The unfortunate thing about bumming rides is that you have no schedule. So when they got back from their tour and felt like a long sit-down dinner, it was a few more hours in Matamata. Little did I know, but any plans I had that night to get to Okere Falls ended with that dinner. We drove to Rotorua and ended up at their hostel a bit past eleven. They had made reservations, but as I was planning on staying with my friend a ways outside of town, I hadn't. As luck would have it, the hostel was full, it was too late for me to consider hitchhiking, and anyways, my friend was long asleep.
I asked the hostel manager, Peter, if I could pay some money to set my tent up in the hostel yard. I must have seemed a little worried (there were definitely some stress tears I couldn't hold back) but Peter decided he would do me one better, called his partner and told her to make up their couch so that I would have a place to stay. It was unbelievably kind. The next morning, after a coffee and a shower they took me into town to meet my friend, Lydia. When I tried to pay them for the room, or at least for the petrol, they refused.
I can't even begin to say how much that act of kindness meant to me. It would have been easy enough for him to direct me to another hostel, to call a cab and send me to a hotel in town where I would have spent much more than I could afford. Every day I am blown away by the generosity of people, and by all the good there is out there. It is inspiring.
With all the bad stories about hitchhiking and dangerous people, I thought I would share a good one, about good people. Hopefully it will remind some people that it is still out there, and we very much play a part in the world we create.
Now a briefing of where I am currently. I finally made it to Okere Falls, about 20 minutes outside Rotorua, on the other side of the lake. There is a river called the Kiatuna that goes through the "town". This is the stretch that many people kayak and about six companies commercially raft. It is most known for having the highest commercially run waterfall in the world, about 7m, or 20 feet.
Yesterday I R2'd it with a guide from one of the rafting companies around here. Absolutely amazing, I would recommend it to anyone, just don't look at it for too long before hand. After that we swam the lower, class III section of the river in fins and pfds, on a mission for a missing kayak paddle.
I love this place. It is a kayaking hot spot. There is warm water, plenty of class V and V+ whitewater to make kayakers salivate. The community is small and open. Everyone is a bad ass; it is quite intimidating. People run around in bare feet and swim trunks. You can always find something to do, be it kayak, raft, mountain bike, climb, or soak in hot springs. It is nice to be adventuring again.