New Zealand

Below is our first house-exchange in New Zealand. We are now in Greytown and will post this blog when we get home first week of November. However, to the delight of ourselves…we are continually adding new video clips to our story which can be viewed in our YouTube playlist. We especially like the clip on ‘Wellington to Picton Ferry’, and the one where Narda serenades our cows. Not really our cows but we have befriended them as they live in the paddock next to our house. see these and other amazing New Zealand clips of our stay HERE. Cheers!

Narda’s note are in italics – Terrell’s in whatever that is left. If sometimes our notes sound similar it probably is because they possibly are. Our notes are then tossed up into the air and as they tumble in such random fashions as to confuse the most ardent editor they are embedded into the story below. Good luck!

October 2022 now in New Zealand Our first three weeks at Lake Taupo before our next house exchange back down by Wellington.

Herewego

First things first.

Before diving into this blog – my first story…like how I first saw New Zealand 42 years ago, which led me to having Australian children, getting married a couple of times, both times to an Aussie; 4 years & 22 years and counting and how the reason I first went to Zealand 42 years ago was because I had different beliefs than I do now. Of course, we all should have different beliefs now than we did 42 years ago. Back to that later, or not.

Anyway, returning to first things…lucky me, I am sitting on this Air New Zealand flight typing on my laptop, listening to inflight entertainment (Creedence Clearwater Revival – a great 1960s band) …because I can…Also watched the video Bansky does New York

Adelaide Airport announcement, “there is a laptop left @ security, collect it now”. Gosh darn, what fool would leave their computer @security. I look down at my bag. Damn! I run off to where we went through security. Yes, we were told to take our laptop out of our bag. I have flown dozens of times around the world, we used to fly New York to Australia every year between 2002 and 2010, China to Australia 2010 – 2014 and many other long-distance flights in the past 22+ years, and yes as an elite flyer (my personal observation) such as me, I know how to get through an airport. Anyway, with fifteen-minutes before boarding I once again had my laptop with me. Maybe it is the ageing process, Narda had a few ‘left behinds’ so far on this trip and we have just started. Though I reckon we are just out of practice – haven’t travelled for five-months. Started off the year OK; DC for New Years, Lahore for Brendan’s and Sofie’s wedding before DC, then Holland for the first three months of this year. Lots of complicated travel, left nothing behind. Maybe we figured New Zealand being so close to home (four-hour flight) we just went off into la la land together. Next year we have six months international travel (Pakistan, UK, USA) so we need to get it sorted. 

Narda’s notes so far…

Narda’s drawing bus with our stuff on the sidewalk – on the right – my bus is on the left…our first time using the pen tool on this laptop…using Adobe ‘sky replacement’ tool for the background – my favourite tool – meaning on a cloudy day I can cheer it up with Adobe.

Off to New Zealand. 

My first time………………….

September 18, 2022

I could have been sitting here in the Riviera Hotel on this rainy Sunday  arvo minus my new back pack. So no kindle, no groovy tablet, and worst of all, no diary. As I stood up to get off, I heard the voice of my beloved  “don’t forget your bag”. I must confess I would have left it on the bloody bus.

Then there was the leaving of the house. We went next door to our neighbours to say goodbye…… keep an eye on our house. We had all our stuff on the front porch to go straight to the bus. Our neighbours were not home. We unlocked the front door and re-entered our house as the bus was not due for another 20 minutes. And here is scary thing number two. The back door was wide open and our new car was unlocked. What the….????

I spend an inordinate amount of time planning, making lists, making lists of lists. I have always thought of myself as a good planner, being organised. My  favourite thing is to plan trips. I am up at 5am full of excitement to continue with my plan, or to start it again because I have just spent half the night thinking about it and have come up with the trip of all trips. I kid you not, I have nearly all of 2023 planned, including flights and budgets and am now working on 2024.

I am reading a very interesting book about ageing. Maybe some tips for me. I must say this whole thing was unsettling. Hopefully not a new modus operandi. I’m only 68 FFS! So much to do, so much to see.

We are on our way to New Zealand. Two house exchanges of three weeks. All on the north island. I have set the bar pretty low. Cold rainy weather, the people are just like Aussies, and everything is expensive. So we’ll see. 
Now the next few days will be telling. This was a trip postponed by covid where Air New Zealand refused to give a refund, despite having cancelled the flights from their end. Here we are ready to use our airline credit.

