Rotorua - "Second Lake"

I know. A month of nothing... and then, all of a sudden, one post after another. Heh... that's how I tend to do things: all at once. So yeah.

And now... woah. If you ever go to New Zealand, Rotorua is the place to be. Three of us took a three day trip to Rotorua. We left one Friday (on the first day of the Olympics) and returned that Sunday. We rented a car, drove on the left side of the road, and...

Well. It was my first taste of adventure tourism in New Zealand. So let’s begin:

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Friday

After class ended, we loaded our bags, packed it into a rental car, and left the city for Rotorua. My friend Brad drove out of the city, friend Kate navigated, and I sat in the back and tried not to get sick. The cows, sheep, horses, farms, and sights around me... bunched together with the camera in my hands... made it hard for me to concentrate on not getting sick.

Fortunately, I didn’t get sick. Not yet. Because... when I do, it gets ugly.

When we reached the halfway point, I took over the driving. Here’s some tips... if you ever end up in a situation where you have to drive on the “wrong” side of the road: stay awake, keep left, and watch out for right turns. If you’re in New Zealand, you’ll probably also run into a LOT of traffic circles.

Anyway, that night, nature was waiting for me to start driving. The moment I got in, it started to rain... and the sun started to set.

That was loads of fun....

There weren’t any close calls, considering that it was my first time driving here... though I did make a wrong exit from a rotary at one point. No worries, though. The GPS that we had helped a lot with that, and it beeped everytime I reached 100. That’s... 100km/hour, if you’re wondering. And, when I was driving... it tended to beep a lot.

Yeah... er, blame the New Jersey driver in me....

When we reached the hostel, we got our rooms and settled in. Here’s what the room looked like:

Actually, before I move on, I need to put in a little side story. After we checked in, we needed to repark the car. Brad took over the driving at that point and brought it around to the back. He thought that he saw something strange in the darkness of the parking lot, but he ignored it as a trick of the light....

Then came a BOOM against the side of the car door, and a giant... black furry creature glared into the car.

It licked the window.

Brad freaked out. Everyone else (me included) thought it was funny.

But, eh, to his credit... if I had been driving, I... would have been scared too. I think the laughter that came afterwards was more of a... nervous... yes-we-survived thing, rather than a... it-was-funny.. thing.

Yeah.. er... anyway. Back to that night. We settled in, walked through the town, and stopped at Hell’s Pizza for some dinner. If you’ve never been to one, you need to go. It has at least seven pizzas. Each pizza is named after one of the seven sins... and the pizza is, in my opinion, actually... better than Antonio’s. The prices weren’t too bad either. I stuck with pasta, though, which was also pretty good.

A bit more wandering around the city.

More comments about how sulphury Rotorua smells. I didn’t mention that before... but, because the place is covered with hot pools and geysers and... signs of volcanic activity, it smells sulphury.

Played some Egyptian Rat Screw.

Then we watched the Opening Ceremonies on the television in our hostel common room.

Struggled to stay awake through the flag thing.

And passed out for the night.

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Saturday

While Friday was a traveling/exploring/getting oriented day, Saturday was a day of near-death experiences. Ok... eh, not quite. But I definitely adrenaline rush after adrenaline rush.

After a quick Fish ‘N Chips breakfast... (or, er... as quick for me... which.. is slow... for most people), we set off for the Agrodome.

The Agrodome is a concentration of intense... adventurous activities, combined with... paddocks full of animals. I’ll let you know what I did here... and then I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Zorbing: We are placed into a big plastic ball. This ball is then filled with water... and then we are pushed off the side of the hill. We bounce down the hill and get splashed all over... all while we are crushing each other within the confines of a big, plastic ball. If you have the chance, you need to do this.

Freefall: We jump onto a giant fan. The giant fan lifts us off the ground. It’s supposed to simulate skydiving. We’ll leave it at that.

Yes... the fan distorted my face a bit.

Swoop: I call this a baby-step to bungee jumping. Don’t think it’s not scary though... because... it’s single-handedly the scariest thing I’ve done up to this point. I’m wrapped up in a giant cocoon, lifted up to... very high, and dropped suddenly... when one of us finally gets the guts to pull the cord. We freefall for long time... then swing slowly to a stop.

I wanted to do bungee jumping before this.

I decided I didn’t want to do bungee jumping when I was at the top.

After it ended, I forgot the fear... and now I want to bungee jump again.

But... yeah – pictures:

Exciting as.

