Sledging and Zorbing

I woke up early no got myself ready for the sledging adventure. I really wasn't sure what to expect which I guess is what I was the most nervous about. Sledging is similar to white water rafting except that you have no raft; you place your forearms on a plastic half sled which you use to bump into rocks or anything you might hit while the rest of your body is just in the river. You wear fins on your feet so that you can propel yourself where you need to go in order to enter the rapids at the best place. Alyssa had absolutely no interest in going, so I signed up to go by myself. Luckily, they offered a pickup service so she could keep the car and do something else in the morning.
When the guy picked me up, he asked if I had anything else planned for the day as there had been a scheduling issue with the guides and they couldn't do the sledging until 12:30. He said I could do rafting in the morning for free and then the sledging in the afternoon. I cleared it with Alyssa and then hopped on the bus. It was a pretty quick drive out of the city to the rafting place. Once I arrived, they told me there had been another change and I could do the sledging in the morning. Apparently I was the only person that had signed up for sledging (the other 18 people were going rafting) so I had my own private guide. I got suited up in a wet suit and boots, not only because the water was so cold but also because the river was filled with eels. My guide briefly went over the basics and then we were on our way to the river. Sledging basic include: 1) Don't let go of your sledge, 2) When you enter a rapid, turn your head to the side so that the sledge doesn't hit you in the face and break your nose; it will just slam your helmet instead, 3) Keep your wrists and arms aligned straight so that you don't break your wrist on impact. My guide was 22 years old, which made me laugh every time I thought about it. In fact, the entire rafting operation was run by kids that had all recently graduated high school. They joked around a lot and thank god I wasn't actually scared to do this because they kept telling me I should be scared and I might die (meant as a joke but would really freak you out if you were scared already!). We watched the rafts go down a massive waterfall before we jumped into the water and went over some of our roll basics and hand signals. The thing I didn't account for was how much of a workout it was going to be! Swimming against a raging river is a lot of work. I was sure as we went over the class V rapids that I would slam a rock or something but I never did. It was actually a lot of fun and my guide and I did some silly things like catching our boards in the water right below the rapid and trying to surf on the board which kept things interesting. All in all, I liked doing it and it was over way too quickly.

I headed back to the hostel afterwards, knowing Alyssa would likely be gone since I told her I'd be gone all day due to the scheduling change. She wasn't there, so I left a note and went off in search of lunch and internet. The day before, we'd been able to use the free wifi at McDonalds but today I couldn't get it to work. I tried Burger King and I was able to connect but nothing would load. Defeated, I walked back toward the hostel. I noticed that there was a mall across the street from our hostel so I stopped in to check it out. I found a store called "Warehouse" which was essentially a Target so I spent some time wandering around in there. They had a "buy 1, get 1 free" on Nivea sunscreen so I took advantage of that and bought a few new shirts since they were reasonably priced and some of my other ones were almost unwearable.
When I got back to the hostel, Alyssa was back. She and a girl at the hostel had gone to see some of the thermal pools. Rotorua is a hot bed of geothermal activity and the entire town reeks of sulfur because of the volcanic lakes and geysers. We decided that we would go for a walk around Rotorua Lake since the girl working at the hostel had told us it was interesting. Turns out the lake is huge but the part near where we were staying is just steaming thermal pools. It was funny to walk around in there since there were signs everywhere warning that if you left the path you could fall into a pool and boil to death. We turned back after less than an hour though because it wasn't very picturesque.
Alyssa had been really excited to go Zorbing, so since they were open until 5:00, we decided to head down there and check it out. We decided to do the zig zag track with the zorb that has water inside. You can do a strait track or a dry zorb, but we had heard that the water one was the best. We headed up the hill in our bikinis to be loaded into our giant rubber balls. They pumped some hot water inside which I thought was a great touch; it would have kind of sucked if the water was cold. I dove through the access hole and they sealed me inside. The guy pushed the ball and it began rolling down the grass track. It was absolutely hilarious! You were sloshing around in the water, being thrown to all sides of the ball. The ball would then hit one of the fences and change direction and you'd be tossed in the other direction. I hysterically laughed the entire time which sadly was only about 45 seconds. I wanted to do it 100 more times but at $40/ride, it was a little too expensive to do more than once. We were really glad we tried it though!

After the zorb, we stopped at the grocery store to pick up some food for dinner. We still had some noodles left that we needed to cook, so we got eggplant to put in it and some asparagus to have on the side. Our dinners would be pretty cost effective except for the fact that we always want a bottle of wine, which pretty much doubles our total. We really wanted the wine for our hot/cold thermal pool experience which we had planned for later that evening. One of the German boys staying at the hostel told us about some local thermal pools that are just out in the wilderness so there's no charge to go to them. Even though it was raining a bit, Alyssa, Christine (the girl Alyssa had spent the day with), Richard (the German) and Nina (girl from the Netherlands) and I decided we would go.
We made dinner, got our swim clothes together and at Richard's insistence, went to the grocery store to buy candles to provide light at the pools. Come to find out, Richard and Nina were both 18 which made their interests and outlook a little different than ours, which we would understand more later. When we arrived at the hot pools, we found that we were not the only ones with this idea. It is a spot that only locals know about, but there about 40 high school aged kids there. We got into the water and it was very hot on one side and very cold on the other where a river met with the pool, so we positioned ourselves in the middle where it was nice and warm. It was only then that we were informed that you couldn't get your head in the water because you can get amoebic meningitis if the water gets in your nose. I was mildly worried about that but really more annoyed by all of the children in the pools. One of them asked how old we were and once they found out that we were in our late 20's, the shock on their faces was both amusing and obnoxious. It was clearly the place where all the young kids came to drink and have sex and I could only answer questions about America and have some guy try to claim us as his "American bitches" for so long before I wanted to get out of there. Luckily Alyssa, Christine and Nina felt the same way so we dragged Richard out of there and headed back to the hostel. We all made sure to take long showers to remove the amoeba and god knows what else before we went to sleep. It was an interesting night but it definitely made me remember I am no where near 18 years old.

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