New Zealand - Day 10, Part 1

We left our campsite at Lake Ianthe at around 8am. Those stupid sandflies bit me several more times during the night, so I didn't sleep so well. It brought me great solace to see several dead sandflies stuck in the condensation on the inside of our windshield the next morning. Kinda gross, I know, but it made me happy! I guess Becky didn't get much sleep the night before either. She pulled out into the wrong lane of traffic...but no one was on the road that early in the morning in the middle of nowhere anyway! (Also note that Becky had to correct me several times too when I drove...ESPECIALLY on the roundabouts! LOL!)

So off we went to travel down Arthur's Pass. The word "WOW" is an understatement. The mountains, the terrain, the scenery were just amazing! We stopped several times on the way.

In the above picture, Becky is on a bridge that takes you to Deception Valley. Maximum load of

this bridge? That would be FIVE people. FIVE!!! No joke! The water flowing underneath it was such a pretty blue. This was only the beginning of the neat things we were to see/experience today. We continued down the road and the mountains got bigger and bigger. The roadway was amazing. We had to dodge rocks that were already in the road from a rockslide. We drove through a rockslide shelter that was built over the road. We also drove under a waterfall too! This was all on the Otira Gorge Road/State Highway 73. Check out my video below so you can see what I'm talkin' about:

When I was taking the videos above, I was paid a visit by a few Kea parrots. These are a large, rare alpine parrot that live only in the South Island of New Zealand. They were fascinating! Me, being the inquisitive gal that I am, extended my hand out to one of them, as they seemed very tame. I was hoping he would hop up onto my hand or arm, but nooo. Dude BIT me! Silly parrot! You can see the one who assaulted me with the purple and yellow bands on his leg. He's lucky that I like birds!

Just a short way down the road, we turned left at Death's Corner and got a fabulous view of the Otira Viaduct that we just drove over. This was built in order to create the least amount of impact on the area. I like that. Check it out:

The video above also shows the "first aid" that I administered to myself after my birdy bite too. Tee hee hee! A little way further down the road, Becky and I parked the van in the Temple Basin carpark, with the intent of taking a short nature hike trail to see the flora and fauna. It was really cold, so we geared up with jackets, hats and mittens. As we headed out to the trail, we suddenly changed our minds and decided to ascend the mountain instead. It was a steep path, full of rocks that zig-zagged up the mountain. I'm not sure what possessed us to climb, but climb we did, and for quite a ways! It was really windy, and exciting to see the views as we got higher and higher. For me, it was totally exhilarating. I was completely jazzed! We got to a spot where there was a little bench that someone built. It had a great view of a waterfall (see movie below). Here's me doing a "Captain Morgan's" stance on said bench...

Near the bench, I found a really neat thing. It was

small rocks that were placed carefully in the shape of a heart. There was some kind of message inside the heart, but I think it was in another language. We couldn't figure out what it said! It was neat to see nonetheless. It must have been for Valentine's Day!

We continued climbing from here. I really wanted to make it to the top, but we weren't really prepared for that. We didn't even bring any water with us! Stupid, I know, but our decision to climb was a quick one. I don't think either of us thought we would go this high!

As we continued our ascent, Becky (smartly) decided to take a break. While she did so, I literally sprinted up the trail a good big further. I was breathing hard, but I wanted to go up up up! I have funny video that makes me sound like some kind of perverted crank caller. I'll refrain from posting that, but will show you a pic I took of myself from the highest point that I hiked to (right). I scrambled back down and hooked back up with Becky so we could make the rest of the descent together. What an amazing experience it was to go conquer that mountain together...on a whim, no less! It was one of my favorite parts of the trip. Once back at the van, we got hydrated again and then made our way to Arthur's Pass. We were starving after our climb. Time for some grub.... and more run-ins with those rascally parrots! More to come in Part Deux...