September 19, 2022

Twenty-five minutes to boarding. Our first time in the new, international, very empty section of the terminal. Last night we had a lovely meal with sisters and brothers-in-law at Marcelina’s. I had the Caesar salad; we had eaten left over cheese all day and this was the only non-cheese option. We both slept well, better than we had for some nights, despite taking turns snoring.

So here’s a nice tried and true exit strategy  from good old Adelaide.

Overnight at the Riviera $90
Dinner with the rels at Marcelinas $51
Brekkie at Macca’s at the end of Hindley St $14

J1 bus at the end of Currie to the airport free 

Could work for the next one.

September 20, 2022

Standing in the rain at Wellington airport waiting for our hotel shuttle. It definitely was a day of delays. Started already in Adelaide, then rolled on to the next two flights as each waited for the previous arrival. We did have brollies though. 

Janie said that her impressions of NZ was it is all still in the 70s. I agree. It’s nice. It’s started with the Brentwood Hotel, which we finally got too, at around at midnight. Our room was large, lots of timber panelling, normal light switches, a regular key to open the door, a very 70s decor, and lots of friendly folk attending a “search and rescue ” conference. So we know who to call when the earthquake starts.

Did you know that the house of a grocer from Virginia was involved in one of the first battles of the American civil war. The grocer then moved to further south to be safe, and 4 years later the final surrender by Robert E Lee occurred in his house again, right on his front porch. What are the odds?

This was the story told to us by Brian Reeve, duty manager of the Brentwod Hotel when he discovered that Terrell was an American! Brian had many similar stories to tell us, as did Terrell, and we were invited to visit him and his wife in a few weeks.

And…….they can both recite Abe Lincoln’s Gettysburg address! “….all men are created equal………”. Men in the widest sense. Of course.

These are things one learns in New Zealand.

Then we got to drive a nice Skoda. Dad would have loved it. Very smooth to drive, and solid….with a CD slot and no beeping alarms!

Another 70s impression was the housing. Nothing new, nothing too square and boxy, with lots of painted wooden slats! Wellington is very nice. Right on the sea with hills rising steeply. Then onto the highway heading north.

A little New Zealand humour – all the trees on this street had one of these witches’ caps on the top –

(Terrell’s part not italicized) Arrived in Auckland – hour late – thought we would miss our flight to Wellington. Auckland International Airport is one of those airports where they do not believe international and domestic should coincide. We had barely half an hour to grab the next flight plus get luggage. The luggage was easy but waiting for a shuttle bus to the next airport made us nervous. Supposed to be every ten-minutes, fifteen minutes later we were impatiently climbing the wall – if there had been one. Slowly one came along we got the domestic airport rushing through letting everyone know we were trying to catch a connecting flight. Folks along the way said it was OK the flight was delayed waiting for the likes of us. We still panicked and let everyone know of the importance of our rushing. Well, it was ten pm and no other flights – the airport shops were all closed. We were starving – well, a bit hungry. Finally, got to our gate. So did everyone else. The flight had been delayed another hour. Bottom line, we got to Wellington after eleven pm. Originally were to arrive about 8 pm. Hungry. Because we did not have a sim card (we were running through Auckland Airport to catch our flight) and all the shops were closed in Wellington Airport we were not able to contact the hotel to send a shuttle to collect our sorry asses. Luckily, Narda spotted a telephone on a wall with some sort of help available notification beneath and got someone to ring our motel which kindly provided a shuttle.

The folks who we are doing our house-exchange with left their car for us at the airport and without future ado we were off looking for food. The hotel-motel manager said all the shops would be closed except for a petrol station he gave us instructions to. Of course, I used my favourite line in these situations when getting a car in a new country, “which side of the road should we drive on?” For some reason I believe that is funny, though Narda doesn’t.

