Rotten Eggs and Friendly Kiwis

The bus ride to Rotorua was one of the most picturesque glimpses of nature I have ever seen. During the 4 hour bus ride, I saw hundreds of sheep, cattle, and horses, 5 rainbows (end to end), lovely rolling hills, mountains covered with luscious foliage and plump and never ending long white clouds. The best way to describe Rotorua would be Jurassic Park meets Lord of the Rings. Between the hills/mountains I had mentioned earlier, the native ferns and tuatara lizards that date to prehistoric times and the large pockets of steam emitted from the ground, Rotorua seems like an imaginary island too beautiful to even be real. We visited the Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Park to observe geothermal activity. The Earth’s crust under this city is only 12 miles deep (which means if you drill down 12 miles..you will hit molten lava) thus giving space for the ground to excrete steam, mud pools, geysers, and crazy colored hot and steam pools. Due to the sulfur emitted from the ground, the entire city more or less smells like rotten eggs; the smell intensifying when you get closer to the pools etc. The best sight of the park would have to be the “Devil’s Bath” – a bright lime green pool sitting in the base of a volcanic crater – my camera could not even capture the color of this pool ( I guess you will just have to come see it in person). It seriously looks like someone poured buckets of “lime green” food coloring into the crater…unreal?!? My friend Krish always used to say “nature is putting on a show” when we used to watch the daily sunset at 1 CMP in NYC. For those of you from 1 CMP reading this blog – what I’ve seen in NZ is a hundred times more spectacular than those sunsets!

And for a daily dose of adventure (which seems to have become the norm for us here), we went zorbing. Basically a “zorb” is a hollow spherical object in which a person is strapped inside and rolled down a hill. Zorbing was invented by 2 brothers (while smoking who knows what..) who had originally wanted to call it “orb” but were unable to patent the word. They then added a “Z” from New Zealand in front of “orb” and christened it Zorb..and what is Zorb when you spell it backwards?! … “broz”..pretty cool huh? The only words that come to mind to describe zorbing is…ri-dunk-ulous, surreal, and you feel like you are born again when you plop out of the “womb like” structure.

The people of New Zealand are probably the friendliest in the world. Never have I met so many people that have talked to me at a bus stop, on a bus, or while just roaming around the country. In the past few days I’ve met a couple of Maori young ladies who briefed me on their love of American culture (Flava Flav, Jersey Shore..etc) and how American pop and hip hop culture has heavily influence the NZ youth; an ex-professor who informed me about the current economic climate and exports of NZ (and that he would make an intro to his daughter who works @ Bain..of course I had to do some MBA job networking here); and a couple of Euro backpackers on “work holiday” (something of an oxymoron that is non-existent in the US; basically other countries allow for you to apply for a working visa to holiday and pay for your expenses while you are there).

Friday night, our friend Lyndon who we had just met on the plane ride over to Auckland from LA insisted on showing us around and introducing us to the nightlife here. We met up with his sister and a couple of their friends to experience firsthand how people in NZ party it up! Dona (his sister) insisted we try the “rocket” shot that is native to this country. She had to ask the manager to make a special exception for us since they recently banned the shot since it was too strong. Essentially the shot is made up of 4 liquors – Jager- Vodka – Tequila – Chartreuse - and Red Bull (how can you go wrong with Red Bull?!?). It comes in a teapot and you just keep pouring the shots until you are done. It goes down very smooth, leaving you wanting more…within 5 minutes each of us had downed 4 shots of this magical elixir. It’s called “rocket” because you feel great once you drink it but about 10 minutes later, it starts to hit you.. FAST. You can only imagine how the night went after those shots…this was definitely an awesome time for our first night out in NZ.

We are now on a detour at Christchurch since it is heavily snowing in Queenstown. I pray the snow halts abruptly so that we can continue our trek and experience the scenic wonders of the South Island.