Take it slow – and stinky...

After having hiked so much and been out and about from dusk til dawn these last few days none of us felt quite energetic today. Especially not since all the other ones had actually stayed up until 3am!!! The only thing on the schedule today was the Thermal Wonderland in Wai-O-Tapu approx. 20 minutes south of Rotorua. It does cost $32.50 but it is worth the money...

First thing in the morning was picking up Shir, a couchsurfer from the USA. She is the new add-on to our party and will join us all the way to Wellington. But we do have to leave Cecilia behind - whom we will meet again in Wellington though...

After having picked up Shir we went south to the geothermal area. Bought our tickets - and guess who I did run into... VICKY!!!!! Another Au Pair from Germany who's working in Whangarei... this place is so small...

The Wonderland itself was really cool! We started our tour by watching the Lady Knox Geysir erupt at precisely 10.15am. It does that every single day - because the staff puts washing powder in to stimulate the geysir. How freaky is that??? But it was really cool watching the bubbles get bigger and bigger until that huge water (steam) fountain shot high into the air.

The Wonderland itself is huge but you can walk it easily in 1.5 hours (the paths are 3km long). Our legs still weren't better - even seemed a lot worse!!! But we enjoyed the quiet and solitude of the rocks and craters. The coolest thing was the Devil's Pool - a neon green (!!! - pictures will follow) hot pool. Amazing!

Didn't do much the rest of the day besides sleep, eat and chill out. Right now there are about 30 people at Gabe's house having a pizza night with music and drink and talk. Once again we have changed our original plan - this time due to the weather. There's a cyclone coming which brings even more rain than we had today. So going to Whakatane hoping to see whales and dolphins is out of the question ;-(

Instead we'll stay in Rotorua one more day and then head straight to Napier after that. Hopefully by then the sky is clear again and the sun will be shining...