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Published: August 6th 2007
Hello everyone, you may notice that we no longer have any blog entries (which is quite upsetting), as travelblog died when august arrived... not sure if this one will vanish or not!
Since we last blogged, we went to the thermal town of Rotorua, where we chilled in the hot tubs after our skydive. The whole of Rotorua absolutely stinks of sulphur, but once you get over that, its not too bad, hot pools everywhere. We took a walk through a park to discover steaming pools and boiling mud, which was one of the most bizarre sights we've ever seen.
Whilst we were there, we went on a maori eveing, and were treated to their arrival by warrior canoe, and then songs and dances, including their tribes haka (this was wierd, as the women joined in, and a war dance is not the way for a lady to look attractive!)
After the singing and dancing we sat down to our hangi meal. They actually cook the food on hot rocks that are over a fire, then cover it in damp linen (and sometimes even bury it in soil!), and leave it to cook for almost 4 hours. The result
was a hell of a lot of food, and as we'd paid $85 for the privelidge, I took it upon myself to stuff myself silly with 2 plates piled high with food, and also desert!
At this point it slipped my mind that we'd also booked the evening bush walk and wildlife park tour - oops!
The wildlife tour was pretty good, we got to see many rainbow trout, eels, and lots of birds. The highlight of it was that we got to see more than one kiwi, which pleased me greatly, I don't think I've ever seen an endangered species before!
Anyway, after leaving Rotorua, we headed to the East coast... the most remote part of the North Island, and where animals wander freely all over the road! The weather here was mostly hurrendous, but brightened up a bit as we drove through Gisborne (home of Sir Guy of) and Napier, and after this we headed to the Capital, Wellington.
Wellington itself was very small for a capital, and we didnt get up to much aside from searching for somewhere to have lunch and watching the simpsons movie, which wasnt too bad!
We headed to
the south island (via ferry) on thursday, spending a couple of nights in Nelson (NZ's sunniest place), and a couple of nights in Greymouth, which was unsurprisingly grey and rainy. During this time we had the pleasure of visiting the pancake rocks in the middle of somekind of monsoon. Unfortunately we hadnt timed it right to see the blowholes (when the tide is right, every time a wave comes in it blasts up like water out of a whales blowhole), but we did get very wet!
Today we visited Shantytown, which is a genuine goldrush town (looks like the part of the american adventure where they did shoot out shows - is that place still open?).
In Shantytown we were able to view many antique houses and businesses including banks, a hospital, bars and we also panned for gold, which was good fun and we now have $2 worth of gold to pawn if times get bad!
We're continuing to head south, and the one lane bridges that NZ loves (bridges that you can get two cars down are as rare as kiwi's here) are now becoming more extreme, complete with train tracks! and will soon be in
World heritage land!
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