Day 11: Wellington

After all that driving and experiencing the rather exciting challenge of driving the windy, narrow and steep streets of Wellington, we decided to use public transportation for our one day of tourism here. We caught the bus just up the street from Art and Josemi's and went first to the major art and historical museum downtown, Te Papa. We wisely decided to take a paid tour and Phil--our 1/2 Chinese, 1/4 Maori, 1/4 English guide--did a wonderful job talking about geology, history, and culture.  We had a bite of lunch in one of the museum cafes, took a simulated submarine ride down into the ocean trench extending north from NZ and met up with a small band of cave trolls.

We wandered around the water front a while; there was some amazing public sculpture around, including a sphere suspended between the buildings that appeared to float in air.

It was really windy--which we understand is the norm in Wellington--but sunny and beautiful. Then we headed uphill on a cable car to the Wellington Botanic Garden. Big rose garden, swaths of agapanthus/Century plant (which they consider to be weeds), and whole hillsides of different colored hydrangea. Really beautiful. Also incorporated an old cemetary.

We walked down the hill into town, waited a very long time for the right bus, and eventually made it back to Art and Josemi's house. Took the car out to top off the tank and went home to a delicious dinner of fish, quiche, onion pie and salad. Josemi had made an orange cake for desert. Here are our wonderful hosts.

We had to finally curtail another fascinating and wide-ranging conversation to finish packing and get some sleep before our early departure the next morning.

Day 10: To Wellington

This was a long drive; the kiwis must drive much faster than I do (yeah I know, hard to imagine!) because they said 5-6 hours, but we left at 9:30 and arrived at 5:30--on a Friday, so extra good timing for traffic ;-)
We had really nice scenery most of the way.

 There are no real freeways through the countryside so we occasionally stopped in the widely scattered small towns for ice cream or to eat our cheese sandwiches. At one road side park, we found this rather interesting large sculpture of a "gum boot" made from corrugated metal, which seems to be popular sculpting material here!

We drove alongside Lake Taupo which was very long and very pretty but, alas, I have no good pictures. Wellington is a hilly city like San Francisco except that the streets are really narrow. Houses are perched on hillsides, cars park on the 2-lane streets which makes it especially exciting to come around a curve and encounter a city bus coming toward you. Remember, always yield to uphill traffic. We did finally make it to Art and Josemi's house which also hangs at the top of a hill providing a beautiful view of Island Bay below.

We took Art and Josemi out to dinner at one of their favorite restaurants for Moroccan food--it was delicious. Drove up to Mt. Victoria after dinner and I have mentally kicked myself for not having my camera because the panorama were 360 degrees of spectacular. Home for ice cream and lots of good conversation. Art (friend Marianne's brother) is a professor of Islamic Studies at the university in Wellington, and Josemi works at the Brazilian embassy downtown.

Day 9: Rotorua

Another gorgeous sunny day here in Kiwi land. We had a slow start but then spent almost all day at Waimangu Volcanic Valley. This valley is the site of several significant volcanic eruptions in the late 19th and early 20th C and remains extremely active. Everywhere you look, steam is coming out of vents in the sides of mountains or bubbling up through lakes...I just today learned how to use the video function on our camera--so these are very basic; I haven't yet mastered the audio or editing stuff but will keep working on it. (Note: no success with uploading videos right now so will try again later. Still photos will have to suffice in the meantime.) This is Frying Pan Lake; the whole surface is just writhing with steam!

This is Inferno Crater, intensely blue, very acidic, and varying in depth during a convoluted cycle of days and weeks by over 8 meters.

Some nice Scottish walkers took this photo of Hal and me ;-)

The heat and chemicals create some really interesting colors and deposits of both mineral and vegetable varieties.

Everything is covered with heavy vegetation...feels very prehistoric sometimes.

Beautiful and fascinating place. Well worth the visit. Have we mentioned how hilly New Zealand is? We did a lot of steps and ups and downs today.

That's it from the Rotorua area. We head for Wellington tomorrow morning. Dear friend Marianne's brother and sister-in-law (Art & Josemi) have graciously offered to let us stay with them for a couple nights and then we will fly to the south island. Not sure when we will be back online.

Day 8: Rotorua

Well, we packed this day full. This is the first day since we've arrived that we woke to clear blue skies instead of the usual morning marine air clouds. This is a picture out our deck windows and the front of our condo with our trusty little Toyota.

We started by renting kayaks for a couple of hours, intending to cruise out onto Lake Rotoiti. There is a river channel which connects it to Lake Rotorua and the kayaking place is there, so we paddled along through lush vegetation, saw lots of birds. When we got to L. Rotoiki  the wind had kicked up and it was a struggle to get anywhere, so we headed back into the channel, paddled all the way to the other end at Lake Rotorua, where our resort is located, and then we were out of time.

