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| The eruption of Mt Tarawera |
After what felt like eight minutes of sleep
we were up and packed ready for our taxi to the airport. Thankfully it was a
short flight and we managed to pick up our next car in Auckland without any
problems (despite the absence of credit card!)
We only had a couple of days on the North
Island so we had opted to head towards the coast in the Bay of Plenty and
booked into an Air BnB place in Omorkoroa.
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| ...and Mt Tarawera today! |
Unfortunately on arrival in Auckland the
weather was HIDEOUS or- torrential rain and wind for our entire journey there.
We called ahead to confirm our accommodation and were told by the owners that
they’d leave the key in their garden cabin so we could just ourselves in as
they wouldn’t be home.
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| Classic waterfall action |
When we arrived we were pleased to find the
cabin not only had heating but also electric blankets! We switched on the
heating and, both ravenous, took a short trip into town to have some seaside
fish and chips in the pouring rain before heading back and promptly passing out
in our cosy cabin for next three hours or so!
When we woke up the weather was still
horrendous, but we were both secretly quite happy that it gave us an excuse not
to do anything! We took a quick trip to the supermarket for supplies and spent
the evening in bed with a glass of wine catching up on Dexter!
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| Lisa and the Redwoods |
We were grateful that the weather had
completely cleared the next day and we decided to take a drive into Rotorua
with some tourist stops on the way. We visited a blueberry winery where an odd
old lady eyed us with suspicion while she tried to convince us to buy $30 a
bottle blueberry juice that would cure any ailment we could ever possibly have.
We declined but bought some blueberry chocolate instead.
Our next stop was the ‘buried village’ just
outside of Rotorua – it had been the original village of Tarawera but it had been
almost entirely engulfed when Mount Tarawera erupted in 1886. It was an interesting
walk around the original site, which still had the remains of the pub and other
buildings scattered around. A lot of stuff had been reconstructed though and
James wasn’t impressed!
To finish off our day we took a trip to the
Redwood Forest on the outskirts of town. The forest was planted in 1898 in an
attempt to find out what the best tree for timber was (as the native ones took 2-300 years to mature!) – fortunately it wasn’t
the Redwood meaning that there were hundreds of the absolutely enormous trees
for us to wander through as the sun was setting. After a bit of pretending we
were orks it was time to head back to our cabin to begin the rather daunting
task of culling all our belongings in preparation for the SE Asia leg of our
tour!
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