Jackie's World Tour 2009 – Let the mayhem begin!

So, I am going to start this post with the quote from that ended last post….

The best thing I have heard this week came from our tour guide on the free tour of Auckland. As quoted from Rewi “ Here in New Zealand you can’t sue people if you get injured so we are willing to throw anyone off of anything. “

So you are probably wondering why I am starting this post with that quote. Well simply put, it is totally true. In the past 3 days I have flung myself off a cliff (attached to ropes of course) to abesail down into a cave, I have rafted straight down a 7 meter waterfall and lastly I threw myself out of an airplane 12,000 feet above ground. It has been an insane 3 days since Raglan!

Anyway, Raglan was awesome and I was kind of sad to leave since it was so beautiful. I seriously loved the surfing and the hostel we stayed in was amazing. The last night there myself and 3 of my friends decided the do the flying fox (a seated zip line) and the ropes course as the sun was setting. I have to say it was mighty hysterical. We all pretty much sucked at the ropes course and we all were laughing our asses off at each other. It was pretty funny. I met a pretty cool German and Irish guy that came in on the Stray bus and I had a great time shootin the shit with them. Too bad they were staying an extra day in Raglan or we would have been on the same bus together. Oh just to explain the bus and how it works. It is a hop on and hop off tour. So you can get off wherever you want and stay as long as you want. There is a predetermined route you take and if you like a place you can stay for however long you want and then hop back on the next bus. It is a really cool system. Allows for a lot of flexibility if you have the time.

So onto the next day…woke up nice and early and grabbed the bus complete with a new bus driver. His name is Kerry and he is a crusty older dude who is hysterical. Drinks like there is no tomorrow, smokes like a chimney and curses just as much as me. We get along real well! 😉 Outta Raglan and into Waitomo which is known for its massive cave system. Today I went underwater caving. It was amazing. We abseiled down into the cave and then abseiled further in by going down a couple of waterfalls. It reminded me of why I love caving. It is seriously like being in a different world. What really makes these caves unique is that they have glowworms. Glowworms are tiny maggots that eat but have no place to drop their poop. Their poop stays inside their body and it glows. Eventually they go into a cocoon and emerge as a mouthless fly. They only live for about 3 days cause they can’t eat so all they do is go around and shag all the other flies and procreate. It is pretty interesting. But regardless of all that it is pretty damn cool to turn off the headlamps and see dozens of glowing orbs on the ceilings of the cave. My favorite part of the whole caving experience was of course crawling through the tiny holes but mostly the rock climbing back up out of the cave. I really love rock climbing. I think I am going to try to find some technical climbing to do somewhere else on this trip cause I really enjoy the challenge! That night we went to Uncle Boy’s place and watched a traditional Maori show. All the guys in the group did the Haka (a warrior dance) and all us ladies learned a really simple poi dance. It was pretty damn cool. We stayed over at Uncle Boy’s and then went to Rotorua for some whitewater rafting. This was pretty freakin amazing. It was myself, Chloe, Sofia and Li in a raft together and we had a great time being complete idiots. The rafting was Class 5 and it was really cool. We went down 3 waterfalls the last one being pretty large. Thankfully we all stayed in the raft and none of us went overboard. You go down the waterfall almost vertical and then get submerged under the water, raft and all! It is pretty exhilarating. At one point we got out of the raft and swam down another set of rapids. Again, very cool! J Oh yeah, one other note, all the guys that worked at the raft company were pretty hot. VERY nice bonus plan. Hee-hee

From there it was onto Taupo (which is where I am now) for a little skydiving action! I can’t believe that I actually did it. It was unbelievable. It was by far my favorite thing that I have done so far. It jumped from 12,000 feet. I had an awesome jump partner. His name was Laci (pronounced Latzi). He was from Holland and he was very cool. He totally put me at ease and after 5 minutes of talking we were both making each other laugh. He was the perfect partner for me since I am pretty much a wise-ass and he had a great sense of humor. When we went out of the plane we did a backflip and then did the freefall for 40 seconds. It felt like I was falling forever. What an amazing view of everything. Then when we pulled the parachute we did a whole bunch of these sharp turns which I loved. It was a totally amazing experience. Laci was laughing the whole way down cause I was screaming my head off cause I was so excited. Ok, so I may never come home now. I am going to run away to become a surf/skydiving/rafting/caving instructor! LOL

What can I say it has been an amazing three days. Tomorrow we leave to go to the national park to do the 6 hour Tongoriro crossing hike. It is supposed to be the best on day hike in New Zealand. I can’t wait!

One thing I will say before I close out this blog is that it is totally going to suck to say goodbye to people. Chloe and I had to say good bye to Li and Sofia today. We all became close when we stayed together at Raglan. They hopped off at Rotorua cause they are doing an east coast extension tour that chloe and I are not doing. We are all going to try to meet up in Australia to either do a surf camp together or rent a camper van and cause mayhem along Australia’s west coast. We shall see. I hope we are able to meet. I can already tell that I am going to suck at these goodbyes. Sigh….

Oh yeah, last thing, thanks so much for all of your comments on my blog. I totally appreciate it. Please keep them coming. I am trying to figure out how to comment back on the blog but I have yet to figure it out. I miss all you guys…Big Hugs!!!!! Mwah!

Best quote of the week as spoken by Kerry the Stray bus driver: “Zorbing is fun and all but is over in like 30 seconds…kind of like shagging an American guy.” I almost pissed myself when he said this!

Tags: New Zealand, Travel

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 at 1:13 am and is filed under New Zealand, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.