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10:17 a.m. - 2003-04-19 Drove down to Waitomo caves, just south of Auckland. We went into the Gloworm Caves, which were stunning. Thousands of gloworms were hanging from the ceilings of the caves and we saw the Aranui caves, which had amazing formations of stalactites and stalagmites. I wanted to do something a bit more adventurous like abseiling 100m down into the Lost World caves, but that cost �100. That's the only problem with New Zealand. There isn't much you can do or see for free, and there are so many companies that come up with activities for you to do and make you part with your money, that you could end up spending a fortune. Last night we drove down to Rotorua, where I am now, and pitched our tent on this campsite which is next to thermal pools. Therefore the ground 'gently' heats your tent at night (so The Lonely Planet told us). Unfortunately it's not gentle warmth but more of a searing heat. Really quite unpleasant to sleep on. Very strange. Rob slept in the car, it was so hot. We are cooking some potatoes in a small brick oven in the ground at the moment. That is how hot it is (looking back, when we took our tent down after 4 days, the patch of ground beneath had turned from green grass to a steaming muddy square). This afternoon we are going to sit in some mud baths. It's Easter weekend though, so everywhere is busy. This is a weird place, there are geysers, steaming rivers and bubbling mud pools everywhere and it stinks of rotten eggs (that's the sulphur). I've never seen anything like it. There is a strong Maori culture here too, which gives it a rather eerie atmosphere. The mud baths were great. We had a spa bath first. I think it was sulphur water, which was at about 40C. I had to take my jewellery off because it turns all silver black. Then we had the mud bath. It was warm muddy water basically. The worst part was that after 20 minutes slopping about in the mud you had to have a freezing cold hose down. I was wondering why cold water, as there was so much hot water around, but apparently the mud draws all your blood to the skin and if you don't have a cold shower you will pass out as the temperature of your skin has to be greatly reduced. I don't really understand though. 2003-04-20 Went into town last night to score some weed. There isn't a great nightclub scene in Rotorua, but we were desperate, so we went into all of them. Claire bravely approached all the longhaired boys and asked them if they had anything. One kid was a dealer but was out with his parents so couldn't oblige! We were ready to give up when we met some skydiving instructors who invited us back to their house for a smoke. Rob and I went with them and got incredibly fucked. They were crazy guys who smoked a lot. One of them was a Canadian called Cameron who we subsequently saw again. He was psychotic I'm sure, but very amusing. They showed us a skydiving film one of them had shot. I was freaked out and said, "Shit, there is no way I am doing that - that is crazy".
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