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Published: January 23rd 2009
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'Twas actually the fortnight before Christmas and we decided to leave Auckland and waiting for a call about a job behind us and head out travelling again! This time we headed across to the East coast starting in Napier and Hastings, both Art deco towns, but other than that not a great deal there. We went to the site of an old Pa (kind of like a Maori fort / settlement) but you really had to use your imagination for what it would have been like, it was still good though. In the evening we went to a Christmas concert in the park - the advantage of having a summer christmas! We packed our rug and wine and watched a random performance by somebody calle Yulia (a Russian classical singer who's now a kiwi) and then we sang along to country style carols - it was actually really good fun and definitely got us into the Christmas spirit.
Heading towards Gisborne (apparently the first city in the world to see the sun) we stopped to do a bit of strawberry picking, and then rewarded all our hard work and effort with the biggest frozen yoghurt berry ice cream! Delicious! Also,
Strawberry picking.......
.....that's one for me and one for the bucket..... on passing an award winning pie shop we thought it would be rude not to pop in and sample some of the award winning produce, it was also very good.......but now you'll begin to understand why I'm putting on weight!!!
Again, in Gisborne, there's a lot of Captain Cook history associated with the place given that it was his first landing place in NZ and he kindly named the bay Poverty Bay as he was unsuccessful in gathering supplies (fresh water, food etc). There are a few statues of him dotted around the place, one which apparently looks nothing like him, plus he's wearing the wrong uniform (an Italian naval uniform) - quite funny! From Gisborne, we headed north to Tolaga Bay where we did a walk across some farmland to Cook's cove and had a little swim in the sea (though it was a little cold!) and then stopped for Ian to do some fishing (he caught 2 which we had for tea!)
On our way North again, towards East Cape, we stopped at St Mary's church (known for it's carvings) and had a little look inside. It's not your average church, though it has the stained
Yoghurt berry icecreams!!!
and yes, they are as good as they look!! glass windows etc, but the maori carvings inside were pretty amazing. East Cape lighthouse is NZ's most Easterly lighthouse (and possibly the windiest!) and has a lot of steps to get to the top! Pretty cool views though, so worth the effort. We stopped in the village just west of East Cape to see what is possibly the worlds largest pohutukawa tree (you can see how small our van looks in the picture!). These tree's are what they call NZ christmas trees - they have a really cool red blossom in summer, around Christmas time!
On our way West again, we stopped at a berry farm in Whakatane to do some more fruit picking, but this time it wasn't just strawberries, there were boysenberries, ranui berries, raspberries, blackberries, bluberries and some others I can't even remember! We filled our punnet (sampling a few along the way, just to make sure we liked them!!) and then we awarded ourselves with a berry icecream! And as if that wasn't enough, we had mixed berry pancakes for breakfast the next morning (oh and a token kiwifruit, but we are in NZ!).
Just after our lovely berry pancake breakfast we headed into
town to catch our ferry out to White Island, NZ's most active volcano! It was a pretty rough ride over (lots of people being sick) and we sat outside and got wet, but it was definitely worth it just for the view of the smoky island on the horizon. We were given our hard hats and gas masks and we were off on our tour of the island, walking along the main crater edge, along lots of steaming vents and bubbling pools of mud. The smell of sulphur at times was really bad and we had to use our gas masks, especially when the wind changed and blew the steam from one of the vents in our direction. Just alongside one of the bays are the remains of an old sulphur works where they actually extracted and processed the sulphur from the island - needless to say it wasn't accident free, working on the site of an active volcano isn't my idea of fun!!
From Whakatane and White Island we headed South for some more geothermal activity in Roturua. I don't care what anybody says, the place smells really bad!! Despite the constant eggy smell, the place was definitely
worth a visit. We went and had a mud bath, which was actually quite dissapointing as there wasn't a massive amount of mud, plus you couldn't completely submerge your body in it (well your head anyway) because of health reasons, but despite that it was good fun, and really hot! We also went to a local hot spring, which is completely free and unbelievably hot.....it was like getting into a bath that's too hot where you have to submerge yourself slowly - it was so hot, I felt cooked after 10 minutes! We also did a tour of a local maori (thermal) village where we saw how they use the thermals in their everyday lives, i.e. their outdoor baths, their cooking pools and ovens (basically a hole in the ground) - we obviously had to try some of the cooking so had some sweetcorn which had been cooked in the 'cooking pool'. Whilst there we also got to see some geysers errupting, one called the prince of Wales as it apparently looks like the feathers on the coat of arms. We also got to see a cultural performance, which included some war dancing, some of the women singing and dancing,
and Ian getting up on stage to do the haka!!
Well after all that it was Christmas eve and time to leave Roturua and head North to find a nice beach for Christmas. On the way we stopped off to go zorbing - basically, a giant plastic ball with both of us in it (and some water to make it more interesting!) rolling down a hill. It was really good fun despite getting stuck on my way into the zorb!
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