Extended Weekend

Last Thursday I walked over to the Weir House around 1PM to meet the crazy road trippin’ GT kids.  Because they are only over here for about 6 weeks, they go on road trips pretty much every weekend to see another area of the country.  14 of them were heading up to Rotorua for a variety of activities, many of which I had wanted to do since before arriving in the country, so I decided to tag along.  

We had a caravan of three cars, five people in each car, but because no one had mobile phones, we never really stayed together.  Sometimes we stopped in the same places for food, but those were chance meetings.  Road tripping like that is a lot harder without communication!  My car was the only one with a CD player, so we got to collect all of the mix CDs everyone else had made for the trip.  Listening to those was fun because you never knew what was coming up next!  We stopped in Taupo for dinner and a stretch break before continuing on to Rotorua.  We were staying in Cactus Jack’s, the only themed backpacker’s in Rotorua.  It was amazing.  It had its own ‘Mexican village,’ swing, hot tub, and entertainment / lounging areas.  We had a lot of fun in this hostel.  Our group took up two big rooms, including one that was brand new.  It had exploded the previous year, so they had just finished remodelling it.  It was nice to be travelling with a big group of fun people as opposed to travelling on my own again.  That night we lounged around and checked out the local nightlife.

We all slept in the next day.  That’s not something you can do often in Wellington, so it was nice.  The original plan was to go see the geothermal areas before being picked up for white water rafting at 3PM, but we ended up running out of time.  Our group was so large that it took awhile to get everyone mobilised, so we didn’t have enough time to eat breakfast, drive to the hot springs, see them, drive back, eat lunch, and change before 3.  The new plan was to go zorbing!  Zorbing is a crazy Kiwi thing that involves rolling down a hill in a giant plastic hamster ball type apparatus partially filled with water.  I went in one with Patrick and Blake, and it was insane.  We couldn’t stand up at all.  We were just rolling over and over down the hill.  It was some of the best money I have spent in New Zealand.  After everyone zorbed and was sufficiently soaked, we headed off to explore the rest of the Agrodome area.  We went in the chocolate store, took pictures with large statues of sheep and moa, and chased / herded some sheep around a paddock.  Basically, we were just wasting time with some farm animals!

We headed back to Cactus Jack’s for some lunch at the Mexican cantina next door before getting ready for this white water rafting.  I hadn’t had Mexican food the entire time I had been in New Zealand, so I really enjoyed my dairy-free chicken nachos.  River Rats picked all 15 of us up around 3, and we were off!  We rafted the Kaituna River, boasted as being the “Grade 5 Ultimate” in the brochure.  This was a fun river.  We rafted over a 7 metre waterfall, which is the highest commercially rafted waterfall in the world.  There were lots of rapids and other exciting adventures.  Krista and I happened to be in the front for most of the time, so we got soaked when the guide kept us in the waterfalls.  I was really nervous before starting the trip, way more nervous than I had been for skydiving.  I kept imagining going over a 7 metre waterfall, keeping in mind that I stand at 1.66 metres.  None of us fell out and our boat didn’t flip, so we did very well.  We had three boats (mine went first), and the other two almost flipped but successfully straightened up.  Jim was the only American to fall out of a boat, but it was his own fault as he wasn’t holding on to anything in a waterfall.  That evening we all came back and camped out in the hot tub.  The hot tub is actually heated with thermal water, so it was also a cool Rotorua experience.  We went out again later in the evening to check out some local pubs and whatnot.

The next morning was much earlier than the previous day.  We woke up around 6.30AM to leave for Waitomo at 7.30.  We were booked in for the Haggas Honking Holes caving trip, which included three abseils (rappelling into caves and down waterfalls), rock climbing, a glow-worm cave, and crawling along a subterranean river.   It was a bit of an adventure getting there because we got slightly lost and ended up arriving later than expected, but it all worked out well in the end.  We were all in wetsuits with helmets that had lights and everything.  We must have looked like we were from outer space as we tramped along pasture land to get to the cave entrance.  This was a great experience.  We were all incredibly dirty once we got out and very grateful for the hot showers back at the base.  I am not the best rock climber, especially not wearing gumboots full of water, but I still did OK.  Our group was too big to go at once, so we split into a group of 5 and a group of 10.  I liked being with the smaller group because some of those spaces were very tiny.  I heard that the big group sometimes split into two groups of 5 simply because there wasn’t room at the bottom of the abseil for everyone to fit!

Once again, back at Cactus Jack’s, we did the whole hot tub / hang around / eat dinner / explore the nightlife bit.  

The next morning (Sunday morning) was our last in Rotorua.  We got everyone together, took some pictures of Cactus Jack’s, and moved out back towards Wellington.  We stopped at Wai-o-tapu to check out the geothermal pools.  I had been to this place on my last trip to Rotorua, but it was still fun to see it all again with the Georgia Tech crew.  We also stopped at the boiling mud pools, which is what I really wanted to see.  (I didn’t get the chance the first time around.)  We definitely took some videos of all the boiling mud.  I don’t remember seeing pools like that at Yellowstone, so it was really interesting.

One thing about road trips is that the ride is usually about as adventurous as the destination.  My car was a lot of fun.  It was me, Patrick, Blake Henderson, Catherine York, and Emily Straus (a non-GT person; she is a UGA student on GT’s study abroad).  We had an absolute blast telling crazy stories and enjoying the drive.  One of my favourite things we did was on the way back to Wellington.  We had heard about a sort of ‘adult’ playground that students had stopped at in the past.  We missed it on the way up but caught it coming back to Wellington.  Emily and I had a great time on a teeter-totter, we all ran inside the giant hamster wheel, and I went down the zip line more than the little kids did.  Unfortunately, Blake and Patrick had a race, during which Patrick potentially broke his toe (still waiting to hear about that one), so we had to cut our time short.  We stopped for dinner and continued the drive back into Wellington, arriving probably around 8.30 or so.  It was nice arriving so late because I really enjoy the motorway coming into Wellington.  It is a gorgeous city by day and even more incredible by night.  The harbour is lit up very nicely.  Our driving adventures were nothing compared to one of the other cars, though.  Their car broke down somewhere more than 3 hours north of Wellington, so they had to wait for 6+ hours to catch a 3AM bus back into Wellington.  They arrived at 7.30AM for 8AM class.  Whew!

My weekend didn’t really end there, though.  Monday was Wellington Anniversary Day (I think – I know it was a public holiday), and there were a lot of horse races on.  Meredith, coming from Kentucky, is a huge horse racing fan, and her boyfriend had 4 tickets to the Kiwi version of the clubhouse through his cricket connections.  They invited Claudia and me along because we had never been to a horse race before.  It was so much fun!  We got all dressed up to head out to the track.  Meredith taught us all about how to read the stats on the horses and how to place bets.  I am proud to say that I won $5.30 on a $2.00 bet, so I think that is a good thing.  We also got a special tour through the owners’ rooms because we got introduced to a guy on the race committee, so that was pretty cool.  We saw the jockeys weighing in, saw the race replayed for the owner’s, and heard a speech by the committee guy.  It was a really cool afternoon.  I wasn’t expecting to go when I woke up in the morning, so it was a fun spontaneous activity.  Now if I could only make editing my essay that much fun!