Ariba Bad

Today after school the children and I went to the local bath, which is called Ariba Bad.  Ariba Erlebniss Bad, to be precise.  ‘Erlebniss’ translates to ‘experience’ or even ‘adventure’.

For the Kiwis I should add that this is an indoor swimming pool/bath not outdoors like those kind of pools tend to be in NZ.

We had a really nice time and I can’t remember the last time I went down so many water slides in a couple of hours.  The longest slide there is 125m long!  I think it is the one that starts in the inside of the bath, but leads to the outside, with a rather strong current urging you along.  You will be pleased to hear that the water is heated.

There is a wave pool which comes on every half hour for ten minutes, outside that time frame it is a more relaxing pool, set in a rock like landscape with stone paving around it and lounge chairs to relax in.  Oh and the lights are slightly dimmer and have different colours, which also change when the waves start up.

Next door is a pool just for diving.  They have two 1m boards and one 3m board and they only open up either the 1m or the 3m ones.  The children were very excited to see those, none of them have ever jumped of a diving board and all of them tried out both heights!  Ben was hesitant on the 3m board the first time and in fact came back down without jumping, but then in true Ben fashion when I said it was time to go he made a quick decision to go up and he just jumped.  Needless to say he was very pleased with himself.

I liked the pool that started with a small area inside and then you had to swim through a divider to get to the outside.  Of course this pool was also heated and in fact it was a salt water pool and every so often the massage bubbles went on around the edge.  I guess in a way it was like a jumbo spa bath.  It was lovely being outside while dark (at 16:30/17:00) being in the warm water with the steam rising into the sky.

Actually I also really enjoyed the tyre slide.  You got to sit in an oversized tyre and went down a tunnel slide, which in parts was quite dark and your tyre turned round and round and went faster and faster.  Yeah, I liked that. I also ended up getting less water up my nostrils than on the 125m inside/outside slide.

There was a proper swimming pool with lengths etc, we never made it into that, there was a non swimmer pool, a whole area for toddlers with a variety of pools with playgrounds in them and also two or three indoor spa pools.

Sadly I didn’t even consider taking my camera with me, but luckily we had such a good time that we are planning to go back there on Thursday afternoon, so I shall take it then and share some pics with you.

Very tired now after all that sliding, off to bed.

Love to you all

Tanja

PS It’s gone quiet out there…is anyone listening to my ramblings???