Rotorua, Nz

On the way to Rotorua we stopped off at a beautiful gorge where we had to walk through dark tunnels and across scary wooden bridges that could only hold 10 people at a time. At one point a guy called Jin sat down in teh middle of one of the bridges because he got too scared as others were trying to rock the bridge from side to side!

When we arrived at Rotorua the first thing to hit us was the smell. The town has several mud pools and many geysers, which let off sulphur steam into the atmosphere... the smell can only be described as rotten eggs, not good when your hungover.

In the evening we made it to a Maori night, where we experienced what it would be like to come face to face with a tribe. To begin with we had to choose someone in our group to become cheif and tell the tribe we were there for peace and not war. Before the chief was able to do this the Maori's performed their tribal routine, which envoled several of them coming out with weapons and displaying there skills to us. This is a very serious ritual and we were not allowed to laugh, talk or even smile while it was being performed. There faces were so scary, especially when they made their eyes bulge, stuck their tounge out and screamed out noises to us!
Once this ceremony was over we were allowed to enter into their village , where we were able to learn more about their culture, watch the Haka being performed and enjoyed a big traditional dinner.