I woke up that morning and headed down to the river, as usual, to think and stretch and whatnot. This time, neither of the girls joined me to chat, but they and Chase came down later as we got ready to head out for the day on our various activities.
Chase and I spent quite a while feeding the birds (while the girls were away. 🙃), including enticing two very large black swans over to us.
Their nibble out of our hands was quite a bit more forceful (and a tad painful) than the little ducks’ nibbles. 🙃
After breakfast, we all drove over to the boat rental place, where we got set up with our motorboat, a couple of wakeboards, life jackets, and at least one wetsuit (for Lea, as she was smaller than the rest of us and needed a different size).
We had a blast on the lake. It started out a little slowly because one of the brand new wakeboards had a cracked boot base apparently out of the box, so we had gotten quite a ways out into the lake only to turn around and come all the way back in. Gratefully, they comped us 15 minutes and gave us free board rentals for the hassle.
With the board issues, we decided to use the inner tube that we rented on the ride back into port to get the wakeboard situation figured out.
Anyway, we played around for a little over 4 hours on the lake, each taking turns on the wakeboards and inner tubes. We have fun trying to steer the boats in such a way as to throw each other off the inner tubes.
First wakeboarding attempt, after getting up and riding for a little while I caught my edge on one of the wakes and biffed it pretty hard into the water. I didn’t really realize exactly what happened until later, but I think I had my fist right in front of my ribs, so when I smacked the water I basically punched myself super hard in the ribs. It hurt, but I didn’t really think much of it at the time.
That was super early on in our adventuring, and we all tried our hand at wakeboarding, road the tubes, and spent a little bit of time driving out to where the Maori carvings were that the girls wanted to see. The carvings were pretty cool, although I’m glad we didn’t rent The kayaks just to go out and see them. It was a lot more fun to have the boat that Chase rented and all the equipment to run around with.
After the lake, we headed on over to grab a little bit of food before our excursion to the bungee tower, 47 m tall tower erected over the river that we’ve been swimming in for the last 3 days.
One of the girls decided she didn’t want to bungee jump, so it was just going to be Chase and Verena and i. Unfortunately, just like with the scuba diving, little Stephen apparently was too broken to bungee jump. Having injured my hip just a few days before, and then my ribs which were only slightly painful but as we were getting ready to do the bungee, the bungee guide instructor/ whatever you want to call him suggested that I not jump, that it wasn’t worth 10 seconds of fun to aggravate an injury.
Having injured myself so many times recently, and having not been very good at taking care of myself, I reluctantly agreed to not jump. That was super hard, and I was pretty torn up about it. It was a chance to have some fun and also to face the fear that I didn’t overcome the last time I went bungee jumping. The last time I went, I jumped by a waste harness and not buy the legs harness. This time, it was going to be by the legs harness, a much higher jump, and a lot more fun I think.
But it wasn’t to be.
I played videographer for the one girl and Chase, trying to get as much of the jump as we could on video for each of them. They had a wonderful experience with the jump, not really hesitating much at all, just going for it.
With everything that was going on, discouraged about the bungee, having sort of, I can’t think of the word, there it is, having retreated back into my shell already and having not been able to get myself out of my shell, I was feeling really low.
Chase and I ate our Chinese food, and walked to what was supposed to be an overlook for hookah Falls, but ended up not being an overlook at all. Chase and I talked, and he was really encouraging trying to help me pull out of the struggles that I was in.
It had been a little rough for me both on the lake and after, having been inside my shell, trying to come up with conversation with a couple of girls, one who doesn’t really make conversation at all, and the other who with me retreating into my shell knew that something wasn’t quite right with me I think and, anyway it was uncomfortable for me personally.
Still, it was a good day, just hard. 😊
At the conclusion of all our day’s activities, we decided to take the drive from taupo down to Tongariro, or for you Lord of the Rings people the national Park that houses Mount Doom. 😎
It was getting dark by then, the sun nearly all the way down, but we got some great photos of the sunset and all of us as silhouettes standing on a fence nearby where we would end up sleeping for the night.
After pictures, and after pulling ourselves into a nice little secluded pull out just off the main, but very not busy, highway, we ate dinner and played games in the back of Sophie–a game called Mind, and also some Uno, I think.
One of the girls broke off a little earlier to go to bed, probably around midnight actually, and the other stayed and chatted with us for probably another two, almost three hours–pretty much all about her trip and things she was dealing with.
I think it was somewhere around 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning when we finally called it a night, and she went back over to her van, and Chase and I crashed.
😴
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 