We've spent the last few days heading south and stayed a few days in the very smelly city of Rotorua. This place really stinks. The town is built on a big thermal area around an old volcano, and there are loads of hot springs and geysers pumping out steam and sulpher into the air. It makes the town smell like rotten eggs, every now and again you get a really bad wiff of it, and it nearly knocks you over. The upside of all this is the great landscapes, we visited a thermal village, which has lots of Maori heritage, and also an active geyser-which was really impressive to see shooting up into the air.

We also went to a traditional Maori evening where we experienced a formal welcome from the tribesmens, as the would have done years ago. Basically a half naked guy comes running at you doing a war dance brandishing one of there traditional weapons and establishes whether you are a friend, or an enemy. Its something that you have to take really seriously, any laughter is really frowned upon as your insluting there whole way of life-a few months ago a guy got headbutted by one of the maori men for not showing enough respect! Its awesome to watch, and you really get an idea of what the early settlers must of gone through everytime they approached a village.

In the evening we went to a Maori feast-or Hangi for a good meal. It was a great opportunity to fill our boots after only eating noodles or pasta for the last week. Adam managed to have two full dinners, or to be more precise, two full plates of meat! There was lamb, chicken, pork, beef, and seafood, so we really made the most of it.

After Rotorua, we headed to Waitomo, which is an area full of about 300 caves, all of which are full of glow worms. They're about the size of a maggot, but there bums glow in the dark, so inside the cave you get this amazing experience of all the worms lit up. It looks abit like staring at the nights sky and seeing luminous green stars-really impressive! We payed to go on a guided tour which ivolved absailing down 85 ft into a gorge, and then floating along in the caves on a rubber ring, followed by a rock climb out. Alexia did really well, after overcoming her fear of absailing, and was soon looking like a natural!

After Waitomo we headed out to the west coast, which has amazing black sand beaches. We only stayed for one night but had a great night out on the town-which had only one shop, one chip shop, and a pub/motel. We were the only three people in the pub (along with a guy we bumped into who came caving with us earlier that day) but had a nice eving watching not much happening. It turns out that the woman who owned the pub used to live in Chislehurst near to Ravensbourne-small world. She was very nice, and even gave us some girl scout cookies to keep us going! yum!

We are now in Taupo, which is a town on a lake right in the middle of the north island, today we've been to see some waterfalls, and a place called the craters of the moon, which is a really baron looking area full of thermal activity, its abit like walking across a field and it looks like everything is smoking. Tomorrow we've booked to go on a walk-which is meant to be the best one day walk in NZ. Its about a seven hour hike, but it looks pretty impressive, they used the area as Mordor in the Lord of the rings films-we'll stick up some pics soon.

Apart from that, we've been enjoying all the driving, haven't manage to see a live possom on the road to kill yet, but we think we might have knocked off a rabbit a few days ago. We did our best to brake, but figured better the rabbit than us! The scenery is stunning, which make the long drive more bearable, and we think we've both lost weight due to our reduced diet-or not having a constant flow of biscuits to nibble on.

The backpacker diet, which we are considering writing a book on when we get back basically consists of:

Breakfast: 3 wheat biscuits (basically budget weetabix)
Lunch: 1 ham and cheese sandwhich, crisps and an apple
Dinner: A choice from either, boil in the pack noodles, complete with freeze dried bits. A can of soup between two, or for the more adventurous evenings, pasta with a tin of tomatos!

Also losses to date: One pair of sunglasses (adams) One Maori necklace (alexia-only owned for about 8 hours) One sleeping bag (adams, when the loser drove off and left it at the side of the road-what a nuff nuff!)

From Lex: Congratulations to Jackie, Steve and all the family, Dad told me the good news via email a few days ago!
Thank you everyone for your brilliant posts, please keep them coming!
Hannah: Hope Iv's last day wasn't too painful and messy! Hope all the SB lot are well!

From adam: hope everyones keeping well, and enjoying the weather. sorry no paolo look alikes yet!

Loads of love xxxx