More rain, with half-hour breaks, just long enough to think it might be worth doing something, but not long enough to actually do it.

We booked ourselves onto a white-water rafting trip on the Kaituna River, but the amount of rain coming down made the river dangerous enough that the trip was cancelled.

We consoled ourselves with a trip to the Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland. Close to the park there was a great pool of bubbling mud with huge bubbles of steam plopping through the grey mud. The actual park was pretty spectacular, lots of steaming craters, coloured by different chemical compounds. Some of the pools are full of fizzing water caused by carbon dioxide in the water.

It was great to walk round the pools in the rain with clouds of warm steam blowing round you.

The rain continued to soak the area and we decided to move on to Waitomo the next day.