Day 92, 17th November 2011. Taupo - Waitomo, New Zealand

I woke up feeling really cold, quite early in the morning, and then realized, the hotel room door was open!! I don't know how it happened or how long it had been open. I was really scared for about 20 seconds until I remembered we were in New Zealand, and the likelihood of a crime being committed were way lower than what we are used to. I went to shut the door, after checking around the room thoroughly, then laid back in bed waiting for Gary to wake up.

Yesterday we had bought cereal and milk at the supermarket, so we had that for breakfast in the room. We also made ourselves some sandwiches and snacks for a little packed lunch so we could eat by the lake again. The room was really nice and I was sad to leave it, as it was so lovely. I would have liked to stay for another night, but we would have run out of things to do in Taupo.

We checked out of the room and drove into the center of town, and parked up to have a look around the shops. We wandered around for about 2 hours, its definitely a really nice area. We didn't really buy anything, apart from there was a store that had an underwear sale on, and I got loads of Elle Macpherson bras for really cheap, so I was then happy for the day.

Also saw this hilarious store, who needs Walmart when you can go to Woolmart LOL

Once we were done wandering around, we went down to the lakefront to eat our lunch, then made our way back to the place where Gary was going to do his bungy.

We just sat around for a while enjoying the scenery while Gary let his lunch go down before he did the jump

Then it was time!! I was really not happy about Gary doing this, it seemed way more dangerous and scary than the skydive. But he was adamant that he wanted to do it, he really tried to get me to do it, but there was no way it was happening.

When we went in, it all happened so quickly. There was nobody else there waiting, so as soon as we walked in the started getting Gary ready straight away. I didn't even really get a chance to prepare myself before they were leading him away from me.

Gary on the other hand didn't seem nervous at all

I barely had time to run back to the viewing point before he was about to jump. Luckily I made it back just in time to record it.

These next photos are stills from the DVD they took, which is why they are bad quality. 

About to jump...

Go..!

It was so scary watching, luckily he was fine and loved it. It was over so quickly though, it was such a short experience. The longest part was waiting for him to come back up. A boat went out to get him and then he had to walk for ages uphill to get back to me, so I was waiting for him for about 20 minutes wondering where he was. At times like this when I get bored I take photos of random stuff, e.g. my feet.

When Gary got back I was glad to see him and very proud of him. He had really enjoyed the experience so I was glad that he had done it.

It was then time for us to start the quite long drive to Waitomo. We got in the car and started driving, it was quite a boring drive really. After a few hours, we were driving along a countryside road when we saw a walking trail, and the Trek America influence on us made us decide we needed to stop to have a little explore.

It's funny, before we did Trek America, we would have never dreamed of just spontaneously getting out of the car and going for a walk, but now it felt like the normal thing to do. I'm so glad that it gave us such a sense of adventure. 

Once we were done with our little walk and had made our way back to the car, we still had a few hours drive ahead of us. There is not really much to say about it, it was really boring and we drove through some really tiny run down towns, which was the only kind of interesting thing.

We finally arrived in Waitomo in the late afternoon. We checked into our hotel room, which was ok, it was nice, but not as good as last night's one. After we had settled in and showered we went out to find some food. There were no restaraunts or supermarkets anywhere, so we didn't know what to do. That was the only problem with some places in New Zealand, there was just nothing around. 

Eventually, we had to give in and we went back to the hotel to eat dinner at the cafe there. The food was pretty terrible but it was the only food that there was. We then watched American X-Factor in bed for a while before falling asleep.

Day 91, 16th November 2011. Rotorua - Taupo, New Zealand

Luckily, I woke up feeling a lot better than I did last night, my headache was mostly gone. I was glad, I'm one of those people who really can't deal with feeling unwell, it really upsets me because I just want to feel ok. We checked out of our room at 10am, and it was raining, so it really did feel like England.
We were hungry and had to find somewhere to have breakfast. We walked a little way down the road once we had put all our stuff in the car and found this little cafe place. I think Gary had a cooked breakfast and I had some cereal and toast.

