Today was another early start – we had to be on the bus by 7.30am, which meant that I had to be up nice and early to have a shower, I may be embracing the homeless look, but I still have some basic personal hygiene requirements. Anyway, the shower was amazing. It was a proper power shower (try explain that to everyone here, “It was a par shar”) and it was clean and there was a real shower door, not just a curtain! So that was a nice experience!
We then got on the bus, which wasn’t as fun, but I can’t really complain, buses are what I signed up for! Our first stop of the day was Waihi, the Karangahake Scenic Reserve (I had to look that up because we were told it was “a gorge”). It was actually really nice, you walk across a few swing bridges, sort of like rope bridges, but sturdier I suppose! You then walk through a series of tunnels, which was interesting as I didn’t have a torch and had no idea where I was going! It was a really nice walk and I went a bit snap happy (no surprises there) so maybe I’ll get some pictures uploaded!
After that we stopped off in Matamata. Matamata was the filming location for Hobbiton, from Lord of the Rings – we got some lunch there and got a few cheesy pictures in front of the Welcome to Hobbiton sign. I bet you’re excited to see that!
We then arrived in Rotoroua, which is also called, Sulphur City, Roto-vegas and Rotten-rua. Why? Because it stinks. The entire place smells of rotten eggs, which is pretty disgusting, but apparently you “get used” to the smell. I don’t think so somehow. When we arrived the weather was pretty rubbish, so I didn’t get to do a lot of exploring. Instead we checked into our rooms and chilled out for a bit. Sally and I are in the same room again, but the two girls from London, Ellen and Jess, are in the next room, so that's’quite handy! Were staying in an 8 bed dorm room, with a bathroom and the bathroom is actually pretty nice, which is a change, usually hostel bathrooms are rubbish! Most people in the room were doing white water rafting during the day so I didn’t really get chatting to any of them, but I did have a nice chat with one of the boys in the room, Pete. It was quite funny; I was trying to find out if he liked the boys on the bus, without telling him that I thought they were all idiots. Turns out, he agrees with me, so we had a laugh about that. I don’t think I’ve actually mentioned the most annoying boy on the bus yet. Let’s call him, J.T, well, he’s from England, Essex I think and at first he was quite normal. He actually seemed quite funny. But after about 5 minutes of listening to him, I realised that he was an idiot. Basically he keeps going on about how much money he has. He LOVES flashing the cash. For example, at the Spa in Mercury Bay you could have a tab on hold, in case you wanted a drink. Most people put about $5 or $10 just in case. But good old J.T walks up and throws $70 at the woman, then decides that “$70 is an odd number, let’s make it $80”, which is just ridiculous, especially since we were only going to be at the Spa for about an hour. He also thinks he’s hilarious. We were talking about the Haka and he was like, “I can do the Haka, look...” and then he started prancing about doing the Y.M.C.A. Idiot. He also told his group of guy friends (they have a bit of a Bromance going on) that he wanted to start a fight at the Maori Cultural Evening. I would pay to see that. He’s shorter than I am. Anyway, I thought I was the only person that found him annoying, but it turns out that everyone I have spoken to really dislikes him. I’m so glad that he is leaving Rotoura before me!
When everyone got back from rafting we decided to go out – it was all you can eat pizza at the Lava Bar (the Hostel bar) so we headed down there. Lizzie (a girl in my room and Pete’s friend) and I legged it to the bar and got some pizza, but Sally, Ellen and Jess came down a bit later and by the time they arrived all the pizza was gone! Because we had all been expecting pizza we didn’t have any dinner, so we were all starving, we then decided to go get our own pizza. Great idea girls! The five of us (Me, Sally, Ellen, Jess and a German girl, whose name I cannot type, but she is really nice) set off on our journey, not having any idea where we could get pizza. I remembered seeing Pizza Hut and Sally remembered where it was, so we set off in that direction. It was raining at this point, so that was fun, combining all my least favourite activities, hunger, walking and rain. We eventually found Pizza Hut, but when we went to order they told us that we were too late to sit in, so we had to get the pizza to go. Being the classy ladies that we are, we decided on 3 pizza’s – Cheese, Pepperoni and a BBQ Meat Feast. While we were waiting for the pizza we had a bit of a laugh, everyone in this country must think English and Irish people are complete idiots – we may have let Old Lizzie (the Queen) down, with our loud, ridiculous behaviour.
We eventually found a nice wall to sit on and we sat, in all our going out gear, eating 3 big, messy pizzas! Beaut. I’m so glad that nobody could see us! After eating far too much pizza we went back to the Lava Bar, had a drink and then set off to find an Irish Pub! We followed the music and found a big, busy, “Irish” Pub. St. Patricks Day is really big over here (I think it’s popular everywhere, except for Norn Iron) so everyone was out in their green outfits, with their Guiness Hats on, I even saw a few Celtic tops. After waiting ages everyone got their pint of Guiness (except for me, imagine, the only “real” “Irish” person there and I wasn’t even drinking) and we went outside for a wee chat/a boogie to the old man on acoustic guitar. I quite liked this bit, it was just like being at home, there was even an old pervy man giving me the eyes, there’s nothing like across the room dancing with an old drunken man!
After a while at the Irish Bar, we all headed home (back to the Hostel). We did try to find an open shop, we had the munchies (it’s nice to know that some things never change, no matter where you are)! Sadly we had to make do with week old pretzels and some Tiramisu Chocolate, which I can’t eat because of Lent. One of my more brilliant ideas, giving up the only thing I actually eat when I’m away from home!
This was, without a doubt, the best St. Patricks Day I have ever had. We had so much fun, stuffing our faces with nasty Pizza Hut and then dancing like idiots in a pub full of backpackers and old men! Bliss.
Xx
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