Rotorua Day II

ROTORUA DAY II (20km, 1061km total) - I woke up this morning in time to go to church for the first time all trip. I rode in to go to St. Luke's Anglican church in town. It was a nice enough service, although the preacher's point was a bit muddled and theologically sparse. "It's a new year, so make every day count," about sums it up. They had communion though, which is what I was really missing, so all was good.

I rode back and found that Shad had spent the morning sunbathing and helping Deborah clean for her birthday BBQ party that she had tonight. We did a bit of laundry and headed out to see the sights of Rotorua. We rode our bikes into town and through the geothermal part of Kuirau Park. There were pools of boiling mud, hot springs, a couple of really hot foot baths, and the strong eggy scent of sulfur.

Foot Soak

It was pretty cool all together. From there we headed down along the shore of Lake Rotorua and ran into an open air market. We spent a little time checking out the stalls, including one that sold handheld "massaging" devices which sent small electric shocks through your muscles.

We continued our ride then down along the coast until we arrived at the government gardens and the Polynesian Spa. The Polynesian Spa housed Rotorua's main thermal pools, and Shad and I decided that was exactly where we wanted to spend the rest of our afternoon. The section we went in had 7 pools, some good for muscle relaxing, others good for your skin. They ranged in temperature from 36 to 40 degrees Celsius and were all fantastic. I think we spent over 2 hours there.

After our soak in the hot pools, we biked back to Deborah's to join her in celebrating her birthday. She had a bunch of her friends over and we enjoyed ourselves by eating huge quantities of food and drinking large quantities of wine, beer, and white russians. Shad really came into his own as a bartender and was producing all sorts of shots for us to drink. Shad, myself, and one of Deborah's friends Raymond staid up the latest, challenging each other to drink the other one under the table. I think we finally called a truce and each went off to pass out in our respective places around the house.

Rotorua, New Zealand