More adventures on Day 24

We woke up early on day 24 to be the first people in the world to see the sun rise! Gisborne is the furthest east town in NZ and is supposedly the first place in the world to see the sun rise. It was a little cloudy and rainy, but we held out hope that we would see the sun. Well at 7:08 am the sun came and...

we didn't see it.

So our day didn't start out as planned, but we were confident that our next activity would not disappoint us...

and it didn't. We headed to the Rere Rockslide, a 60 meter long smooth sloped rock face in the middle of a river. We got wetsuits and inflatible boogie boards and cruised down the slide. It was faster than expected and incredibly fun. We spent two hours going down the slide and walking back to the top to go down again. At the end we thought of a fun game. We slid down and tried to go through the tube at the bottom. It was a little dangerous, but still a blast. Watch the video below.

After we couldn't walk up the hill any more, we headed over to the "champange pools" in the river. They were deep and you could jump and dive off them, then slide over a little waterfall into a second pool. As you can see we pulled off some "choice" tricks.

Next we headed down to the waterfall for a few photos and a climb behind the falls. It was a pretty spot and neat to walk behind the falls.

We were exhausted by this time and headed back to the backpacker to get cleaned up and pack so we could head back to Rotorua. On the way we ran into a "New Zealand traffic jam." It is not the same as a Minneapolis traffic jam, but can be just as slow!

Once we got cleaned up we loaded the van and headed to Rotorua. We were very tired and tried to sleep, but the roads in NZ are not known for being wide and straight. Most of the time you just hold on so you don't fall out of your seat. We made it back and got some dinner and a beer with the people in our group before heading to bed, exhausted.