Blog Entry #5
Use arrows at bottom to move forward/backward through posts.
I love the smell of
sulfur in the morning! Not. Went on our first adventure today -
Zorbing. If you don't know what Zorbing
is, google it - imagine a giant plastic ball inside another giant plastic
ball. Imagine a tiny hole that you dive
through to get into the inner ball. Then
put a bunch of water and two people in the ball. Then seal it up and push the ball down a big
hill. The water in the ball keeps you
sort of on the bottom sloshing around, so you are not head over heels, but you
are still sliding all over the inside of the ball as you roll down the hill.
Quite possibly the most fun I've had getting pushed down a hill. We did it twice.
Right after Zorbing
we headed to the Gondola to take us to the top of some mountain - gave us a
great panoramic view of Rotorua. To get
down the mountain, we luged - five times on three different= courses. I think we scared the crap out of the
Japanese tourists screaming "on your left, coming through" as we flew
by them. Suffice to say that safety
concerns are not overwhelming in NZ - they just stick you on a luge, test the
brakes once or twice, and send you down the mountain. There was one spot on the advanced track that
had a big hill where if you were going fast enough, you caught air. Oh, let's add to the fun the fact that it was
raining on and off, so I did skid on one side trying to break around a turn in
the rain. No Cards were harmed and we
had a blast.
I think I mentioned
in a previous post that the food here is very big and it is pretty expensive,
so we thought we'd lay low for lunch and hit up (sorry folks) McDonalds. I didn't want another ginormous beet and may0
sandwich. Plus, NZ McD's have special
Kiwi food - like the Georgie Pie (meat pie) that Damon had to try. This McD's had a McCafe - which, in addition
to all of their coffee drinks, had sourdough sandwiches, paninis, and a baked
goods case that rivals a nice bakery. Fancy!
After lunch, we
headed to the Redwood forest - we never understood why, but for some reason, NZ
ended up with a bunch of California Redwoods in a forest, so we hiked through
the forest - the Redwoods are not as impressive as the monsters in California,
but the forest itself was beautiful and the trees were stunning. The Redwood forest morphed into a tropical
jungle filled with silver ferns and Eucalyptus trees (no koalas). And yes, it rained on us while we were
hiking, too.
Our evening plans
involved going to a traditional Maori dinner where we learned about the customs
and traditions of the Maori people - including song, dance, crafts, weapons,
history, etc. And then we had a big feast. The Maori people came to NZ six hundred years
ago from Tahiti and faced similar challenges as Native Americans in the
US. The Maori fought hard for their
rights to retain their heritage and culture and are very proud to share it with
everyone. It was really a nice night and
we learned a lot. Damon did a
spectacular war dance and it is all caught on video.
On the bus back to
our hotel, the guide singled out each country to sing a song. Australia and UK both did nice songs about
their nationality. When US was called,
no one did anything, so Damon broke out into Sir Mix-a-lot - Baby Got
Back. He did our country proud. Of course that was the only song where the
whole bus started singing.
Got back to the
"stink hotel", packed up and we are ready to start our next adventure
as we head back to Auckland tomorrow, fly to Christchurch, and pick up our
Campervan for 8 nights on the road. We
are both having a lot of anxiety about our Bungee Jump, which is fast
approaching.
Almost forgot to
mention that I did all of the driving yesterday. It is freaky driving on the
left side of the road and right side of the car - it takes two people to
concentrate around all of the roundabouts and any time you have to turn - but I
think I got the hang of it pretty quickly.
Let's see what happens when we add in stick shift tomorrow!
No comments:
Post a Comment