More storytelling

While I was in Rotorua, I went white water rafting in the Kaitiaki river. It was really fun, the only bad part was that I wish it was longer. Total water time was about 1 hour on class 5 rapids. Class 5 is the toughest rating of rapids that you can find. Considering I've never done this before, it was pretty exciting.

The best part was when we dropped down a 10-15 foot waterfall. We almost made it but at the end we flipped over and had to get everyone back in the raft. It was intense swimming in the river underneath the boat trying to get a breath in and stay alive. I loved it. I actually think I enjoyed it more because we did tip over.

To see more pictures from white water rafting, click here.

This next picture is a good one of us on the Magic bus on the way to Taupo from Rotorua. On the left is Kate (Canada), then Phil (Ireland), myself, and Lee (Ireland).


We stopped at a geyser on the way to Taupo to watch it fire off. The park staff actually made the geyser go off manually by dropping some soap down the blowhole to break the tension. I thought that was pretty funny. It's basically a spot where all the tour buses stop at the same time and watch a manual geyser explosion and then get back on the road. It seemed a bit cheesy to me. We snuck in this picture below while we were waiting for the show. From the left it's Marlene (Holland) and Zosia (Poland). Zosia is actually a model but you wouldn't be able to tell that from this dorky pose of hers.

For more pictures from the geyser, click here.

This is a clean shot of Chris and Jacko (left to right). They're friends traveling together from England.


These were the friends I went on the Tongariro Crossing with. From left to right it's Rachel (UK), Sarah (UK), and Kate (Canada).


That day the weather was rainy, cold, windy, and foggy, which made it pretty discouraging because the view was terrible, but near the top of the highest point of the hike, we found a beautiful sulfuric natural spring pool and for your viewing pleasure, today we have Kate posing in front of it.

For more pictures from Tongariro, click here.

When we got to Taupo, there was a day when we were waiting for the sky to clear up so that we could skydive, so in an effort to use time efficiently, we walked to town to take a look around the Lake Taupo edge and check out the views. Well Rachel had the bright idea of setting up my camera and doing a shot where we are all running in inside 2 seconds before the timer goes off. This is what we got:

From left to right is Rachel (UK), Kashmira (UK), and Sarah (UK).

For some reason, when I stare at this picture, it reminds me of a time back in high school where I slammed into a friend of ours on the sidewalk while trying to toilet paper somebody's house as quickly as possible and I basically body checked her about 5 feet backwards because she weighed about half what I did.

For more pictures from the lake area, click here.

At the Taupo skydiving center, Rachel asked me to mark her palms before she jumped so that she could show them in her pictures while falling from the sky. Not only is Rachel from the UK, but that day was also the rugby match between the All Blacks (NZ) and England so she was rooting them on.


That night we went out bar hopping for the rugby game. Here I am with free facepaint from one of the bars. The fern on the left side of my face is the symbol for the All Blacks. The flag is for England. If you didn't know that I don't blame you, England is pretty unimportant anyway.

For more pictures from that evening, click here.