Epic World Tour Part II
Trip Start
Sep 02, 2007
1
19
31
Trip End
Ongoing
Rotorua,
New Zealand
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Anyways, I've been slacking I'm sure I'll continue to slack and there is just so much to do
I wish we had playgrounds like that back home!
here that you feel guilty setting foot in an internet cafe- but I'll try! Where to start?!? So I got to Auckland a week ago and met a couple of cool kids who were also looking to get out of the city, get in some treks, etc. Perfect! We booked tickets on the cheap inter-city bus and made our way down to Rotorua, a small town in the middle of the north island, where we figured we'd spend a night and then keep going to the big National Park near here. Ha, that was a week ago and still haven't left Rotorua. The town itself is pretty non-descript, small, cute, on a beautiful lake (pretty standard here really) but there is just sooo much to do in the surrounding area.
getting back on a bike!
The first day here we saw some sick mountain biking pictures so naturally the next morning we rented mountain bikes for the day and spent all day riding around one of the parks. This place puts any trails back home to shame. You could go for hours and hours and never get on the same trail- they have them all marked and rated and super well maintaned. Not having been on a mountain bike in about 6 months, I was exhausted after 5 hard hours, but man was it worth it! So just as we're about to book tickets to leave the following day, we hear about the Waitomo Caves just a couple of hours away. It's this region in the northwest part of the
Weeeeeee!
island that has tons of underground caves and you can book tours that take you for a full day caving trip. Ha, okay, we'll stay another day. Rented a car and made our way over there... I don't even know how to describe it.
Rappelling down...
Our group was five people plus the guide and everyone was awesome. We started by getting our harnesses on, practicing how to rappel on a little wall, and then bam... 'just jump over the edge' he says. I look down from the top of the cave where we were and all you can see is the river in the cave over 100 ft down!
another sweet cave shot
Yeah right!! After the first kid went down and started whoooing and yippppeing I didn't need much convincing though, and off I went. The rappel down was incredible... the cave was gorgeous with the sun streaming in and you just hung there in the middle of it all hearing your echoes.. until the guide tells me to get down there already! Once we were down we went caving for a while, spent an hour walking around in the dark through waist-deep water (there were sooo many glow worms that you
that hole was smaller than it looks!
could see fairly well after some adjusting) and squeezing through the rock formations. Then we grabbed inner tubes and did the whole way back down in the black water... freaking incredible!! To get out, we had to rock climb back up from where we rappelled, harnessed in of course. For anyone who has ever climbed with frozen fingers and big goofy water boots
before...
(yeah right, huh?), it was definitely a challenging experience. But oooh man, it was awesome! After that we did a little trek just off the side of the road (it's so nice to have a car here!) and started to make our way back when WHAM, HUGEEE fire in front of us. There had been a car accident just up the road and the cars caught on fire, just a few minutes before we got there. Everyone was okay, they got out before the fire,
...and after!
but the fire was spreading and the fire trucks hadn't gotten there yet. The first truck came and ran out of water pretty quickly- they had to drain some guy's swimming pool while waiting for the water tanker to come! I've never watched a forest fire be put out, it was pretty impressive and I've gotta give props to
the fire
the New Zealand fire deparment... they worked fast! Two hours later they opened up the pass and we were on our way again.
Phew, this is getting long huh? Okay, I'll start updating more than once a week so this doesn't happen again! What else? This town reminds me of Yellowstone National Park, with geysers and natural hot springs everywhere, so yesterday a bunch of us from the hostel went down to the natural spa and had some beers before going out. I've gotta, say, I *was* pissed about having to pay $20 for a hostel bed dorm, but it was well worth it yesterday for the free spa! Today I stopped by the dropzone and met some really cool skydivers... I got some contacts down in the south island where I want to work so I'm pretty psyched... and I got some beer drinking buddies for tonight who like to talk skydiving so I've gotta run and meet them!
So stay in touch, smile, and have a kickass day!
Much love,
Maia
