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Published: February 21st 2009
Rotorua
View of lake Rotorua and the luge track Nibby- Well, it's been a fun packed few weeks since our last blog entry, I hardly know where to begin! Oh of course, we just left the stunning warm beaches of the Coromandel Peninsular and were headed for stinky Rotorua. Those of you who have been to Rotorua will know what I'm talking about! Lets just say, when Matty let one rip I couldn't tell the difference for the strong smell of sulphur all around. It was that bad!
Our first day in Rotorua we checked out the sky ride and luge. For those of you who haven't (yet) experienced the wonders of the luge I will give you a quick run down on how it works. You grab the sky ride up to the top of a big hill and then sit in a sledge with wheels and meander (race) your way down the hill along the windy course either beginner, medium or advanced track. Don't panic you do get handle bars to hold on to, and brakes although I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to turn one of these things! They can get some speed! I nearly fell out when I took a corner on the advance
The Luge lift
Us in our geeky helmets track too fast. I demoted myself to the medium track after that! Much more to my liking! Matt kept saying how all the boys he goes go-karting with would love to have races down it! I think the winner should be the one who has the most skin left at the end of the race! Straight after our fun at the luge we headed next door for 18 holes (mini golf!). Nibbler beat Matty of course!
We took a drive round the lake and checked out the park in the centre of town. It's really bizarre walking round what seems like an ordinary park until you come across fenced off areas. As you get closer you can see steam rising from a pool of smelly bubbling mud or a still lake with an eerie cloud of smoke rising from it. Amazing!
In the evening we had booked in to do a Maori Culture evening. It was something I had done on my previous trips to NZ but I thought it was important for Matt to experience it too. Our driver, Dennis, picked us up from our hostel and took us, along with a bus full of other tourists,
Rotorua
Lunch over the lake to the Tamaki Maori evening. He told us to imagine that we were a maori tribe going to visit another tribe. In our tribe we had to select a chief. Nobody seemed particularly keen so Matt stepped up. The chief had to be male and lead the tribe in before being welcomed in by the chief of where we were visiting. There was a maori show with traditional dancing before a “Hangi” feast. Hangi is how the maoris cook their food under the ground. It was well tasty! We were both pretty pooped after such a busy day!
The next day we checked out of Rotorua and on the way to Taupo we stopped off at the famous Wai-o-tapu thermal wonderland. This place really is amazing! It's so hard to describe. It has exploding geysers, bubbling mud pools, steaming sulphur pits and deep green lakes. Oh and the whole area STINKS of rotten eggs! Brilliant! We spent half a day walking round this area enjoying the hot New Zealand sun on our backs. Good times.
Finally we reached beautiful Taupo. I have such fond memories of this place, and, although neither of us jumped out of any aeroplanes
Rotorua mini golf
Giving Matty a wooping at 12,000 ft I still felt a strange connection with the place. We spent lots of time relaxing by the huge lake basking in the sun, played another round of mini golf (which I won might I add!), but our main activity in Taupo was the Rapid Jet Boating experience. It was brilliant! Matt was wishing he hadn't drank so much the night before as we were getting thrown around in 180 degree spins and shooting over the rapids and managing to get the whole boat out of the water! That got the blood pumping I can tell you.
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