Rotorua Continued

After a good sleep in our beauty campervan, we got ourselves together and headed out to Wai-O-Tapu. Sculptured out of volcanic activity, Wai-O-Tapu is one of New Zealand’s most colourful and diverse geothermal sightseeing attractions. We walked around for hours, there is so much stuff to see within the park

The Champagne Pool- my favourite thing at Wai-O-Tapu

Lake Ngakoro (means "the grandfather" in Maori) is a beautiful emerald green. Here you can see the hot murky water mixing with the cold.

Orange lichen all over the trees

Sulphur Cave

Oyster Pool

Bubbling Mud Pools 

The Lady Knox Geyser

The Devil's Bath

It was raining most of the morning, so we decided to do a canopy tour. It said on the brochure that the forest looked the best in the rain. We headed over to the canopy tours headquarters and got geared up, then they took us out into the forest. The tour consisted of hiking tracks, swing bridges and lots of ziplines! So much fun. Here are some pics and a video.

Clipping Jared on

Traipsing through the forest

Ziplining!

While on the walk we learned a lot about the native birds and how bad the possums, rats and ferrrets are for them. Part of our ticket price went to conservation efforts and this made me quite happy. The forest we went through had only been toured for 8 weeks, it was so untouched and pristine. There were lots of Rimu trees- some of these trees are over 600 years old, and the seeds that planted them were possibly carried there by moa. The moa is an extinct bird that was over 12 ft tall and looked like an enormous ostrich.

After that we were all ziplined-out and soaking wet so we headed back to camp. We bbq'd some steaks & veggies and went for a hot-tub. There was a very charming drunk Kiwi woman in there with her two high-school aged kids. Nothing but class.

The next morning we went out to the WaiOra Spa for a mud bath. My inner mud-kid came out and I covered myself and Jared with mud.

After a freezing cold shower and then a relaxing soak in the hot pools we headed back into Rotorua. Oh, I almost forgot- when they tell you don't get any of the water or mud in your eyes because it contains sulphuric acid- believe them! My eyes were burning so bad all the way back to Rotorua and while we were having lunch in the van. They finally stopped watering and we could continue with our adventures.
We headed out to Tikitapu and Rotokakahi, or as we call them Blue and Green lakes. There are about 10 lakes in the Rotorua district, all created from volcanic activity.

Blue Lake is blue because of the reflection of white ryolite on a pumice bottom.

Green lake is green because of a shallow, sandy bottom. 

Before we knew it it was time to drive back to Owhango. It was a great weekend in Rotorua and I wish we could do it all over again!

Until next time- here is the tip of a silver fern to bring you good luck

Labour Day Weekend in Rotorua

Hey folks,
another update from NZ. We had ourselves a weekend full of action, so there is a lot of pictures and info to talk about. This past weekend was the Labour Day long weekend which gave us that extra day off work to get into trouble.

Friday night we headed to the local pub in Owhango (where we are living) for the Dragon concert held outside. Dragon is a 70s rock band that was huge in Australia and New Zealand and this was their 40th anniversary tour. Hello Sailor, another Kiwi band, were touring with them. They sang the only song that we had heard before "Gutter Black" which is the theme song for Outrageous Fortune, a New Zealand TV show that Roberta and her sister Jocy were obsessed with. It was cool to take in the kiwi music culture. We could tell which were the most popular songs as the rest of the crowd knew all the words.

Once we had shaken all the cobwebs from our brains, we left for Rotorua on Saturday morning. Rotorua is a tourist hotspot being in the middle of the geothermal zone and having a huge selection of extreme sports to choose from. The drive from Owhango to Rotorua took us around 2.5 hours as we made a couple of stops to check out a couple of lookouts and have ourselves some lunch.

Our first item on the agenda was whitewater rafting on the Kaituna river. It is a class 5 out of 6 river meaning the rapids are quite large and included going over a 7 meter waterfall.....more on that later. In our raft there was Roberta and I, the local guide, and two guys from Saudi Arabia that could not speak English very well. They just nodded and smiled as the guide went over safety but really didn't know what he was talking about. We tried to help out but I don't think it worked. Roberta got a few laughs from the look of fear that they had as we went over some of the larger rapids. The ride itself took around 1 hour and was awesome. The looks on our faces tell the story.

Safety briefing - taking everything serious.

Making our way to the water.

The first big rapid.

Hmm...where did we go.

Someone seems to be paddling harder??

Next is the sequence of pictures going over the 7 meter waterfall.

and then we flipped...

Roberta and I in the water.

We were the only one of the three rafts that flipped, but it was awesome. We think our guide meant to flip us. 

All back in the boat safe and sound.

 The Group

After that great ride, we rushed back into Rotorua to catch the bus out to Tamaki Maori Village which was waiting for us. Our bus driver informed us about some of the history of the Maori people and appointed us a chief. We arrived at the outskirts of the fortified village, but nobody may enter the tribal grounds until the Powhiri, a formal welcome ceremony, was performed. Haka challenges were performed by a series of warriors from the village.

Here is a video to show a taste of it.

