It is another beautiful day, sunny and starting to get very hot. We left Rotorua with plans to make it as far as Kawhia today. It is a small fishing village on the west coast. First, we wanted to check out a local park where you could go Zorbing. It was not that far out of Rotorua on Hwy 5.
Zorbing is a activity?, sport?, thrill ride? , all of the above? What I do know is that it was 15 seconds of rolling down a hill for $ 50.00. However the people who did it all seemed to have fun and one thing in common. They were young, the oldest being in their early twenties. There were two types of rides, a wet ride or a dry ride. A wet ride is when they put a bucket of water in the ball with you and the dry ride is when you are strapped in. We only saw people who wanted to do the wet ride.
It was with great difficulty (not) that we dragged ourselves away from watching them Zorb and headed for Kawhia. It was almost due east from Rotorua but in order for us to get there we had to zigzag across the interior. We wanted to make the trip by using as many secondary roads as we could. As a result we found ourselves travelling across some pretty nice farmland.
In the first game we saw Waipa defeat Auckland 12 goals to 11 in a 6 chukka game. It was a nail bitter to the very end. In the second game we saw the hometown Kihikihi put a beating on Cambridge. When we left at the end of the third chukka it was 6 goals to nil. In spite of the fact that we didn’t have a clue what was going on, we had a good time. The weather was hot, very hot, the ice cream was cold and it was a good way to spend the afternoon.
As a result of our spending so much time being polo connoisseurs we had to change our plans on how we were getting to Kawhia. We were going to travel a circular route along “The Freedom Highway” but instead had to take a direct route. Again, as expected, the drive was pretty nice. The landscape was very similar to what we seen this morning. As we got further west it started becoming quite hilly bordering on mountainous.
we were only a few miles from the coast we reached a summit that gave us a look at where we were going. We couldn’t actually see the town but we could see the coast and surrounding country side. It was quite a vista.
We were pretty beat by the time we got to Kawhia, the afternoon sun at the polo grounds had taken its toll. However, we are not complaining, after all the rain we are really appreciating the sun and the heat.
We decided the best thing to do was find a campsite and settle in for the night. It was a great day.
We had a first today. On our travels we came to the town of Kihikihi and as we were passing through we saw some activity at their polo grounds. Neither Kathy nor I have ever seen a game of Polo played live. So we pulled in and stayed to watch for awhile.
At about the half way point we came to the Waikato River. There was a picnic area so we stopped for lunch and a few pictures.
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| Waikato River |
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| Waikato River |
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