(I know. That doesn't make sense... but it's a saying here. You add "as" after a word to intensify it. Slang. The most common one is "Sweet as.")

Anyway, after that, we set off for... a much safer farm tour. This included... cows, lamas (!!!!), sheep, lamb, pigs, deer, emus, ostriches, and... LAMAS! Heh... I had to say that again. I stepped in a lot of poop, and I fed some animals. They kept on asking for food even when I didn’t have any more... so I backed off and tried to show my hands empty.

By the way – cows are much MUCH bigger than I thought they would be.

When all that was done, we had dinner at a little cafe place at the Agrodome (I had a Shepard’s Pie). Then we drove off to Rainbow Springs.

Rainbow Springs is a giant area, filled with habitats for fish, birds, and... yes... wallabies. Since we came at night (with the sole intention of seeing some kiwis), we missed many of the birds and animals that were awake during the daytime. And since it was freezing cold, we didn’t walk through the entire thing.

We met Jenny.

Jenny’s a kea, brought up in captivity. She also tries to talk, by mimicking humans. Her “hello” sounds more like “HA HO!” If you continue to talk with her, she says more things... but it comes out sounding like laughter. “HAHAHAHA!” The longer I stayed, the quieter she got. She didn’t stop talking... but her screech stopped sounding so much like a screech after a while. When we left, though, she purred... almost as though she were crying.

After we left Jenny, we saw some swans and some other birds. I stood beside a giant fake moa for a picture. A moa, by the way, is a prehistoric flightless bird, native to New Zealand. It didn’t have any fight-flee instincts when humans first landed on New Zealand, so it was extinct within a couple hundred years(?). It’s been gone since... at least 1500AD.

Then, of course, we saw some kiwis.

They’re small, brown flightless birds... famous in New Zealand. Local New Zealanders have adopted it as a national symbol... so much so that local New Zealanders call themselves Kiwis. They’re nocturnal so we weren’t allowed to take pictures with the flash on while we were there.

Nevertheless, one of us accidentally left the flash on for one picture... and a bird (not the one who was flashed) panicked and ran around in circles for a while.

It was... er, amusing... to watch.

Oh! And that also meant we got a great picture of a kiwi:

After that, we left Rainbow Springs, warmed up in the car, and headed for McDonald’s.

Yeah... heh. I know. Why McDonald’s? Honestly, I... wanted to try out the Kiwi Burger. It’s a hamburger with a beet and an egg on it. It was good. And I think the burger was a bit more substantial than the McDonald’s burgers back home. I’m not really sure, though, since I haven’t gotten a burger from McDonald’s in ages.

We went home, played some more Egyptian Rat Screw, and fell asleep.

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Sunday

We woke up early Sunday, packed up, and checked out of the hostel. We weren’t quite ready to go home though... because, after a small breakfast (banana bread or something), we still had to go see the hot springs at Waiotapu. "Wai" is Maori for "water." "Tapu" is Maori for "sacred." So, essentially, Waiotapu means "Sacred Water."

Anyway, beautiful pictures. Lots of pretty rocks. Mud pools. Nice, warm steam... and a decent hike.

After all that, we watched the 10:00am water-rising-out-of-geyser thingy. Yeah. I know. I’m really bad with terminology, but it was interesting. What caught me by surprise, though, was that someone actually had to go up and put something in the geyser to get it to start going. I thought that this stuff was natural... and I do think it is. This one was just weird.

But... the water did go pretty high:

After that, I started driving... for our journey home. I wanted to drive the first half because I wanted to avoid the city driving. Everything was going well. We stopped for lunch. I ate a delicious burger... though I’m not sure exactly what kind of meat was in it.

On the second half of the trip, when I sat on the passenger seat, I started to get carsick. It started off with some dizziness... a headache... and then a stomach ache. When we finally arrived back in Auckland, I was in pain and half-dead. I stumbled out of the car, grabbed my stuff... and clambered out to the front of the store. While the other two spoke with the car rental guy and took care of all that bureaucratic stuff, I was on the sidewalk outside, crouched down against the wall. I ignored passerby... while they stared curiously at me.

And I threw up.

Not pretty. My burger came right back up. I struggled back to UniLodge and was helped up to my room. I lay down on the floor for a bit before I took a shower... and... threw up there again. I cleaned it up best I could, went to my bed, and passed out.

After that nap, I felt better. My great trip to Rotorua ended on a memorably disgusting note, but I learned one great lesson:

I have a better chance of dying from a rough car ride and a bad hamburger than I do of dying from a jump off a building with a rope tied to my ankle.