We found said petrol station. We were not allowed inside. A friendly person said through heavy barred window that we can only order from outside. No one is allowed inside after ten pm. Security and all. Nevertheless, the friendly person said that they had food. Pies and sandwiches and sausages. Narda kept asking if we could come inside. “Obviously, we don’t look like we would rob you”. But no. He recited what foods they have. I asked if there was anything vegetarian. That was a showstopper. He basically laughed and wanted to know why. Anyone could look at me and know I don’t eat meat…so I often think. After fifty years on the lamb or not on the lamb I must project a non-meat-eating look. He said he was a Hindu who ate meat, and I was a white person who didn’t. Bottom line Narda had a meat pie, and I had a carrot cake. By then I was too hungry to ask if he had anything low-carb, and already I think he was having a bit of lend of me – hey! How about organic? Narda went to bed full I went to bed hungry. In actual fact I am on a low-carb diet (diabetes), vegetarian forever, and who doesn’t want their intake to be organic?

Narda has talked about the person at the motel who was a civil war buff (my great-grandfather was in the civil war, and I have a whole story about him dying on the battlefield at Gettysburg.) My adopted father, since age three, but still I would say this person was a part of my family. I told the friendly guy I would send him some confederate money when we return to Australia as I have several paper bills. My father collected such things and I have no use for them, and they are not worth as much as I thought they would be, and my son doesn’t want all the boxes of stuff in our shed. Long tale shortened…the buffet breakfast was good, and I got to eat lots.

We bought a sim card for one phone. Realized it did not work and in the next major town, Palmerston North we found a Sparks store, which is our sim card, and a rude dude, who said we ‘were aggressive’ did not take to us blaming him, his company, and half of New Zealand for the failure of our Wi-Fi. After much conversational struggle it seems that we may have not paid for a service in their stupid app that we had downloaded. At the end of it all Narda explained that we are really nice people, and we were not attacking him personally – we just needed some assistance.

After driving all day so far, leaving Wellington at 10 AM – to Palmerston North (142 KM the GPS said two-hours, we took six-hours, go figure) to Feilding – another 20-minutes re. GPS – took us only an hour and a half, where we stopped after our sim card incident, now that we have GPS, we found a nice little overpriced motel. We went shopping at the local New World supermarket and bought fixings for dinner and breakfast and snacks for if we got hungry between dinner and breakfast. We had been upgraded in our overpriced motel, $155 NZD, to a suite with a kitchen and we made full use of it.

A little known fact: Feilding has won the annual New Zealand’s Most Beautiful Town award 15 times https://www.feilding.co.nz/

Next day on our way to our destination of Lake Taupo we saw a windmill alongside the highway. It looked exactly like where we were living the first three-months of this year in Nieuwerkerk aan den Ijssel, Holland.

Our first interesting stop was Foxton, sporting a real working windmill. It still grinds and makes flour.  Some homesick dutchies built it 20 years ago. The ground floor is a very respectable Dutch shop with all the necessary stuff on sale. We stocked up, and then did the little tour, climbing the steep ladders and playing a game of sjoelbak. Of course, I won.

[‘De Molen in Foxton is a full-size replica of a Dutch windmill, completed and opened in 2003. Two Dutch immigrants, Jan Langen and Cor Slobbe, saw their dream realised that year. This working windmill makes stone-ground flour, available for purchase inside the mill’s souvenir shop. Visitors can also view the mechanical workings of the mill, which are an example of traditional Dutch 17th Century craftsmanship.’]

After indulging in Dutch sweets, we took a route 54 up toward Vinegar Hill stopping at the amazing view point of Stormy Point Lookout. … stretching as far as Mt Taranaki and Mt Ruapehu, and the west coast. You’ll also see one of the best-preserved sequences of river terraces in the world.

Our second long drive took us to Palmerston North, where we headed straight to the Spark store to complain about our not-working sim card. The person who was supposed to help us was a dick and told us we had no right to come and demand a refund. After smoothing his ruffled ego, we managed to get him back onside and it’s all good.

Outa there. Still think he’s a dick.

We drove to a nice friendly hotel in the charming town of Feilding. No this is not misspelt, it’s named after some guy (who clearly had some spelling issues 🙄)

 Some lasagne and the like from the grocery and we did our own dinner.

A serious snow-capped mountain on the way impressed us, though  it was not quite K2. There were two more. Around 2,600 metres. Brendan from Pakistan said that this is a baby.

You can catch a view of this as well as our stop along the Rangitikei River in our video Wellington to Lake Taupo below.

