Rotorua - July 1, 2013

What an amazing day!  I am exhausted but let me try to tell you about what I did today.

6:45-9:15 AM: Riding in tour van from Auckland to Waitomo Caves with Ron, the driver and Amy, young Chinese tourist.  Here is some of the scenery.  I took these pictures from the window of the moving van and just know that they will never be a just representation of what I really saw.  Gorgeous scenery!

9:30-10:30 AM: Waitomo Cave Tour.  It was like many other caves and truthfully as far as the formations go, I think Timpanogos Cave in Utah is more impressive.  However, we saw very little of the 300 caverns at Waitomo Caves and there are no glowworms in Utah.  Yes, inside the caves are these little larvae that glow when they eat.  They look like little tiny blue Christmas lights on the ceiling of the cave.  It is pretty cool.  You can only see them in the dark.  So they put you on a boat (another cool thing they don’t do at Timp Cave) and you go through part of the cave on this boat in the dark so you can see the glowworms.  I must confess, as I am writing this it is reminding me of Phantom of the Opera.  It was pretty cool.  There was another girl in the van and on the tour with me.  She is from Beijing and just graduated from uni, as it is called down here (and in the UK).  Amy is her English name.  She is an only child and had to talk her parents into letting her travel alone.  She spoke English very well, but kept asking me if I understood her.  And she was so cute when she asked me to take picture of her.  It was like all of a sudden she was a model.  She would pose and then turn and pose again.  It was cute.  She inspired me.  I’m going to add more modeling to my pictures.  Although when you are doing self portraits that is a little more difficult.

10:30 AM-12:30PM: Riding in tour van from Waitomo to Roturua.  I calmed down a little on the picture taking on this leg of the drive.  But here are a couple of pictures.

 That red line is some kind of bouy line.  It looks wierd, but was so gorgeous.  This is above the dam of the Waikato River. (I'm not sure that's the name of the River...)

This is cattle and sheep grazing land.  Those bumps in the  landscape were created by volcanic activity. When you can see a broader view it looks like the earth was boiling and froze mid-boiling.

 This is the site of a Maori History Story, much like Romeo and Juliet, but with a happy ending.  Remind me to tell you when I get home if you are interested.

12:30-2:00 PM: Check into Hotel in Roturua, eat lunch and Facebook.  I was given a little carton of milk when I checked in.  You know, like the ones they give you in kindergarten at snack time.   No explanation, just “Here’s your milk!”  I ate my lunch and then got on the internet because now I have unlimited free wireless.  In Auckland it was free but limited to 100 MB per day.  But Facebook?  Really?   I’m in New Zealand.  But there I was for at least 45 minutes catching up on everyone’s weddings and Jared Trudeau’s puppies.   So many things to see in NZ and I am on Facebook, but I guess it’s because I love you all and want to know what is going on even if I am in NZ.

2:00-5:00 PM: Tour of Hidden Village.  This was quite fascinating.  Rotorua reminds me a lot of Jackson Hole or Yellowstone.  It  looks like it is mainly a tourist town because of the hot springs, mineral pools, geysers and other side effects of volcanic activity.  Not far from Rotorura there used to be a couple of villages, Te Wairoa being the largest one that thrived on tourism.  There used to be these terraces of hot water baths that were quite an attraction to tourists in the late 1800’s.  Well on June 9, 1886 one of the local volcanoes erupted, destroying those terraces and burying these villages in ash and mud.  Te Wairoa has been excavated and I spent the afternoon at this excavation site.  It was fascinating and in such a beautiful location.

I've never seen black swans before.  Here is a whole family: Mom, Dad and...ugly ducklings...what do you call swan babies?  I have no idea.  The thing that was so funny is that the babies are like the size of a full grown goose goose but still have these little baby chirps.  The Mom hissed at me when I got too close.

These are parts of the mill that was buried in the volcano explosion.  The white lump is petrified flour.

 There was a fence built around the village where you see the tree stumps in this picture.  After the fence was covered in volcanic mud those fence posts sprouted and grew into trees (poplar, I believe).  They had to cut the trees down in 2012 because they were falling on other parts of the excavation site.  Who ever heard of fence posts growing into trees!  It's kind of like Lantern Waste in Narnia....Apparently, NZ is like early Narnia, things grown very well here, especially when covered with volcanic mud.

 Water fall near the excavation site and part of the walk around the buried village.

This one is for you, Angela.  There just happened to be a railing at the right height and I was able to do that timed picture setting and make an interesting pose, just for you.

 The volcano is actually the farthest little mound in the back.  You can't really tell from the picture but all of that green in the foreground is a massive canyon .  It was a breathtaking view!

5:00-9:30 PM: Walked to and from the grocery store, it was about a mile each way.  While I was walking a guy came up from behind me and walked with me for a spell.  When I told him I was from Utah he said,  “Oh, Utah!  Isn’t that where the hill billies live?”  I asked what he meant by hill billies.  He said, “uh, like the Amish?”  I thought, “No, they are in Pennsylvania where I have been living the past two years but that will just totally confuse him.”  And I said instead, “No, I think you mean the Mormons and we’re not hill billies.  We’re just normal people, like you.”  And then he said, “Well, I’m not a hill billie but I’m not normal.”  And then he trotted to his car parked on the street.   When I got home from the store, I cooked some dinner in my kitchen, ate, laid on the bed in the living room and digested, washed dishes and then ended the day with a dip in my private geothermal heated hot tub. Ahhh, that felt really good.

Now it is off to bed, the one upstairs in the loft, not in the living room.  Tomorrow is another busy day.  There is so much to see.  

P.S.  I love my hotel.  Mary and Bob, it's called the Wylie Court Motor Lodge if you want to stay here when you get to Rotorua.