So it's been a little while since I've made a post. We've been pretty busy! Yesterday we left Auckland and headed south to beautiful Rotorua in the scenic Bay of Plenty! The views along the way were absolutely spectacular. Rotorua smells like rotten eggs constantly because of all the volcanic activity. You can see the steam rising up from places all over the valley it's in. There's also lakes. And mountains. Seriously, this country is ridiculous. It should be illegal to have this much scenery packed into one place.
This picture is from our long hike into a park called The Redwoods, it was awesome. There were large trees, and it felt very Middle-Earth.
Today we rented a car from the hostel owner and toured around the area a bit. Matt took the mantle of driver upon himself, and we got to have the excitement of driving on the wrong side of the road. We survived in style, and went to some awesome places. We went to a place called Hot-Cold River. It's basically exactly what it sounds like: a hot geothermal river meeting a cold river. The hot side feels as hot as a really hot tub, and the cold side is... well, cold like a river. We soaked there for over an hour, and then we went to this conservation park to see some native NZ fauna! The kiwis were really hard to spot, but we got to see one and it was awesome. I was by far the most excited about the kiwis, but I think it was contagious.
Tomorrow we're heading to Napier, on the coast. We were intending to go to Hastings, but when the hostel there was sold out we did some quick replanning. The hostel we're staying in in Napier is literally 50 feet from the ocean. Should be pretty epic.
There were chickens at the park we went to. They were actually awesome. They followed us and the chicks were trying to eat our feet. Maja was terrified.
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