ANOTHER WANDERFUL DAY

We've become addicted to the outdoors since we've been here in New Zealand! As the time is quickly approaching for us to return home, we're realizing how much we're going to miss wandering around all the beautiful places here. We spend as much free time outside as our work and the weather will allow. This past weekend we went back to a regional park, Shakespear, that we first saw early on. It starts out with a little walk through the bush, and then up through some pasture land to where at the top, this is the view below.

The cool thing about these regional parks is that they're dual purpose. Many of them are actually working farmland that's also been set aside as a park. You can wander through the pastures, or as they say, paddocks, and the only request they make is that you don't bother the animals and close the gates. There are about twenty five of these kinds of parks within an hour or so drive of our apartment.

The Happy Wanderer!

Norfolk pines on the skyline. They're a very common site here, and pretty against the sky.

This is a cruise ship sailing out to sea from Auckland.

This is us up on the lookout...

...and this is our sheep friends, with the lookout in the background.

One even posed for us!

As evening begins, another Norfolk pine silhouetted against the sky. If you look really hard just to the left of the trunk, you can see the skyline of Auckland across the water. It's never far away, but yet another world from these peaceful pastures and hills.

A VERY LONG, WONDERFUL DAY!

We were loving our chance to get away for a few days, and had enjoyed ourselves so much thus far, that we just had to keep going. We had so much to do and see that we didn't sleep long. We were out early so we could put in a full day, not wasting a minute of our free time! We had a mountain range to cross to reach the east coast, our destination for the day. We drove through a little tiny town that bills itself as the corrugated capital. And it is! Below are a couple pictures of places along the main street of town where tin was used very creatively.

A giant bug on top of this building

Sheep are plentiful in New Zealand, so this is a sheep...

...and this is the sheep dog.

We passed a large field of beautiful blue lavender growing,

lots and lots of equally blue jacaranda trees in full bloom,

beautiful little mountain lakes,

fields and hills,

and eventually reached the beach and some horseback riders. In the background is a little active volcano island in the sea off the coast.

The Maori culture is alive and well, and here were two totum poles. The Maori were quite the carvers. The one on the right depicts a blond, fair skinned man marrying a dark Maori girl.

More rolling hills, but very dry and brown. In spite of all the rain all winter, this summer is much browner than it was when we came last year - in fact they're calling it a drought.

The east coast has a more mild climate, almost Mediterranian-like. It's a famous grape growing region, with beautifully kept vineyards.

This is a new little vineyard, mowed between the rows, and beautiful!

We drove down the coast from Gisborne to Napier. The town of Napier was leveled by a giant earthquake in 1931. The whole town had to be rebuilt. The style in the '30s was Art Deco, and that's the architecture they used to rebuild Napier. The whole downtown is built in Art Deco style, well maintained and brightly painted in the '30s style. They are suppossedly the Art Deco capital of the world, have festivals to celebrate it, sell period clothes in the shops - just very proud of their claim to fame. Below are some examples of the distinctive architecture in the downtown buildings, and in a street of row houses.

The stores that front along the beach look out across the street to this arch that frames the view of the ocean.

Looking beyond the arch, you can see these gardens and arbor at the beach edge. Very beautiful sight.

As evening closed in on us, we saw a pretty double rainbow for quite some time, and then as we started back across the mountain range, the sky lit on fire and gave us a beautiful show most of the rest of the way back.

By the time we reached our room, we'd been in the car for about fourteen hours, and saw more variety and beauty than you can imagine. What a wonderful way to start the new year!

NEW YEAR'S DAY 2010

After our adventurous hike to the Wairere Falls the previous day, we decided to take it a little easier on New Year’s day. We drove to the town of Rotorua which is a highly commercialized tourist attraction. Just about everything is located behind walls and fences with large billboards and colorful brochures explaining just enough to say that they is something behind the wall to see. Rotorua is known to be a Maori culture capital – if you are interested in learning about the Maori culture and want to see it, you can do that in Rotorua (for a small price), for a little more you can have it explained to you, and for an extra fee you can see a demonstration, and finally, you can buy a souvenier. We weren’t that interested. But they did have a few things that we were interested in. Most of the things we enjoy are not listed in the “Attractions” section of the city tour brochure.

