Rainbow Mountain & Kerosene Creek

Disclaimer: Ok. First parts about a mountain bike trail, you might not care. But the second part of this post is about a hot water river (hot tub temperature), with waterfalls and you can swim in. Every but should care about those things...

After tearing up the smooth, wide, and speedy-fast machine built trails of Rotorua, Lisa and I decided to earn our turns at what the internet calls: one of the best adventure trails in the Rotorua area, Rainbow Mountain. Rainbow Mountain is a volcanic peak about 30 km south of Rotorua, situated in the middle of pasture land. It's heavily vegetated with tropical looking trees, and has a lot of interesting steaming rocks and ponds. From the top, their is a full 360 panorama, featuring smaller volcanic peaks to the North, Mount Tongariro to the South, and a mix of forest and pastureland everywhere else.

The mountain bike trail itself was about 8 km and included 390 m of climbing from car to peak, of which about half required pushing our bikes instead of pedaling. So your probably thinking "that doesn't sound like fun!", or "why didn't you just stay within the confines of Rotorua, where $5 dollar shuttle-rides can give you just as long of descents?". Well the truth is we are masochists, plus we heard (and can now verify) that the downhill section is rough, rugged, and rad as hell. The trail is awesome! The top half is steep technical downhill, which taught Lisa and I that we should listen to our friends at home who tell us our old bikes sucked, and a new bike would change our lives. Fine, we get it. "Geometry, and bigger tires... Blah, blah, blah". Seriously, bikes make for better riders. The second half was smooth, flowy, fast jungle riding, which was equally as radical.

---------Kerosene Creek - ---Hot Water River---------------------

So apparently Rotorua is famous for its geothermal bathing experiences. Lisa and I are a bit ignorant to this as, and unwilling to take part in the fun because these types of attractions, for the most part are super-duper expensive. But there is a magic place which shares a parking lot with the Rainbow Mountain Mountain Bike Trail called Kerosene Creek where you can enjoy geothermal water in a jungle setting, while swimming under a waterfall, while drinking a beer, and all for free. Also, while it is not exactly a secret, it's not the most busy place in the world. Worth a trip for sure, just make sure a shower is in your evening plans, as the water kind of smells like either the worksite at my fathers wetland planting business or a feedlot.Baca lagi