Auckland to Rotorua

Finally we got to travel on our Magic Bus and start seeing NZ!

I had done a similar type of bus tour in Canada with my bestie Andz, it was pretty chilled and we saw loads.

As those of you who know Joe - he is very laidback =  me organising everything! So this was perfect for us, we literally did nothing and just showed up. result.

The first bit of the journey was going out of Auckland, we stopped off at Mt Eden - a volcano just outside Auckland with an awesome view of the city

Mt Eden - Auckland

View of Auckland from Mt Eden

Next stop was Paeroa, which is famous for the NZ drink L&P - Lemon&Paeroa. (I think it is lemon and spring water and this is where they get the spring water from for the drinks) We had some and it was OK - I could take it or leave it, sorry kiwis! This was the day we found out about NZ currency - 10 Cents looks like a penny and i whispers to Joe he just gave me the wrong change thinking he'd given me a penny! Luckily I looked at it before going back in demanding my $$!!

Paeroa

We carried on driving and 2 girls got out at Te Aroha - Maori for Love! I noticed lots of cows everywhere whereas I thought there would be sheep everywhere!!

We visited a place called Hobbiton - where they are filming in the Lord of the Rings, we stopped off at a place called Shires Rest where you go to see a tour of the set and they have super cute lambs.

The views of this area were just stunning. So green and hilly, the pictures do not do it any justice at all.

From here we made our way to Rotorua where we were staying for the night. Considering it was a Saturday you would think something would be going on. Nope it was absoutely dead. It stunk there too. coz of the sulphur but it smelt like rotting eggs. there were a few times were i gagged so much i thought i would puke. This was a really cool place, the lake was huge and you could get closer to the geysers, seeing water bubbling was pretty awesome. Over the other side of the lake you could see the steam from where they were bubbling!

In one of the parks there were also hot pools which we checked out so a weird thing to see. As i said the night life wasnt pumping so we chilled at the hostel in the hot tub - we actually met a guy who auditioned as an elf for LOTR! Random.

And that was the end of the 1st day adventure!

x