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.

Auckland - June 30, 2013

I woke up much happier today and had a dreamless night.  So I got up and going.   I went to the Sky Tower.  I have seen it in all my views of Auckland.  I can see it from my hotel window and from the ferry rides I have had.  I figured it was like the Empire State Building or the Eiffel Tower.  You just gotta go to the top, probably just once, but you gotta do it.  I must say it is quite a spectacular view!  

And it is cleaner and nicer than either the Empire State Building or the Eiffel Tower.  It is also considerably newer (1997).  There are spots on the floor of the first deck that have glass in them and you can see down to the street.   They are strong enough for you to stand on – as strong as the concrete surrounding them, but there is something really trippy about stepping onto those glass panels.  Once, I wasn’t looking and stepped onto one and saw just enough out of my peripheral vision that I thought I was going to fall.  My heart skipped a bit and I nearly screamed.   No need for bungee jumping off the Auckland Sky Tower for me – stepping on the glass floor was enough of an adrenal rush for me.

 While up in the Sky Tower I saw a lovely looking park and I decided to go there.  

I walked around for a while.  There are these kinds of trees all over Auckland.  I think they are a kind of fig tree and they are amazing.  They are Giants!  And there were several of them in this park. 

The next time I come to New Zealand I am bringing someone who likes to climb trees because these would be really fun to climb.  Where are my nephews when I need them?!  Seriously, I am not really a tree climbing kind of girl, not even when I was a kid.  But these trees just scream at me, “Come climb me!”  These are different than that tree I climbed on the beach.  It was a New Zealand Christmas tree – there is another name but I can’t remember it right now, something like Katuapawa…those are also really great trees and have branches that grow horizontally as well.

I returned to my hotel room and had not been there long when there was one of those tropical showers where it is pouring rain but sunny.  I was glad I could watch it from my room and was not out in it.  At 1PM I walked next door to the church to attend worship services.  There was a senior missionary couple in the congregation who invited me to come to their apartment for dinner after church.  They live in Devonport in this amazing apartment with an amazing view!  I couldn’t believe how beautiful their apartment is.  I told them I had to take a picture and that I should put it on-line to advertise for senior couples to go on missions.   The next 3 pictures were taken from their living room.

This couple is on a medical mission.  Elder Anderson is a retired doctor and he is assigned to work with mission presidents and doctors treating missionaries in all of the South Pacific countries.  Their headquarters is in Auckland but one week every month they are traveling to other countries and islands.  We had a lovely evening.  I sang for them standing in front of their amazing view.  It was good practice for the presentation in Brisbane.  They told me to let them know when I am performing, after their mission they will fly to where I am performing to come and see me.  It was great to feel so immediately loved and welcomed.  And it really is such a small world.  Sister Anderson served as a missionary in Nauvoo in 2009-2011.  She said that I looked familiar to her and when I found out she was in Nauvoo, I told her she must recognize me from the Nauvoo Pageant.  I played Eliza R. Snow in 2009 and 2010.  Now she is remarried and serving in New Zealand and just happens to be here while I am here.  Crazy!  It really is such a small world.

Elder and Sister Anderson brought me back to my hotel room and this is my last night in Auckland.  Tomorrow, very early in the morning, I am off to the Waitomo Caves and then to the next city on my itinerary, Rotorua.

Auckland - June 29, 2013

I had a rough start to my day this morning.  I had dreams about going to my fourth grade teacher, Mr. Fornelious’ class with unfinished homework and then other dreams about Nazi occupation...It took me a few minutes to get started, but I did.

I did know that next door to my hotel is the LDS Family Services Building, but what I didn’t realize is that next door to that is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  I was on online looking for the church this morning and looking up wards and their start times.  On-line it looked like there was a church just a few blocks down and to the left a little.   But when I started walking this afternoon, I realized that it was just next door and that you can see it from the window of my hotel room.  It sits a little ways back off the sidewalk so I just didn’t notice what kind of building it was.  It was open so I went inside, there was an activity going on.  I double checked with someone that the English congregation meets at 1PM and then went on my way.

I spent the afternoon in Devonport.  It is a suburb of Auckland that is directly across the bay from Downtown Auckland.  I think you could certainly drive to it but you would have to go around the bay and it is much closer and more direct to take the ferry, which I did.  It is known for it’s Victorian houses,

art shops and galleries and handmade chocolate shop.

I booked a tour again, which was helpful.  The tour took us to a place called North Head which has a lot of old guns and things that were set up to protect Auckland but were never used.  But it also has a fantastic view of the Hauraki Gulf and the City of Auckland.  The tour only stops there for 10 minutes but the guide gave us the option of staying for an hour and then joining the next tour.  I decided that 10 minutes wasn’t enough time to see what I wanted to see at North Head so opted to stay the hour and join up again with the next tour.  So I rambled around the top of this hill, which is actually a volcano, as are all the hills in Auckland. 

And at the end of the hour when I met up with Ray, the tour guide, again there was no one on the tour.  It was just Ray and me.  He told me some very interesting things, including all the changes and construction that has been going on recently on all of these Victorian homes.  Apparently it is illegal to tear down these homes and rebuild due to their historic nature.  If you own one of these homes you have to preserve them.  For example, Ray showed me a home that had recently finished burning off all the layers of paint so that they could get back to the original wood.  The homes are all made of Kauri wood, which is very soft and ideal for furniture, according to Ray.

Incidentally, Ray also told me about his family and his pre-retirement job as a bus driver.  He was also terribly concerned about how much it is going to cost to buy souvenirs for all my brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews and my parents and my grandpa.  I told him that I picked up a lot of really cool shells on the beach yesterday.  But since we are now BFF’s I decided I should have a picture with him.  He asked how I was going to manage that.  I told him it was really tricky, but that when you travel alone you get really good at the self-portrait.  (It must also be noted that my sister, Angela, taught me the art of self-portrait last summer in France).

After the tour was over, I walked around and looked in a few shops and then ate some dinner at a restaurant.  Then I took the ferry back to Auckland stopped at a couple of souvenir shops and a grocery store and came home.