rafting and dancing

Day four: Rotorua.

The first order of the day was rafting. I’ve been rafting on the Arizona River in Buena Vista, Colorado, which was amazing, but I knew that the Rotorua rafting trip was much shorter than my Colorado trip. I figured that $45 was a fine price for a short trip if you’ve never been rafting, but I could skip it and save the money for something else. Then Jesse reminded me that she had a free rafting trip voucher and that we could just split the cost of one trip. A raft trip for 20 bucks? Done. We’ve been splitting our good fortune this whole trip, and we’ve both had more fun because of it. Nearly the whole bus signed up for this activity. Like many tourism activities in New Zealand, Kaitiaki Rafting Co. is a well-oiled machine. They quickly herd you around, fitting you with wet suits and booties and life jackets, and then you’re off for a quick bus ride to the entry point.

Though the actual water time was short, we got to raft a couple of good waterfalls, including the highest commercially-rafted waterfall IN THE WORLD.

It was pretty thrilling. We all know that if you ever get dumped out of your raft in a rapid or at the bottom of a waterfall that you’re supposed to ball up as small as you can in order to get spat out of the churning water faster. But sitting at the top of that waterfall as we’re about to nosedive seven meters into frothy water, you just know that if the raft capsizes you’ll forget every lesson you learned. Luckily we remained upright and I didn’t have to demonstrate my clumsiness in water.

The way many bus companies here work is that you can hop off in any city the bus stops and spend more time there, and then you just catch the next bus a couple of days later as long as there are open seats. We’d already planned to stay in Rotorua because some of our Auckland friends were meeting us there to see a famous New Zealand band, Salmonella Dub. Stupid name, I know. But I recommend a listen. We actually timed our whole trip so that we would end up in Rotorua on Friday for the band. We were so sad to leave our fun travel companions on our original bus, but Salmonella Dub did not disappoint. It’s like a reggae singer with a techno beats DJ guy plus a couple of horns. It was musically interesting and seeing our friends from home was sweet, not to mention that all of the rafting guides from earlier in the day were there and recognized us. We were so far from home base Auckland, and yet we probably knew 25 people at the show. Everyone drank and danced with abandon, and it’s probably one of our best memories of New Zealand so far.