A fun filled weekend...

After being in the country only 3 days, I really hit the ground running. Having been here before, it was fairly easy to get acclimated again to a culture and area that I was somewhat familiar with. Helping along the way are two of my friends, Dave and Galina. Besides serving as my unofficial guides to Hamilton they are also generous enough to let me crash on their sofa until I can find a place to live. Props!



Being the great guides that they are, they suggested that on Saturday we go and do a nice day hike at Wairere Falls. Of course I couldn't say no to that! The falls is the highest in the North Island with a height of 152m (according to wikipedia, but we thought it looked a bit higher), so the sight was pretty sweet. The trail leads to a midpoint lookout as well as the top of the falls. On the way up there are various little waterfalls that gave me an opportunity to snap some interesting photos.




This was the first time that I had really experimented with longer exposures and running water, but for an initial try I think they turned out ok. At least the falls is close enough that I can return if I wish.

Of course, being in NZ means that you have to take unnecessary risks to be "extreme" (think: bungee, skydiving, etc) so we decided that walking out to the edge of the falls for some photos would be a good idea.

After a nice hike down, we returned home for some well deserved rest, only to prepare for the next day.

On Sunday myself and two other PSU students, Sam and Amanda, went along with Dave and Galina to partake in what seemed to be one of Dave's favorite pastimes in NZ, the luge at Rotorua. This is somewhat similar to the "Alpine Slide" at Seven Springs back in PA, but instead of being on a track you steer the sled around a concrete race course. Of course, in typical "extreme" Kiwi fashion, you are very capable of crashing into each other, tipping over, and flying off of the track. I only did two of the three having saved myself from tipping over on a few different occasions although a mouth full of sand from my time spent flying off of the course was a bit less than desirable.

Here's a cool group shot that Galina was able to take during one of our runs.


A reoccurring theme resonated throughout the weekend: a great time was had and we returned home exhausted.

More to come later, possibly today, since we made a trip to the Hamilton Zoo yesterday.


As always, check out my flickr at www.flickr.com/danielbott for more shots and bigger versions.