Today I was awoken to the sound that no one on holiday wants to hear… Rain.
On the other days that it has rained so far it has been quite a fine rain that you can still venture out in if your feeling adventurous and on occassion I have even gone for a run in it to wake up and feel refreshed. The rain today was nothing at all like that. This mornings rain was more of the “fetch the sand bags!” variety in which noone in their right minds walks out side the door, never mind goes for a run.
All this rain basically meant a day indoors with exploring off the cards and the lounge area of the hostel I’m in at the moment suddenly got a lot busier than usual. I did attempt to watch a move since they have them to borrow and watch on their big TV, however the background noise in the room just make it a seriously difficuly task and since my laptop doesnt have any sort of disc drive then I cant even watch it with headphones so that was off of the cards. After watcing some of the TV shows that I brought with me the rain started to let off a bit, enough for me to go for a bit of a wonder with one of my new room mates, Toby. Most of Rotorua town centre is covered by big awnings outside the shops which at least meant we could amble about aimlessly in relative dryness which is always a bonus but was still boring so we headed back inside.
When you first walk into the Rock Solid Backpackers
Hostel the first thing that you notice is that the whole wall of the reception area is made of glass and looks up (and down) on a group of massive climbing walls. The reception area is on the first floor of the building and so situated about half way up the 20mtr climbs which gives an awesome view of everyone hitting the walls with all theyve got and with the professionals showing people how its done. Earlier in the day the place had been packed due to the rain, however people had started disappearing later in the day so we decided to go down and check it out, especially since we got a discount for staying in the hostel too which isnt bad at all.
Now I have been bouldering a lot before but I have only gone full rock climbing once before an that was on actual rock faces and didnt seem quite as high as the walls in this room. Bouldering is great as it is really technical and makes you think a lot but since it is quite low off the ground muscle fatigue doesnt play that big of a part since you are not up that long on climb. Now even though some of the walls we did today seemed relativly easy compared to some of the bouldering, the high did add a massive factor since there was obviously the fear of falling playing a part as well as becoming tired from climbing for so long. I am happy to report though that I got to the top on all but one of the runs I climbed, however that one did have a crazy overhang that I couldnt quite figure out so I am not too worried about missing out on it.
All in all not a bad way to salvage a day and at least the weather is looking better for tomorrow!