The local volcano is now filled with the huge lake you see below, Lake Taupo. It has just a few days ago been upgraded from 0 to 1. The locals say they have only ever known it as a category one in their lifetime.

Here is the scale:

Zero is extinct
One is not extinct
Two is pending eruption
Three is actively erupting. 

We have minimal internet, no TV (have not figured it out yet)

So if we disappear under the molten rock, you will know it made it to 3.

September 22, 2022

Can you imagine falling into a puddle and being boiled alive? Well this is possible in the hot springs. If the volcano doesn’t getcha, the hot springs can. They are all over this area. I’m told to be reassured, as this means the pressure for an eruption is somewhat eased. I’m sure Jessica can add a better explanation.

A devastating landslide obliterated the Ngāti Tūwharetoa village of Te Rapa on the south-west shore of Lake Taupō. Sixty people were killed, including the paramount chief Mananui Te Heuheu Tūkino II. This remains New Zealand’s highest death toll from a landslide.

Te Rapa sat below the volcanic springs of Mt Kākaramea. The missionary Richard Taylor recorded that an ‘unusually rainy season occasioned a large landslip’ on the mountain. The slip dammed a stream which, three days later, ‘burst its barriers, and, with irresistible force, swept rocks, trees and earth with it into the lake’. The avalanche of debris buried Te Rapa and only a few people managed to escape.

In 1910, another landslide killed one person in a new village near the old site of Te Rapa. After this second event, the village was abandoned. The source of the landslides was an unstable geothermal area known as the Hipaua Steaming Cliffs. This still causes problems for engineers working on State Highway 41, which passes between the cliffs and Lake Taupō. Waihī village now stands at the lakeside. https://nzhistory.govt.nz/new-zealands-most-devastating-landslide-at-te-rapa-lake-taupo

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Today is day four that I have tested negative for Covid. Only significant as I am supposed to test for five days in a row because Narda tested positive five days ago. Lucky me so far. Only one day to go then I no longer need to test according to latest New Zealand guidelines. Narda is self-isolating for seven-days which given our nice spot in the world is not bad. I went off and bought oodles of groceries – lots of tempeh, tofu, organic and low-carb stuff and some chunks of meat for Narda. We should be good. I have time to write this silly stuff and learn about our area, such as this is where the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit were filmed – 45-minutes away. We are less than an hour to the snow fields and it snowed there yesterday. Chains on tyres are required to go there so we will need to give it all a miss, but we will get as close as we can. I am making lists of all the places we will go to see once out of quarantine.

They are very good about this covid thingy here. Was a two-week quarantine up to a week ago now just one week. At the airport we were given four test kits each. We had to report our situation once arriving and they said we could get more test kits, so I went into town and they gave me five boxes of four each. Now we have like 25 RATS – in Adelaide they wanted like ten bucks per RAT. I was also given a box of 50 good quality masks. Narda has been rung a couple of days – very nice people, wanting to know if we needed anything like food or medicine. Sacha suggested we say we needed wine and cheese, mainly because Narda is Dutch. But we didn’t.

We drove halfway around our Lake Taupo to the town of Taupo and of course the first place we run off to is McDonalds – and on a plane too.

At McDonalds there is a DC3, right there in the carport. You can go inside to eat your burger.

Terrell’s jacket got a taste of my gold texta too. One of my iso projects.

Sidebar: we made a great discovery; Narda asked if they did senior coffee at a McDonald's couple of days past...no to special coffees like latte and crap - but yes to a filtered coffee. So, we are making McDonald stops as we drive around the country getting our free filtered coffee. Seems a bit out of balance we will pay thousands of dollars to go places and look for free coffee but we do.

Knowing that we are a tad bit cultural-ignorant we saw a Māori-Volcano Museum in town. When we realized that the fee for entry was only $6 (seniors) – which translated to $3.60 USD for two we were quick to part with our would have been coffee money. The Taupo Museum https://www.taupodc.govt.nz/community/taupo-museum was both a great museum to learn about Māori culture as well as about the volcanic activity of our local area.

