Rotorua day 1

Up early this morning (6.30am!) checked out and had breakfast before catching the coach for the day.

We were picked up by a driver called Lawrie who was to be our guide for the day, this man has to be probably the most boring guides in the world, but he loves the sound of his own voice. We were to be on the coach for nearly 5 hours and he talked for nearly all of it.

I wish I had written down some of his quotes and statements I could have put them into a book, here is just a taster for you.

"on the left is the brick yard, in there they make bricks"

"we are just entering the new dual carriage way, the lanes on the right go back to where we have come from"

"you need to be back on the coach at 1.10pm thats 10 minutes passed one, thats 1.10pm thats 10 minutes passed one" The really bad thing about that was Carol and I forgot what time we were due back on!!

We arrived at Waitomo caves for a tour of the caves to see Stalactites etc and a boat trip of the glow worms, unfortunately you will have to take our word for this as cameras were banned, apart from when we left the caves at the end of the trip.

After a further 2 hours with Lawrie we arrived at Rotorua and our new hotel the Rydges hotel, definately not the best we have stayed in, I will leave you to imagine Carols language when she discovered the beds had human hairs on the sheets! But it was made up for with a spa bath in every room.

I went for a 30 minute run, followed some other runer, luckily he led me back towards the direction I had come from or could still be out now.

The hotel os 20 minutes from the centre of town, we walked in and realised how strong the smell of sulpher is in this town from the lakes etc. Took some good photo's of the lake and then found a really nice restaurant.

By the time we came out the temp had dropped dramatically, it is about 2-3 degrees colder here than Auckland and it is becoming their Autumn. Walked back briskly to the hotel.