New Zealand Adventures

So I haven't really been using this thing like I planned, but I'm going to write now so I don't forget all my awesome adventures.

We started the trip by landing in Auckland and spent the first day just wandering around Auckland and checking out all the sights to see there. Auckland is pretty cool, but it's a big city and not really like the rest of New Zealand. We took a ferry to this island, Devonport, and walked around that island for a few hours. We ended up going to this hill that was once a World War 2 bunker so it was filled with tunnels and other rooms, but the cool part was that it was completely un-guided and totally black inside the tunnels. They had a very creepy feel to them, but they were a ton of fun. After that we had to run back to the ferry to catch it; we made it back to the ferry with 31 seconds to spare before it left.

The next morning we had to get up early and drive to Rotorua. This was about a 3 hour drive through New Zealand country side and was the first real view of New Zealand we got to see. The sights were nice and so was the drive. On the drive we did this icebreaker game where everyone would switch seats and we would get a chance to meet everyone and what not. Lots of fun and essentially allowed everyone to meet everyone else. When we arrived in Rotorua we immediately noticed that it smelled like shit. Like literally like feces everywhere you went outside. This was because the town is in a very active geothermal spot with tons of hot springs, so we were smelling the sulfur they released. It wasn't pleasant but we adjusted. The place we stayed at was this crappy little place with four of us in a bed room smaller than the one I am currently staying in. It was okay though because it gave us another chance to bond with people and we were rarely in our rooms for more than 30 minutes, and only at night. We spent the next few days at the KiwiPaka doing all kinds of fun/adventurous things. One day we learned the Haka, which is a traditional Maori war dance meant to prepare them for death, which was very cool and very intense. It is the thing that the All Blacks do before each of their matches, so it was cool. Then we learned how to play rugby, which was just as awesome. For everyone that has never played rugby, go play it. American football is fun, but rugby is manly.

The next day we had our day of adventure which consisted of a group of 8 of us going to this AgroAdventures place and doing all kinds of extreme things. The first one was a ride on a jetboat driven by a professional driver. The boat was about ten feet long, barely wide enough for 3 people crammed together, and had a 450 HP engine, so it was a ton of fun. The driver could spin the boat in a 180 easily and throw up a 30 foot wake. He asked if we wanted to soak our friends and of course we said yes. Michael and another friend barely escaped being soaked by about a foot. After that we did a skydive simulator with a big fan and the oversized suits, which was also a ton of fun. It was actually a lot harder to maintain yourself and stay balanced then it seemed, but I managed to successfully stay floating for a few seconds which was pretty neat. After that we did a 43m tall swing, which consisted of about a 15m freefall to begin the swing. There were three of is in these sleeping bag-like things and they pulled us up with a crane and then when the time was right I got to pull a ripcord and off we went. The swing was by far the highlight of the day.

That night we went to a traditional Maori dinner, a thing they call a Hangi. The Hangi is a meal that is cooked in the Earth, due to all the geothermal activity in the area it is quite easy to cook in the Earth. The food was phenomenal and the place was really cool; there was a complete replica of an ancient Maori village and they performed a couple of traditional songs and dances, all of which were very entertaining.

The next day, our last day in Rotorua, we drove about 2 hours away to Waitomo and went caving. The cave was about 8km long and was fascinating. The adventure started with us repelling 20m down a waterfall INSIDE a cave, in complete darkness. Once inside, we followed an underground river to another underground waterfall where we had to repel about 8m through rushing, ice cold water. They gave us wetsuits but it was still damn cold. After that we did another quick repel down a what I'm going to call a waterslide that was only 3 or 4m. After that there was plenty of crawling on our hands and knees, going through passages with about 6 inches of room between the water and the ceiling and every other kind of thing you can imagine doing in a cave. It was cold, dirty, and one of the most fun things I have ever done. One special thing about the cave was that it was filled with glow worms. At one point, in a larger room in the cave, the guide had us all turn off our lights and we sat and he talked to us for about 5-10 minutes and we just watched all over as the worms began to glow, more and more, until the ceiling and walls of the cave looked like the sky night. We ended up being underground for about 3 or 4 hours total.

After that we departed for our schools. It was nice because of our group of 82, about 36 of us were headed for the University of Otago, so I was able to make plenty of friends and meet plenty of new people. Anyways, that's it for now. That was just the first week we were here in Rotorua, there is plenty more to come when I feel like writing more.