New Zealand on a Very Tight Budget Day 23

It poured all night - I mean really poured. Places not far away had over 120mm of rain in 24 hours - that's nearly 5 inches in old money. I was getting quite worried about the road out - remember we still had 77KM of dirt road to get down. There were loads of rock falls we had to drive round and we only passed 4 vehicles in that entire time
BUT! what i hadn't bargained on were the waterfalls and streams. at one point we stopped on a bridge to look at a waterfall across the valley and I said I think we are standing on top of one. when we got to the other side we couldn't believe our eyes. We even saw 4 wild boar on the verge when we rounded the corner. Further on we were warned of stock on the road and there were dozens of horses grazing everywhere and even a few settlement.
Then suddenly we were out of the hills and on a flat plain before entering very pretty farm land dotted with what looked like bonfires smoking away. these were of course steaming vents - everywhere.
We are camped at Waikiti Thermal Pools campsite. If you are camping you have free access to the extensive range of pools and as the campsite is $22 per head and the pools $16.5 that makes it a good deal. The water is untreated and they empty the pools every night and refill them from the biggest boiling water spring in NZ - its quite a sight 40-60 litres of boiling water every second!. The forecast is for more rain today then the weather should start improving - but so far it's not caused us much inconvenience and if it rains this afternoon as forecast we shall retreat to the pools like Japanese monkeys!