We woke up early for our trout fishing expedition on Lake Taupo. As we had been told that this was the trout capital of the world, we had to do it. We met up with our captain for the day, Dan Basse, at 6 am on the marina to board the White Striker. Dan said most people average about 1 trout per hour. We averaged almost 3. In a span of less than 3 hours, we managed to catch 8 trout ranging from 3 lbs to 5.5 lbs. Eric was the angler of the day with the big catch.
Trout fishing is very different from bass fishing or even deep sea fishing. It's what Dan called "chardonnay fishing" cause you can sit and sip your chardonnay without having to hold the pole. He has an automatic reel that takes the lure down to 150 feet or deeper, and you sit and wait for the reel to start jiggering. Once it does, you have a fish and you wind it up. Trout don't fight as much as bass or grouper, but it's fun to see them jump in the air to try to get off the hook.
New Zealand is pretty awesome about maintaining its natural beauty. They don't allow any bait fishing on the lake, only lure fishing. They also don't allow you to fish between 12 am and 5 am which is the trouts' prime eating time, in order to prevent overfishing of the lake. They don't stock the lake, everything is au naturale.
After our fishing expedition, we took one fresh fish and one smoked fish with us. We dropped off the fresh fish at Waterside Restaurant. We told them we'd be back in a few hours to eat it, after we'd taken a trip to Rotorua to go ""Zorbing".
We then hopped into our car and drove the 1 hour drive to Rotorua. New Zealand is known for its crazy sports, they invented bungy jumping. Zorbing is another silly activity created in Rotorua, New Zealand - so we had to try it. Basically, you are like a hamster in a giant hamster ball. You can opt to do a dry run down the hill or a wet one. Also, either straight down the hill or on a zig zag. As it was highly unlikely that our stomachs would be able to handle being tied in and rolled down the hill in the dry run, we
opted to do a tandem wet run down the hill. This required them to fill water about 1/5 of the way into this huge plastic ball, then we jumped in, and then they zipped us up. Then we proceeded to do the initial push off the plateau of the hill by walking like a hamster.The ride down was pretty fun. Just imagine how it would feel like to be put in a giant washing machine. Basically, that's what it was like. We slipped and slid all the way down the hill. The video isn't that great cause I didn't manage to hold the camera steady when we went down. Just a lot of sloshing and us laughing. Maybe that's why they told us camera's weren't allowed. Oops. We were completely soaked when we got out. I was done for the day but Eric decided to go for a second run down the zig zag path. He said that one was more fun cause you got jostled around a lot more and you never knew which direction you were going in. It was funny seeing him roll around inside this giant hamster ball. So silly.
Running late, we couldn't really explore more of Rotorua and had to head back to Taupo to eat our tasty trout. The cook did a superb job cooking the trout. Interestingly, the trout here are pink, they look like salmon. It was very meaty and tasty. We couldn't get enough of it and picked the bones
clean.After our lunch, we knew we had a long drive ahead of us to get to Wellington. Since we were behind schedule, it wasn't likely that we would get there before 11pm, so we tried to make up the time by driving faster. Bad idea. I got busted going 115 kph on a 100 kph zone. In my defense, that really is less than 10 mph over the posted speed limit. Such bad luck. The cop was really nice though, smiled when he gave me the ticket, told me it wasn't the "crime of the century" and proceeded to talk to us for a good 10 minutes afterwards about our travels and how we liked New Zealand. Well, I liked it a lot until I encountered you, buddy!
We were then on our way again (going probably under the speed limit now). We made a pit stop along the way at the McDonald's. It was the trendiest McDonald's I have ever seen. So modern and clean, in the middle of nowhere. Guess "Maccas", as they call it here, is improving its image.
We finally made it to Wellington around 10:30 pm. We hadn't previously booked a hotel since we figured it was a Wednesday night and a big town. BAD IDEA. Every place we stopped at was booked full for the evening. The only place available was on the pricier side and we didn't feel like paying so much to be in a room for less than 8 hours. After circling town for awhile and having no luck finding a place, our next bright idea was to find a hotel near the airport since we had an early morning flight.
Well, finding our way to the airport was another issue. We had a map and it pointed us to the airport route but after 3 times of circling the town we kept ending up at the same darn McDonald's we ate dinner at. Ugh! We thought we were just lost since it was hard to read the tiny map in the dark. Finally, we realized it wasn't us, it was because the on ramp was closed due to construction. There was no on ramp to the airport in town!
We then found another route to the airport and got the heck out of Wellington. I'm sure Wellington is a great town, but I really have no desire to go back to visit after this ordeal. By this time, it was close to midnight, we were both tired and grumpy (probably me more so) and got even grumpier when we realized there were no hotels on the way to the airport.
We finally decided to head to the next town instead. We came across a place called "Airport Motor Lodge". It didn't look so great from the outside but by this time we didn't care. We were willing to pay 5 star prices for 2 star quality if it meant we could take a shower and lay down and sleep. Luckily, it wasn't too pricey and turned out to be a really nice motel. It looked brand new! At least one thing went right.
We finally got to take those hot showers and hopped into bed. Christchurch tomorrow!
For pictures of the day, we have two links (we exceeded our memory limit on the other account). Go to:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=bigtandeze&target=ALBUM&id=5409032816188534705&authkey=Gv1sRgCP325qL9qYrQmAE&feat=email
and
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=eric.chang1&target=ALBUM&id=5409045839040798513&authkey=Gv1sRgCNKMz93Dj9CqBA&feat=email
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