Friday- Damon took us to the racetrack. Horse racing and betting is a huge thing over here in New Zealand. Apparently the betting system is run by the government-so it's all completely legal and accepted here. It was the first time I've ever been to an actual horse race. The races themselves were pretty spread out. We did bet on a few horses... mostly based on how cool their names were. Unfortunately, none of the bets really worked out for us. Oh well.
Saturday- We went to a really cool organic blueberry farm that has over 42,500 bushes that all need to be hand weeded! It was a pretty neat place, and I'm a bit sad we can't stay longer to work there over the summer. They also run a nifty little cafe that sells blueberry wine, juice, ice cream, pie... pretty much anything you can imagine.
Sunday- All 13 of us piled into the big yellow van and headed down to Taupo for the day. Taupo is a big lake in the middle of the North Island that was created by a volcanic eruption long ago. The whole area is just like Rotorua in that it has all of those geothermal vents. While the lake itself is chilly, there are places on the Waikato river where geothermal springs burst up to join it. We found one of those hot spots in a park and dipped in (even though it was quite rainy and cold for most of the day). It was just like going to a jacuzzi... except it was completely free!
One of our friends in the group also decided to bungee jump over the Waikato river. It was too expensive ($132!!) for our backpacking budget. So unfortunately I didn't get to go. The view of the river was really fantastic through. It looked just like the scenes from LOTR where the fellowship is paddling down the huge river at the end of the first movie. After the bungee and the thermal springs, we went to this place called Huka Falls. They were crazy powerful. It's not so much the height but the volume of water that's impressive about these falls. Apparently 200,000 liters go over it every second! That's 52834 gallons a second! The river also had a really neat,deep blue color.
Coco taking the plunge.
Huka Falls.
Today we set off on a three day journey around the North Island in a camper van. We're hoping to see some pretty cool places, so hopefully there will be a sweet new blog post about it by the end of the week! Much love to all! I'll leave you with some more pictures from around the neighboring farms. Cows are having babies all over the place!
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