New Zealand - Day 9

Sooo, what was this thing that I saw next door to our van? It was a sweet Cannondale bicycle built for two!!! Have you ever seen such a thing? I surely, have not. Amazingly, there are a lot of people that are "Bike Packers" in NZ. They travel everywhere via bike and camp in tents at night. They ride up the tallest of mountains and on the narrowest of roads. Then they sleep on the ground at night! WOW! After admiring this bike, we went and took showers. I also (thanks to Becky) called David from a phone booth. It was REALLY good to talk to him. After talking to him, I was even more confident in us and that things were going to be ok, thank goodness! What was ironic was that I was standing in shorts and a t-shirt next to the ocean when I spoke to him, and he was watching it snow 5 inches in Atlanta! Anyway, after this, Becky and I made oatmeal breakfast in the communal kitchen, packed, and got on the road again. We stopped at a grocery store to stock up on some more food and other staples. We then drove to Hokitika. All of New Zealand's jade is mined within 20km of this town. We shopped for a little bit at some cool stores, but when the weather started to improve, we decided to drive to Franz Joseph Glacier. Once there, you have to hike to actually see it. Me, being the brainiac that I am, wore just my Teva sandals. We did a steep 20 minute hike that took us to an elevated viewing platform. The weather wasn't the greatest, but we could see the glacier!!!

Once we made our way back down from the viewing platform, we decided to hike out to the glacier itself. The path was very rocky, but flat. The below movie clip pretty much tells it all. My favorite part of the clip is at the end. :-)

We didn't get close enough to the glacier to touch it. We saw several others who did. They paid to do a group hike ON it, gear included. They had on heavy duty hiking boots and garb. I had on shorts and Tevas. LOL. People looked at me funny. Surprisingly, I was quite comfortable the whole way out and the whole way back, with no soreness later on! I should write to Teva to tell them my story.... Anyway, after taking in all the amazingness of the glacier, we walked all the way back to the van. We drove to Lake Matheson in hopes that we could see Mount Cook. We got there and hiked out to where we were supposed to be able to see it, but the weather wasn't cooperating. We couldn't see it at all! It was still a pretty hike though, as you can see from the pictures below...

After our hike, we decided to find our campsite for the night. We drove to a DOC campground on Lake Ianthe. It was so pretty, right on the shore of the lake. We were roughing it tonight...no showers, only composting potties, and no potable water. We had a feast planned though! Tonight's special was chicken curry with veggies. We unloaded our food and cookware on a picnic table near a babbling brook by the lake and began prepping our food. It was pretty! However, two things began to suck. One, the DAMN sandflies were here, BIG TIME. The other thing that sucked was that we couldn't get our camping stove to work at all. Fortunately, there were two women at a picnic table close by and they saw we were having troubles. They let us borrow their camp stove! To thank them, we made them a plate of crackers, cheese and fruit. They were very pleasantly surprised! Becky made us yummy chicken curry (she wasn't as big a fan of it as I was, but I kicked mine up a notch with a little peanut butter and a handful of raisins - YUM!). We ate quickly cause we were getting eaten alive by the stupid sandflies. I took a quick movie of our surroundings so you can see where we ate and camped.

Even though it was still light out, Becky and I decided to get in the van in order to get some solace from the sandflies. We chatted and journaled and knitted while looking out over the lake to watch the sun set. Before it got too dark, I saw a feral cat that came out of the woods in search of food scraps under our neighbors picnic table. There is a terrible feral cat problem in NZ and there are traps for them all over the place. They look like cute kitties, but they are apparently wilder than wild and NOT friendly. It was odd to see a wild cat like that, that at home in US, could pass off as someone's cuddly pet. He slunk back to the woods as quietly as he came out. Wild. Literally. As it got dark, we got out our headlamps so we could continue writing and knitting. The light attracted the darn sandflies that got into the van though. We killed a bunch of them, but couldn't get them all, darn it. We went to sleep, but before we did, another car pulled up next to us full of noisy people. Hrumph. Perhaps I won't be so quiet when we get up early tomorrow morning..... ;-)

By the way, I neglected to mention that Becky and I sat down with all our guidebooks a night or two before. After much research and strategizing, we determined that we just didn't have enough time to get to the southern part of the South Island. No Queenstown or Milford Fjords for us! Shoot. Well, we'll just have to somehow make our way back to NZ someday!

