Weekend in Rotorua

This weekend Megan and I went with my host family for a weekend in Rotorua. We left Saturday midday which was great because I had a lot of preparation work to do for Monday. So I spent Friday night doing school work. I did receive a wonderful surprise though..Brian managed to have flowers sent to me IN NEW ZEALAND! That made for a great start to the weekend.

Rotorua turned out to be a lot of fun. We stopped in Matamata on the way for some lunch. This is where we will be heading back next weekend for the Hobbiton tour-and it already looks like this town needed Lord of The Rings to place it on the map. When we got to Rotorua we went to the top of the mountain to get some good views of the city and lake in which the town surrounds. Unfortunately, a restaurant has capitalized on the view and was pretty stingy-fences and signs saying ‘customers only” and “surveillance cameras” were everywhere. So my only photos from the top have barbed wire and were taken in the car J.

On Saturday night Megan and I went to a Maori show and dinner. Maori are the native people of New Zealand. They picked us up from our cabin at 6pm. The show was interesting to watch and the food…well, that was amazing. They had traditional Maori “hangi” which is food that is cooked in the ground, as well as an array of seafood, salads, and desserts. Needless to say, I wasn’t hungry when we left.

Sunday Megan and I walked to the hot springs and mud pools in Rotorua. This is really what the town is famous for. All we really had to do was follow our nose because as you got closer the smell of rotten eggs (sulfur) was definitely present. After that, we got picked up and all went to the Luge. You take a gondola up the mountain and then ride these cars down three different tracks. That was really fun, even though I wasn’t too adventurous so my ride down was more of a “Sunday stroll” as I was permanently in the brake position. Oh well, as long as I had fun, right.

Then Megan and I decided to also try this contraption (think it was just called the “Swing”). You are harnessed in and then it pulls you very high up. It was kind of scary because there was nothing to hold on to and you are lifted until you are literally looking straight down at the ground. Then someone who is in the contraption with you (in this case I nominated Megan) has to pull the string that releases you. We were dying laughing because Megan couldn’t get it to release on the first pull. After some technical difficulties, we were launched at about 100 miles per hour out over the mountain. It was quite a thrill and contrary to the pictures, I had a lot of fun!! Overall, a very fun weekend that went by too fast!