What's that smell...?

Friday: We wake up in Tarunga, excited to experience one of the more anticipated towns on the trip. We stop by the front desk of the hostel and ask what is good to see in the town, and the super nice and enthusiastic (almost to the point of being creepy) guy behind the counter tells us "that we all look like very strong, fit boys and we should take a hike up Mt. Manginoui and then have a dip in the hot springs at the base of the mount. Before we go to the mountain, we take a walk to the flamboyantly yellow Pack N Save supermarket to get some food for the next day or two. It is on the way home that we realize why everyone is so nice in New Zealand...because all of the assholes live in Tauranga, while we were walking back to the hostel a van drove by with a bunch of twenty something year old guys yelling randomly at us, our luck didn't change much later in the day when we had all kinds of weird sexual gestures and obscenities yelled at us. The hike up the mountain took about twice as long as it should have because Keller and I were so fixated on catching the sheep that we would walk up part of the mountain than chase the surprisingly agile, furry, little animals down it. The view from the top was beautiful the weather was perfectly clear, you can see some of the pictures on Keller's Picasa account. We hike down the mountain (much faster going down), just as torrential downpours move in. We ran over to the hot pools, no digging this time, just $6. Delicious fish and chips again for dinner.

Saturday: After having numerous sexual gestures and swear words yelled at us the previous day, we decided that we were done with Taruanga, we took the short bus ride to Mt. Manginui, were we stayed at some surfer hostel, we were greeted unenthusiastically by the front desk girl, she showed us around the hostel, making sure to let us know that she was really hungover so we would get the abbreviated tour. We took another hike the mountain, this time right through the sheep pastures and watched the sunset. We have another swim in the hot pools and head back to the hostel, we called it a night early because of our early bus ride in the morning, and not wanting to binge drink with a bunch of trashy surfers. I was woken up multiple times that night to the sound of beer bottles breaking and people screaming and puking right outside our room.

Sunday: We leave the hostel to catch the buss to Roturua or "Rotovegas" as the same hungover woman behind the counter of the hostel tells us as we are leaving. We have a nice easy puke free bus ride to Rotourua. As the bus pulls in we are greeted by a nice quite city. We stumble off the bus pondering what about this city could possibly be anything like Vegas (we still have no idea). We check into our hostel Cactus Jacks, whose front desk person acted less happier to see us than the woman at the last hostel had. We walk around the hostel and realize we are in what looks like the set to a really bad western movie, all the rooms have different names such as the "shit house" for the bathroom and the "saloon" for the entertainment room. There is a central courtyard that has weird cowboy memorabilia nailed to the walls. The rooms are creepily decorated almost as if they were trying to cover something up. Wanting to escape the creepiness of the hostel we venture into the city and after having dinner we go walk around town and notice a building with 10+ pool tables inside, we go inside and the owner lets us play for free enjoying that fact that we can do something that doesn't cost money besides just sitting in our hostel, we play a good 3-4 hours of pool. We go back to our hostel after double checking that the doors were locked we slept (uneasily).

Monday: We decide we don't want to risk another night in the Cactus Jacks so we go to the Hot Rock Hostel. Deciding to investigate the weird sulfur/sewage smell that seemed had been lingering in Rotorua at times, we find the hot spring park, which was basically a tiny and extremely smelly version of Yellow Stone, that had everything from geysers to hotpools that you could stick your feet in. We decided to go to the bar across the street from our hostel for dinner after finishing our meals and a beer or two we decide to defend America's honor and test our new found pool skills from the night before on a few British guys who had been beating everyone in the bar at pool, and claimed that it was team pool night and they were "keeping things social" by making us play them. They make us pay the $2 pool table charge to play them and they proceed to beat us soundly 3-4 times. An hour or two later and about ten dollars poorer from rematching the British guys so many times we leave the bar really pissed off.

Tuesday: I wake up and my first thought is how pissed I still am at the British guys for beating us so many times the night before. We decide to get out of "Rotovegas" and take the bus to Taupo the self proclaimed sky diving capital of the world. Up to this point on the trip we have been having a problem with too much farting in the extremely small hostel rooms which ends up lingering. To solve the previously named problem Nathan proposes a "fart jar" that you have to put 10 cents in every time you fart in the room. Unfortunately the jar didn't really work and turned into an all out ban on farting the in the hostel rooms. We decided to get out of the room cause there was already over a dollar in the fart jar after about 20 minutes, as Nathan was climbing down from the bunk bed Nathan smacks his head on the glass light fixture and it splits clean in half shattering all over the floor, luckily no cuts this time.

Wednesday: Woke up today to the smell of cigarette smoke lingering in our room from the people who decided to smoke right outside the window that we had left open to reduce the lingering fart smell. After making a generous portion of cowboy toast, we decided to take a hike the the Huka Falls, which ended up just being intense rapids. We decided to walk past the falls to the Honey Hive, which was a bee house and Meadery, which had just burned down due to arson. We trekked even further to the Prawn Farm were you can fish for prawns, unfortunately we got there too late and was told the fishing was closed. Budget pasta for dinner tonight.

Excuse my poor spelling/punctuation everyone who knows me knows that its not exactly my strong point.