A day of two halves

survived the white-water rafting! Including a plunge over a 7m waterfall (the largest you can do in the world!), I have come out of the experience unscathed! It was absolutely freezing, and even the physical exercise didn't warm me up all that much. It was good fun though, we drove to a river about 30 minutes out of Rotorua for the rafting and we were on the river for about an hour. It was good to get back in the bus to the wamth at the end of it though!

I had lunch at an Italian cafe which was good and much appreciated after my early morning rafting trip!

Anyway, this afternoon was a great contrast to the adrenaline of this morning. We went down to the Polynesian Spa which is a spa with lots of pools from the geothermal springs. It smells of the sulphur (everything here does!) but the water is lovely and warm and it was a wonderful relaxing contrast to the beginning of the day. The pools are all outside and it is very cold here (but sunny!) so it is so nice to sit in the hot water and feel the breeze from the lake. You get an amazing view from the pools too. I'm sure they have lots of supposed health benefits too, although from what I can tell all they do is make your swimsuit smell very bad. We spent about an hour here before heading off for a walk around town.

I’m feeling a little bit lost at the moment as they girl I have spent most of my time with over the last 3 days has headed off back to Auckland for her flight down to Queenstown. Amy's from Dublin (there has been a noted improvement in my Irish accent) and has been making her way around the world for the last 4 months. She should be in Queenstown for the next week so I hopefully will see her when I make it down there and I’ve offered her a ski lesson!

There are quite a few amusing things that I’ve seen/done over the last few days, which I’ll try to relay but I suspect there will be a large element of 'you had to be there.' I've managed to leave the dorm key in the door on two occasions in the last two days and on both time I’ve got into a paddy over thinking I’ve lost it (and with it my $10 deposit.) They also have these really funky pedestrian crossings here where not only does the green man actually walk, but they also count down the seconds you have till the cars come charging towards you! One of the funniest things I have seen though was the video they show you on the plane about all the bio security controls you have to go through. Firstly they make you sign all these forms saying you haven't touched a cow for years and haven't inadvertently hidden a grape inside your hiking boots as these would both be a great threat to the national security of the fauna over here. Anyway, on the video they have a girl who goes through all the stages saying she has nothing until she gets to the X-ray machine and it flashed wildly and they decide to search her bag, and, what do they pull out? A huge great pineapple! As if someone could accidentally bring in a pineapple that took up her whole backpack and must have weighed a few kilos... Maybe it would have been more believable if someone had inadvertently brought in an apple from their bag! (i think maybe you need to watch the video to fully appreciate the hilarity of it!)

Tomorrow I leave at 8.15 for Taupo that is only about an hour away. Not sure what I’m going to do here, no doubt it will involve spending lots of money though! I've gotta go now as Starbucks in closing!