Blogs from Whakatane, Bay of Plenty, North Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 4

Today was to be my tour of the island that the Maori people call Whakaari (White Island to you and me), approximately 29 miles North into the Pacific Ocean from Whakatane. I went to bed the night before with a heavy cloud cover in Whakatane, thinking that once we got to the island the following morning (and the tour for the following morning was confirmed at 7pm the night before, taking weather into account), it wouldn't be very photo worthy as the weather on the night of the 10th was basically fairly heavy fog and misting rain. In any case, I woke up at around 6:30am, looked outside, and the conditions had actually worsened, or so it seemed. I got my workout going, looked back outside about 45 minutes later, and WOW! The fog was receeding, ... read more

Kia Ora! (Maori for Hello) We landed at Rotorua airport on the 20th of Dec and since then we have been staying with Kirstie’s very kind friends, Cashy and Gary, at their lovely home in a place called Whakatane. Whakatane is a small coastal town situated in the eastern part of the Bay of Plenty on the North Island. It has a really nice climate as is shown by the fact that it’s one of the sunniest areas in New Zealand, and since we’ve been here the weather has been very nice indeed. As we’ve been settled here, we’ve both taken the time to relax after our constant and hectic travelling around Australia and the South Island. It’s been nice taking things at a much slower placer and not getting up at 6am each morning to ... read more

Matariki is the Maori New Year and winter solstice; a time when a unique cluster of stars can be seen on the horizon of the southern sky. Looking back on our time in New Zealand we see 8 months of adventure, awesome landscapes and most important… lasting friendships. A life experience we will never forget. During this retrospective time it is impossible not to ponder all the things we’ve missed back home in Canada. Everything has a cost and the opportunity cost of our trip includes missing weddings of good friends, the birth of new babies, nieces and nephews birthdays, a brother’s fortieth and an uncle’s passing. People have moved and houses have been renovated while some renos remain works in progress. Careers have changed, seasons have passed, grey hairs have multiplied and everyone (well most ... read more

We crossed back onto the North Island on March 2. We spent almost a week at Logan and Chloe’s not really doing anything! One day we went to Lindale, which is a farm that has NZ animals and does shows of shearing sheep ect. We took Logan and Chloe’s 1 ½ old daughter through the farm tour to check out all the animals, she thought that was pretty exciting and the adults enjoyed it too! On the 9th we went ocean fishing with Shawn and Jarrod (these are guys Dave worked with on harvest) off Wanganui. Between the 4 of us we caught 9 Blue Cod, 3 Snapper, 2 Barracuda, and 1 small shark. Not bad for a days work! Later that night we went to Jarrod’s place for a party, where both Dave and I ... read more

We’ve been back in Edgecumbe since the 20th and have done some more of the touristy things around here. On the 23rd we went to Tarawera Fall and Tarawera Lake. It was a long dusty drive down gravel logging trucks to get to both the falls and the lake, but it was worth it. The falls come out of rock instead of over it; this is a result of a lava channel the water follows. The channel was formed from Mt. Tarawera explosion. On the 23rd we were supposed to going swimming with the dolphins, but the water was too rough to go out. Instead we drove to Rotorua to go zorbing. For those of you who don’t know what zorbing is, you pay money to roll down a hill inside a big plastic ball. Sounds ... read more