New Zealand Diary

Wednesday 13th August

We have been to Hot Water Beach, a gold mine and soaked in a thermal pool

We were p bright and early after spending the night in a layby - and David spending a lot of the night on the floor (must fill you in on that one day!! - we didn't quite work out how to make the bed - gave me a good laugh!) it had been raining heavily in the night and during breafast - but was sunny by the time we left!

We then headed off up the Coromandel peninsular to Hot Water Beach- where hot springs come up through the sand, so if you dig a hole at the edge of the sand it fills up with hot water from underground - sometimes really hot - some parts of the beach were too hot to stand on! There were people in bikinis despite the miseable weather - and it was great to stand at the edge of the water watching massive waves - digging your feet into really hot sand that was cooled as the waves came in! The pics don't show how wierd it was but we had good fun!

We took quite a long drive then towards Rotorua. We stopped off at Martha Goldmine at Waihi - it is still being mined - both an underground and above ground mine - the mine we could see was 275m deep (we couldn't see the bottom despite trying and getting quite wet in the process!) They had the old Cornish building and the wheel tower thing too.

We thn carried on driving - it really is a beautiful country (Brian and Carole you are going to love it!) we had been warned it rained a lot in winter - and that they have had excessive rain over the last 3 weks and they weren't joking - when it rains it really rains - but then the sun comes out and for a while it is lovely and we mostly managed to dodge rain today! Here are just some views we took while travelling

It was starting to get dark as we arrived at Rotorua - but we stopped off at the Blue and Green lakes to have a look. One of the lakes is supposed to look Blue (due to cloud reflection and whatever it is on the bottom of the lake) - and the green for similar reasons - but they looked fairly similar to us - but were pretty and there was a nice sunset!

We then drove ino rotorua to be amazed to see that the town was steaming! Coming through the road drains and just all around was steam. We stopped in Kuirau park which has a lot of sealed off pools and outlets - it was quite dusky but here are a few pics - shame we can't give you an idea of the overpowering smell - the picture of Sam below he had to hold his breath to stop passing out!! thnk rotton eggs......

We then parked up on a campsite as we onlyhave electric (ie microwave and heating most important) when hooked up to mains electric and we needed to charge some batteries and get warm! The site we stayed at had their own thermal pools and mud pools so we all sat in the pools for ages (they are cooled to about 40 degrees) so natural spring water naturally heated - and only slightly smelly! It was only about 8 degrees outside but we all came out looking like lobsters!

Thursday 14th August

We have been to two thermal villages and to Huka Falls

We were up fairly early again as we had lots of plans for the day (as usual!) we stopped off at the edge of Lake Rotorua (as this is where the campsite was) as it was a nice morning and lovely views

We then drove just a few miles to Whakarewarewa (no idea still how to pronounce they helpfully call it Woka!) which is a Maori Thermal Village. It is still inhabited - and is right next to the largest geyser Pohutu. The houses are arranged around the thermal lakes and pools - the ground was hot - if you stamped you could feel vibrations as the rock is only 10 metres deep - lots of signs warning you not to walk as the ground was very thin - there is the sulphur smell all round and steam makes it very difficult to see at times. The maoris still live here and use the steam to heat their houses and the hot water that is rich in salts and minerals for communal bathing areas. They have steam holes in the ground that they use for cooking (they are well over 200 degrees) and they also cook in the water (we had corn cobs that were cooked in the water - they cook within a few minutes it is so hot) Here are some pictures

Then - we drove a little further out from Rotorua to Wai-o-Tapu - another thermal village but this one is less about the maori culture and more about the geographic side. The first thing we encountered was an amazing mud pool - it was huge and the mud was popping and plopping like mad. To me it seems as thought the mud is boiling as it is hot and bubbling but the bubbles are actally due to Carbon dioxide coming up from the ground. Here are some of our pics (I never thought I would take so many pics of mud!!!!)

