Some Funnies

Deep In a Cave

The team ready to hit the cave

PK deep in the cave system

PK, Tania & Jenny

PK, Buzz, Reece & Muckle

PK exiting the cave

Some of the caves were quite a squeeze

PK & Buzz

Coming out of the cave

What is it called when a stalictite meets a stalicmite? What ever it is called this is the biggest one of it in New Zealand.

Reece & PK outside the cave. Funny thing is that it is around 4pm and it looks like it is night time. You have to walk quite a bit into the bush to get to the entrance and exit of the cave.

Lets Find Me a Possum

Reece & Pk

So apparantly Possums came from Australia. I am not really sure that they did or if it is another story that the New Zealand people have convinced themselves of to dislike Aussie people even more. Anyway Australia don't have a problem with them because Possums have their own predators that sort them out. Unfortunately Possums over here don't have predators so we have to be the predators. They are a pain in the butt. They distroy the trees and eat the fruit off the fruit trees that we have around camp, and they mulitiply like crazy.

So the other Sunday night we set off. Wrapped in warm clothes, we jumped on the back of a motorbike (quads to normal people but NZ folks call them bikes) attached a really powerful light to the battery Muckle driving, Reece on the back left armed with a 22 and myself back right with a shotgun. We drove all around our property shining the light all around us, into the bushes and up into the trees. That is the best way to find them cause they look into the light and you can see their eyes shine. Depending on the range was whether Reece or myself got the shot. If it needed a sight then Reece stepped forward with the 22 otherwise they let me have a go.

In total we got about 12 and you may think that is a lot (or too many) but I was walking around the property the next night and saw another 4 running around. So we did leave a few........ for another night.

Marthas Gold Mine @ Waihi

Martha's Gold Mine @ Waihi - they have finished looking for gold and silver here. They are going to fill it with water and make it into a lake. Guess what..... it will take 12 years to fill.

The mine was making over 1 million dollars a week worth of gold and silver

The Muckles standing beside one of the small truck things they use to bring the gold / silver or crappy rock up in.

Rotorura Pics

Traditional Maori Dance

No this wasn't modeled on my brother

Stinky Mud Pool (steam = hot)

Rotorura Pics cont...

38Degree Hot Pool

Gondola Ride up to the Luge

Sam & Rachael coming up from the Luge

When you get on the Gondola they take a pic and when you come down they charge you $30 to buy the pic. No way.... We just took a pic of the pic. Looks good to me

One of the hot pools in the Maori Village

Tourist not a Terrorist

Accents are a funny thing. With traveling a lot I don’t notice accents that much any more but according to NZ people my accent is pretty strong (ask my family and they will disagree) When I told someone that we were going to Rotorua to be a Tourist for the day they looked really shocked because they thought that I said I was going to be a terrorist.

Anyway. Off we headed to a place called Rotorua for the day. Myself, Rachael, Roy and Sam.

We had 3 things that we wanted to accomplish during our trip away and they were a trip to a Thermal Village, go up the Gondola and do the Luge and finally make a trip to the Polynesian Spa.

Thermal Village www.whakarewarewa.com

This was incredible to visit. It is a little community of Maori people who bring people into their town for tours and show you a little of the history of Maori people. They started off with a traditional dance, sang songs, performed the Haka and then took us on a tour of the natural thermal pools. These pools are almost hard to believe that they are natural. They are pools that are fed straight from the ground at crazy hot temperatures. The first pool they showed us was where they cooked their food. At the top of this pool it was between 85 and 93 degrees and at the bottom of the pool it can get up to 145 degrees. I was rather impressed with this until they took us to the next pool. This pool was smaller than the first yet it had bubbles coming to the surface of it. The top of this pool was 178 degrees (now that is warm). This village was a great trip, it smelt really bad because of the thermal pools. Almost like a nasty egg fart with a hint of gross. We had our traditional Hangi lunch (Hangi is a special way of cooking food under the ground using red hot rocks and steam.)

Gondola & Luge www.skylineskyrides.co.nz/rotorua/ssr_luge

Off to the Gondola we went. Up into the mountain side where we got our luges and shot down the track to the bottom where we got on another gondola and repeated the luge process another 4 times. The luge is kind of like a bobsleigh, without the ice and you don’t have to wear spandex (which I was a little disappointed in)

This was fun and a great way to bang into really slow people on the track. We discovered quite a violent streak in Rachael as she tried many times to push us over the edge.

