Wow! What a couple of days!

We are now in Rotorua and have 24 hour internet access. I think this will give us enough time to catch everyone up.

We had no time to blog yesterday. When we woke up the Rosier/Giff party decided to go on the city bus tour. You know the tours where the bus takes you around to all the sites and you can get off at any one you want . . . that's what we did. It was pretty awesome. We felt like we were able to see the whole city and get more details then we would have otherwise. This was perfect for us b/c it was raining and dreary out.

The tour hit everything from the zoo, museum, harbor, two markets, rose garden, mt eden, eden park, and many others. I think there were about 14 total. It was very beautiful. One of our favorite parts were going up to the top of mt eden. You could see the whole city from that vantage point. We also got off at the museum. We checked out the Maori cultural section, and the dinosaur exhibit. The TRex named Sue was being featured so we had to go see it.

We were going to get off at other stops but we had a tour at 2:30 we needed to get to. Once we got off the bus, we freshened up and went to meet the Downes at the "Yacht" for a little sailing. Yes, we all went sailing and we each steered the boat for a while.

After sailing the harbor we went to the maritime museum. I learned more about boats then I probably needed too.

One of my favorite parts of the day were sampling the Green Muscles, a local favorite. The Muscles were HUGE! Jennifer and I shared a kilo! Helen treated herself to a lamb roast.

By the time we got home were exhausted! We had to be up early in the morning for our bus ride to Rotorua. It was BEAUTIFUL! Green rolling hills and cute little towns sprinkled in. On the way here this morning we had morning tea and then went into the caves to look at the glow worms. It was quite a day already.

We are going to be heading out to dinner soon. I will write more later and try to upload a couple pictures.

Couple quick things:
- TJ, the toilet flushes down. It doesn't swirl. I know! I was ready to see the counter clockwise swirl.
- The town we are in now smells like sulpher. It is supposed to have natural hot springs that we might check out in the morning.