Gary had this weird little bean thing on his spoon when they gave him a mug for his tea. We have no clue what it was but it gave us a good laugh.

After breakfast, we left Rotorua, and made our way to Taupo. It wasn't actually that far away, I think the drive was about 2 hours. When we got there, we went for a little drive around the town. It seemed really nice, a lot nicer than Rotorua.

The activity we had booked for today was quad biking, Gary loves anything to do with driving fast, and we did it once in Mexico a few years ago, and I quite enjoyed it, so we were excited to do it again. It was through the New Zealand foresty area, so we thought it would be quite cool.

I don't think the place got that much business, because when we got there, the man that worked there was real excited to see us. We were really early but he let us come in and wait, I think he wanted somebody to chat to. As it had been raining quite a lot recently, he said we should wear these overall things that they provided. No joke they were huge, I put on the smallest size and it was drowning me, I didn't want to wear it but Gary said I should because we didn't know what the conditions would be like out in the forest.

Luckily, there were 2 more people booked on the quad adventure with us too. They soon turned up, they were a young Indian couple and were quite nice. Once they had put their big overalls on too, we all went outside to get on our quad bikes.

Gary and the Indian guy got big ones, and me and the Indian girl got given small ones as the man didn't think we would be able to handle the big ones. Even the small one was hard to handle so I would no way have coped with the big one.

Then we started riding, we had a little practice area first where the man could see how fast we were all going and then put us in order so we didn't overtake each other in the forest. As expected, Gary was first, then the Indian guy, and me and the Indian girl were at the back. It actually worked out quite well, because me and her were going the same speed and stayed together throughout the course. Actually I was a bit faster than her, so that made me feel like I was the brave girl LOL.

Looking attractive in my ugly yellow overalls and helmet...

It was set out in quite a good way. You would have about a 10 minute drive before you reached a checkpoint where everyone had to wait and meet before we carried on. Gary and the guy with him most of the time got to go on a little extra bit because me and the other girl were so far behind them. I feel like I was going really fast, so they must have been going extremely fast.

I didn't really take many photos throughout, mainly because it was so muddy and I was always trying to concentrate on driving. I was overall quite good but did have a few crashes into the bush, but that is to be expected of me really. There were some really steep uphill bits that were hard, and some bits where you rolled downhill really fast, they were super fun.

Overall, it was really fun, but I preferred the one we did in Mexico. Then we drove to our hotel to check in, and it was so nice, and the room was big. We were so glad after yesterdays tiny little thing. 

It had a little porch out the front

and a little garden with a bench

We then went out to get some lunch and decided to go and eat it by the lake. We just got sandwiches and stuff, and it was really nice to eat by the water. Taupo is so pretty, much much nicer than Rotorua.

There were lots of birds around

Gary was enjoying a chocolate brownie

and some apple juice.

Then Gary started throwing bits of food to the birds

Eventually the birds started bombarding us, so we had to leave. We had another little drive around town, and went to the viewpoint of the place where Gary was going to do his bungee jump tomorrow. This place was so beautiful, definitely the nicest place we saw in New Zealand.

Eeeek, where Gary would be doing his bungy jump from, funny, I was ok with him (and me) jumping out of a plane, but bungy, NO WAY!

How pretty and blue is the water!

We went back to the room, and just spent a few hours relaxing and watching TV, and then got ready to go out for dinner.

I finally got to wear my new skirt that I was excited about wearing

We had dinner at a nice steak restaraunt. I have no idea what it was called or anything, all I remember is that I had calamari and Gary had steak. Also, the people in there gave me weird looks for pulling my own bottle of ketchup out of my bag haha. The food was nice though.

Afterwards, we went for a little walk along the side of the lake, the sun was setting and it was so pretty.

Although we had a nice evening, there was not much else to do, so we just wet back to the room and watched TV and stuff until we fell asleep.