Nicky in New Zealand

Nicky missed the deadline for the Bulletin with this so thought i would upload it here:

I had four absolutely amazing days in New Zealand with my host dad and my host sister.
We started our trip with driving from Auckland down to Waitomo, where we spend the night in a nice country B&B. Down in Waitomo did I see the biggest rabbit I have ever seen. But We did also explore what Waitomo is famous for, the caves. We went Black Water Rafting, it was one of the most memorable things I have ever done.
In the cave 100 m under the ground, surrounded by nothing else then totally darkness. The only thing you could hear was a waterfall in the distance.  The guide told us to turn off our lights and we did lean back lying in the cold water looking up. Seeing all the thousands of glow-worms, like lying in the dessert an clear night and watching the stars with no other sources of lights around you. It was just indescribable and really relaxing, I could have been floating around there for hours.

The next day did we drive from Waitomo to Rotarua with the smelling mud baths. We spend two nights there at "The Red Rock" motel. We went Water Rafting,  if the black water rafting was the most beautiful thing I have ever done, this was the most adrenaline filling thing I have ever done, It was such a feeling to go down along the river down through a seven meter high waterfall, you can imagine. It was so cool.

We went to a dinner show the last night, with a local Maori tribe. It was really good and I learnt a lot about their culture. They came fully dressed up, rowing in a hand carved boat on their holy river with water clear as glass, sipping up from the underground geyser. We did follow them up to their village where they did a little theatre where they explained about their traditional dances and music etc. Later on the night a guide did show us around in the forest and told us about different plants that they used as medication.
We finished our trip with one day of shopping in Auckland and we went up in Auckland's Sky towel, after collecting a lot of courage I did lie down on the glass floor 180 meters above the ground!
I'm really lucky that I could go with my host family to NZ, not only because I have dreamt about visiting NZ since I was little, I did also learn  a lot of things about the NZ culture and the Maori that I had no idea about before. It is a place that I definitely want to go back to in the future.