Yesterday we got to New Zealand at 5:30 and made it to are hotel at 7. Sadly we could not check in until 3 so we went to a cafe and got muffins. Are meal cost about 80 dollars which is a lot in New Zealand dollars. They call flashlights torches, they call to-go boxes take-away boxes, and restrooms toilets. Also yesterday we basically sat down and stared at each other. Finally we got to check in and we took showers ate and fell asleep. Then today I woke up and my dad asked me if I wanted to scale a volcano called Rangitoto. Only we went because my brother, sister, and mom did not want to go. We got there and had to be back by 5:00 p.m. and it was 1:50 (we had to be in time for the last ferry) so for the first few meters it was easy then we started going uphill and it got harder and harder. My dad had to take a few breaks but I tried to keep going. When we finally reached the top we were covered in sweat head to toe. The volcano has not been active for a while so you can not see lava but you can see the crater. If you drill straight down in the crater and all the way through the earth you would end in Spain. The island is the volcano so 700 years ago that island was not there. On are decent we decided to go a different way. Not a good idea. We walked down quite a few flights of stairs and ended on a road. Then we read the sign and it did not tell us that we were in the right area so we thought we had to go back up all the flights of stairs but then we read the other side of the sign and told us we could follow the road back to the wharf. Then we looked to the side and it said it would take a hour and forty-five minutes. We only had a hour and thirty minutes left. We walked and walked and walked. When we got back it only took us a hour and fifteen minutes. I thought I was never going to see civilization again before we got there. We had extra time so we looked at a ruin and it turns out that the island used to have a jail in the 1930's. We got on the ferry and headed home. We did not want to walk back to the hotel so we called the rest of are family and we went to eat. New Zealand does not have as good as steak as the U.S.A.. We went home afterword then I started this blog.
We started packing today and my room has been a disaster and my bag is so full not even a sheet of paper will fit in there. To add to that today is Christmas and I had to add more to my bag.
The other downside is that it has been snowing and sleeting so we are not sure if we can make it back to Conway in the morning. We leave Thursday to the airport which will be sad because we will have to say goodbye to everyone.
If you are reading this in, I don't know, January , then i would just skip to the next entry because this is a test to see if this works. So what I am saying is I am not on my trip going around the world, but I am sitting on my bed at "home" typing this so it is not that interesting so just skip ahead.
