New Zealand Pt 2- Rotorua

Friday 22 April

     Sulfur. Sulfur. Sulfur. This is what Rotorua smells like! And if you don't know what Sulfur smells like... its like rotten eggs. And if you don't know what rotten eggs smell like... Well LUCKY YOU! Rotorua is known for its geothermal activity. This means there are lots of hot springs and geysers and volcanic activity going on around the area. Now this all sounds really cool and it was, but I wish someone would have warned me about the smell. I did NOT know about the smell. 

This is why the whole town stinks! A sulfur lake.

     We got to Rotorua late, almost 10 pm late. Which normally I wouldn't consider late, but on Good Friday it is pretty late. Or at least it felt late. The whole town was deserted. I wasn't expecting a big city, but it is a tourist destination on the North Island, so I was at least expecting people. Nope, there were none! It was us and the people on our bus. So we got directions from the bus driver and headed to our hostel, Crash Palace. 

     We were lucky because we got there right before they were about to close reception for the night. This was weird because it is a backpackers so you think they would be open late...? Nope. But it was a nice cute place. It wasn't a chain and I believe it used to be someone's house. So it was really fun and the staff was so nice (we were constantly asking them questions... Where is there good food? How do you get to here? How much is a taxi? What is there that's free?) hahaha you get the idea. So we got all checked in and our stuff up to our room when we realized we were starving! 

     We went back down to reception because they had free pasta available that night. So we got a bowl and started trying to get the water to boil. Lauren and I decided to go see if we could find any pasta sauce. We walked to the outskirts of town and NOTHING was open. "Looks like we'll just have to deal with plain pasta." Well the lack of pasta sauce was the least of our problems. We got back and the water hadn't even started to boil, turns out the stove was broken. So we switched to another one. And this one was taking forever. Soon Lauren and Michelle decided to take over and once the water was "hot" not boiling, they put the pasta in thinking it would be fine. BOY WERE THEY WRONG! It was sitting in there for an hour, we were using an electric kettle to boil water and changing it out frequently to get the pasta to cook. We were soooo hungry. Finally they decided it was "cooked" enough and we all started to dig in. Ugh! It was horrible, it was gluey on the outside and still slightly crunchy on the inside. So we found the spice rack and attempted to cover up the mess. It wasn't perfect but we made it work. We all had different combinations of spices, and after a blend of garlic, rosmary, black pepper and basil, mine was alllllmost edible. But of course as starving backpackers we ate it anyways. Every last noodle! 

     Finally we went up to bed so we could be up early for the next day's activities. 

Saturday 23 April

View of Skyline. 

     We got up pretty early and headed to breakfast. Some of the girls ate at a little deli and had pancakes or eggs, but Lauren and I went over the to grocery store and each bought a pastry and a piece of fruit. After this we decided we were going to go to Skyline (even though it was raining and foggy). This is at the top of the mountain and has a ton of stuff to do. To get to the top you take a gondola, and then once at the top you can go on the skyvue swing, or do a street luge down the side of the mountain, or you can even dine on the gondola or at the restaurant at the top. 

     We all decided to go up on the gondola, and the view was amazing even with the fog. We could see most of the town.  Then all of us except Michelle decided to luge. But first Jessica and Kirsten decided to do the skyswing! It was really fun to watch, but I would never do it. Its similar to the ripcord at Valleyfair, but instead they were in a giant swing/ ball thing, and were flying over the side of the mountain! 

     After this we went over to the luge area.

We're ready to Luge!

I was a little hesitant to go, not because I was scared of the ride, but because I was afraid to ride the chair lift back to the top. Ha. But I decided it was worth it and got in line. It was so much fun. You get a little cart with your feet in front of you and almost like bike handles between your legs. You steer like a bike, but to go faster or slow down your move the handles forward or backwards. 

Luging! 

     After my 1 ride the others had 1 or 2 more to go, so I waited inside with Michelle, and once the others were done we got food, and headed back down to town. Here we had a debate about what to do next. Kirsten and I ended up going to get stuff for dinner while the other went to the hot springs, and then Kirsten and I went to find them, but ended up wandering around the park looking for them before giving up. But it was really cool to see the different hot springs, at least while the wind blew in the right direction. After a while though the smell got to us, and in then end we could only look at bubbling pools of mud for so long. (See video bar for my commentary). So we decided to go back to the hostel and wait for the others. 

Hot spring/ bubbling mud. The sulfur causes the different colors. 

     They showed up soon after us and we began cooking dinner. Grilled cheese and tomato soup. We used the upstairs kitchen this time so the stove worked and we had a pretty decent meal. But Lauren and I were still hungry so she had a fantastic idea! Let's go get some pasta from the front desk and put the rest of the soup on it! Now normally this would be totally disgusting, but the soup tasted like marinara sauce. So I agreed, and with adding a little bit of rosemary and garlic to the soup it actually tasted pretty good! After this we decided to sit in the spa (hot tub) and just relax. 

Sunday 24 April

The bungee platform!

     Today was the day that Kirsten was going to bungee jump. Its an interesting idea since she is terrified of heights but is an adrenaline junky... (such a combo). So we all headed out to Agroventure for the day. Here there were tons of things to do, but it all turned out to be super expensive. There was the bungee jump, the big swoop (similar to ripcord again), the shweeb which is like a mini monorail race, and you're in a capsule and you pedal as fast as you can to make it move. There was also the agrojet, which is a jet boat ride, and finally the extreme freefall which is like indoor skydiving.

Shweeb!

     After waiting 1 ½ hours for Kirsten to jump, Michelle, Jessica and I decided to go over to the Zorb area. For those who don’t know what zorbing is… its where you get into a giant rubbery/plastic ball and roll down the hill. We were all going to do it together, but after a while Michelle and I decided it wasn’t worth the money (since we can do it in Michigan where she is from) and so Jessica went alone. (Check out the video below). On our way back we met up with Lauren and Kirsten who had finished her bungee and we headed back to the hostel to get ready for our Maori dinner experience.

      I’ll write about that in the next blog! 

My beautiful friends! Jessica, Lauren, Kirsten and me!