Mountain Carts and the Zorbe

NZ, Day 3, Rotorua

Day three in New Zealand is so exciting!! We <3 NZ! With our flight
from New Zealand to Bali coming up on the 13th, the clock is ticking
so we woke up and went straight into action!! We are in Rotorua, home
of hot springs, the mountain luge Zorbing, river rafting and various
other exciting activities. We kicked off the day with a ride up the
Gondola for some mountain luge fun. The Gondola ride gives you a
beautiful view of the nearby lake and city below. With tickets in hand
we were ready for the mountain luge!

The mountain luge is several paved paths winding down the mountain
through the forest. You race down it on little carts you control.
Imagine a little go-cart with gravity as your engine. For anyone
familiar with it, it's like the Park City Alpine Slide on steroids!
You can choose from various paths; Scenic, Intermediate and Advanced.

Some parts of the paths are six carts wide so you can race down and
pass people as you go, you control your speed and steering. There are
dips, banked turns, s-curves and the like. Much of the path does not
have side barriers so it's definitely possible to launch yourself off
the edge and take a tumble. This nearly happened to me...I was
whizzing through an s-curve and had to slam on the breaks to avoid a
bunch of people stopping fast for the next curve...I skidded at an
angle and stopped just short of the mountain edge. Haha...good times!

It was so much fun. Once down you jump on the chair lift and head up
for another run. We each did 5 runs and had a blast. Highly
recommended!

After that we decided to head on over to check out the Zorb. Imagine a
gigantic hamster ball for humans. You get inside and roll down a hill.
They had a wet and dry option. The wet option puts water in the Zorb
with you and you slide down a straight hill. The dry option went down
a winding path and looked more fun but was closed. It looked  cool but
we decided to save our money for adventures on the South Island.

We spent the rest of the day exploring the beautiful countryside
around Rotorua including the numerous hot springs surrounding the
area. The hot springs get pretty crowded in the afternoon and evening
so we decided to scope out several and find a good one to come back
and have all to ourselves in the morning.

Many of the hot springs are privately owned and cost money to access
however we heard of a place just 30 kilometers south of Rotorua called
Kerosene Creek that had open access and good potential. We were able
to find it without to much trouble and decided to come back early
morning for a relaxing dip.

We went back to the same place we had parked and slept the night
before and drifted off to sleep.