Waitomo black water rafting!

On 3, fake a smile!

Nic looks like a PRO!

Believe it or not there is a hole down there that we fit into!

Even in practice I work the pout

Can you believe it, everyone was English except Patrick

So far we have counted that we have done 51 of the 101 Must Dos for Kiwis, so in our last few days we decided to do the 52nd, the Waitomo caves. These caves are a series of underground caves that go on for quite some distance, and have a stream running through it, and full of amazing glowworms! We met up again with Patrick, our American friend from Napier, as he had done the trip before and wanted to do it again. We got kitted out in wetsuits and boots and helmets and even balaclavas, to finish off our sexy ensemble. The start of the morning involved an abseil to enter the caves, through the teeny tiniest of holes. So we had to make our way town the 37m rope to the bottom of the cave, which we mastered! Then we had a 'flying fox', which is where you're attached to a zip line and you travel from one side of the cave to the other, in complete dark, except for the ceiling being alight with glowworms. Then we each grabbed a rubber ring and had to jump in the freezing water, still sat on the ring, and we made our way upstream. We turned all our lights off and just floated back just taking in all the light of the glowworms, it was crazy! We got rid of the rings and then it was just walking, and sliding, and going on our hands and knees through caves, trying not to get swept away by the water! It was awesome, and even finished off by climbing up 2 waterfalls, which I now realise, is possible....especially when you have a guide to push your bum up the cave wall, for that extra much needed boost!

Return to Rotorua

Face mask anyone?!?!

Bubblin' mud baby!

At least this girl went to the trouble of being authentic and got her face tatooed

If you look carefully you can see the white guy, sorry, authentic Maori, on the right

The Haka, sans Japs

Just before they saw my potential and snagged me out of the crowd

After the Rihanna concert we had a week left until we leave NZ, so we decided to revisit one of the places that we thought we hadn't quite 'done'. The lucky town was Rotorua, the smelliest town in NZ as it has sulphur fumes coming from every nook and cranny as its rife with geothermal activity. It was also the scene of our previous 'Zorb' triumph. One of the things that we were still keen to do in NZ was 'something Maori'. Rotorua is the place to do that as they have cultural perfomances and 'hangi' (aka banquet) in various locations, whether it be in an actual Maori village or on stage in a hotel. Given funds, we opted for the hotel idea. It was slightly odd though when we turned up at the Heritage hotel, given that we were the only ones there in a room off about 200 seats. Never to worry though as after half an hour 50 million Japanese tourists turned up, clicking their cameras. When we were all seated the perfomance began, with 4 women and 4 men in loin cloths and such took to the stage and danced and waggled their tongues at us. The ladies showed us a 'poi' dance (twirling balls of twine on the end of a piece of string) and they needed willing participants to come on stage and demonstrate. I still can't figure out now how I got picked. Me and 3 Japs took to the stage and tried to copy our maori 'wahine', as Nic filmed on, trying to keep the camera still through all the laughter. The highlight has to be when they had 4 Japanese guys on stage perfoming the Haka, complete with tongues out and enthusiatic slapping of thighs. I think the whole thing would have been a lot better if it lasted longer than half an hour, all the performers weren't laughing, and one of the guys wasn't white. Nevertheless, after our half hour treat we got a three course meal 'traditionally prepared' of course, and we most definitely had our fill, given that we were the last ones left in there.

The next day we had free entry to Hell's Gate thermal reserve, which was a Maori owned area the had plenty of steaming sulphur pools and bubbling mud! Some of the temperatures were over 200 degrees, steamy! We disobeyed some of the rules and we stole some mud, given that they were packaging it up in their gift shop and selling it as face masks for $10, woops!

Rihanna and Chris Brown baby!

Rihanna, for goodness sake put some clothes on

Chris Brown and his 'gangstas', post descending from the ceiling, as you do!

We got to Auckland in time for the concert to end all concerts....Rihanna and Chris Brown! On entering the stadium, I won't lie, Nic and I felt old. I guess I didn't realise that the average Chris Brown fan is roughly 12, and comes complete with the obligatory market job printed T-shirt with him showing off his bling. Oh and we also felt very white. Once we were in though we put our concerns aside and the starting act was some fat dude 'spinnin some tuuuuuunes'! After a while Chris Brown was out on stage, to a sea of screams. Everytime he flexed his abs or showed the crowd his bum the screams reached frequencies only intelligible by dolphins. At least we could laugh at that cos he was really hamming it up and finding it funny himself i think. His show was really really good though, he was accompanied by a DJ that filled in all the dodgy changing-into-a-tighter-vest moments and his dancing was awesome. He even came down from the ceiling at the start, the CEILING! The best bit was a Michael Jackson tribute where we donned a red jacket and did all the classic MJ moves, and it was really a great show. Then after a half an hour gap Rihanna came out, wearing pretty much nothing but a hood. Ok, sorry she was wearing underwear, and a large hood. She sung all the classics as well as a few lame ones, and gradually she did manage to put on a few more clothes. She was pretty good because her singing is awesome, but to be honest compared to Chris Brown her show wasn't as good. They ended by singing 'Umbrella' together though which was a good finale! And then everyone went home, and it was WAY past their bedtimes.

