Not to be outdone by the cold a second time, we held no punches entering the night. We packed our sleeping bags with blankets, wore hats, sweatshirts, pants and wool socks. Sure enough, come morning we were both warm and toasty; however our alarm was set an hour and a half early, so we started our day ahead of schedule.

Our first event was white water rafting, the river we went on had a 12-ft waterfall. We got on our wetsuits (remember it's still 40 degrees outside and it was 10:00am) and helmets and headed down to grade 5 rapids. Go figure, we were the only ones to book for that day, so we had the raft all to ourselves. The first two waterfalls took us winding through gorges lined with ferns. It is tradition to take a fern leaf off and throw it in the river; if it turns up green you raft doesn't flip over on the last waterfall, if it turns up white... Jer took the leaf and hurled it an impressive foot away from the boat - it landed green side up. Hizzah! We slowly paddled up to the waterfall and looked over the edge. It emptied into a large pool surrounded by steep cliffs and jungle. Inching closer to the falls, we hear the command "Get down!" and we hunkered close to the floor. The boat fell and submerged for a few moments, until it rebounded from the water. We nearly lost our guide but made it through. The photos turned out great!

Close your eyes and imagine yourself being in a hamster ball trapped in a pinball machine - this is zorbing. It began as you crawled in the 12 ft diametre ball as they filled it with 10 gallons of water to allow you to slide around. The material was like a medicine ball, but the door was rough and scratched you as it went by. From within you couldn't see much; the only directions given were "when I hit the ball start walking towards your left." The "left" was a winding course that sent you crashing into barriers and racing down straighaways. Besides the amount of fo-hawks you had to talk to in order to ride the zorb, it was really fun!

We came back and grocery shopped, and then rode kayaks down a small stream behind our camper van park that emptied into Lake Rotorua. We also took showers for the first time in God only knows how long (2 nights) because we have our Maurai (sp?) cultural dinner tonight. We don't know what we're more excited about: learning about a warrior culture that has survived 1,000s of years or the prospect of our first non-soup dinner.

Tomorrow we head out to go black water rafting (done inside caves!) and on the 5th we visit Mount Doom! Catch you on the flipside!

Take Care (Jer),
Much Love (Nick),
Over and Out (Jaquline),