Home is Behind, The World Ahead: Catching Up Part 3 - Finally Up to Date and What is that Smell?

My attempt was to be completely caught up by yesterday but the amount of time it took to get that last post up was horrendous. So I will cover the last several days in this post...Better get started then.

December 24th- For Christmas Eve we went to see the Waitomo Glowworm Cave which is a very short tour (45 Minutes) but it was spectacular. You weren't allowed to take pictures so my trusty camera stayed behind but look up pictures online if you are curious about it. The only way I can describe it is that it's like looking up into the night sky and seeing the brightest stars you can imagine. That doesn't do the glowworms justice though. It was quite the sight. After touring the cave, we drove down to Rotorua and got a hotel for that night and the next day. That night we went to the movies and saw the newest Hobbit movie (My second time, Mom's first). I can now say that I saw one of the Hobbit movies in the country that it was filmed in...impressive if you ask me. ;)

December 25th- For Christmas day we hung out in our hotel room and relaxed the day away. It was a good catch up on sleep and gave us the spring back in our step to head out and finish our tour of the North island.

December 26th (Today) - We woke up early (Ish) and went to check out the Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland that was highly recommended to visit while in Rotorua. It was a stinky place (Sulfur anyone?) and it was an okay place to visit. I feel that if I had more interest or education in earth sciences that I would have understood or at the very least appreciated it more. But nonetheless here's what we saw. The two things that I enjoyed the most from this place were some of the crazy colors of things as well as the mud pits because serious mud boiling is weird.....really weird.

So after the Thermal Wonderland we hit the road with the intent of driving down to the Lake Taupo and Tongariro National Park area. Lake Taupo was huge and beautiful and on a whim upon seeing a sign, we pulled off to see the Huka Falls. The falls were gorgeous. The color of them was an icey blue that was unreal. The amount of water pouring over the falls is enough to fill five Olympic size pools every minute. That's a lot of water.