In New Zealand, variety is the spice…
Monday, Feb. 25, 21:20 (our itinerary)
The past 24 hours or so has been incredibly varied, and it’s been planned as by far the most expensive 24 hours of our trip. Last night we went to the Mitai Maori cultural show and hangi, an extremely good and varied series of presentations and dinner that went on for almost 4 hours. It ended with a long walk through the forest to see glowworms, which I thought might be silly but was actually very cool. We had some rain, but nothing too heavy.
It rained heavily most of the night, but under clearing skies this morning, Cathy and I took a walk to the city park next door to see what initially made Rotorua famous – the hot water in its many forms. It’s quite a sight to see steam coming out of everything from ponds to storm drains and people’s back yards!
Then I went back into crazy mode with the folks from Wet & Wild, this time running the Kaituna River with its 7-meter waterfall. The photo below shows us in mid-drop – although I have the photos, I’ll leave it your imagination to see what the raft looked like a second later at the bottom, upside-down. With the crystal-clear water at about 20°C, going swimming is part of the fun, even if “the ‘Tuna” does have lots of big eels in it!
Not quite finished with silliness, we then drove a few miles out of town to try one of New Zealand’s signature adrenalin attractions – zorbing. You simply slide yourself into a large inflated plastic ball with a few gallons of water in it, and roll down a big hill. We both loved it!
The Polynesian Spa was the scene of our “final event” of the day – a long soak in the hot pools and then a hot stone massage for Cathy and a mud detoxifying body wrap for me. Aaaaaah 🙂
Dinner was at historic Hennesey’s pub – very good dory (a local white fish) and chips for $14.90.
About The Author
