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Published: February 4th 2010
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Another early morning as the bus left our hostel, Turtle Cove, at 7:30am. The bus stopped at one other hostel to pick up more passengers then back on the road we were to our destination of Rotorua, Thermal Hot Springs Capital of New Zealand.
It took us about one hour to cross back over the Kopu mountain range with LOTS of turn backs and steep inclines/declines. Another good reason not to drink too much last night. That would have been a horrible first hour to anyone’s day.
Our first stop was at Waihi Karangahake Scenic Reserve to take a 45 minute hike along a river and through a gorge. It was an interesting walk with 2 swinging suspension bridges and a tram tunnel through the Cliffside, very dark. Since it rained hard yesterday in this area part of the hike was shut down so once we got to a certain point we had to retrace our path back to the bus.
There was a little café across the road from the car park(parking lot) so Pete and I split a blueberry muffin, since we didn’t have any breakfast. Once we got back on the bus the driver informed
us it would be about 40 minutes until we got to the next stop Matamata for lunch.
Matamata was the filming location for Hobbiton in the “Lord of the Rings”. I never made it through the first movie but there was a stone carving in the city also bus tours that you could pay for to see the film set area, which our driver told us looks nothing like the movie. We were only there for about 30 minutes, enough time to eat a sandwich from Subway. Oh how I miss sandwiches and avocados ; we both are getting our fill while here in a Western Country.
Back on the bus we had a new driver named Flea, short for Felicity. She took over since our bus driver yesterday basically quite on the job and was just waiting for another driver to take over. She is much nicer and informative than the last driver. We didn’t even know his name, it was that bad.
Flea has worked for Kiwi for 10 years. The first 3 months were a fun summer job that turned into 3 years as a bus driver. Then she thought she should get a
real job and moved to the Sales/Marketing Dept for 3 years. The Flea decided the office wasn’t for her. She loved to be outside doing things and since returned to being a bus driver. Flea also takes all the photos for Kiwi Experience marketing supplies. www.fleaphotos.co.nz
We arrived here in Rotorua around 1pm. Pete decided to go sledging, New Zealand adventure sport. While I decided for the money it wasn’t for me. I hung out in the hostel, Hot Rock another Base hostel, updating our blog entries, Facebook and catching up on email since we had a good wireless connection.
We haven’t come upon any free Wi-Fi in Australia or New Zealand except for McDonald’s in Australia but the uploading speed was SO SLOW. So we have to pay for it but at least the blog is almost up to date, only 1 day behind at this point. We have been switching off days who writes the blog and keeping everything saved on the computer then I just copy and pasted everything and uploaded the photos today with the corresponding days.
Later in the evening we went to the Polynesian Spa. We were there for about 90
minutes enjoying 5 different thermal pools overlooking the lake. It was a great experience and we even got to practice our Chinese as there were some people from Taiwan there.
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Whit
Glad to hear you have a much better driver and one who enjoys her job!!! GLad you are getting your fill of sandwiches!!! What is sledging????