I floated through the pitch black to look at maggots that glow out of their bum

Ok, so to finish off and get up to speed (we do so much it's so hard to catch up).



The evening in the traditional Maori village was pretty interesting. When we were picked up someone on the bus was chosen to be the 'chief' of our 'waka' (canoe, actually our bus). It turned out to be one of the guys of the kiwi bus, Elliot. When we arrived, he had to stand in the centre of the welcoming area with the other 'chiefs' whilst the tribe warriors did an aggressive challenge with sticks and sticking out their tongues and shouting to intimidate them. It was pretty intimidating. Once we were allowed in the village we watched several demonstrations of how the warriors would have been trained in fitness and agility and also a complex stick throwing game. After this we watched a concert which involved traditional songs, and dances with poi and sticks. There was also a demonstration of the haka (the dance that the New Zealnd rugby players do). I'd never seen it before, it was pretty scary. After the concert we had dinner. This was a feast cooked in a traditional way, in a hangi, which is like an oven in the ground. The food baked with hot rocks. The food was really really nice and I had two helpings. There was chicken, lamb and fish with carrots, potatoes and a New Zealand sweet potato thing. Dessert was pavlova and steamed chocolate pudding, obviously I was really impressed with this.



On the way back to the hostel there was a lot of singing on the bus. The driver made someone from every country that was on the come up to the front and sing a song. We had a German singing 99 red balloons, some Swedish singing Abba, and english singing whatever we could remember, I think the Spice Girls came up at one point.



Once back at the hostel we headed to the bar. As drinking is quite expensive I've been very well behaved. I only had one drink but just hung out with everyone else. I ended up staying out fairly late dancing with one of the girls, we even managed to get the guys up dancing (although this was mainly so we could stop the creepy locals hitting on us).



The next day wehad a bit of a lie in, until 8am! Then we headed off on the bus. We stopped at a sheep show park, whilst quite a few people went to watch, most of us headed to the cafe. I figured that if I wanted to see sheep shows I could just go to the Three Counties show in Worcester. Our second stop was at a mini adventure park. I didn't do anything but a couple of the guys went on a big swing thing and several people went on this super fast speed boat thing round a water track. The driver kept trying to splash the spectators.



Our lunch stop was fairly exciting. We stopped in this little town and me Em and one of the guys Anil, went to find a cafe for lunch. We found this tiny little cheese shop and factory and went in to see if they did sandwiches. We ended up tating a load of cheese! Their goats cheese and buffalo soft cheese was amazing! Apparently it's award winning. We had toasted sandwiches and coffees in a little cafe. I love how there are always little independant coffee shops everywhere that do great coffee and food. It's not even just tourists that go to thier either, they always have lots of locals in as well.

In the afternoon 4 of us went black water rafting (the rest went this morning). This isn't actually rafting. It's walking, wading and floating down underground rivers in a cave system. You have to get kitted up in a full wet suit and jacket. This was a fairly hilarious exercise as the one they gave me didn't fit and they tried to force me into it by lifting me up by the middle and shaking me. They gave me a bigger suit. During the rafting trip we had to jump off waterfalls, backwards so that we landed in our rings. The water was very, very cold but I didn't get quite as cold as I thought I would. There were eels in the caves!! I saw one really big one and one baby one. I wanted to ask if there was a goozy, but I don't think they would understand! The main bit of the trip was floating in a line, holding each others feet in the pitch black so that we could see glow worms. They were incredible, it was like being outside in pitch black looking up at the sky and seeing blue/green stars. Amazing. At the end we had to turn off our lights and find our way out in the dark! It was a bit weird and scary but lots of fun. Once we were out of the caves we had ridiculously hot showers and a toasted bagel and hot soup. The actual highlight was the 7 week old golden labrador puppy called Sunny. I wanted to steal it.

I have to go again! We're going for dinner!
xx

Once we were out of