Rotorua

Another HWS trip! Hurrah! This time we 18 flocked south for the weekend, about three hours away to a splendid place called Rotorua. Rotorua goes by many other names, two of which are "Roto-Vegas" and "Rotten-rua". The  "Roto-Vegas" nickname left us all a little surprised because as far as we could tell, this town was NOTHING like Las Vegas. All the Aucklanders claim it is a huge tourist destination, which there are a lot of tourist activities, but there were not that many tourists. The other name, "Rotten-rua" has been given to the town because of the rotten egg smell the town suffers from due to the high amount of geothermal activity going on.

This trip was very different form our Bay of Islands field trip in that although it was organized by the school, this trip had less emphasis on education and more activities that were purely for fun. On Saturday, we began our trip with a visit to the Glow Worm Caves in Waitomo! We descended into the caves where little green glow worms lined the ceiling. We weren't allowed to take any picture though, so no cave selfies. After the glow worm caves we headed down the road to go BLACK WATER RAFTING!!! This was AWESOME!! I was really nervous about being so far underground at first but then excitement overtook my fear just enough and I had an amazing time. Except for putting on/ taking off the wetsuit. That was pretty horrible for everyone's body image.

Glow worm caves in Waitomo

lookin' good

scared/excited

 The next day began with a trip to Rainbow Springs, an animal center (birds and fish). The best part of the morning is tied between two things: first, seeing baby kiwis that they are raising and then releasing into the wild to save the kiwi population. The second contender for the best part of the morning was while we were looking at one of the conservatory's favorite birds. We were all being very well behaved and listening to our tour guide when we heard some weird stomping going on around the corner. Coming around the bend was a male swan, probably twice the size of an American swan, similar to a big dog, larger then a 6 year old but smaller then an 8 year old, I think you get the picture. Anyway, it attacked our bus driver and it was hilarious. I ran away in fear.

the kiwi stood really still for the picture

COSMO LOOK ALIKES

 After Rainbow Springs we went to our next stop, Te Puia, which is a geyser park in Rotorua. Te Puia is the site of the Prince's feather geyser (and some other smaller ones that I can't name). We ended up arriving just on time to see the geyser go off, which was GREAT once we got upwind of the water/smell. Te Puia is also the host of the best carving school in New Zealand (for Maori carving).

Prince's feather geyser with silica terraces

Manuka flowers that turn into manuka honey

mud boils!

carving in process

The afternoon was devoted to adventure activities. Half the group went Zorbing while the other half went jet boating. I was in the Zorbing group. For those of you who don't know, a Zorb is basically a human sized double-layered rubber hamster ball that you can go into in your bathing suit and slosh around in while they roll you down a hill.

We wrapped up Sunday evening with dinner at an old police station called 'the Pig and Whistle' (those kiwis and their humor...) and a trip to the Polynesian Spa. The spa has a bunch of public baths that are right on the shore of the lake. These baths are heated by the geothermal activity that is underneath the spa site. The spa was overrun with naked old people. Not a lot more I can say/ want to say about that.

On Monday we had our last activity at the mountain before we headed back north to Auckland. We took gondolas up the mountain (in our make-shift Halloween costumes) and took luge rides down. No one understood why we were dressed up so we had a pretty wide berth on the luge tracks - thanks scared kiwis!

weeeeeee!!!