Tour of the Treetops

The town of Rotorua is known for adventure sports.  This is the place where bungee jumping was invented.

Carol doesn't take physical risks often.  Yet, for weeks she had been reading about a canopy tour company in Rotorua, one of our rest-day locations.  While there are other zip lines in NZ, this is the only one through native forest.  Apparently, none of the tree or plant species we saw on the tour exist outside of NZ.  Don't ask their names though, as she can't even pronounce the name of the town we were/are in at any time.  The Maori language is related to Hawaiian, and a complete mystery to us.

Another good reason to take the tour is that the company uses a portion of its profits to fund a native species conservation program on its over 1000 acres of forest.  Its few employees handle the program completely on their own time.  The company has a 30-year lease on the land from the government which loosely monitors their conservation programs and offers some advise.  We got to see photos of the neatly laid out (for program documentation) corpses of possums, stoats (weasely things, yuck), and rats (huge) collected in the first 5 days of their predator elimination program in 2013.  They use special traps which instantly kill the animals.  It's very important, as the possums and stoats are eliminating wildlife in amazing numbers.  Even normally vegetarian possums are eating birds, etc.  There were no land mammals in NZ prior to the arrival of Europeans.  The birds, in particular, had learned to walk up and say hello to other animals...snap, gulp, gone.  Once the predators are eliminated, they will put a protective barrier around the whole zone to keep other mammalian predators out.  It sounds impossible, but has been successful at another nature reserve near Tauranga, about 90km east of here.

There were 8 of us new to zip lines touring that day, including a 7-year old with his parents and a 16-year old who came on his own to see if he could conquer a fear of heights.  At the end of the tour, he admitted to having fun, but was still terrified at the prospect of perhaps doing it again.  On our last zip Dan, the guide, taught us how to go upside down.  I didn't try feet up...this time.

Carol was frightened, so went before the teen-ager - to not see his fear - and put on a good face before the first zip, only about 20 meters off the ground.  The guides attach you to the line and you walk down stairs and walk off the platform, not jump.

Unfortunately, the photos of us actually zipping didn't turn out.  One of our two guides had a camera that was malfunctioning.  Along with zipping, we also walked across several types of swag bridges.  This one actually had "rails", as it was our first.

The others did not, although we were always attached to lines for safety.  Look mom, no hands!

Carol was totally relaxed after the first zip.

We went over 22 meters above the forest floor, and on a line 220 meters long.  We landed and took off again from a platform built around an 800 year old tree.  When we took off on this longest of zips, all we could see was trees, no platform for landing was in sight.  We flew over a valley that went perpendicular to the zip and could see the treetops in both directions.  What a thrill.  We walked on a pathway with 2000 years of leaves and other organic matter that was so spongy it was more like bouncing though the forest.

While zipping, we flapped our arms and made bird calls - ok, it probably scared more off than it attracted - leaned back and looked up at the clouds, leaned over and looked at the forest below, and just had an all around good time.  Am I having fun yet?  In the second photo I wasn't screaming, but that one is no fun to look at.













At the end, we all knew one another's names, were cheering one another on, and were truly a team.