Rain, Rain Go Away...

Actually, the rain isnt so bad, as we have quickly figured out, because when it is raining, it's not frosty or icy on the roads, which is much less scary!


Anyway, as you may have guessed (and I suppose you guys dont see NZ on the weather maps over there, but there is the most ridiculous cloud cover over the entire North Island) it has been raining lots here! Pretty much non-stop for like three days now! Not like Denmark were it's on and off all day, literally yesterday it was rai
ning when we woke up, and it rained all day and all night, though we have had a couple of hours now without rain...WOW! lol.

So lets see, the last post was pretty hurried because the last few places we have stayed have had really expensive internet (like $2 for 15 mins), and also silly somputers with no usb drives, meaning o photos, so sorry about that. We are now sitting in Maccas (who knew - they have internet there...) and it is like half the price that we have been paying lately.

But to continue on from the last post, I guess we are at saturday...

We headed off at the usual time (10am - which is checkout time at most places), and started out on a leisurely drive around the lake for a look, had fish'n'chips for lunch, and found out that there are some really smart, and really stupid people around here (unfortunatley we fit into thne second category...). Explanation - so these clever guys have set up this golf thing called the "Hole in One Challenge" on the lake, where people come along and try to get a hole in one in various sized holes to win various prizes...unfortunately it is pretty much impossible to atually get a hole in one, so it is just a bit of a waste of money, but regardless, Boh and I decided to have a couple of goes. Needless to say, we didnt win a dime...but ah well, it's not like you actually can, so those guys are pretty darn smart!! After this we decided we were done in Taupo, cos everything is just so darn expensive, and
poor backpackers like us just can't afford a place like that! So it was around the lake to Taurangi, at the southern point of Lake Taupo, where we stumbled across a backpackers that had it's own climbing wall! Despite the fact that I was embarrassed by the fact that I am so terrible at that sort of thing, and the fact that the little monkey-spawn children in there were making me look even worse, Boh (who is actually quite a good climber) had a great two hours there before heading off for the dingiest caravan park we have stayed in yet (though we didnt know it yet). It had a real creepy feel about it, made worse by the scary owner guy (well we presume he was the owner...)who was stalking around smoking and looking scary. So that wasn't the best night...but it was ok...cos we left in the morning, not even waiting to have brekky (probably more due to then fact that our milk had gone off than anything else, but anyway...).

Now it was off to Mt Ruapehu, and, as we found out, to Mordor and Mt Doom! (Lord of the Rings...in case any of you didn't know) So that was kinda awesome, because we now have photos of Mt Doom!! haha. It was pretty wild weather at this point, but we decided to check out Whakapapa Village anyway (which is right at the base of Mt Ruapehu), and then ended up driving up to the ski area, as the rain meant that the freezing level was pretty high (meaning the road was open), and....*drum roll*...Boh touched the snow for the first time!!!!!! That was super exciting says Boh, who was pretty much bouncing up and down at the time. But Bluey doesnt like the cold, so we decided to haul ass back down the mountain and regain feeling to our faces and fingers!
Then we decided to drive on to Wanganui (the town where my dad was born) which is on the west coast, and stay there before starting on down to Wellington to visit my cousin Lara and her family. So here we are in Wanganui, a riverside town/city (it's pretty big to be town...but not sure if it is a city), having stayed last night in a nice caravan park by the beach, unfortunately a night spoilt by the incredible amount of rain, so it was kinda like an extension of the ocean, or maybe just a muddy lake...Well to make up for the photo drought, heres a big bunch of the last week or so since we left Malcolm's.

P.S. Thankyou again Mal and Fiona for the blankets and Boh's Jacket - they have kept us alive these past couple cold of days!!

Huka Falls>

^Mt Doom....

Crazy Chicken that we saw

^My Wristband came off!!!!!! soo sad...damn u budgie! But I got a new one that very same day at zorb!

^The incredibly smelly mud pools in Rotarua

^Us at the climbing place

^Boh in the SNOW!!!

^My most awesome photo ever

^The HUGE redwoods

^THE ZORB!!!

^It may look like I'm just being a retard and doing funny stuff with my hands...but I am actually holding shards of ice out of a puddle...yeah...

^Boh reaching the heights