Roadtrip: Taupo, Rotorua and Tauranga (week 11-12)

During the week I did my first pub quiz with some colleagues. I’m way too young to know most of the questions and my colleagues didn’t know anything either so we ended up second last. Luckily the second last place got a voucher of 25$ to spend the next time. So in the end of the day we won something. Furthermore, we went out eating with “The squad” by a Chinese and it was really good. We call our friend group “The squad” (original yea) and we are with 4 guys, 4 girls and me; so a total of 9 people (for people who can’t calculate). In addition to those two activities, we went to the homage of the All Blacks. It was really cool to see the All Blacks in real life. It was also cool to see the activities they prepared for that day. For example; a Maori group performed the haka in front of the All Blacks.

The first weekend we went with the squad to Taupo with three spaceships. These are cars with beds in the trunk. We left on the Friday night so we had to drive in the dark. The lights of our cars were not really good; so it was really hard to see where you had to go. When we finally arrived in Taupo we parked our spaceship close to Lake Taupo and chilled a bit at the lake. After some time we went back to the cars to sleep. We had some struggle to build our bed, but in the end we had something that was sufficient enough to sleep on. It was really cold that night (around 1 degrees); so everyone was sleeping with their clothes on. Furthermore, everyone was sleeping close to each other, because there was not a lot of space in the car. The next day we went to the thermal park in Taupo and enjoyed the hot water pools. After that we went to Rotorua to prepare for the Halloween party.

In Rotorua we drank some drinks before we went to the Halloween party. It ended before it begun, because someone (not me) was too drunk to get in. So we went back to take some rest instead. The next morning at 5 am we went back to the bar to watch the final between New Zealand vs Australia. It was a brilliant game where New Zealand came ahead in the early stage of the game. Australia came back after some time, the All Blacks were too strong in the end and they run over Australia.

The next morning we went to OGO. It was really good, the sun was shining and the best of all; it was for free. It was for free, because someone of our group works for STRAY (a travel organisation with a lot of contacts) we only had to make a promotion text about the OGO. That was really easy, because I really enjoyed it and just wrote about my good experiences (It is in Dutch, but you can read it if you want to). The rest of the day we chilled in the sun at Lake Rotorua.

The other weekend we went to Tauranga with the internship company. The first stop was at a goldmine, but we walked the wrong way so we didn’t see the goldmine at all. The next stop was in Tauranga itself at Mount Maunganui. We walked to the summit and had some great views all over the sea, isles and Tauranga itself. Then we chilled at the beach and waited for the pizza. They managed it to deliver three times the wrong pizza for me. In the night we had some drinks, watched to a beautiful firework show and went out.

The day after we went to another goldmine (yep I’ve seen it). In addition to that, we walked next to a river for an hour and ended up walking through a really really really long and dark tunnel (it was way more special than it sounds). Then we went back home and ate something together with the squad; to end the weekend well.
 

PS: that’s it for now, I'll try to upload the next blog next week and down here you can find my promotion text (if you are interested).

OGO

Na een korte rit vanuit rotorua zijn we bij het ogo terein aangekomen. Het was vroeg in de morgen maar de zon stond al stralend aan de hemel. Met een strak blauwe lucht en de felle zon werd er al snel ingesmeerd en klaar gemaakt voor het ogo. Voordat de ogo kon beginnen worden moesten er eerst nog promotie foto’s gemaakt worden voor de STRAY company. Deze werden met veel lol en plezier gemaakt. Daarna was het dan eindelijk zo ver. Nadat we wat kleren kregen om in de ogo aan te doen werden we omhoog gereden. Vanaf boven hadden we een prachtig uitzicht over de fel groene gekleurde bergen en na een paar mooie foto’s kon de echte pret eindelijk beginnen. Er zijn drie verschillende banen en we zijn als eerste van baan twee afgeweest. Dit was een soort silnger de slang pad naar beneden. Normaal word je al helemaal heen en weer gechut als je erin zit, maar door de slinger de slang pad was je helemaal de weg kwijt. De volgende was de eerste baan wat recht naar beneden ging. Hier zijn we met zijn drieen tegelijk in geweest. Helemaal fantastisch, omdat je om elkaar heen draait en natuurlijk weer helemaal geen richtings gevoel had. Je bent gewoon met zijn drieen van boven naar beneden helemaal aan het laggen en genieten. Als laatste zijn we van baan drie afgeweest. Deze begon lekker rustig, maar opeens kwam er een kijharde versnelling die je niet verwacht. Dit was natuurlijk echt heel gaaf en heb daar ook erg van genoten. Na even nagenieten en drogen in de zon gingen we ons weer terug omgekleden. We hebben natuurlijk de crui bedankt die ons dit heeft mogelijk gemaakt voordat we weg gingen. Het was een onvergetelijke ervaring en echt een van de dingen die je in Nieuw-Zealand gedaan moet hebben.