From here we decided that we wanted to relax so we headed to the Polynesian Spa. Was this nice or what!! ! (No need to answer because it was)

Polynesian Spa www.polynesianspa.co.nz
We decided that we would pay the extra dollars to get the pools that the kids were not allowed in and what a great decision this was. These pools are outdoors and the air temperature was a little chilly so when we jumped in the first natural hot pool it was 38 degrees and very warm. You might not know (or even care) but I love baths so for me this was heaven, apart from the fact that I couldn’t properly lie back and that I was sharing it with 20 others, and i had shorts on… but the heat was nice. The pool got a little crowded so we decided to head to the pools that overlooked the sea. There were 3 different pools you could choose from but we went to the hottest one (of course). The pools were 39 degrees, 41degrees and 42 degrees and I found it fascinating that these were naturally hot pools. The water was sooo warm. The best thing to do was to get into a position that was comfortable and stay there. Do not move, do not breath to heavily as it could move the water around you and that water around you was hot. Occasionally we would jump out and go to the shower that they had. This was fun because it was a cold shower. The not so fun thing was that it was unclear the first time as to where the water jets would come out. You push the button and the shower hits you from all angles. There is no whimping out and only getting an arm wet. It is all or nothing. Then you jump back in the pool and feel your skin sizzle.

We stayed in there for ages but we decided to leave for two reasons, 1 being that we were getting a little light headed from the heat and second a bus load of Koreans arrived and they must have been tricked into thinking that it was cool to wear the tightest black spandex short shorts they could find and most of them decided that our pool was the best. We left.

We jumped back in to the 38 degree pool to finish off with and it was a little disappointing. The first time we jumped in it was very warm, now it wasn’t as warm, so I sat out and let my body cool down and then jumped back in.

It was a great day and I was very tired when I got home (wow I sound like my mum). I think you wouldn’t want to be a terrorist in Rotorura cause being a Tourist was way more fun.

Long Time No Blog

So what have I been up to you are probably wondering? I have been rather busy. Jamie (who i replaced) left a few months ago and I knew I had to take on a lot but I have ended up doing more than realised. I will give you a brief rundown of the past few months

I haven’t been on too many holidays. We are just near the end of winter over here and it is pretty cold and rainy so that limits the amount of times that I can bless this country with my Speedo. But worry not… summer is coming fast.

We had a huge camp at the start of June called HM Rage. This is the celebration of the queen’s birthday and for some reason it is a holiday time in NZ. They get a week off. Crazy stuff. I would say she is more my queen than their queen and I don’t get a holiday when I am home. Anyway… The camp was fun and I didn’t realize that my role was as big as it was for this camp. It turned out that I was the main mc guy running the week. Stress aside it was a great time. We had some amazing bands play and on the final night in front of probably 500 people during our banquet live on stage I tried to phone the queen to sing happy birthday to her. I had her on speaker phone (can I call her ‘her’ – will I get in trouble for that) well I didn’t actually have her on speaker phone. It was the receptionist from Buckingham Palace that answered. When I asked if I could talk to the queen she was very polite and hung up the phone. So I decided to try again... same thing happened. Final time… she didn’t even answer. Good job that I was using Jeremy Bennets Cell phone. So I gave it to my NZ friend who went outside and rang and explained what we were doing, we came back on stage and over speaker phone we all (500 of us) sang happy birthday to the queen. Fun times. (Thinking about it, she probably heard my accent and thought that it was a threat)

Then we have had camps, more camps and more camps again since that. In the middle of July we had our Winter Kids Camp. This is the first camp that I have actually done since Jamie left and I was a little worried at first. But what a fun week it was. A few people have said that it is the best camp that they have ever been at. So I was quite pleased with the job that myself and Rachel (who I work with) had done. It was a carnival theme and the highlight for me was the last night. We changed the gym from being a gym into a circus. WE moved all the bleachers into a circle, put up edging around them, strung streamers and about 350 balloons to the ceiling. The kids earlier in the week had to put together a performance and the winning teams (or the ones that didn’t suck) got to perform during the circus. No one knew who was up next so all teams came prepared to act. We had a VIP section for the best cabin during the week and they had a sweet seating area, with comfy chairs and we had a waitress who served them drinks. We finished off with a huge dance, let the balloons down and then did a conga from the gym back to the dining room.

We have amazing leaders here at the camp and I love getting to know them. Their passion and energy for the work that they do almost scares me.

I don’t have any pics to add at the minute cause they are all on my ipod. And funny enough my ipod has frozen and it won’t let me get any of my files off it and it wants me to reformat it. It just adds to my frustration and makes me hate Apple even more. They really are the devil.

I shall go for now. I will definitely try and update it more frequently. I kept wanting to but the longer I leave it the more I have to write. Later Peeps….