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Published: April 17th 2007
the car
The rental car as well as some really good hills Ok so writing in this thing isn't as easy in NZ as it was in Australia. I guess with only 6 weeks to explore we really have to keep moving all the time and don't spend much on the computer. But I guess it is time that we updated you all on what we have been up to sense leaving Australia.
We arrived in Auckland on April 9th and spent the first couple of days starting to plan our trip. Rented a car for a month, and outlined the first 2 weeks of our North Island adventure. We started out by heading north up into the Northland where we came across huge Kauri (pronounced Kerry) trees that are around the 2000 year old mark. and huge! i think one of them was like 17 meters circumference, or about 9 people holding hands. we also stoped at the Kauri Museum in Matakohe were they had working models of the early day sawmills, tree felling tools and a gallery of furniture made out of Kauri wood. There is also a lot of sap (amber) that comes out of the tree when it is injured and this stuff can be found buried
Most Photographed Toilet
Can't remember where this was but we just had to use it! in swamps and dating back some 15000years. But i wont bore everyone with all those details. I found it fascinating though.
After the Kauri forest and Museum we headed for the Coromandel Peninsula on the eastern side of the North Island. This area was quite spectacular to us. Some of our fist experience with the NZ landscape; rugged and beautiful. The highway just wound along the coast with vertical forested hills to the right and ocean to the left. at times it only one lain and always had speed limits around the corners of around 15 to 25 km/h. It was just a great drive. They say that the Great Ocean Road in Australia is one of the Top 10 drives in the world, well in my opinion it doesn't even come close to the road around the peninsula.
After the peninsula we headed inland to Rotorua, a town to permanently smells like roting eggs. it is such an active volcanic area that pretty much anywhere you look there is steam coming out of the ground, and mud pools everywhere. Here we visited the Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland with places like the Champaign Pools and a geyser that conveniently
goes off at 10:15 every morning, and takes into account daylight savings. actually they set the geyser off with a little bit of soap to break the surface tension of the cold water and let the hot water below do its thing.
This town was very active with Maori culture and very place we went had some Mauri influence. There was a great Anglican church that was decorated with Maori carvings and a painting of Jesus wearing a Maori cloak walking on the lake outside. it was painted in such a way that when kneeling in front of it, it looked like he was walking on the like outside the window. A pretty cool effect!
I think I'm going to end this entry here as it is starting to get pretty long. You can see how much we have been packing into such a short time period! But i think in a way, cramming a lot into a short time is such a great way to travel as well. Maybe just traveling in general is just the way to live life!
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Lyn McDonald
non-member comment
The tiled Toilet
The town was Kawakawa and the toilets are called "Hundertwassers Toilets. We have a few more toilet photos if you are interested.