Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
A few k's in the morning and we hit Rotorua, straight into the Zorbing balls, got alot of water round us for the first run down together. Was great craic and just like being born again coming out from inside the ball with alot of water! Got threw about alot on the zig-zag course which near caused us to be a little sick but made it through ok.
On the hill behind Roto-vegas we took the gondola to the top and had half a dozen Luge rides down the concrete tracks. Back at the top we were strapped into steel frame, hoisted into the air where we released ourselves to swing over the edge of the mountain at 150kph, was pretty cool feeling and alot less scary than the old bungy.
Spent the evening at Te Puia geothermal park/maori village, seen the Pohutu 'big splash' geysers along with the prince of wales' feathers. Stayed for the evening concert and Hangi were our group was accepted into the Maori meeting house and I acted as chief for our tribe, shaking hands and touching of noses. Was great experience, and even had a go at the Haka before having a feast of a Hangi.
Next day we headed for Kaituna river with for a bit of white water rafting to start with. After a gentle fall over a 2 then 3 metre waterfall we hit the biggest commerical waterfall in the world, 7metres. With a 50/50 chance of capsizing we went rightunder the water and luckily made it back up the right way round with everyone on board, the nexdt group weren't so lucky. Tackled a few more rapids but the grade 5 river was nothing we couldnt handle.
A short break later we were back on the river again to try a bit of sledging, I thought this was going to be a relaxing bobing about sort of affair with no much to do but float downstream. Couldnt have been further wrong, we had to kick for almost an hour as hard a we could, avoiding walls and ever changing eddy currents, while staying along the exact right line. We found out later we were running at full flood, the limit that we could go onto the river at, and only a year ago a few folk had drowned here doing the same thing. So after tackiling the rapids which we had to dive right into and under to get out ok we thought we were doin ok and goin to survive. Two rapids from the end came a mass of currents which pulled us down from the calm looking surface, Jo got caught by one and was instantly dragged below the water, and with only the sledge to hold onto fortunately the instructor spotted this and dragged her back to the surface. We were lad to get out in one piece just before the grade 6 rapid.
- comments