Mt Taranaki and van trauma

The extent of the meteorite hit

Mt Taranaki

In case you thought we had had enough of mountains, we haven't. On our trip up from Wellington we pulled off from Stratford (named after Shakespeare's birth place) and headed to Mt Taranaki. It pretty much rises up out of nowhere and is really impressive and to top it off, snow capped. Beautiful! We did a couple of walks and then headed North on our mission to get to Auckland for the Rihanna concert! In the process our windscreen got hit by a stone and caused a chip about 50p in diameter. I start panicking and worrying we're not covered on the insurance, which Nic assured me we were, and so I calmed down. Then we get hit by a small meteorite and the chip is about 20cm wide, and growing. Concerned by the time the crack when from the top to the bottom of the screen, we called the rental company. Now when our rental company, Britz, were starting out, they decided not to descriminate in their initial staff selections, and employed all the idiots that they could find in the greater Auckland area. After being transferred and hung up on a few times we speak to a 'person' and they tell us instead of getting it fixed, we have to change vans. So within a day we had to say goodbye to our beloved and move all our stuff into an OLDER MODEL!!!!!!!! Sob sob. It's different. We want our old home back.

What to do when your wasting a week in Wellington

Ah Kristov, with this fine Vodka you are really spoiling us

8.2 and not a percent less!

In a week and a bit's time, we're heading back home, but spending 5 days in China on the way. It wasn't until a couple of weeks ago that we realised we might need to apply for a visa to be allowed in for a Chinese takeaway in Beijing. So after a lot of research and lost in translation emails we went to the Chinese Embassy to apply for our visa, stopping in error on the way to knock on some Chinese man's house who greeted us in his slippers, but in the end turned out to be the Finance Minister. All our forms we completed, my occuption was listed as 'traveller' and we hoped for the best. But we had to wait 5 days to pick it up. So we had to hang around the Wellington area for that time, stopping off in various tiny towns on the way, the highlight being seeing the Greytown WI partaking in a mid week line dancing lesson in the village hall. Masterton was a gem. We walked around the town for a while, perusing all the $2 shops and admiring the 'Calven Klain' imports direct from our next destination no doubt. This led to a lot of hanging about, and what better to do when hanging about than have a good drink. Being a the end of the trip we are short on funds and so needed a drink that was a) cheap b) strong c) in large quantity. A trip down to New World supermarket and they did not dissapoint, in amongst the 'Grannypash' and 'Passion Pop' we found 'Scrumpy'. Like our cider at home, but 8.2%. Into the trolley she goes. After we had had our fill of cider we then thought we'd head for a spirit. The Antipodeans are very good at putting drink in boxes, and we found a 'Kristov' vodka and orange 3litre mix that hit the spot. By Friday we had our visas, and aching heads.

Glaciers!

The bit you can see is about 15km long, HUGE!

Nic enjoying an icy hole!

Ultimate glacier geeks

This crevasse is about 40m deep

Studying glaciers at uni was like a slow and painful death, especially when it consists of a lisping lecturer by the name of Jane Hart going on about them in her monotone voice. Seeing glaciers up close though is so awesome! We went to 2, the Fox Glacier (birthplace of the glacier mint?!?!?!) and Franz Josef glacier. These 2 are only of 3 in the world that reach down to the sea and into the rainforest, and their speed of movement is also impressive, at up to 5 metres a day. How cool is that! Simply having a look at the glacier doesn't do it justice, as you can not grasp how huge it is, even my photos don't really show how big it is. So we decided to go on a guided glacier walk of Franz Josef, where we were fitted out with 'crampons' to walk on the ice, and taken round by our guide Rob, from err...Hull. We had an initial climb up the end of the glacier which took about 30 minutes just to get off of the front of the wall of ice. Then we had a walk around the glacier looking into 40 metre crevasses and sliding through holes in the ice, it was incredible! Even our guide was carving out our route on the ice with a pick axe, we were like proper adventurers!

Queenstown and Wanaka, SHRED THE NARN!

Lake Wanaka

Nic demonstrating falling leaf, her favourite

Yes, we know we look bad, our outfits were RENTED!

Queenstown is a massive backpacker hang out, as it is full of outdoor activities. If you want to do a bungy, throw yourself out of a plane or go on a death defying boat trip then this is the place. Nic and I, went to the cinema. Ha ha! Our excuse is that is rained pretty much constantly for 2 days and not wanting to part with $200 to nearly kill yourself we were happy to sit back and watch everyone else do it! We went along to watch the bungy, at which point Nic decided to start umming and ahhing about whether to do it. Then she wanted to do a tandem with me. Good god. The art of bungy isn't exactly hard, you just need to throw yourself off into a river, ah! So eventually we decided to save our money for better things, namely Wanaka! Wanaka was a bit like Queenstown but not as big and less touristy. Fortunately I have a friend that I used to work in la Plagne with when I did my ski season, who works the ski patrol on the mountain. So we met up with Paul who was awesome, and gave us free lift passes (legend) and up to Cardrona it was! It was a bit weird though, as we're used to lifts that start right outside your hotel, in NZ, you have to drive 40 minutes, drive a death defying climb, and then you're at the mountain, where you are greeted by a whopping 3 lifts! Ha ha! It was really good though as they had just had 30cm of fresh snow (freshy to us pros) which was good as it was 3 days until the end of the season. Once we were there we were encouraged to 'SHRED THE NARN!', a phrase that I'll be looking up in my boarder dictionary, but I presume it was a good thing. Given that Nic and I worked in different resorts in France we were both a similar standard so it was awesome boarding together, that is, except from the part where Nic fell and took us both out. What an amateur.