 Narda entering a Māori meeting place, place. Of course, we had profound interest in the idea of caravan camping… and of learning about the volcanic activity in our area – Narda has various thoughts of what we should do if there is a local eruption of one of the volcanic mountains or if the lake goes up as it did once-upon-a-time – like will we get an alert?

And that was our day in Taupo – we didn’t even investigate what the SuperLoo was though I had thoughts about it which I won’t share.

@ home we once again got into our tennis-championship playing mode. We first played tennis when we lived in Noja, Spain https://neuage.me/2019/03/19/spain/ a few years ago. The reason for that then was because our house-exchange for a month had tennis playing equipment i.e. rackets and balls as well as a tennis court – with the special incentive of no one around to watch or see us – it was end of winter and no tourist shuffling about. We played most days for a month. We were so excited about our fastly developing, almost improving, tennis skills that we bought rather expensive (more than ten dollars) rackets and even dozens of tennis balls when back in Adelaide. We drove off to a rather never used tennis court at the end of Perseverance Road (our street and the subtext of our life) and played daily for almost a full week before my elbow began to hurt. Tennis elbow is the unfortunate consequence of us elite tennis players. Then we travelled more, went through the covid thingy and sort of forgot about our world rankings until now. To prove that we were serious, we watched the first ten-minutes of a 20-minute beginner’s guide to how to play tennis then went out and worked on our serve. My return had more bounce that I had expected and went over the very high fence around the tennis court and landed in trees a distance away. I believe in baseball that would be a home run though in tennis probably not. Anyway, because we found tennis rackets and a huge tube of balls, we are playing upwards of 20-minutes a day to work on our world-rankings. (In the low billions at this point but we hope to improve – after watching the rest of the first of the beginner’s video series – if we get around to it)

September 27, 2022

1.) Mt Ruapehu is an active stratovolcano located in Tongariro National Park, in the centre of the North Island, New Zealand.
2) Mt Ruapehu is estimated to be about 200,000 years old.
3.) It is the largest volcano in New Zealand and is also the highest point in the North Island.
4.) It has the only major ski fields in the North Island which are the longest ski runs in the country.
5.) An eruption in 1953 caused a lahar which descended on the valley below destroying a rail bridge just as the Wellington – Auckland train was passing which resulted in 151 fatalities.

#MtRuapehu #facts #tongarironationalpark

Mount Ngauruhoe is one of three volcanoes in Tongariro National Park, it is also Mount Doom.

September 28, 2022

We have finally figured out that daylight saving has kicked in in this volcano of a country. So the mornings are still darker. My bedroom is pitch dark….I mean black, not a sliver or hint of light. Same with the sound. Nothing. Nada.

Mt Ngauruhoe, elevation, 2,2291 m and featuring as the Mountain of Doom in Lord of the Rings, taken from the car park of the Chateau Hotel where they refused to sell us a buffet brekkie because we were not staying there. Oh well.

Then on the road again to the ski resort at the next mountain, which was mostly still in the clouds, literally. The trip there was strange. Lots of black volcanic rock and no vegetation.

The snow we saw was created by machines, but when there was a break in the clouds you could see the big arsed  mountain with real snow. And a gondola taking folks up to it.

(Mount Doom is a fictional volcano in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. It is in the northwest of the Black Land of Mordor and close to Barad-dûr. Alternative names, in Tolkien's invented language of Sindarin, include Orodruin and Amon Amarth. [Wikipedia] Other name(s): Orodruin, Amon Amarth, the Fiery Mountain Ruler: Sauron)

Well, let me tell you that is fake news – it is not a fictional volcano but a real one that shoots its load rather often. Maybe today. Mount Tongariro, (the volcano next to mount Ngauruhoe), had a hydrothermal eruption in 2012! Which could have caused a chain eruption of Ngauruhoe. But it hasn’t so far.

(Ngauruhoe first erupted 2,500 years ago, and erupted 45 times in the 20th century, (61 eruptions since 1839) and most recently in 1977. It is one of New Zealand’s most active volcanoes and has the youngest vent in the Tongariro volcanic complex, on the central Plateau of the North Island. 
Explosive and violent ash eruptions took place in January and March in 1974 and February in 1975. The major eruption (which took place on the 19th of February 1975) sent and eruption plume up to a height of 13km above the crater.)