We started with a long slow walk through a redwood forest.

The redwood trees are not native, but were planted well over 100 years ago from California seedlings.

They appear to have adapted very well. In fact the climate reminded us a lot of the Santa Clara valley.

Looking up it was near impossible to see the top of them.

Even the tree ferns had to grow extra tall just to compete for some sun light.

The day was clear and warm – a perfect temperature. But there was plenty of shade under the trees, so we didn’t worry too much about sunburns.

We had a leisurely lunch under the redwoods, before moving on. It was so pleasant. Both of us could have stayed there all day – just for starters.

Contrary to what I said earlier, we did take in a little of the local culture in Rotorua. This government building is situated near the sulfur fields near the city center.

The “white” water in this lake is from the sulfur “tainted” water. Most of the lake was clear, but there was enough sulfur to stink up the entire city.

Geo-thermal field is one of the other “attractions” of Rotorua… if you’re attracted to smelling sulfur. This pool is a by-product of the on-going thermal eruptions in and around Rotorua. The white foreground is from dead vegetation.

We didn’t stay long in Rotorua, but found a beautiful blue lake about 15 kilometers out of town. It is called “Blue Lake.” It is a favorite recreation area for locals. Having no sulfur odor, I could understand why.

There was a 5-K path that went all the way around the lake, which we decided to explore. We were so glad we did. Every turn gave us a new view that was just delightful.

At one end of the lake was a beautiful white sandy beach backed up by acres of green grass.

The other end of the lake was a piney wood that was full of wild flowers and birds, and… us.

We finished our day, by treating ourselves to fish and chips from a local shop, which we ate picnic style under the trees. YUM.

A New Year’s Eve Hike

Our offices closed at noon on New Year’s Eve, and the place quickly became a ghost town. We finally got our stuff to a stopping point about 12:30 p.m. and by then we were the only ones in the building. We headed quickly to our apartment, changed clothes, grabbed a bite to eat, loaded the car and were off to our predetermined destination – Matamata. When John and Shona were here last month, we saw a tall water falls from the highway in the distant mountains. We were fascinated, and decided to hike up to it. Upon getting to the location we learned that the falls was named Wairere, and has a drop of over 500 feet. At the bottom of the track a sign suggested that it would take us almost two hours to get to the falls, we were starting at 5:30 p.m. – hmmm.

Once inside the forest, the tall trees and thick tree ferns made the hike cool and pleasant and almost immediately dark in the late afternoon sun.

The track took us through a beautiful, diverse range of natural scenery that appeared to have hardly been touched by man.

In addition to the water falls, which was our original destination, there was a beautiful river which we followed up the mountain for several miles.

The path crossed several rivers and stream beds on its way up.

Along the path were several picturesque river falls and cascades.

It should be no surprise that some sections would include steep stairways or mountain paths. This particular section contained more than 200 steps.

The entire pathway meandered around and through a boulder strewn rain forest which reflected every color of green imaginable.

The light that came through breaks in the forest canopy reflected beautifully on the small ponds that we found from time to time along the river.

The falls was stunning, but the magnitude was almost in comprehensible. If we go close enough to photograph it all, it was so far away that the details were lost. Up close, only small sections could be seen at a time.

There are numerous pools to along the way, and several side tracks to be explored.

Racing the sun-dial, we took the time to explore only one side path. It lead us to a beautiful lush pasture land that overlooked a vista that the setting sun bathed in long shadows that accented the trees and farm lands far below.

Still racing the sun, we took only one short breather to grab a picture of the two of us together.

As the sun continued to fall we began to think that we might get caught in a dark forest. This was one that it would be safer to just stay the night than to try to navigate in the dark. (We picked up our pace – considerably)!

We emerged from the forest just in time to catch the sun setting behind the distant mountains on the other side of the valley.

As we drove away, the full moon poked its face above the very forest from which we had just emerged. What an exciting adventure and we were glad we didn’t have to stay in the forest the whole night.