Rotten eggs

After one big night in Auckland with a group of british and the following not so glorious day with hurting head I started to head South towards Rotorua. I made some shopping in Auckland which should ease up my travelling a little bit: 50h intercity bus time, sleeping bag and some warm clothes.

I got first warning about local weather when leaving the sunny Auckland the weather turned to really rainy and windy in no time. The landscape also transformed into more and more hilly and I had nice time enjoying the green sights on 4h bus journey to Rotorua.

You know when you arrive Rotorua because you can see little clouds of steam everywhere and you start to smell rotten eggs which comes from sulphur gases. Yes here's lots of thermal activity around this area.

After a quite uneasy night in hot rocks hostel(don't recommend to anyone). I woke up in the morning, changed the hostel and planned to go some trekking to see the Geysirs and other local things. Well I managed to walk about one hour when I met and old local man Brian at the same track. After few words he offered to show me around Rotorua with his car. We ended up going through all the local and nearby sights and I'm pretty sure we drove over 100kms with his car. I saw things that you probably wouldn't see just by going to organized tourist trips. Deserted thermal pools and waterfalls that locals use as a spa, mud/water pools with boiling water, geysirs and of course lots of sheep herding on steep green hills :).

Brian didn't even want to take anything when I offered him some money but after he had paid me into local thermal/geysir area and to see some Maori musical performances I insisted to pay him something. It still wasn't the full price though. I was thinking all the time that there's something behind this all friendliness but after the day he just dropped me to the hostel and we said goodbyes. It seems that Kiwis are a bunch of really friendly people.

So far I'm really amazed about New Zealand. The scenery is just unbelievable and it should get much more massive and beautiful when I'm going to South island! Tomorrow I'm heading to Taupo though gonna do a 12000ft/4km tandem skydive. 75euros/150nzd for that one with a free t-shirt and ground dvd. Good deal. I rescheduled my flight back to Wednesday 9th of August. That makes my total New Zealand time a bit over 5 weeks but it seems to me that it's still barely enough to see and experience everything I want.