We stopped at the Chateau Tongariro Hotel in Whakapapa Village in the Tongariro National Park. We went in to have breakfast, but it was only available to people staying at the hotel, so we went back to our car and had coffee we brought from home and ate our cheese sandwiches. Probably a bit cheaper. We had hoped to stay at the hotel – looked so fancy and nice but it was booked full – and is booked full for the rest of the time we are here.

And of course, information on Tongariro Alpine Crossing which is a couple of days of hiking up Mount Ngauruhoe and through craters and scary stuff. I am sure Sacha and Brendan would do it. But not being quite as young and fit as our children Narda and I decided to give it a miss this time.

We drove up to the end of the road, Iwikau Village @ the base of Mt Ruapehu (the largest volcano/mountain) in the range. Thought of hoping on the Sky Waku – gondola, that goes into the now fields but being so much cloud coverage, we gave that a miss too.

Occasionally the clouds would scoot over and let us get a glimpse of parts of the mountain but nothing to write home about (except here I am doing that).

The area around the base of Mt Ruapehu is pretty rugged filled with volcanic rock and no snow where we were at the bottom. They had the snow blowing machines on for those wanting to have one last ski before the end of the season. There was snow further up and skiing, but my zoom (300 mm) was not quite strong enough to capture it. We had coffee at a nice little café next to the gondolas then went home which is 45-minutes away. If there is a clear day we will come back up but the next week looks quite cloudy until we leave when we will be passing this way on the way to our next house exchange in Greytown.

Tawhai Falls is a 13 metre high waterfall in the Tongariro National Park. The track begins 4km below Tongariro National Park Visitor Centre in Whakapapa Village. It was a fifteen minute hike from the car park – which was a reasonable hike for us in this area, unlike the three – five day hikes people do going up to Mt Doom looking for those bloody Hobbits.

That’s us there in the Cafe. The white stuff at the top is Mt Ruapehu elevation 2,797m

It a big one.

On the way home we took a 15 minute hike 😀 to a lovely  waterfall nearby.

One of the more advertised tourist scrambles is the ‘Crater of the Moon‘ caper outside the town of Taupo. We found the free walk around the Thermal Pools near our house more interesting. Still, our video shows our fun time in this area…following the next two or more photos. It was only ten bucks NZ about six Yankee funny money – ten times more than ten free filtered coffees at McDonald, though hotter than their coffee.

Taupo, October 1

Tourists were we. First a tour of “Craters of the moon”. A decent walk through a park with many examples of funicular, which are funnels of hot steam rising up from the hot interior of the earth. It was nice, we were well set up for the constant rain: brollies and rain jackets.

Just outside of Taupo, Huka Falls is one of the most visited natural attractions on New Zealand’s North Island. Waikato River’s largest falls are fed by Australasia’s biggest freshwater lake, Lake Taupo.

Next stop was the spectacular water fall called Huka Falls. The picture barely does it justice; the roar of the water needs to be heard!. The river empties into the large lake Taupo. We live on the opposite side an hour’s drive away.

September 30 and the next couple of days

Lunch at the local Indian restaurant (butter chicken, mali kofta and good naan bread) and we were on our way home.

Those of you who know us know that Terrell, despite his easy going exterior, is actually a meticulous, almost obsessive, keeper of records. He has precise records of all our spending, going back many years. This enables me to make guilt free flight purchases. ✈ . He also keeps records of how much exercise we do. Which means that I get dragged off to do something more often than I really want. So we completed 2 long (hour plus) walks in recent days. Both along a gorgeous track very  close to our new home.

The track follows the lakeside and goes from our town Kuratau and its twin, Omori to Pukawa.

I will let the photos tell the rest.

Magnolias abound, on our walk to the track, everyone has them.

The first walk we took the left turn, and second one we turned right a few days later after a 3″ rainfall over night, so a bit wetter. These days I’m still wearing my crocs, but now I have nifty galoshes to put over them. This is significant in my quest to reduce our luggage. This trip has been the lightest in a long time. Big bags well under 20 kgs and the carry on well under 7. Pretty happy with that. Hence the galoshes  instead of boots.

Trip inside a trip. Rotarua. October 4, 2022

It’s 7am. I’m sitting in the lounge of our little apartment in Rotarua in the charming Victorian style Prince’s Gate Hotel.

