Advertisement
Our wonderful Hosts
Kate, Me, Jo, Mrs, Maxwell, Tom The rest of my trip was what you would call…chill 101, that was until the last day, but you will just have to wait for that one.
We spent the next 3 nights with my friend Tom at his family farm. It was so nice! He lives about 25 min outside a pretty large town (for the North Island that is) along this crazy dirt road (that’s right another one) where you have to ford two river to get to, lucky for Heather it had been a very calm few days and the river wasn’t over the bridges yet. His house is made of nothing but windows (including a corner window with pillowed bench seats! I feel in love). All the windows over look the Coramandel Peninsula Valley. It was so green! But we soon figured out why. We had not meant to stay 3 nights but as always the rain fallowed us, but this time it decided to let every last drop out of its mighty clouds, there was no way we could leave - Tom’s mom woulnt let us, “too wet, no, stay, you stay” , she was adorable. But before the rains really hit we got to go
play with there small herd of dairy cows. Otay so I was never really into cows, I mean I liked them but have never really been around them, but after this experience I think cows may be moving up on my favorite things list (Monica you would have gone crazy! Hehe). They have a herd that was unbelievably friendly, we walked down to the pasture they where in, and just by Tom going “COME ON COWS!” they all rushed down from the top of the hill to check us out, all 55 of them. Now if you have never been surrounded by 55 cows before, let me tell you, it is something quite humbling. These guys where HUGE! I mean one wrong bump and I could have been on the ground. I was sitting on a log just watching them when the leader (number 101) kinda wonders over to me, very shy at first, I hold out my hand to her, she just looks at me with these GIANT brown eyes, takes a step closer, then I look over my shoulder and there are two more behind me. Still holding my hand out she come a little closer and stiffs
The girls
Mrs, Maxwell, Kate, Me my hand and then…licks me! Take a cats tongue and multiply it by like a million, it was so wired! And then if that wasn’t enough the one behind me too an interest in my sweatshirt and started licking that! I look up from my new three friends and realize that the entire herd is surrounding me. Tom, Jo and Kate where up the hill laughing at me. I guess they liked me because they knew I wouldn’t eat them! Hehe. It was quite an experience. I have added cows to my list of animals to own.
Yeah so after the cow experience we headed to a beach about 45 min away from Tom called Hot Water Beach. We heard that you could dig your own hot tubs on the beach…well it wasn’t exactly that cool. The tide was not that low due to the moon only being a quarter so our hot tub kept getting filled by the waves, but it was still pretty neat to dig your feet under the sand and feel the boiling water come up. plus we all jumped in the ocean and went for a swim, which I haven’t done in a long time
Farm Hands
Tom and Jo
I forgot to add that I got to drive the tractor too and it felt very nice.
The rest of the time was filled with cooking, reading, and watching the rugby. It was a very nice rest after far too many nights in the tent.
We then headed to see our friend Rachel in Turanga, the surf capital of NZ. It was a pretty uneventful time, we had dinner together, watched huge boats come in, and camped in a wildlife park?! I really don’t think it was legal but we didn’t get in trouble so its otay.
We then headed to Rotarua, the thermal capital of New Zealand. OH but on the way we stopped in Te Puke to see the largest Kiwi in the world! Hehe, it was kinda lame but! I did climb it so there you go.
Rotarua was stinky, literally. I do not know how anyone can live in that town. It was hard to stop from gagging most of the time, who knew sulfur was so gnarly!? I was excited because we were gonna go to the thermal wonderland and see the crazy large champagne pools, a geyser, and bubbling mud pools, but of course the rain was there to ruin our plans again! Two
out of three walks where closed due to flooding and it was still gonna cost us 25 bucks to get in, so we decided to pass and just drive to Taupo.
Taupo was a nice little town. We hung out in a coffee shop till the rain passed then went to Rainbow Falls, it was pretty nice. We then did a walk around one of the lakes, I really liked that because it was very rainforest-like and there where lots of mushrooms, and crazy birds. But as the last leg of this has been pretty mellow, that was until me meet up with Charlie, Matt, and Curtis…
Till next time…
Advertisement
Tot: 0.072s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 11; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0415s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb