rain, rain, rain and the faint smell of eggs

Not much to say about the last few days.



wednesday was a complete waste of a day. the bus back to Auckland was at such a time that i couldn't really do anything in the morning, and by the time we got into Auckland there wasn't really time to do anything there

Thursday was a bit better. we were driving up to Whitianga on the Coromandel penuisula. there was a lot of driving in the morning but in the afternoon we stopped at Cathedral Cove. it was a lovely and very hot to day so the long walk down and back again was not pleseant, but it was an absolutely gorgeous beach, which was apparantly used in the recent Narnia movie 'Prince Caspian'. it was only spoilt by the fact that, like the idiot i am, i managed to leave my camera on the bus so i din't get any photos at all.



Stayed in the hostel in the evening, because there was very little else to do in Whitianga, they had there own bar and they cooked us Spaghetti Bolagnase, which I ate in front of total strangers with the dignity and style you can imagine from me.



Today would have been quite a nice day except that it has absolutely thrown it down all day. torential rain with practicaly no stops all day. very annoying. this meant that we didn't stop to do the walk we were going to do on the way to Rotarua. we did stop in the town of Matamata, a completely non-discript and boring town apart from the fact that it was where the Shire and Hobbiton sets were built for the LoTR films. we didn't go to any of the locations but we stopped for a quick photo in front of the Hobbiton sign and the most appaling statue of Gollum you could imagine. I'm not sure if the person who made it had actually seen the films.

Rotarua would have been nice if it hadn't been for the rain. we went to the Te Puia geothermal park but it became a bit of a joke quite quickly. the rain was so hard and so constant that we were all soaked in seconds and nobody, including myself, had any desire to stand around getting drentched and stinking of eggs. I think it would have been really impressive under any other circumstances, but even the geyser wasn't really firing because it was getting rained on so hard. I did see some kiwi's though and they are much bigger than i had imagined.