Rotorua - Jul 10 to 11, 2010

We celebrated our two year anniversary in Rotorua. The town is known for its geothermal activity. There are many geysers and hot mud pools in the area. We drove down to the town early Saturday morning. It takes a couple hours to get there. We started the day with a visit to a local market beside the lake. There are a lot of Maori crafts and art on sale. We picked up some souvenirs to bring back to Canada and Mexico with us at the end of the month.



Afterward we went for a hike through the nearby Whakarewarewa Redwood Forest. It was pretty incredible.








On Sunday we got up early and drove down to Waiotapu. We watched Lady Knox Geyser erupt (it erupts every morning at 10:15am), then spent a couple hours walking around the geothermal area, hot pools and sulfur pits. All the colours were unbelievable! Then we drove back to Rotorua had some lunch and walked around town.



A giant sulfur pit:








The water is boiling!




Before heading back to Auckland, we had to check out the famous Luge course. It was awesome! There is a gondola ride at the very beginning to get to the top of the hill (great views!):

From here it's basically a downhill go-cart course. The luge sleds have handlebars to steer and you pull back on them to brake. They aren't motorized, gravity takes care of that. They have a variety of paved tracks that wind their way through the trees, down the hill. At the bottom they have 2 chairlifts (like a ski hill) with special hooks at the bottom. You toss your carts into a loading bay and the chairlift catches them on the hooks and brings them back to the top with you.

They get going pretty fast on steep parts. Jesse has a small mishap with the camera flying out of his hoodie pocket on a fast turn. It skidded down the track and suffered some nice road rash but it still works fine. We only have 1 camera, so posting pictures of it won't really work...

We tried to do some racing, but Carolina was simply no match for one particular Jesse Parisian. Clearly he needs some new competition. The challenge is out there now. Who is going to come to New Zealand to race him??

Slow is right!!

It was pretty darn cold going down the hill since it's "winter" here, so we only went 3 times. Caro couldn't move her poor fingers (Mexsicles) anymore. We called it a day and drove home; it was a short trip, so we'll definitely need to visit again.