My Kiwi Experience: part 2

Hungover. Yes, leg two of the kiwi experience began with the world's biggest hangover. I never usually include my poorly states in posts as they're pretty frequent and dull to write about, but this one was something else so I couldn't leave it out. We intended on going for the classic 'couple of drinks' during our night in Auckland knowing full well that we had another early start the next day heading south to hot water beach. However, as always, this escalated rapidly and eleven jugs later, we were smashed and having a very fun time.

When my alarm went off at half 7 the following morning, I hoped and prayed that I was dreaming as I was in no state to be starting my day. Still feeling a little drunk, I had a shower and attempted to get myself together before waking my friend who may or may not have got concussion from her drunken fall. Luckily she woke and, though bruised and cut, was ok and thankfully feeling as awful as me so we could suffer together. In fact, all five of us who'd gone out together were feeling the same level of terrible.

For this reason, when we saw the golden arches of McDonalds and noticed our bus stopping outside, we felt like we were in heaven and could not have ran faster to order our sausage mcmuffin, hash browns and full fat coke - step 1 to a decent hangover cure. This made us all feel a bit more human, different levels of human, but more so nonetheless. We got back on our bus and continued our journey. 

The driver hit us with an icebreaker for twenty minutes during this part of the trip and this was our worst nightmare. I hate these at the best of times and when I'm hungover it's the last thing I want to do. Surviving that, we began driving down the most bendy roads which brought my hangover right back. I felt nauseous and needed my next dose of stodgy food to help. We stopped at a tiny village and found the most greasy wedges to hopefully fill the hole. This worked for about half an hour but it wasn't shifting. 

Something which did help was running into the ice cold (literally) sea at Cathedral Cove. This place was stunning, the sun came out and it looked like a glimpse of paradise, but the sea was like jumping into a bucket of ice, I'd forgotten we were only just coming out of winter and into spring here. Brr. 

The coldness remained until evening when, after dinner, a few beers and a typically British few games of cards with everyone, we wrapped up and headed to hot water beach. My friend gave me his towel to use as a scarf so I was pretty toasty, even more so when we got to the beach to find all the guys had been there digging already so a few natural hot pools were waiting for us to dip our feet into straight away. Some of the water was too hot to paddle in, it was incredible.

Another early start the next day to Waitomo to see the glow worm caves. This involved walking through the caves and learning a bit of history about their formation, Maori culture and some details about the creatures themselves, finished off nicely with a boat trip in total darkness where the glow worms lit the ceilings of the caves like a sky at night, thousands of them glistening away. It was beautiful. 

The next few days were action packed including a visit to Hobiton (the set of Hobit and Lord of the Rings where I'm determined to live one day) and a night with the Maori people giving us an insight into their ways all in and nearby the city of Rotorua. We decided to hop off here, winging it in true backpacker style and risking our spot on the bus a few days later. So, without a space on an onward journey (despite me having a tight schedule so this was something I really shouldn't have been doing), we forgot all about it over many a beer in the hot tub at the Maori village. 

The Maori village was by far the best thing we've done yet. We chose a chief and a very western song (Fresh Prince of Belle air) for our tribe then had all the formalities and spent the afternoon playing traditional games and singing songs. This was followed by a show from the Maori people which involved lots of scary Hakka faces and the most delicious buffet dinner. When they demonstrated how they cooked and showed us the food, it smelt like my house on a Sunday full of roasties, lamb and chicken. We all ate so much and to top off the brilliance of this day, the desert was pavlova - my favourite. 

After dinner, we all raced to the hot tubs where I parked myself for the evening with a bottle of wine. Sadly the bar closed at half 11 without a last call leaving a lot of very angry backpackers, but the Mexicans had a few bottles of Bacardi so obviously it felt like a great idea to shot this straight for the rest of the night. The morning after, I instantly regretted this decision and couldn't get the taste out of my mouth. However, I survived the twenty minute bus ride back into Roturua and chilled at our hostel which had a heated pool.

Despite a slight hiccup to start our few days in Roturua because I'd stupidly left my bag with my trainers and bikini in on the bus which had left to the next destination, we enjoyed our time here. We walked to the pretty lake and to sulphur bay where we held our noses to mask the smell but witnessed bubbling pools and steam coming from the ground. The weather wasn't great that afternoon so we made best use of our mattresses and made a fort to lay in while watching films. In the evening we headed to the bar where I'd decided I was craving gin and ended up having far to much due to a silly drinking game where you couldn't drink out of your right hand. Put it this way, I had to down a lot of drinks that night!

The following day we made solid use of our first lay in in what felt like forever and went luging. This is essentially real life Mario Kart and was so much fun. The rain came and went making the tracks more and more slippery so crashes were had on our final run, but nobody fell off so a successful trip in my books. 

I'll leave part two there because we're off to Taupo next and hopefully (weather depending) doing the Tangoruri Crossing which is 19km long and takes about 6-8 hours to complete so I feel there will be big stories to tell from that.    

Until next time, Kia Ora!

Things I've learnt:

-hangovers, early starts and long bus journeys are NOT fun

-tonnes of new card games

-as beautiful as cathedral cave is, the sea at the dawn of spring in New Zealand is FREEZING

-cows have best friends

-glow worms are cool to look at but they're actually little maggots

-straight Bacardi is vile

-how to do the Hakka

-a lot about Maori culture

-that there are a lot of very good looking tattooed Maori men

-I'm a bit ditsy when it comes to leaving things on coaches.

-I'm rubbish at drinking games