It wasn't raining this morning, so we headed out to Paradise Valley nature park to see some lions and native wildlife. The lions were great, they came right up to the fence and you could feel them breathing when they came really close. I was disappointed that they had no cubs, because they let you stroke and cuddle the cubs until they're six months old.

We walked around the rest of the park, feeding deer and sheep and finding possoms in trees and sleeping wallabies enjoying the sunshine. After lunch we watched the lions being fed, which was fun - they did a bit of fighting and growling at one another as the guy threw huge lumps of beef over the fence.

Rotorua is right in the centre of a big geothermal area, so we went off to find a park called Hell's Gate, which was full of sulphur lakes and boiling mud. The ground was very hot and steaming big stinky clouds, the natural springs were bubbling away and there were pools of grey mud that spluttered and boiled. It was really eerie, and looked like Venus would look if it was cool enough to look at it closely and you could breathe. The walk took about 45 minutes and the setting sunbeams made glowing tracks in the steam as we returned to the car.

On the way back we stopped at a swimming pool that was heated geothermally to 34 degrees centigrade (about 100F) and little spas that were lovely and warm at about 40C (110F or so). It was almost dark and the pool was outside, the lights made the steam glow, and we spent an hour or so swimming and soaking. We finally returned to the hostel, made supper and went to sleep.