 We came home, had a bit of lunch, put on slightly drier clothes and shoes and headed north toward Tauranga and the Bay of Plenty. We went to Mount Maunganui to the east of Tauranga; didn't take account of the fact that apparently yesterday was a school holiday and the place was absolutely wall to wall bodies! We drove around for half an hour looking for a place to park. We did finally succeed--for which efforts I earned an ice cream-- and walked up the "Mall" along the harbor to reach the 3.5 km walk around the base of the mountain. It was really stunning, surrounded by the bay and the sea on almost all sides. 

 Saw sheep up close for the first time, surprising it took this long since they are supposed to outnumber the people here...

 This is the Maori name for the Mount.

Came back, grabbed another video for the evening, and then enjoyed our first dinner "out" at the nearby Amora resort restaurant. Nice setting and beautiful old buildings. Decent food and a lovely glass of NZ sauvignon blanc...also a first since arriving.

Day 7: Rotorua

We did indeed spend several hours at the Maori cultural centre, Te Puia. Some of the original 7 tribes settled here because of the advantageous thermal features which heated homes, cooked food, provided warm bathing...

It's not really that hard to pronounce, just difficult to do it with speed and grace ;-)
They did a show in the meeting house preceded by sending a representative out to meet our chief (some unlucky fool from Colorado named Josh "volunteered"), and then some traditional songs and dances. Most of them were moving way to fast to capture with a camera using flash settings, so apologies for the poor quality.

There was also a re-creation of a traditional village, a weaving school, a carving school and a nice gift shop where we traded $NZ for goods to take home to the local natives.

They are participating in efforts to protect the rapidly disappearing kiwis. No pics of them as they are nocturnal and you aren't allowed to take pictures of them in their little kiwi house!

Finally, we went to see the boiling mud and the Pohutu Geyser.

Went into Rotorua as planned, got a guest card for the Automobile Association along with a whole bag full of really good in-country maps, wandered around town, bought more groceries, filled the car with gas, and made reservations to go kayaking tomorrow morning.  That's it for now.

Day 6: Home

It rained all day so we took the day off from activities. Did laundry, planned our next few days' itinerary, read (me), took naps (Hal), and generally rested up. Hal tried in vain to find a broadcast of the Super Bowl.  Oh well, we missed all the great commercials. Heading out this morning to the Maori cultural centre, Te Puia, and to find the Automobile Association for a map of Wellington.

Day 5: Rotorua

OK, we expected to watch rugby on TV, but dart throwing championships?! And while we're on the subject of cultural differences, I know we all speak the same language, but doesn't "sachet" sound so much better than "garbage bag" ?? And one of my faves, for which I provided a picture below, is their term for shopping cart ;-)

It has been pissing down rain since the middle of the night so we are having a lazy morning at home. We may be running out of sunny days here based on the online weather forecasts, but we hear it's balmy (40's & 50's) in Bend.   We started the day with another 2 hour hike in the Whakarewarewa Forest, walking through some big California redwoods and past sulfur springs.

Then we drove into town to see the Rotorua Museum, which is situated in Government Gardens. Hal watched a bowling match, I took pictures of flowers and then we went into the museum, which was originally built to be a bath house for people "taking the cure" of the various hot mineral waters and mud baths.

They used x-ray, electricity, and vibratory stimulation to treat people from all over the world. Unfortunately, the sulfur in the waters immediately corroded all the pipes and interacted with the lead in the white painted furniture and walls, turning everything black--generally the place was a maintenance nightmare. Still it stayed in business for about the first 50 years of the 20th C treating celebrities, soldiers returning from the war, and the rich folks who came on cruise ships for several week stays. You're able to go down into the basement to see some of the old treatment rooms and pipes for bringing in water. Also, visitors can go the attic and get an amazing view of the surrounding sulfur springs and lake Rotorua.

Now the building is a wonderful museum with a large standing collection and narrative presentation of artifacts about the original settlers of NZ. Unfortunately, we couldn't take pictures of this part. Surprisingly, there was a special collection on display from WOW (World of Wearable Art) with winning costumes on display. My favorite, "EOS" for Evolution of Spirit, involved a hand-made beaded wire costume requiring 1,000 hours of work over a 4-month period to create. Alas my pic is blurry but you get the idea. I didn't even try to take pictures of the mini-collection of special bras from WOW because they were in glass cases and I knew the flash would make them unviewable; nevertheless, suffice it to say that one was made from kitchen utensils,  one from fiberglass with operational mini-cranes attached to the shoulders, and one was made from the artists' two deceased budgiebriars (aka parakeets) with spare feathers from an anonymous donor.  The heads were strategically located. 

All in all, an interesting museum well worth the visit.