Then we went down to the main Wai-o-tapu thermal park where there were loads of craters and fumeroles (steam vents gushing steam from underground) and pools of steaming water, all with names like Devils Hole and Thunder Crater. The colours of the rocks were impressive too, bright primrose yellow sulphur, reds and purples. There wa sa long boardwalk over the silica terraces (they look like water, but actually are just wet shiny stone and minerals), though very thin with boiling water underneath, Here and there were a couple of geysers and surreal lakes that were turquoise or green with orange and yellow edges. At the end was the Chamnpagne Pool (difficult to see due to the amount of steam), but pretty impressive, about 20 metre wide circular pool (74 degrees at the surface) that went down 65 metres deep, shaped like a champagne glass, and the water was 150 degrees at the bottom.

We left here at about 4.30 and headed towards lake Taupo planning to get towards the Tongariro national park before dark (three large volcanoes used in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy (one was Mt Doom if that means more to you them me!) We stopped off at Huka Falls - New Zealands best waterfalls apparantly - it was getting dark so not too good pics but very very noisy from all the water here!! Apparantly two olympic sized simming pools of water go over the falls every second.

We then drove all the way around Lake Taupo an headed into the National Park. It was too dark to see the mountain by the time we arrived but we parked up in a layby and planned to see them in the morning. We were a bit disturbed when the van old us the temperature was down blow 3 degrees and we had no heating (we were very grateful for the extra duvets we had been given!) and then it rained very heavily ALL night!!

Friday 15th August

We built a huge snowman and visited Glowworm caves- and didn't see any mountains!!

It really did rain all night last night - it was noisy and cold! We were up early as we had another busy day - and we left in the heavy rain. The cloud was so low there was no way that you could see more than a few yards in front - let alone the amazing montains we knew were right next to us!! We headed towards Whakkapakka (a ski resort) and were quite shocked to suddenly meet snow - and many cars stuck - and snow ploughs - and to be turned arond as the roads were still being cleared!! (Bearing in mind we are in something resembling a removal van! with no snow chains!!!)

We had a good old snowball fight and then we had to build a snowman!! (Nigel and Fran look and weep - this guy is pretty special!!!) I ws sent back to the van for supplies to finish him off ( a bucket, pegs and a banana (we ate the carrots yesteday!) but actually the traffic cone and twigs we left him with were just as good!

We then left fairly quickly before we got stuck (we were told lots more snow was forecast and it was still snowing! - David said - "can you believe with this weather we will be in Fiji tomorrow? - my reply - "oh yes!!!") We had to leave without even seeing the mountains which was a little disapponting but the snow was an unexpected bonus and great fun all round!

We then headed to the Waitomo Glow worm caves - which is an underground boat ride on a river where glowworms (the larvae of a fly that hangs around before turning into a mosquito type fly that only lives about 2-5 days - the glow comes from its bottom and is how they get rid of waste products (we are learning a lot too!)) Unfortunatley as there has been such heavy rain recently the river had flooded the caves and the boat was unable to run - we cold still go in the caves but as most of the glowworms are on he cave roof above the boat we were all disappointed as this was something we had been really looking forward to. We couldn't take pics inside (it was dark anyway!!!) so nothing to show. We paid for another cave too - which also had glowworms and stalgmaites and stalctites and was very pretty. The entry into the cave is quite impressive - it is a spiral walkway - that goes down 20metres - really easy to do as no steps (and easy to get back up too) looked like this

The cave was amazing - about 1.6km of walks with an underground waterfall (again all flooded - you could hear the waterfall moving huge boulders - quite scary - but you can only see the waterfall if you go in a wetsuit and are prepared to jump off it backwards!!) Here are a few pics - cave pics really!!

enough cave pics!! Anyway we then headed back towards Auckland - we got beyond Hamilton and stayed by a lake in Huntly about 100km from Auckland ready to be back in the morning!

Round the world home, Dillo home, eek home

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