road trippin it...

About a week ago Austin and I embarked on a tiny road trip to Rotorua to see more of good ole New Zealand. So let me take you along with us....

First and MOST importantly was the SHEEP SHOW!! ha ha yes that is what I said, a sheep show....a show with sheep....sheep doing a show. What more could you possibly ask for? Well I say nothing. And was it all it promised to be you may ask? Oh yes! and much much more. And anyone who knows me, knows that I love animals and for some reason they make me laugh more than anything... so needless to say this show was comedy hour :)

here are some of my fluffy friends...

Let me introduce you to....Jaba the Hut (on the left) and Perm (on the right) (named by me and Austin). These 2 were hands down my favorite....notice Perm smiling? He is just happy to be a part of such a fabulous show!

I had to take a solo pic alone with Jaba and he even showed a little leg... what a tease

What happens in a sheep show?
Well, I now have an increased knowledge of many different kinds of sheep and differences in their wool. I saw a sheep get sheared, a cow get milked, a sheep dog do tricks, baby lambs....and yes even 3 ducks made an appearance. It was a full farm extravaganza.

Now what could possibly compare to a sheep show? A Luge of course. It is fantastic....its like skateboarding down the most gigantic hill but getting to steer.

Away we go...

Now as you read the helmet you will see that...


SO up we go for a second round!


The view from the top so so pretty :)


After our first day of festivities....it was time to camp it out
(in the car because everywhere we went tried to charge us to camp)

The next morning we decided to go and see the "Buried Village". Sounds interesting, scary, maybe a little adventurous?? WELL.....it was NOT! It actually,we decided, might have been the worst thing we have ever spent our money on, ha ha, which made it SO funny. It is basically an outdoor museum about a little village that was buried under a volcano...and what is displayed? Oh you know... those exciting broken plates that were found, replica bed sheets and an old oven (that looked like a dirt hill to me)...ohhhh it was thrilling. ha ha but we were the only ones there so it was pretty fun we just fooled around and had leaf fights.

So since I had no desire to take pictures of the village itself here is a little of the beautiful nature


After the Buried Village we thought we would hit up some hot pools (pretty much what Rotorua is known for) We asked a local about some hidden hot pools that were free....and she told us about this place.
It was amazing warm bath like water, no one around and so pretty. It was so exciting....so we dove right in and started swimming. THEN we got to the other side and what awaited us was volcanic rock and boiling hot mud. It was painful and awful and we instantly decided to head back. But to get back meant to cross back over the incredibly sharp rocks and boiling mud. Austin decided to just steam roll the whole thing, but me? Well I came up with the genius idea of trying to dive OVER everything into clear safe water.
The diving idea was unsuccessful and THIS happened to my leg. It was so painful and the worst part was I had to swim back to the other side.
We tried to clean it up as much as we could....bandaged it and continued on to Raglan.
This is Raglan... so so beautiful. I just sat here on this grass and watched Austin surf at sunset, it was amazing and made Raglan one of my favorite places.

We were going to camp out and stay another night in Raglan BUT my leg was on fire and throbbing and needed some more care. So we headed home at 2 in the morning.

So this road trip was probably one of my favorites, I laughed, I cried and I was with my best friend, it was awesome :)

Okay just one more pic of Jaba.... I've gotta end this post with a bang!