Rotorua

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The first thing that hits you when you arrive in Rotorua is the smell. Because this is an area of geothermal activity (spas, geysers, hot pools etc.) it stinks of sulphur, which reminds me of Will's farts in the hire car when he was driving and wouldn't open the window for us.

We stopped off at the Tamaki village offices to pay for our cultural Maori experience that night, and had a quick tour entitled the Realm of Thane, which was very strange and pretty rubbish. Although we did learn that Maoris originally came from China thousands of years ago, and inhabited the many Pacific islands including Tahiti before coming to Rotorua. We were also told about some native plants, one of which I wish I could remember the name of as it cures tooth ache, which I have at the moment thanks to my bottom left wisdom tooth.

After checking into the Hot Rocks hostel, which was pretty naff really, we went to the Tamaki Maori village aboard our Waka (canoe) which was actually a bus. After a 10 minute journey, which had lead me to believe that our driver was on drugs, we arrived at the village and our elected chief, Jeff, met up with the other chiefs and waited for the wero (challenge) from the Tamaki tribe. This is basically a ritual where the Maori tribal chiefs perform some mental dance that is supposed to intimidate the tourists. It is very important to the Maoris that you don't laugh, smile, or imitate the faces or noises they make during this. A fully grown man grunting, sticking his tongue out and making his eyes massive is pretty funny, and I don't know how all the chiefs managed not to react. Once one of our chiefs had picked up the plant that indicated that we had peaceful intentions, we were allowed into the village where weapon and cooking displays were shown. We then headed into the theatre room where we watched various dances and were informed about Maori culture some more. We were all really impressed by the weapons demonstration, and how much detail the Maori warrior went into about cracking enemies sculls and ripping their scalps clean off. The Maoris never throw their weapons, so don' thave spears etc. as they believe their weapons are connected to them. After some more dancing and a performance of the real Haka, we were lead into the dining room for the banquet that took 4 hours of underground cooking. And it was a great feed. We were treated to chicken, mussels, fish, lamb and mint sauce (fantastic) and all the trimmings including some native sweet potato thing. After the meal and some more singing, some college kids randomly performed the All Blacks Haka and we headed back to the Lava bar next to our hostel for some more beers. The crazy lady driver was at the helm again and started singing into her microphone. The journey finished with her rendition of 'coming round the mountain' whilst driving round and round a roundabout, somewhat strange.

Our hostel had 2 indoor thermal pools and an outdoor spa pool as well as the hottest swimming pool I've ever been in which made for a relaxing evening. The next day we took the cable car up to the luging (a similar set up as the one in Queenstown). We were a bit sceptical of the luges at first but after the first run were having an ace time and the racing really began.Will span out right in front of me, which was one of the funniest things I've ever seen and I couldn't stop laughing for ages. He also tried to overtake me on the outside in another race but I ran him off the road and he came to a standstill on the grass (revenge for the paintballing). It had been raining and the wet track made for some powersliding simulations. If you pull the handlebars back, you brake, and if you hold them in the middle you accelerate. You can pull off a handbrake turn by releasing the handlebars, but this was no time for stunts as the races were underway. Overall, I won our championship with Dan coming a close 2nd. We really took it to the extreme, going up on two wheels round some corners, and leaving the track on one downhill section. You can see why you need to wear a crash helmet. Thankfully none of us came off the luges. Luging is one of the most enjoyable things I've done, so much fun, and we all agreed it'd be carnage if 10 lads all raced together. The dude running it gave us a free run at the end of the day, which was the best race of the day. Dan was just leading me when I took the opposite way at a fork in the track. I came out just infront of him when the tracks rejoined, but he just managed to beat me, very lucky! As one of our money making ideas for when we get back, we are considering setting up a luge track in the U.K. and hope it'll soon become a national sport, so watch this space.

Another thing about Rotorua that I have never seen before is bubbling mud and steam coming out of the ground randomly around the town. There are also some geysers and champagne pools nearby, but sadly we didn't have time to visit them as we only found out about them on the last day.