Bargain price of around $100 USD for a Tuesday; same room 3 times the price on the school holiday weekend.

We found Hobbitland. Yesterday, a fine sunny day, after 3 days of rain, we got lost (OK,  now you can stop laughing) on our way here, but our hour of extra road miles took us through amazing quirky landscapes that can only be Hobbit country. I would insert a photo here, but his Lordship, the chief taker of photos, is still asleep, despite it being 7.21. I’ve watched the Ukraine  updates, had my first big coffee and caught up on Facebook. What are you going to do?

Yesterday I did a very brave thing. Despite my fear of heights I joined my Terrell on an sky walk through the local, and impressive, Redwood forest. They do have lots of wood here. 90% of the plantations are Radiata Pine, mostly for export. But the old Redwoods have been saved in this charming forest. Not quite the scale of  California, but still rather beautiful.

Pretty scary to not only be on the skywalk, some 30m ( or was it 30 ft?) up, but then to lift ones phone up even higher………

Then there is Eat Street. Quite a civilized town, this.

We had a late brekkie there, Terrell took the bennie (that’s the cool version of eggs benedict) and I wolfed down some bacon with accessories. I’ve been trying to cut down, and I must say, this made me slightly queezy, so maybe cutting down is a reasonable future strategy. I’ve also been cutting down on red wine, a third of a glass max these days ( supported of course by the occasional beer)

We also found some cool geysers, but I’ll spare you more photos of mist plumes.

Local tulips and a bit of a look at the local paper. 

This gorgeous building is very close by. It was a bath house back in the day, now closed for renovations. It’s set in a beautiful  park.

We did go into their thermal pools – actually, pool. There were three pools, each hotter than the one before. We started off in the middle pool and stayed there until we felt cooked – about twenty-minutes. Narda felt a bit faint after. I think it was in the mid-30s (C). The pool above was too hot for us to get into but occasionally someone would come along and go in it and looked still alive by the time we left. Thermal pools -supposed to be of healing quality. The whole city has that rotten egg smell – not bad – just a sulfur odor. Similar to Saratoga Springs, New York, where I grew up (nearby in Clifton Park) – I always love to have Saratoga Vichy water when I am there – very high in minerals –

The springs are the result of a geological fault that allows water trapped in shale layers to surface. Historically, Mohawk and Iroquois tribes drank and bathed in Saratoga waters to celebrate the waters’ supposed strong healing and curative properties. Local lore says that the Mowhawks called the area “Serachtuague” to refer to it as a “place of fast moving water.” Early settlers may have mispronounced this word, leading to the anglicised “Saratoga.” Once discovered by settlers, accounts of its healthful benefits caught on in a big way. Even George Washington was an advocate of its restorative powers…https://www.saratoga.com/waters-of-saratoga/mineral-springs/

We enjoyed our three days in Rotorua – on the drive to there we were excited by the view of Mount Ruapehu in our rear-view mirror. Narda stopped so I could stand in the middle of the road and get a photo

We took the short detour to include the Waimangu Volcanic Valley. Well worth the drive. If we were younger and fitter we would have hiked to the crater, an hour down steep terrain – and taken the bus back up – but we didn’t.

and yes, of course, there is a short clip on our trip to Rotorua

Bye for now. Heading back to our little home in Kuratau.

Back home – we have lots of walking areas around Lake Taupo – see our couple of clips –
Our favourite spot is this bench in the deepest part of our little rain forest…

And that is it for our first three weeks in New Zealand. Our second three weeks – here in Greytown (Wellington) we will write up after we return to Australia and have it up by mid-November. Below is a sample of our trip from Lake Taupo to Greytown. We stopped in Whanganui along the way because a three-hour drive is meant to take a few days. There are already stories to tell but the time is yet ripe for them. See ya in November and if anyone actually read this all the way through – wow – good on ya. Cheers Narda and Terrell

The Durie Hill Elevator is a public elevator in Whanganui, on the North Island of New Zealand. It connects Anzac Parade beside the Whanganui River with the suburb of Durie Hill. It is ranked by Heritage New Zealand as a Category 1 Historic Place, and is New Zealand’s only public underground elevator.

Random postscripts – on the way…