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Rotorua is a place known best for its geothermal activity with a number of geysers and hot mud pools located across the city, and it is for this reason the city is also renowned for its unique sulphur smell (the result of the geysers releasing hydrogen suphide) into the atmosphere. But we were there for none of that (well we would take a look at the geysers) - we were there for zorbing and luging!
Once off the bus from Auckland via Hamilton we quickly navigated ourselves to the YHA a short walk away opposite Kuirau Park and across the road from Base (which we had tried to book, but which had been full). The place was pretty new, clean, modern - a lot of glass - and Lucy and I had a 4 bedroom dorm room to ourselves for the night, which made a welcome change to slumming it with 5 or 6 other people. We wandered about the centre for a bit looking for somewhere to eat. We set our sights on an english looking pub that went by the name of 'The Pig and Whistle' and ordered a beer and nachos (OH yes!) The beer was pretty watered down (the standard I have kinda come to expect of New Zealand) but the nachos were piled high with plenty of cheese - delicious. There was also a floor show in the form of a group of 4 girls singing along to the music at full volume with make believe microphones as if they were singing karaoke - it kept us pretty entertained whilst we waited for our food.
We were up reasonably early the next morning - ready for a day of adventure. We found the appropriate bus and got off at the Zorb Stop (very convenient for us backpackers) and filled in a small disclaimer/health and safety thing on a touch screenc omputer than then proceeded to print a certificate including the most appalling photo from a webcam attached to the computer - I looked like s*** - and this was before I'd been soaked to my skin in the zorb! We changed into our swim things and discovered we'd both taken it upon ourselves to wear red swim shorts with black vests so looked very matching. We'd decided to do one together before doing one each individually and my s*** was it awesome. You wait at the bottom of the hill and a small van picks you up and takes you to the top where you must first dive into the zorb through the hole in the middle of the ball - Lucy did this a lot more gracefully than I did, although in my defence I was attempting not to smack Lucy who was already sitting in the ball. The then roll you along to the exit and you basically roll down the hill. The track for groups is straight, but my s*** do you go fast. We're "sitting" in a small pool of water in the zorb ball, and slipping and sliding everywhere on top of each other, all over the shop, water is everywhere - under you, above you, to the side, at the bottom we went over a bump and you can see us quite clearly in the video suddenly jump up off the ground in the ball. The video of us zorbing is in fact classic because the woman we had given it to to record us giving this commentary and its just hilarious - "They're going pretty fast actually, f*** me they're going fast, they're all over the place... f*** me." You'd need to watch it, but its awesome. We then took it turns to go individually and I was much more stealthy diving into the ball this time. We had the choice of doing the straight or the zig zag track and having done the straight track together opted for the zig zag, whilst the straight track had been all about us falling over each other the zig zag track was all about just being thrown about the ball by the track - you had like zero control over the thing, but it was immense and like the straight track ended far too soon. We bought the photos having had such a blast we felt we couldn't not and waited for the bus to take us to our next stop - the luge.
To get to the luge you first take a gondola up the side of Mount Ngongotaha, 487m up, which gives you some pretty amazing views of Lake Rotorua, Rotorua and the surrounding area. At the top they have 3 luge tracks to choose from - the scenic, the intermediate and the advanced tracks. We paid to do all 3.
The scenic track was a 2km ride through redwood trees with a number of rest stop areas for taking photos that we utterly ignored. The intermediate track was much the same with a somewhat more advanced curve on the side of the mountain, a curve which a small girl took it upon herself to drive about as a slowly as was humanely possible to drive on - Lucy was stuck behind her for a while, but every time I attempted to over take her she would turn uncontrollably to prevent me from doing so until I lost patience and pushed past her regardless of whether she crashed into the side of the cliff. The advanced track was short, but had a whole lot of bends, dips and one big hill that the 2 of us were clearly driving far too fast on and went flying over. They were a whole load of fun, although the chair lift that you had to take from the bottom of each back to the top was slightly never wrecking above the forest.
We then took a stroll through Kuirua Park since it was en route to our hostel and had a look about at all the geothermalness. Some of them looked pretty attractive, the majority looked like a child had been playing in the mud and dug big deep holes. Regardless it was free, and it was worth a look.
We went to Base for dinner and got a meal deal with lasagne and beer for $10 - not bad at all - and would have stayed longer, but it was a bit dead. We headed back to the hostel and some other backpackers had rudely turned our private room into a dorm room again (rude!) so I went and uploaded some photos on the internet before turning in, after all tomorrow we were gonna be up early to pick up a rental car!
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