rotorua: geysers, glowworms and green hills

we were up bright and early on saturday morning to make our way to 'wai-o-tapu geothermal wonderland'. we had to be there early to see the lady knox geyser (cue my danny dyer impression) go off which she does every morning around 10.15am.

after that we made our way through the geothermal wonderland where we encountered a variety of smells, steams and colours. there was some information explaining what the different colours meant and how each was a different kind of chemical reaction. it was also explained that the colours could change depending on the amount of sun, wind, rain etc. the temperatures varied also with some areas as hot as 100 degrees. obviously there are plenty of warnings about!

that evening, after spending the day being wowed by the geothermal activity, we went to the tamaki maori village for an evening of learning about the maori culture, seeing some traditional entertainment and eating our hangi (dinner cooked underground). 

the evening was great and we particularly enjoyed learning the haka (the war dance used to intimidate the enemy before battle... and evidently before rugby matches), hearing the beautiful songs and the general lively atmosphere of the night. while in rotorua we also visited kuirau park which has a lovely lake and also some thermal activity. there's geothermal stuff all over rotorua, obviously, and you can see (and smell) the sulphur steam coming from different holes in the ground in various locations. i even saw a thermal golf course! we went to the rotorua museum which used to be a healing bath house - the natural volcanic waters said to cure diseases such as arthritis - and a nightclub, before being a museum so we enjoyed spending some time there finding out more about the interesting building, the history of rotorua and its people.

yesterday (monday) we made our way from rotorua to auckland but we thought we should probably break up the journey a bit on the way. WE WENT TO HOBBITON. it was really impressive, the set is really well maintained and organised tours run through the set smoothly. our tour guide was excellent and told us lots of information about the set and how it was used for the lord of the rings and the hobbit films. i went a bit photo crazy so i have about two hundred photos (there are 40 hobbit holes to see!). here is bilbo baggins' house, bag end!

there are two hobbit holes that you are allowed to go in so here we are in a hobbit hole!

after we'd been to hobbiton we stopped at the 'waitomo glowworm caves' where we had a tour into the caves and took a little boat our under the caves so we could see all the glowworms in the dark. it was a really amazing sight to see hundreds of thousands of tiny glowing lights only a metre or so above our heads, used by the glowworms to lure bugs for food. unfortunately we couldn't take any photos in the caves but i took a photo of the next boat coming out so you can see what i mean.