Road Trip With a Twist

Both my previous road trips have been tailored to interests that my companions and I share. A love of walking mixed with photography. A love of animals, mixed with photography. A love of singing along very much out of tune whilst going from A to B to C etc etc (stopping along the way to take the odd photograph of course). Therefore it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that when I had a quick look at the ceroc timetables on the way up the country I quickly managed to plot out a route that coincided with them and even less of a surprise that my dance obsessed friend immediately agreed to it. And so began our mini ceroc NZ tour.

The main aim of our trip was to relax and have a holiday before I left. My goal was to get to Auckland by the 5th of July as I flew out on the 6th. We agreed that the main highlight of our trip would be a spa day at Rotarua as though we’d both been before neither of us had tried the famous mud spas. Since it was on the way our first stop was Palmerston North where we stopped by purely to try out their Monday evening ceroc class. We were surprise at how many people we recognised and it was a great start to our ceroc tour.

The following day we were on our way to Rotorua via Gravity Canyon. I’d wanted to go to Gravity Canyon since my brother and his wife had visited as they had a zipline there that was meant to be amazing. On arrival the place was very quiet probably due to the terrible weather. The rain was trying to start but kept giving up then trying again. It made for a dreich1 day and not at all conducive to ziplining. Personally the thing that decided it for me was the walk. At least twenty minutes up a very steep looking path then a few minutes back down not to mention the walk back up from the bottom of the canyon. Since I was not feeling 100% neither walk appealed and I decided that it was not meant to be. Instead we had a cup of tea and watched a braver person give it a go.

In Rotorua we were able to book into a twin room in a hostel friend I had stayed in previously. We settled in and went for a wander and in search of some food. Our first full day in Rotorua and we visited one of mud spas the town is famous for. I must admit I did enjoy playing in the mud and whilst sitting in the hot spa water was a bit boring I did feel much better afterwards.

On the Thursday we took the gondola to the luge and had great fun racing each other down the track. It was a beautiful if cold day so I took the opportunity to take some photos of the area. It had been a while since I had used my mirrorless camera and I was still getting used to it. Nethertheless I enjoyed reacquainting myself with it. In the evening we tried the local ceroc class and again everyone was very welcoming. We got the feeling that most people there were quite new but they still made us feel welcome and we got some fun dances out of them before managing an early night.

1. dreich

Pronunciation: /driːx/ 

adjective

Scottish

(Especially of weather) dreary; bleak:a cold, dreich early April day
From the Oxford Dictionary