12/11/10

I slept in this morning and found that I had missed the bus to the local park which has a geyser that goes off daily at 10 am and the bus leaves town at 9 am. I was somewhat interested in going but the fact that I have been to Yellowstone and also seen some in Iceland I was not that keen on doing this. I wanted to do something so I talked with Karina and asked about booking a kayak tour today. She called them up for me and told them I was interested in going on a tour it turns out they did not have one planned for today but they would contact me through the hostel if they decided to have one. I decided that I might as well book the whitewater rafting trip and the brochure looked pretty good. In this tour you are able to go down grade 5 rapids and you go down a waterfall that is 21 feet high. That alone seems pretty cool so I booked and paid for the trip that afternoon. I had some time to kill so I decided to walk around the city and see one of the local hot springs parks. The town smelled like sulfur and the park was interesting in the fact that it was a regular park but had hot springs and gases being released. Nearby a little flea market was going on and I decided to try a lamb kabob which was a nice little snack. I finished walking around the park and then made my way to Lake Rotorua. It had a nice walkway along the lake but not much to see with the exception of tourist vehicles. I saw a float plane, a jet boat, a large paddle driven riverboat, and a few fishing boat charters..... it is clear to see that tourism drives this area. I worked my way back to the hostel and when I walked in Karina told me that if I wanted to do the Kayak tour it was on now......she arranged for me to go on the whitewater rafting the next morning and the Kayak tour was going to pick me up at 2:30pm. The kayak tour guide was a younger college age guy who is on summer break from school named Steve. We headed out of town to a lake and after a little while a RV met us on the road and followed us. I was going on this tour with a family from Denmark who are on a 10 month world traveling tour. They are on month 5 after going coast to coast in the US and then spent 2 months doing charity work in Peru. The dad name was Frank and his wifes name was Annette they also had two daughters who were around 10 and 12 years old. This was my first time going kayaking fully geared up. I had the spray skit, the water proof jacket, and the life vest. I shared the two person sea kayak with Steve and it was apparent right away that this would be a bit of slower paddle. I took it for what it was and enjoyed the sights around the lake. We paddled out a ways around the lake stopping quite often to let the other two boats catch up. We also went into a cave which can not be seen from the lake since it is covered by trees but is large enough to get a few boats in the cave. We went in the cave and got to see the glow worms and learn about them. This was interesting to see and I liked the cave as well as learning about the glow worms. Our final destination was at a local hot pools area on the lake. It is only accessible from the lake and you needed to pay or have a membership to enjoy the hot pools. This was nice and was included as part of our trip. I tried out a few of the different hot pools and just relaxed and of course I needed to try out the hottest pool they have. It was not overly hot but it felt very nice anyway. I had a good time chatting with Frank and finding out about his travels. I asked him if he took a career break and he told me he does not really have a career....he teaches, he will have his teaching job when he goes back. I then decided that I should jump into the cold water of the lake and Steve told me I should go off the slide at the end of the dock. That is all the talking into that I needed....I did it and Steve soon followed. It felt great to get that cold water rush and after getting out I had to jump in once more for good measure. After another quick dip in the hot pool it was time to suit back up and head back to our starting spot. We headed out and we could not figure out why Annette and her daughter were going the wrong way. With the wind and her daughter not weighing very much the wind was just taking them away. We pulled up next to them and had them clamp on to our boat to help them get stability and pull them along a bit. Once we got across the strong windy section we cut them loose for them to paddle it themselves the rest of the way in. I was dropped off at Crank Backpackers at around 8 pm and I just decided to take it easy and I ended up watching some of Lord of the Rings which someone was watching in the TV area. I went to bed around midnight since I knew that my rafting trip in the morning was going to pick me up at 8:30am.