course eat. The girls had a go at the Poi, small woven balls on string which are twizzled and spun in all sorts of ways, essentially making them look good. Kayla, our host's daughter, showed us how it should be done and she looked amazing. For the boys, it was the Haka! We were all pretty abysmal at it, pulling at gyrating moves more akin to the bedroom than the battlefield. But after a great meal, it was a relaxing ending to a top evening and wrapped up the last few days' activities. Of course there was more to come over the next twenty four hours as we had to Taupo for the skydiving..