Rotorua

Ok so yesterday I got into Rotorua and I spent the day here today. Tomorrow we're going to Wellington.
Yesterday (which was Saturday) we left Auckland and first went up to Mount. Eden which is actually made from a volcano and at the the top you can see the crater and everything. Very cool. There was a fog over everything too and it had a very peaceful and yet surreal atmosphere going on.

Then we jumped on tbe bus and drove to the caves and saw the glow worms. So the caves (who's actually name excapes me at the moment) are between 4 million and 12 million years old. Formed by water etc. They're deep and absolutely fantastic to walk through. In them there are glow worms.

Glow worms are these little 3 cm worms and only 2 cm of them glow (they're lower half). There's a little rhyme to them too: "I wish I were a glow worm, a glow worm's never glum. Cause how you be sad when the sun shines out your bum?"

They live for 11 months. There are 120 eggs laid per glow worm and the 1 egg of out 20 eats the other 20 eggs. They're larva for 7 months then they form a coccoon (like a butterful) hatch again as it were and come out as like a masqueto (yeah didn't spell that right) and then have 3 days to reproduce before they die.

In the cave you go out onto a boat because there's an underwater stream and they cover the ceiling of the caves millions of these tiny little dots of glowing bums (and they're blue). It was really cool.

After that we drove into Rotorua and that night we went to this Mauri concert, where they put on a show of how a tribe traditional was, they're dances, told us some stories. The opening part though, was that we walked down these paths to a stream, and we waited. Then this conch shell sounded and then this lonely wind instrument sounded too. And all around you are Mauri carvings (which are seriously scary looking as they are made to warn off people) and then torches come out, and then on a canoe (which they call a waka) these men came out of the darkness (cause it was night) chanting and singing. It was unbelievable. I took a bunch of videos of it all, so I'll put them up on fb when I get back.

Today we went to see sheep shearing. There are almost 20 different kinds of sheep in NZ. So we were introduced to them all, and then the guy sheared a sheep. We also saw sheep dogs and how they operate, which was cool. One kind of dog is used for small numbers of sheep and doesn't bark, and the other is used for large numbers and does bark. And also jumps all over the sheep to get them moving it was interesting.

After that we went to the gysers. Rotorura is sitting on top of gysers. You walk around this town and there are random fences put up around certain patches of ground and steam just pours out of them because there's boiling water underneath. One of the hottest pools here is over 200 degress. So we went to this gyser place (two words but I can't spell it, it's in Mauri) and they showed us these crazy gysers that can shoot out water up to 15 m in the air. We also saw the bottom half of Kiwi cause it was burrowed it it's little tunnel and you only saw the backend. They're endangered here and they're trying to breed them and bring them back.

After that we went to meet a friend of my grandmother's Clare who owns a motel here called Cozy Cottages. She also told me to come back backpacking and that she would give me a job. She also said that NZ needs teachers. So we went to her house and had some tea and visited. It was cool.

Now I'm back at the hotel writing this ridiculsouly long post (sorry about that, but awesome if you've gotten this far in reading it. I appreciate it :) and we're going to have dinner in a couple of hours.

So yeah, that's the last 48 hours for me. Tomorrow it's on to Wellington.

Also, I'm currently eating Ruffles salt and vinegar ships which I think is cool cause I don't think we have ruffles salt and vinegar, we only have Lays right?