more water (this time, the fun kind)!

The weather forecast turned out to be wonderfully inaccurate, and a day that was supposed to be very windy and mostly rainy turned out mostly sunny, and perfect for outdoors fun.  Last night was very windy indeed - the howling woke us up in the middle of the night, and forced at least one of the boats in the Volvo cup to go back to port... By morning, while it was still windy, and the lake was much rougher than I thought lakes could be, the rain had stopped and we even saw some patches of blue sky.  So we decided to go on our planned water rafting expedition - which turned out to be a lot of fun AND the sun came out too.....  We went rafting on one of the rivers that feeds the Rotoiti lake ("roto" means body of water in Mauri, which is why so many places around here start with it.  Iti means small - thus "small body of water") - it is actually quite large, but when the Mauri discovered it, they only saw one part of it, and thought it was small....
The river has level 2 through 5 rapids.....  5 is some serious rapids.....  Which is why we had to put on some serious equipment - I think we look quite sexy......

All this gear turned out to be useful when we ended up upside down under the raft after tackling a 7m waterfall - here we are after having been rescued and pulled out of the water by our guides.....

the river goes through a beautiful canyon, with lush vegetation and interesting rock structure - it was really worth "the ride"!.
In the afternoon, we decided to take a walk to the Tarawera waterfall:  this involved taking a boat ride across the lake to reach the trail.  There were some serious waves on that lake today!  I did not know lake grew waves that big....  but we made it and the 1 1/2 hour hike through lush forest, following the river, was really beautiful.  It's not quite a rain forest, but is is definitely very moist...  with lots of different type of very large ferns, including the omnipresent silver fern tree, whose curled "proto-leaves" are one of the symbols of NZ:

The river is this amazing shade of blue-green, and this swimming hole was tempting, but we were not equipped for swimming, so we just hiked on....

 At some point, the river disappears - quite striking for a river, it literally  goes away, as if swallowed by the rocks.  And then, it comes out as this amazing waterfall:

I have never seen a waterfall where the water does not come off a cliff, but comes out of the rocks!

This is our last evening at Solitaire lodge, which is good, because if I keep eating this way, I won't fit in the plane seat..... tomorrow, off to Napier and Hawkes bay!