Hello Everyone, sorry we’ve taken so long getting round to this, again, especially joe :z …

Well Since we last wrote we’ve done quite alot, but we’ll save this post for the thermal highway, So… afetr Hawk’s Bay we followed the thermal highway accross the least populated area in the whole of N.Z. which was basically a huge forest, but it was quite a nice drive nonetheless, and on the otherside of the forest we reached the centre of the north island, in a rich little town called Taupo, which although it was very expensive was beautiful as it is set right on the edge of lake taupo, the largest in N.Z. which according to all the information in the local museum was a volcano a few thousand years ago or so, and the explosin was so big that the sky went red in china and went significantly darker in rome, enough information for you? good. anyway after walking around there for a day or two eating ice cream and generally relaxing we decided to go south on the adjoining volcanic loop highway and took a trip down to three sleeping volcanoes, one of which was mount doom in lord of the rings, which we camped right next to, and the\ next day, although we didnt do the crater walk as the weather was actually a bit dreary that day we did enjoy a few nice walks around the base, where we saw a massive waterfall flowing down off the edge of an old lava flow, which was pretty impressive!

Anyway back up at Taupo we decided to splash out abit and went to see what the geothermal activity in the area had to offer, in the way of the cartyers of the moon, which were huge steaming holes in the ground about 30 metres wide and very deep too! And we also went to a thermal park were we saw the lady knox geyser that spat boiling water 30 ft in the air and a long walk that twisted and turned through loads of brightly coloured pools coloured by various minerals in the ground like calcium, iron oxide and loads of others that we could name, and probably name wrong, but you get the picture, it was all very pretty!!

And then we moved north!