After a day of rain, bright sunshine greeted us today, and we thought it was 9 when we woke up at 6am. We went off to Redwoods on time to be greeted by friendly staff (an almost superfluous and understated adjective to describe anyone in NZ). We were all hooked up to the safety harness before a nice stroll/ hike through the Redwood forest. Interesting tidbit was that the Redwoods for imported from California, but grows 10x faster due to the fertile volcanic soil. However the flip side is that their barks are more brittle given the rapid speed of growth, leaving it more prone to being destroyed by human touch (oils in our hands). It's both an irony and a pronounced sarcasm of the effect of human beings on nature that the tallest trees in the world just can't stand a human touch!
Our Redwoods Altitude adventure began with a quick demonstration of how to navigate the ropes with our gear and cross bridges and ziplines. It was fairly simple to understand but still made a couple of mistakes along the way! Crossing the different types of briedges they had specifically built was fun, with 20+ bridges of varying complexity for us to cross. The ziplines were fantastic, feeling the cool wind while we zap across the Redwoods trees, earning the mock ire if we touch some of its leaves. I always ended up turning on my back for some reason, but thoroughly enjoyed it. The real highlight was the last drop off, literally, from 20+ meters high, with a 1 second free fall and 7 seconds in all. Doesn't sound like much but I started with a scream of pain as I held the harness a bit too tightly, but enjoyed my way down. My kids had no such issues and was overjoyed by the experience, probably the most adventurous activity of their short lives so far. 2 hours felt like 2 mins here! For my wife and daughter, this was also a bit of a prelude to their planned skydive later on in Queenstown!
Having dropped off the kids at the hotel, my wife and myself went to the city center to buy some shoes for me (which got torn during my morning adventure). Having got a recommendation, we went to the Torpedo7 store at The Warehouse to get some hiking shoes (which were pretty expensive compared to SG by the way) before we had a mix of sandwiches, Indian and Chinese lunch take aways. While the price was high, the quantity and quality more than made up for it, leaving us with a bursting stomach!
Afternoon was spent gorging on ice cream from the Lady Jones Ice cream shop across the road with 50+ wonderful flavours to try out. It seemed quite popular from the everpresent crowd and we now know why! We also caught up on some sleep and using the geothermal spa at the hotel, soaking in the sulfur rich hot water at various temperatures.
Dinner was Italian pasta, from the food lane across the hotel. Needless to say, all food stalls, cafeteria and restaurants were mostly manned by Indians and Chinese staff.. Kinda needs some getting used to, especially given some preconceived notions of interacting with a lot more Kiwis on the tour!
At sunset at 8.30pm, it was off again to Redwoods for the famed TreeWalk at night. Once the lights came on, we were one of the first to go in with the highly recommended Fast Pass, as the queue was quite long otherwise. It was like stepping into a magical place, with lights illuminating the trees and creating structures like Maori lanterns and native birds. It was a 40 min relaxed stroll through a series of bridges across the Redwood trees, with plenty of photo ops. However, photos can only be limited to either people or the background, not both due to the high contrast in brightness between the two. That's probably the only grief about this experience. The isite information center was smelling of coffee the minute we entered and we tasted a wonderful brew there, alongside grabbing a couple of souvenirs.
We came out to a clear night sky full of stars, and even took a small detour on the way back to immerse in the celestial view by the Rotorua Lake before calling it a day.
Day 4 was indeed a lazy day before our long drive to Wellington through the supervolcano town of Taupo tomorrow. I am also increasingly excited to catch up with my childhood pal after many years, and talk a lot more about NZ!
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