Blogs from Rotorua, North Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 8

Finally going to get caught up. long ride here yesterday. Took about 6 hours, but we had some fun stops. First of all i was amazed how quickly the street department personnel got the barriers down. There when I went to bed at 10:30, gone by 7 am. We made a few stops including Happy Houses. lunch and finally a shop for hokey-pokey ice cream. It reminded me a lot of our butter brickle, but the chips were less crunchy. The town we stopped in used to be one of those drive-through towns. We all know what they are, places that do not stick out much and you are through in the blink of an eye. Well, some smart entrepreneur decided to make use of left over corrugated metal sheets and make sculptures on top of ... read more

End of the last day here, and I will finally be caught up, so if you all look at the date, you can figure out where I am. This morning we went to Waimunga Volcanic Valley. Everywhere around Rotorua there are volcanic vents spewing out sulfer fumes and boiling ponds. Even the golf course has a couple of real hot hazards. Anyway, tourism started there in the mid-1880's because of the steam vents and geysers. On June 1886, Tarawera blew up in the early hours of the morning and at 2 am, a column of black ash suddenly erupted from the highest dome, Ruawahia. The eruption kept extending to the southwest. The eruption rift extended in a 16 kilometer line and was in violent upheaval. The rising magma hit the gdo-thermal pools and the resulting ejection ... read more

Morning everyone, just couldn't do my blog last night, too tired, went to bed early. Well yesterday, woke up and the smell of sulphur here is so strong, you just can't get away from it, it really is over powering. Well we decided to visit 'The living Maori Village' called Whakarewarewa, short for 'Tewhakarewarewatangaoteopetauaawahiao' it's hard enough typing it, let alone saying it !!! She got us to say it after her, well it really didn't work !! The village have been having visitors since the 1800's, they have bubbling mud pools, boiling mineral springs and we can see what they call the 'Prince of Wales' geyser from the village. So we met our guide who still lives in the village, she said a lot of people have now moved into the city but she stayed, ... read more

Smelly place. Full of gas but the cable car up the mountain and the luge ride down were fantastic fun ? Stayed one night in Taupo and the spa pools were filled with natural spring water at about 40°... read more

Thurs am we did a 3 Cave Combo tour of the Waitomo Caves. The first limestone cave offers the opportunity to see stalactites, stalagmites and amazing colonies of glowworms by boat. The acoustics are really good and they hold carol concerts in the caves during December - they have even had the Vienna Boys Choir performing. The second cave, Ruakuri, offers another opportunity to see Glowworms close up led by really interesting and knowledgable guides. The third cave, Aranui, was much smaller but had incredibly ornate cave formations, so much so that they even hold weddings down there. From here we headed a short distance North to Otorohanga Kiwi House and Native Bird Park, which is a conservation park with breeding programmes to protect endangered species. Here we saw the elusive kiwi. Being nocturnal they are ... read more