Saturday in Tongariro National Park

Greetings!

This weekend our friend Ema was coming to visit us from Palmy. His bus came in at 4 pm so we went to the National Park again to do one more walk while we waited. I love the Tongariro National Park, it is just the absolute best place to be on a clear day. 

Mt Ngaruhoe- I know you've seen it before but it's just my favourite 

We stopped in at the visitor centre and looked at a few walks we wanted to do. When we have a clear weekend we will be doing the Tongariro Crossing. This is a 7-8 hour hike and you walk between Mt. Ngaruhoe and Mt. Tongariro. Hopefully more on this later. Instead we went out on the Silica Rapids Walk, which is only a 2.5 hr walk. The great thing about this walk is the stream changes color as you walk up it due to the different minerals in it. Here are some pics:

When that was done we picked up Ema and took him for a little drive. We drove up to Turangi, saw lake Taupo, and came back down via Taumarunui.That night we checked out some glowworms at Kakahi, the town our boss lives in. There is this random country road and a deep trench has been dug for the road to go through. On the sides of the walls there are tons of glowworms. It's kind of a spooky walk after dark, going through this dark trench, but I had Jared to protect me and Judo chop any bad guys. The pictures of course don't do it justice, you'll just have to come see for yourself :)

This is supposed to be a wall full of glowworms

The little webs they put down and reel up once something gets stuck in them

Until next time!

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!