Onwards and Outwards...

well i've made it as far as rotarua now. first stop on the trip was raglan, a surf town near hamilton, didn't really do much there and we stayed in backpackers way out of town. from there we went for a "cultural expeirence" we had a hungi which is a traditional maori meal and then had a concert of dance and song, and had a big sleep over with all 35 of us sleeping on the floor in the hall. the next day I started on the east coast loop which was a 3 day trip with only 8 people in a van, it was awsome. the beaches on the east cape were beautiful, its unfortunate it rained pretty much the whole time. the tour guide/driver was super helpful booked everyones accomidation for where ever you wanted to stay, booked you on the bus when you wanted to be picked up, organized whatever activities you wanted to do and wrangled a discount. mostly we just toured the beaches, the highways out there would give any bc mountain road a run for its money, crazy windy and full of one lane bridges. it was nice being in such a small group b/c anytime we saw something we wanted to take pictures of the driver would pull over and let us do it. each day had a supermarket stop as well so we all pitched in a made group meals, one place had a bbq so we did that one night. we went out to this natural waterslide yesterday and you could rent these boogy boards to ride down them, pretty fun stuff. on the way back from there the bus driver ran over a pig. they were going to take it for dinner... but in the end took it up to the farm house and left it out front... there is apparently shark diving in gisborne which i think i might have to do when i go back on the east cape loop. and for todays random useless fact, gisborne is the first city in the world to see the sun each day. also for those complaining about gas prices in canada: gas is 1.75/L here, and a girl from the neatherlands told me gas is 1.6 EUROS/L there! crazy stuff. went white water rafting this afternoon which was pretty awsome, apparently they have the world highest commercially raftable waterfall - 7m. our driver came with us on this day off and they gave him a free cd of the pictures which we all ripped on his laptop, but for some reason i can't upload them on to facebook from this computer. anyhow my friend is coming down from hamilton with his girlfriend tonight or tommarrow to go luging so that should be fun, apparently you take the gondala up to the top of some hill and go down. the plans for the next few weeks have sort of changed, i met a guy from calgary here on a university exchange studying medicine, and he's doing a bunch of travelling around before he goes home for the spring semester and he's heading up to the top of the north island which you can't get a bus up to most beaches are only dirt road access so i might join up w/ him and split petrol costs so i can see 90 mile beach, he also dives so a trip to poor knights islands is probably in the cards. i'll possibly go back to hamilton for the holdiays or new years at least then join up w/ the bus again and head down to the south island. thats about all i can think of for now, pictures will come when i get to hamilton next.