NZ Day 20 - Rotorua Orienteering & Adrenaline Forest

Thursday, 20 April 2017

Today was another fun day - first we had the sprint event around the Government Gardens beside Lake Rotorua.  Mostly 'beside', but also a bit actually 'in' Lake Rotorua - as the 445mm of rain that Rotorua has received in the last 30 days has meant that some control features originally at the edge of the lake were now islands in the lake!  The organisers had to change some of the courses at the last minute, then as a final headache on the morning of the event (i.e. today) they discovered that a) a circus had arrived and set up in the middle of the map, and b) new hot springs had appeared where a control site was supposed to be.   Ha!

Despite it being very wet underfoot, we all had good runs - Jon won M45, Jett was 3rd in M12, Zali had a good run in the relay event she was in for high school kids, and I had a great run in my class only to discover to my horror (as I downloaded) that I actually missed a control and was disqualified - dang! Still - it was super fun and I enjoyed it heaps.

In the afternoon we headed to Adrenaline Forest - something we'd been looking forward to since we were last in NZ.  Out of interest, last time we did it (2012) the kids looked like this..

This time they looked like this:

The forest had 6 different courses - each one was harder and higher up than the previous one. Last time we did it Jett was limited by his height and could only do a few courses, while Zali was technically able to do most of them but I think we only had time for 3. This time the kids were allowed to do them all and only the limiting factor was themselves.  Zali reached her limit walking across swinging logs suspended 25-30m up in the trees, halfway through the 5th course, but did well to finish it.  Jett was still happy to continue but by then everyone else (Andy, Lyra, Leo Annabelle, and especially Clare :) ) had had enough, so we called it a day after the 5th.   It was awesome fun though.

Back at Blue Lake we had our third big dinner with all 19 of us staying here. Our routine is to have a first sitting for the kids (8 of them), then a second sitting for the 11 adults - it's been really socialiable and  fun. Today the menu was leftovers of the 2 previous dinners (mexican and indian).

Tomorrow is our last full day in Rotorua and half the group is  planning to hit the mountain bike trails (finally!), whilst the other half, including Zali and Jett are planning to take it a bit easier.