I am once again up-to-date on my photos on facebook. Feels great!

Our 10 hour day trip was a huge success! We began the day around 7am and quickly ate breakfast and packed a picnic lunch. Making homemade sandwiches is such a blast! Always such a great picnic option! It took us just under 2.5 hours to drive to Rotorua. We had bought tickets online last night for our gondola + 3 luge rides + skyswing at Skyline Rotorua. It was a gorgeous 24 degree day with not a cloud in the sky.

We rode the gondola up and chose to head towards the skyswing first.  We were all eager to do it….well all but one. Emzie rode it a few weeks back when her parents first arrived in town. She is not a fan of heights so it wasn’t the most pleasant experience for her. Being the trooper that she is she daringly decided to brave it again. The swing gives you a nice view of Rotorua. You get strapped into your harness that is attached to a three seater swing. The swing takes you 50 metres above ground level and drops you 150kph in 2 seconds. If money wasn’t a concern I would have done the swing at least one more time. It was such an amazing experience. Watching Ana and Kristy on their ride was fun too. It’s so much fun watching people who are laughing and smiling so purely and freely. Happiness is just such a great feeling. I wish we could all experience it more.  (The videos are posted on facebook!)

After the swings we headed off for 3 luge rides. I had fun the first time but I definitely had more fun this time around. The sun was shining and the 4 of us riding together down the slopes was a thrill. The first time down the track we chose the scenic route, it was pretty fun but we didn’t go that fast since two of us were beginners. On the second ride down we were movin’ down, passing each other and laughing the whole way down. It reminded Ana of real life Mario Cart. On our last trip we stopped on all of the pull outs for a few photo ops on our carts. We captured fun group shots at the dinosaurs. Luge was definitely a blast!

When we were done we had a lovely picnic at Kuirua Park which was not too far from the ‘Skyline Rotorua.’  It was a gorgeous day and we had packed a wonderful lunch which we thoroughly enjoyed after all of the activities in the hot sun. Next we went to ‘Zorb’ for Ana and Kristy to give it a try since we had so much fun before. They also went down two at a time and had a blast!

The drive home was around 3 hours in the hot hot van. Our air-conditioning doesn’t work and our speakers died on the way home but that didn’t stop us from LOVING our little road trip.We are looking forward to another beach day tomorrow at Muriwai.

A huge thank you to Ana for being a special co-writer on this blog. Maybe I can convince her to help out more in the future 🙂

xox Buddha Blessings
Amanda + Ana