Eventually, a peace offering (teka) was laid at the feet of our Chief which he accepted and we were allowed into the village. We walked around the village to different little houses where they showed certain aspects of their culture like games they played, the haka, how they make tools and how they made their carvings, and how they cooked.

Our supper brought out from the ground called a hangi.

After walking around the village, we headed into the sacred meeting house for some song and dance. By the end of this our stomachs were growling for food. We ended the night with a large feast.

After that action-packed day, we were ready for bed when we got back to our camper van at around 10.
More to come.......

Taumarunui Vet Clinic

Hello Again,

Sorry for the delay, we’ve been busy as here at the Taumarunui Vet Clinic. 

Jared and I are both working, doing a little bit of everything from smallies to beef and sheep, even the odd 

goat. 

From the very hairy patients

 

To the very hairless

We’re really enjoying it here because we have a great team- all girls except Jared! But he does pretty well tolerating the hen house. I think he got used to it during vet school. We work with one other vet- Carin, the owner, one vet nurse, an office manager and three rotating receptionists. Most mornings we sit down for morning tea and the odd afternoon tea, too. I can get used to this, we've gotta bring this trend back to 

Canada.

Jared at his desk....is that Facebook? 

We just finished a busy week on call. Carin told us at the start of the week that “she hardly ever gets called in during the week.” Well, we got called in every night and even had multiple calvings the one night. So much for that! We must have angered the “On-Call Gods” somehow.

Funny story this morning- Jared and I went out to a calving this morning at the end of a windy, twisty road. It was raining cats and dogs as it does here, and the heifer was down. We got her frog-legged and Jared reached inside. He started looking around and asked: "Is there a calf running around somewhere?" Sure enough, the farmer did a head count and found one lying in some tall grass. So we treated her like a down cow- easiest calving I'll ever do! 

Until Next Time!

Weekend in the Naki

Gidday Mates,

Whats going down on the other side of the earth? Over here in the land of the long white cloud (Aoteroa), things are going as good as ever. Last weekend brought us to many more cool new places and sights. On Friday night we hit up the local pub in Owhango for some New Zealand piss. Yes, that is what some of the locals call alcoholic beverages. We didn’t get too crazy and were home quite early.

Saturday we headed west on the Forgotten World Highway towards Stratford. The drive was quite cool. Lush, fern-filled forests lined the rugged hills as we twisted this way and that. The road got quite narrow and became gravel as we came through Morgan’s gorge.

We took a small detour off the “beaten path” to check out one of the largest waterfalls on the North Island, Damper Falls. We walked through a pasture that was filled with ewes and recently born lambs as are many fields these days. Once we got to the trees there was the wooden walkway that we have come accustomed to. The view was outstanding and gave a certain sense of awe as we observed without a human in sight or within earshot.

Damper Falls (74 meters high)

After taking the view all in, we jumped back in our van and headed back to the forgotten highway. Not too far down the road, we were taken by the sight of Mount Taranaki aka Mount Egmont another one of New Zealand’s volcanic mountains. Roberta thinks it is just awesome that all of a sudden there is a large, single mountain sticking up from the earth. Definitely different from those mountains she could see growing up. We weaved our way through the dairy cow-filled pastures to Egmont National Park. Roberta also loved. At the National Park we checked out Dawson Falls and headed out on our second hike of the day to check out the Wilkie’s pools. It brought us through the Goblin Forest and closer to Mount Taranaki.

Mount Taranaki in the distance

Mount Taranaki

Dawson Falls

Goblin Forest

Wilke's Pools

We then carried on to New Plymouth located right on the Tasman Sea. We had ourselves a great “tea” a.k.a. supper and rolled on in to the local holiday park for a night’s sleep. Yes we finally spent the night in our van. It was easy to get to sleep that night as the ocean waves carried us into our dreams.

Sunday we were awoken by the blistering hot sun. It definitely has a lot more kick near the hole in the ozone, but apparently the hole is getting smaller. We decided we would take in the famous coastal walkway here.  The sand was brilliantly black from the breakdown of volcanic rock. After checking out the surfing competition, we decided to hire some bikes so we could take in more of the walkway. Few things feel good when they hit you in the face but ocean mist is one of them.

We decided to drive to the wharf instead of walking there. On the way, we noticed a path up one of the volcanic outcroppings- Paritutu Rock- and we couldn’t resist the temptation to climb it. After a steep ascent we were rewarded with one of the most spectacular views.

Mount Taranaki was covered by clouds unfortunately

Mount Ruapehu and Mount Ngarahue in the distance

After going to the I-Site, we decided that we would go check out Pukekura Park. It is known around New Zealand as being one of the nicest in the country. Roberta was quick to comment on how it put Central Park in New York to shame. There were definitely many beautiful plants. After a couple hours of aimless wandering, we had to make our 3 hour venture back to our base.

Roberta’s note: It was not aimless wandering, it was a beautiful garden and I spent the entire time loving the scenery, the flowers, the ponds, the ancient trees and the waterfalls. And at the end I got ice cream. Score!
Over and Out