(I took some of these pictures... but Brad B. took most of them. I stole 'em from him... with his permission, of course.)

EDIT: I lied. They weren't lamas... they were alpacas. Yeah... heh, I know. It's very sad....

Rugby: All Blacks vs Wallabies

Ok.

Hello again. I realize that it’s been a while since my last update... but, eh, I’ve never been good at doings things regularly. You’re probably surprised that I’m even here... updating. But I have loads of pictures saved on my computer, and it’s about time that I... did.. something with them. Whatever that something is.

Right... er, let’s begin where I last left off.

A week (or two?) after the hike up to the summit of Rangitoto, IFSA-Butler (my program) took us to our first live rugby game. If you remember the post about orientation, then you’ll remember that I learned how to play touch rugby. Real rugby, though, is a hundred times rougher than touch rugby. Real rugby, believe it or not, is more dangerous than American football.

Real rugby is American football. Minus the padding.

And, that night... was more than real rugby.

That night was the All Blacks versus the Wallabies.
New Zealand versus Australia.

Kinda like Red Sox against the Yankees. Only... I know absolutely nothing about baseball... so, eh...

Amherst versus Williams?
Except... er... more intense. Much more intense. Take away the padding, take away that “touch rugby” stuff, throw in blood and dirt and bone...

Then you get a sense of what I saw that night.

Enough ranting now. Let’s go back to that night, and let’s begin with the costume. Since I’m in New Zealand, I set out the day before to buy myself some new All Blacks gear. I left the store with a black and white fleece jacket and a waterproof jersey underneath. Kind of stupid, when I think back on it... since, as usual, we were expecting it to rain that night. I’ll get to that later....

Once I was all set to go, I descended the UniLodge elevator to the first floor for some free pizza from Mel (the program’s “Student Liasons Officer” aka our mum for our time here). While everyone ate, a friend took out some face paints and started covering everyone’s faces in the traditional black and white.

I ventured forth... and allowed one small addition to my face: a small black kiwi bird.


Then, faces covered, we set off for the crowded train.

Since we were expecting some rain, I wore my yellow raincoat over my All Blacks stuff. I wore several layers to keep myself warm, but that yellow and blue raincoat basically hid the home team support that I was trying to give. Actually... it did more than that.

If you know anything about rugby, you’ll know that yellow and blue are the colors of the Australian Wallabies. So, in effect, I was walking around a city in the colors of the visiting ‘enemy’ team. When the rain didn’t come... and I heard some boo’s from behind me, I quickly pulled off the jacket. It wasn’t raining yet, and I was afraid that the colors of my jacket would provoke some of the pre-gamed All Blacks supporters.

We arrived at the stadium without too much trouble, found our seats, and waited for the game to begin.

The rugby game began with two national anthems – Australia’s and New Zealand’s. If you haven’t heard the New Zealand National Anthem, you should give it a listen. It’s half in Maori, half in English... and extremely interesting to listen to. It incorporates both the indigenous culture and the Kiwi culture. After that, the Wallabies stood side by side and grabbed each other’s shoulders... bracing themselves... for the All Blacks’ Haka.

A haka is a Maori war dance, traditionally done before a battle to intimidate their enemies. The All Blacks have adopted it... and, as the Wallabies stood in silence, the All Blacks stamped their feet, yelled something about death in Maori (“Kia Mate!”), stuck out their tongues, bulged their eyes, and made themselves look as scary as possible.


I kind of... felt bad for anyone who had to stand in front of them.

Then, of course, the game began.

It was intense, to say the least. There were several injuries... and there was this one move that I noticed. Everytime someone threw a ball in from the boundaries of the field, their teammates would, of course, try to catch it. But they didn’t all stay at ground level. One or two players from both teams tended to boost another player up – throw him into the air so that he could catch a ball that was... way above their heads. It worked some of the time and... I was actually waiting for someone to fall face first onto the ground from that position.

Didn’t happen. But... it was interesting.

Anyway, at the end of the day, the All Blacks killed the Wallabies by... a lot... (I can’t remember anymore, but the score reminded me of the Amherst-Williams Homecoming game two years back).

And – good news – it didn’t rain at all.

So that was that, and we all crowded into a train and made our ways back home after a brief, relaxing stop at a coffee shop.

Most of these pictures, by the way, are courtesy of Helen A. Because... you know how lazy I am with a camera.

This picture... with the bad camera lighting... is one that I actually took. But they're actually in the middle of a game here, so I thought I'd include it.

(And this... is our group picture.)