Advertisement
Published: February 24th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Our next destination was a place called Whakatane, the main town in the Eastern Bay of Plenty. We needed to charge up the camera batteries, so opted for a luxurious powered site, something we haven't had yet on our tour. As it had taken the whole day to drive there from Gisborne, we played cards in our tent (with the light on!) then went to bed.
We had booked onto a day trip to New Zealands most active volcano, White Island. It was a 1 1/2 hour ferry ride from Whakatane, one of the most horrible journeys we've ever done! Right from the beginning we both felt sea sick, and Dan even delighted everyone with a second viewing of his noodle-omelette breakfast. On the plus side we did see loads of dolphins swimming alongside the boat, which was pretty amazing.
The volcano itself was awesome, we had a guided walk around the fumaroles, mud pools and main crater, then had the chance to explore the buried ruins of the old sulphur mines. The smell of sulphur and acid levels in the air were really strong in parts, and we were given some very attractive gas masks to wear. It
was a great experience, although quite scary as on the day of the last eruption (in 2001) our tour company would have been on the volcano if the trip had not been cancelled because of bad weather! The ferry home was much less eventful, all we encountered as a hammerhead shark and some exocoetidae (also known as flying fish)!
We carried on our journey, down inland to Rotorua, a lakeside town. We checked into a cute little riverside campsite, then headed off to try some locally invented adrenaline activities. The first was Zorbing - basically rolling down a hill in a giant air-filled hamster ball. We both opted for the Zydro - where you are loose in the ball with water added. It was so crazy, you had to superman-dive in through a small hole, which was then zipped up before you headed down a zig-zag track. It was like being on a mad water rollercoaster, never being quite sure which way was up or down. Overall we thought this was far better that we were expecting, and we really enjoyed it.
The second activity we did in Rotorua was the luge track. After experiencing lugeing in Queenstown
we were eager to do it again, and both agreed that it was an even better and scarier course than before. We finished our time in Rotorua with a nice paddle down the river and up to the lake in a boat that we had borrowed from the campsite.
The following day we mainly spent travelling, eventually arriving at Hahei, a small town on the East coast of the Coromandel Peninsula. It is home to one of the worlds phenomena; the Hot Water Beach. This is just a regular beach for most of the day, until an hour either side of low tide. If you dig a hole in a particular area of the beach it will fill with 65°C water, and you have your very own natural hot pool. It was pretty awesome to see so many people in one small steaming area of the beach late at night, and really wierd to walk from the burning hot water to cold water in one step!
Another amazing place near Hahei is Cathedral Cove, a small secluded beach only accessible via a 45 minute cliff-top walk. It is part of the set used in Narnia: Prince Caspian, so
we can pretty accurately say that we have now been to Narnia. The walk there was pretty tiring as the temperature was in the high 20s, so as soon as we got to the beach we went for a swim in the sea. That day we also tried out our new snorkels that Lee got us for Christmas - Julia even saw one fish. Overall it was a great day and such a beautiful location.
The final day in the Coromandel was mostly spent driving around the peninsula, although we did stop at a butterfly farm in Thames. It was so hot in the greenhouse so we didn't stay too long, but we did see some very cool huge butterflies.
Off to Auckland now for our final week in the country.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.033s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 13; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0138s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb