Still sporting sunburns we plastered ourselves in healing coconut oil shortly after our 6:30am wakeup and our early morning dip in the thermal pools. On the road by 8:45am to make sure we got to our zip lining tour on time! Turns out we were super early, but we were very eager and excited.
Our 3 hour adventure started at 10am. We filled out paperwork, got weighed, and suited up. We had two hilarious guides, Shane and Richard, looking after our group of 10 people. We got into the van and started to get to know each other, and Shane blurted out that he hunts pigs. I don't know what came over me, but I burst out laughing because I had no idea that hunting pigs was a real thing. Unfortunately for me, I paid for my little outburst for the rest of the trip by getting picked on. Whoops!
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| Photo credit: Ryan R |
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| Photo credit: Ryan R |
When we arrived at the site we had a short walk through a beautiful virgin forest (one of the last in New Zealand, so it's also a conservation site) and then headed up for our first practice zipline. It was short and low, but exciting since it was my first time ever doing it. As we went on, each one got higher and longer, culminating in the longest one which was 220m. They explained to us that when we got to the end we had to catch this rope stopper thing, but when I got to the end I managed to forget completely, even though the guide yelled at me to do it, and so I ended up reversing all the way back to the middle of the zipline! Which of course meant that the guide had to pull me in on the longest of all the routes. Another whoops!
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| Photo credit: Ryan R |
The next one after that was very steep and we had to be careful to avoid a tree.
Overall it was a really fantastic trip with tons of highlights. Highly recommended, and it was totally safe. Well, as safe as flying through trees on a rope can be.
For lunch we thought we'd check out Sulphur Point. I don't know why we though that was a good idea...as you might expect it was a smelly place that was kind of sketchy and full of seagulls. The rest of the park was beautiful though in Rotorua.
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| Photo credit: Ryan R |
Our first stop after lunch was to try and watch people zorbing (a notoriously NZ thing), but unfortunately there was no one to watch. Our group was on the fence about actually doing it, but in the end we chickened out.
Next, and most notably, we went to Hell's Gate Mud Pools. Unfortunately, this was one of the most memorable parts of the trip. For $75/each we got to sit in brown water for 20 minutes with a bucket of mud. Wasn't quite what we were expecting, but we made the most of it.
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| Photo credit: Ryan R |
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| Photo credit: Ryan R('s camera...) |
Everything was going fine until we showered off and Kat messed up a contact lens. We were sitting in the sulphur pools and she started to get really sore eyes, like when you cut an onion or get chlorine from a pool in them. Except, MUCH worse. Naturally she took out her contacts and we all decided to leave. While we were changing it started happening to Ryan R as well, so I went to reception and they gave us some eye drops. Her only advice to us was to get out of the area as quickly as possible because it was the sulphur in the air burning their eyes. Not even thinking, I ALSO took out my contacts and that's when we realized that was the problem to begin with, so of course I died too. While all three of us were crying like babies and couldn't open our eyes, Ryan P had to drive us all out of there. What a gong show!
Kat and Ryan soon got better, but they had about 20 minutes on me, so by the time we reached our next destination, the mud bubbles, I still couldn't see but they were fine. The mud pools were another free gem. And also really supernatural...why was there bubbling mud?? So neat. We were all really impressed how much free thermal stuff there was to do and see.
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| Photo credit: Ryan R |
20 minutes later we were back at our campsite and got to cooking an epic taco salad for dinner. We half-heartedly had another soak in the thermal pools, but really we just needed to clean off even more mud and re-apply the coconut oil to our burns. We were definitely early to bed that night, and everyone had sore eyes from crying so much. What a day!
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