Day 13: Lake Wanaka

We had a leisurely morning. Here's Hal sitting in what the staff refer to as our "wee back garden"...aka the patio of our studio condo.

Rain or shine, the lake and surrounds are very scenic.

We walked into town (pop = 7,000) which took about 30 minutes and went to the "i-Center" to plan out the rest of the week and book excursions. Ridiculously expensive, but after we have blown all this money getting here, doesn't make sense to miss out of what is worth seeing. By the time we finished, it was raining pretty hard so we wandered around until we found the restaurant recommended by the staff at the i-Center and waited out the worst of it while we had a bite to eat. Wandered around town a bit, then headed back out to the resort. Hal took a nap and I read. Then at 4'ish we got in the car to just go drive around the northern shore.

As you can see, the sun had come back out and we just wandered down every gravel track we saw off the main road out of town. This picture is for our friend, Joan Starr, because we think this is definitely the place to be a sheep rancher!

Day 12: To Queenstown and Wanaka

Up early and dear Josemi had a nice continental breakfast all laid out for us and was up to say good-bye. Night owl Art was still sleeping when we left ;-) We returned the car to the airport and made our way to the gate about 2 hours before flight time as directed by the Air NZ person on the phone--no security checks at all for the local flight and we really just cooled our heels the whole time. Picked up our car after a 2 hour flight and drove into Queenstown for lunch. Beautiful setting for the town on a lake surrounded by mountains; we'll come back and take in the sights at a later date. Couldn't find the grocery store so just headed up to the Crown Range highway, a series of steep switchbacks over the mountains.

Arrived in Wanaka late afternoon, did grocery shopping and a couple of errands in the town and then checked in, unpacked, and relaxed. Hal even walked over to the little bar on site and fetched me a gin and tonic--heavenly. Fixed scrambled eggs for dinner and then slept a good 10 hours.

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.