Rotorua and Lake Tarawera!

Our weekend of fun was awesome. We took Friday off and drove down early, allowing Iain an hour or so of fishing and me some welcome relaxation with tabloid magazines. We had a picnic lunch by the water, a bottle of wine, and went for a walk along the stream. It's fed by an underground spring, so the water is a beautiful turquoise blue but it's freezing (despite this, loads of kids were leaping into it from the bridge -- it was great).

The stream empties into the lake, and the fish love it. Iain caught THREE fish in a little over an hour. Pretty awesome. Here are the pictures.

It's tough to see in the photos, but the stream bed is this insane blue color.



The first of three!!


Around 7pm, after a drink at the lakeside restaurant, The Landing, we met our friends Shane, Glenn, and Claudine for a night of BBQ and booze. Shane lives in Rotorua and let us all crash at his place. You'd think that 5 adults staying together (for the first time) in a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom house would be potentially disastrous, but we all got along great. I admit it - I was pleasantly surprised! (it helped that no one wanted to do anything except eat, drink, watch the Crime & Investigations channel, and go to the lake).

The next day we headed to the lake for waterskiing and swimming. I had to take a picture of Iain's outfit -- he wore Glenn's shorts for waterskiing, a life jacket, his own floral shirt, and hat. Sex on a stick!

The last time I went waterskiing was 1988 on Grand Island, NY with Kate Brill. Times have changed! Waterskiing is SCARY! Our efforts resulted in one pulled hamstring (Glenn), major water up the nose and ears (Iain), extremely sore arms (me), and one 20 second success (Shane, pictured below). We are all getting old.

Shane and Iain decided to play some cricket, which was interrupted by a guy who was either drunk or severely mentally disabled, or both. We're guessing drunk, but who knows. Apparently, he took the cricket ball and threw it at family seated about 20 feet away. Not cool (but I'm a little sorry I missed it!)

We also lost a water ski, which was devastating for Glenn, who search the lake about three times. The only saving grace is that he was the one who lost it, not one of us. Here's Glenn and Claudine returning from an unsuccessful search....

The mountains in the background are volcanos that erupted in the 1800s, and no longer have their tops.