New Zealand
Trip Start
Nov 2002
1
15
53
Trip End
Sep 2003
Rotorua,
New Zealand
Tuesday, December 10, 2002
We have made it to Rotorua, one of the thermal centers of the world. While travelling in the southern hemisphere we have encountered many problems trying to determine North and South. The friendly people of Rotorua make it even more difficult by placing North at 3 o'clock!
Our motel has five smelly (sulphur) hot pools to choose from. Compuserve is NOT friendly so we will have to wait until we get back to Houston late (very late) tomorrow or the next day to upload pictures.
This morning we started our day with a visit to Wai-O-Tapa, thermal wonderland
01 Auckland Sky Tower
. It is somewhat - note somewhat - like Yellowstone. But Yellowstone, it isn't. And the Lady Hope Geyser isn't Old Faithful. They advertise to get the tourist in that it goes off every morning at 10:15 am sharp. Now anyone know only an alarm clock can be set to go off exactly at a set time every morning. We knew prior to paying our entry fee that they had found a way to seed the geyser. It was the prisoners in the area in boredom and the need for a hot bath, who came to the geyser and thought they had found a way to do laundry. They put their clothes in the geyser along with soap. The geyser blew sending clothes sky high into the bush. From then on, the geyser, has been soaped regularly to make a "controlled eruption". The Lady Hope erupts on its own on a regular cycle of every 24-48 hours, but to "get every down there" for the eruption, (and the entry fee surely) it is necessary to "seed" the geyser.
All that being said, the eruption wasn't that spectacular. Perhaps it was 10 metres high, not much more. But for those who haven't yet made it to Old Faithful and may never, it was something to see.
Driving around New Zealand, we kept saying "this looks like England", "this looks like Scotland", "this looks like Colorado", "this looks like Hawaii". In the end we decided "this is New Zealand". We were only on a small part of the North Island and that is velvet green rolling hills and valleys.
New Zealand is a dichotomy constantly being divided and re-divided into many groupings
02 Looking through the glass floor.
. You could call it "The Blooming Island". It is a gardener's dream. The soil here must be perfect for growing blooming plants. I have been told that given the right conditions any plant will bloom and New Zealand is a perfect example of this. Part of this could be that it is actually springtime in New Zealand. Certainly Peter must have gotten tired of me saying "look at that huge............", "can you believe the size of that.....", "that is the biggest...." If you have never been to a garden wonderland, this is it. In Texas we grow Bottle Brush Bushes. In NZ they are 20-30' tall trees. We have blue bonnets covering our fields in the Spring. These are a type of lapin and living up to their name, they are blue. They are also a small scrubby plant not much more than 12" tall when big (in the Central Texas area). In NZ they are yellow, gorgeous, and a 2-3' tall bush. I saw a copper beech on the north side of Lake Rotorua that was close to 60' tall. Broom which I have seen many times in England and was never THAT impress with, was drooping like a waterfalls, falling over with blooms and also growing into small trees. Roses here grow the size of small saucers and seem to grow wild without much care by the roadside. Foxgloves 6' high grow as wildflowers, rhododendrons of every shade and hue from white to pink to mauve to darkest red with blooms covering most of the foliage, and plants and more blooming plants that I didn't recognize by name were seeming to grow without attention
03 Lady Hope Geyser
. Someone must have decided that NZ was a test ground for blooming trees of every shade and shape - orange, golden, pink, yellow, purple, white, red and redder still. If you ever get the chance, go to NZ in the Spring.Dec 11th.
We have arrived back in Texas after the long 43 hour? day that occurs when passing the International Date line. In general the airlines did a fine job of looking after virtually full planes. Qantas supplied only a box lunch on internal flights but these were good compared with the "Bistro" bags that we picked up for the flight from Los Angeles to Dallas. This contained a turkey "sandwich" that would have been better used as fuel for the plane as it was dripping with oil. Seems to me it would be better to bring your own packed lunch than to have to endure this cut in service.
There are still six segments left on our RTW ticket so please stay tuned.
Just a note: our niece Brenda from Swindon, England is currently in New Zealand's north island on her trip around the world. Our best wishes to Brenda and we hope that she enjoys NZ even more than we did.