One night was spent bowling, and those of you that have played with me will know, I am rubbish at it and lost all 3 games. I then got 7 balled by Will at pool, which makes it 1-1 in the travelling series. That really hurt.

White water rafting down the Kaituna river was next, which included a trip down the largest commercially rafted waterfall in the world (7 metres). For the price it was an excellent trip, but nowhere near as extreme as I'd hoped. dan didn't even fall out of the boat despite my efforts at prodding him with my oar. Going over the big waterfally was pretty cool though, with the boat getting completely submerged (see pictures link below).

The next day saw us head to Waitomo for the day, aboard the Waitomo Wanderer. Sounds impressive but actually it was a dirty old bus with an old lady driving who not only talked really loudly on the microphone the whole way there about irrelavant stuff when we were trying to kip, almost killed us on the way back by nearly crashing into the back of another car, who thankfully saw it coming and swerved out of the way!

Waitomo means 'Water Caves' and is one of the top places to partake in a spot of black water rafting, again recommended by Rob. And it was bloody brilliant. The trip starts with a 110 ft abseil into a cave with no safety harness (strange but true) and parts of the cave are barely larger than me, into the Black Abyss. We went for the 5 hour trip, which was more expensive but well worth it. The other trip is a bit tamer, and whereas we had 4 lads on our trip, the other tubing trip had women and children, and went at a much slower pace. We were really lucky with our group as everyone was confident in the caves, our guide explained that it sometimes takes 20 minutes for some people to do the abseil which we did in less than 2!

After the abseil we followed the guide deeper into the cave, just like 'The Descent' for those of you that have seen it. We then turned the torches off and were clipped to a zipline or flying fox, and hurtled along the line in the pitch black with glowworms on the cave roof that looked like stars. After morning hot chocolate we were given our tubes and holding them behind us, jumped into the river a few metres below, the plan being to land in a sitting position in the tube at the end of it. We then paddled up the river learning about the caves and its inhabitants along the way. The cave was actually used in The Lord of the Rings as Gollum's cave. We then turned all the lights out and floated downstream with the glowworms above us, which was really cool. That was until our guide told us that 7 ft eels inhabit the waters and have been known to wrap themselves around visitor's legs. And they bite. The largest one, nicknamed Gollum, attacked an American girl a few weeks ago. Great!

We then ditched the rings and headed into some narrower tunnels and another part of the river. As we were sculling down the narrow river, and eel swam into me, which made me jump. In more shallower water, we walked down "Drunk Man's Alley" which is a really uneven river bed that makes you walk like a drunk. You have to be really careful as I found out as there are huge holes in the riverbed and it's very easy to fall into one, up to your head.

As we had so much time, we were able to visit the dry tour caves, which are probably the most visually impressive. The lighting effects and the rock formations look amazing. We then headed back into the water and crawled through a really narrow muddy tunnel that ended in a three way mud fight, and a dodgy drop down back into the river. Some of the spaces that we had to squeeze through were barely big enough. At one point we were challenged to climb round the side of the cave without falling into the water, none of us, including the guide managed it though, although Will came close. The trip just got better and better, and the final part was definately the most exciting and most demanding. There were 2 exits of the cave, the easy way and the hard way. Of course we opted for the extreme waterfall climbing which involved climbing about 4 waterfalls towards daylight, and it was like something out of the Goonies. Sadly our trip had come to an end and it was back to the headquarters for a shower, soup and bagel. Sitting here now, Dan and I have both said that if there's one thing that we could do again in New Zealand, it'd be the Black Water Rafting. If you go to Rotorua, you absolutely have to do this Black Abyss trip, unless of course, you're claustrophobic!

White and black water rafting pics


The next leg of the journey took us to Auckland, which is where I am now, writing this blog. We leave for the Bay of Islands tomorrow morning and it's the first time in absolutely ages that I've been up to date with the blog!

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