Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Rotorua stinks, its a realtivley big city (NZ relativity) and is right on teh thermal area and just stinks of sulphur. and you dont really get used to it either. anway...stayed in a hostel for one night when we got there as we were all a bit fed upand couldnt bebothered loking for somewhere to camp. attemptede to go out but the one bar we found thaty had been reccomendde was well, horrific. a wierd mixture of backpackers and locals. made you feel wierd just being there so we left and retired to teh tv room to start what turned into being watching every film the hostelk had over a three day period.
got up the next morning and booked to go zorbing. its soooo funny. the first go two of us went dowbn togther, down the straight track. it looks really slow when you watch but feels really fast whebn your in. they put warm water inside so you swill around in a nice bath giggling the whole way down. bascally you just slide and flop into each other. the second go i went on my own downt eh zig zag track. this one is even better. erverytime the ball hits a corner it chucks you to the other side.again, just giggled the whole way down.
went rafting again that afternoon, this one was 10 times better than queenstown. the crew were wicked, making us say mauri prayers and chants while we were going down. had me sat up at the front of the boat down some of the rapids, paddlingd back up the rapids so the boat filled with water, let us all jumped out and then got swepped off down river so 10 of us had to get in the other raft. there was just so many rapids it was incredible. three water falls as well. one of which is 7.5m high, the biggest you can do conmmercially in the world apparantly!
went to the polynesian spas that nghts, the big thermal spa baths which was really nice looking over teh lake, but just smelt worse than the rest of the city.
the next day we went for a mauri evening. to be honest, a bit disspointing, very commercial and overly touristy. it could have been done in england, it didnt seem that authentic but it was still pretty interesting and i learned a fair bit.
did various shows and talks, the haka and then we say donw for wht was supposed to be traditional mauri food. looked pretty standard to nme but never mind. bumped into someone iid sailed teh whitsundays with which was a nice suprise.
the thing that spoiled teh haka the most was that the cleaner from the hostel was in it. a big fat guy that was camp as christmas appeared in the war dance. it was pretty entertaining watching him trying to do the scary faces but he really didint pull it off! but got to let him off sicne he must have nown we werent suppose to be in teh hostel. we only slept there one night but then had the door code so kept using teh faciites and the tv room. desperate times and all that.
set off driving then to make it upthe coromandel peninsular for hot water beach. pretty long drive which left us sleeping in what turned out to be someones drive, sort of!
- comments