Life Down Under

So it's been a few days since we've been on a computer! Weird I know. Once out of Auckland we don't have free access anymore, so it's not as handy. But after a great last night in Auckland...and too much wine with the Rileys...we headed out of town finally with a destination in mind. Next Wednesday June 9th we have a booking to cross the Cook Straight on the ferry around noon. So between now and then we have time to scope out the North Island and figure out what fun things we want to do on our way back north later in the year. (Believe me the list is already too long!)

We drove through Hamilton and on to Rotorua on Tuesday. Mike's new favorite thing is driving through the many roundabouts on the roads here, hah. Not only do we not have them at home but they are going the wrong direction from instinct (as is everything with driving here, but Mike is doing a stellar job!). The Kiwi's apparently hate turning right and so have created Roundabouts at nearly every intersection in and around towns/major roadways so that they can just keep going left til they are going down the road to the right (???!!!). It's very comical to be driving along looking at my maps (I'm addicted, but I'm the navigator so that's ok) and hearing "Bah aNOTHER one? I hate these things" from next to me. By now I just smirk and keep looking at the maps.

Tues night we found a very cute little Holiday Park where we rented a room, cooked some dinner and then used the spa pool(hot tub) to soak out the road bumps. The Holiday Park was just about 3k north of Rotorua, which we've been fondly calling Rotorooter, and so the next morning we headed in to the main town. It sits right on Lake Rotorua and we ate breakfast with the swans (and of course seagulls "mine! mine! mine! mine!...) before we found a great little shop of New Zealand trinkets and books. We browsed the books for Lord of the Rings places and the Maori pronunciacion of some of these long, vowelly words. Just next door we found the information center for the town and bought a little map of local hikes.

We decided to do a couple hike loops that took us out over a couple small, volcanically formed lakes surrounded by the rainforesty native bush. We don't seem to tire of the fern-like palms that grow up and over our heads, or the vines and all sorts of things growing up there on Kauri trees. It's like walking in a nature program. (Oh and Mike has great fun touching everything!)




On our second hike we found a beautiful waterfall called Cascades. We stood and watched the sparkles of the drips catching the evening sun and hoping to see a glow worm or two, but to no avail. We don't like to drive in the dark so we headed out before the little guys really got their glow on.







After hiking we were hungry and so found dinner and hung out a bit in the evening at a hopping little bar called the Fat Dog. We had to choose between that one or The Grumpy Mole Saloon, hard selection to be sure, but the Fat Dog looked more popular. Hee hee.

This morning we headed out of Rotorua and on southward towards Taupo. About midway between the two cities lies the Wai-o-tapu "Thermal Wonderland". It was an awfully stinky "wonderland" if you ask me, but maybe one can't be picky here in Kiwiland. We arrived in time to watch Lady Knox geyser erupt (at precisely 10:15am each day with the help of the park guide and his powdered soap), it wasn't quite Yellowstone but it was fun. The thing I got the biggest kick out of was the little three year old in front of us. He sounded exactly like Jake, Mike's nephew, does (including all the random yells and giggles and squeals) except it was all done in a babble of Chinese. Kids and the joy they find in funny things is apparently universal.





After the geyser did it's thing we headed into the main park. We were handed a guide map and set loose with strict instructions to stay on the marked pathways. -Like I'm about to wander off the path and end up boiled up to my knees in sulphur and gurgling, boiling mud, but I'm going to have to assume that the signs were there because people have tried it, duh! This is an extremely thermally active area and this park shows quite a bit of intersting stuff. The colors are phenomenal, and if the sun had been out I'm sure it would have been even more brilliant. We saw bright yellow sulpher crystals hanging in caves, neon green pools of water, loudly blurping mud, 3 acres of terraces made by silica deposits, a giant pool rimmed with bright orangy-red deposits called the Champagne Pool, a smaller turquoise pool named the opal pool, and at the very far end of the park a waterfall of all this weird water running off in to Grandfather Lake that was an eerie shade of green blue. It was fantastic. Here's a photo of the Champagne Pool as we saw it. The postcards we've seen show it with less steam, but it was still very cool...




After the thermal wonderland we stopped briefly at some gorgeous falls just north of Taupo called Huka Falls. The water was an amazing shade of blue, this time not related to random minerals leached from the ground, but rather due to the absolute clarity of the water and it's reflection of blue colors in the light.








And now we are here in Taupo for a couple of days. A novelty that, staying in the same place two nights in a row, and we're going to thoroughly enjoy it.