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| The Swoop - note the tight grip I still have on Glenn's arm! |
| Erin's Journal 01-08-03 New Zealand Today was a busy day! We left Tauranga around 9:30am, headed for Rotorua. I read about it en route, and found that it is the north island's most visited city. Some term it the adrenaline capital of NZ. This is because most of the adventure activities can be found here - skydiving, bungee, swooping, zorbing, etc. Don't worry, I didn't know what a couple of those were until we arrived in New Zealand either! We had a hard time deciding what activities to pursue today, as we were slightly tired from our dolphin experience the day before, so to solve this question, we stopped off in the information center in town and picked up about 40 pamphlets of things to do. Then I thought it would be prudent to find ourselves a place to stay before heading out to do anything. We found the local YHA backpacker and got a double room, no problem. Not sure, but we think that pre-bookings are only really important for weekends. While checking in, our hostess asked what we planned to do, and gave us a few good suggestions. There is so much to do in Rotorua that we figured we'd better stay for an extra day! The YHA got a better deal on the skyline gondola rides than we would have by ourselves, so we prepaid for a gondola ride and 5 luge rides. They take you up the mountain in a gondola for views of the lake and a few entertainments up top, then there are 3 luge tracks for people to race down the mountain in a small, wheeled plastic cart. I was slightly leery when I saw all the optional padding provided, but we donned the required helmets and got on the luge for our first ride down, and it was really fun! You can control your speed with handbrakes by pulling back on the steering bar, so I took it easy the first couple of rides down, then got my confidence and started racing Glenn. He always won, as he is more of a daredevil than I am, but it was still a blast. And I probably enjoyed the ski-lift ride back up the hill as much as the rides down! After this, we headed on to the Agrodome, home to the major adrenaline attractions in Rotorua. First stop was the Zorb, in which a person or two can get inside a huge plastic ball, then get rolled down a hill. They have dry zorbs where you're strapped immobile to keep you from burning on the plastic, but it was windy so you couldn't do that one. The other option is a wet zorb, where they throw in a couple of buckets of warm water with you and you slip all around as you're rolling! I didn't care to get wet and battered, so I told Glenn to go for it and stayed at the bottom of the hill to take photographic evidence. It was hilarious to see this little figure rolling and bumping along downhill, then see Glenn emerge all soaked! He loved it! The crowning touch was next: a Swoop. This is where up to 3 people are zipped into a sleeping bag-like harness, hooked up to a bungee cord and pulled up high, then released to go swinging madly forward like superman. I had agreed to do this, and had a few moments' doubt when I watched the platform raise, and raise, and raise to 130 meters! (that's almost 400 feet up!). Glenn and I went together, so we stood there on the ground platform getting zipped into these bags with shoulder straps, then yanked off our feet and slowly raised backward by a cable attached near our feet to the level of the bungee platform. Let me tell you - it is much higher from up top than it looks from the ground! That's when I started having trouble breathing. Not to a point where it was serious, but I kept saying to Glenn, 'this is too high! This is way too high!' Finally we were all the way up, and it was my job to pull the ripcord! I didn't want to, and hesitated, but knew that it was the only way down! So I pulled - and we dropped down about 30 feet before the cables caught us and sent us shooting forward like we were on a huge swingset! The ride takes you flying forward at 130km/hr (3 Gs), and it flashed by in a blur with both of us screaming our heads off. Then the swinging down commenced, so we were just casually flying back and forth as we slowed down. That was the fun part! They took a bunch of pictures of us, and within a couple of swings I was able to smile genuinely for them...but it still took me a few more swings to let go of Glenn's arm! After this was over and we were back on solid ground, we sat with some of the other couples who were going after us and shared their experience. Then we laughed over our photos and even bought a couple to share with everyone back home. By then, it was 5pm and time to head back to the hostel, as we'd signed up for a dinner/show at a Maori village to soak up a little of the native culture and eat a hangi - a meal cooked in the ground. We even had time for a short nap, and were refreshed by the time we caught the little bus out there. The show was really fantastic. The Mitai family had only recently reclaimed their native land, and prepared this show to preserve their cultural dance and heritage, to share with tourists and other visitors. The performers were mostly the youngest of the family, teenagers still being taught the songs and legends, and having a lot of fun was part of the event. There were only about 16 of us, which made it much more intimate and enjoyable. The chief in particular had such presence and charisma that he literally made the show. He is a member of one of the premier Maori performance groups in New Zealand, and was very impressive, as were all the family members we met. During the performance outdoors, it started to rain, so we ended up having the hangi inside. This was a feast, and very tasty. We all sat around and ate till we were stuffed. Then we got to go outside in the dark and walk down to the river, where we were treated to the local glow worm populations. I had expected these glowy, fat worms, but in fact they were tiny slim little things buried along the side of the trail, with a pinpoint of bright blue light on their bums, which serves them to attract the insects they eat. It was great, and with the help of flashlights, we even saw some of the eels that populated the natural spring pool where the water spurts out of the mountainside. Cool! By the time we got back to the hostel, we were pleased and tired, and went to check out the hot pool in the courtyard. It was PACKED! So we decided not to go in, and spent about an hour chatting with a couple of the guys from the Mitai dinner. Tomorrow we planned a bunch of hiking at the local geological sites of interest, and possibly a horseback ride in the morning. |
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| Glenn emerges soaked from the Zorb - a huge plastic ball that is rolled downhill with you inside it! |