Anyway, tomorrow is a big day....Arthur's Pass!

Becky has a blog too!!!! Check it out!

Hey everyone! You need to check out Becky's blog too! She's been writing about our NZ trip and has all sorts of other cool things on there too. It's awesome!

http://talesofaneclecticsoul.blogspot.com/

Enjoy!

New Zealand - Day 8

Becky and I got up early so we could be the first to get to the showers. When we got there, they were being cleaned by the Ranger dude. Bonus! Not only do we each get showers before everyone else, but super CLEAN showers too! So, we showered and dressed and began packing up to head to the farm for our morning horseback ride. Before we left, we were able to see some of the mountaintops that we didn't get to see the night before at the lake. Sooo neat.

When we went out on the dock too and I noticed the water was super clear, even in the deep parts! I think it was at least 6 feet deep when I took the below shot.

We had to be at the farm by 9:30, so back on the road we went. We stopped to get a quick breakfast at a coffee shop on our way to Richmond, and arrived at Stonehurst Farm on time.

There were two horses in the paddock that already had saddles on them. They were ours! Becky got Dinky and I got Rodney. In fact, we were the only two going on our trail ride that morning, so we totally lucked out! Sue was our guide, and she was great. I've been on many trail rides before and this one was the best ones I've been on in my life. We actually had some control over our horses and the whole ride was very personalized for us.

The scenery on "The Musterers Trail" was beautiful. We lucked out with the weather. The sun came out and the clouds went away. Sue led the way through pretty pastures, bits of forest and we even did a stream crossing! I had to keep my camera tucked away so I don't have many pics of the surroundings, but Sue used Becky's camera to take pics for us (must be a liability thing!). In addition to all the naturey stuff I saw, I spied a few Quail families along the way. Sue told us all about the area, the trees, the history of the land, etc. Did I mention she was cool? Halfway through our ride, we stopped at the Musterer's shack, which was actually called Cherry Flat Hut. We dismounted and let our horses take a break in a small pasture. While Sue was putting together some snacks for us, I, being the kid that I am, climbed on the "bucking bronco" as shown below. Tee hee hee. It was actually kinda fun!

Here's Sue and Becky enjoying some cookies, granola bars, water and an orange drink that looked and tasted exactly like Tang.

After our snack break, we gathered up our horses for an enjoyable ride back to the farm. We did some trotting on the way which I thought was fun but poor Becky kinda got thrashed a bit without posting (rising and falling in the saddle in time with the horses gait). At one point, Rodney got totally spooked at something and sprang forward with a jolt, which also set off Dinky, as well as Sue's horse too. After a few minutes of getting the horses calmed down and back in proper formation, all was well once again. :-) Once we got back to the barn we dismounted and thanked our horses and our guide. It had warmed up quite a bit, so we went to

the van to open the windows. When Becky tried to start the van, we had no response. Dead battery! Becky had left the lights on by accident. Fortunately, the kind gentleman who owns the red truck next to our van, jump started our little RV (with Sue's help). This was majorly nice of them and saved us so much time. I tried to give them some money to thank them for all their help, but they wouldn't accept it. I tried hard too! Wow. Some NZ folks are indeed THAT nice.

So back on the road we went, heading to the west coast. We grabbed some yummy sandwiches that we could eat while driving, so that we could save time. We also stopped at one point to get gas. While at the gas station, we got ice cream. This wasn't any old ice cream though. This was MAGNUM ice cream. It was advertised all over the place and looked very tasty (especially on this warm day!) so we finally succumbed and bought some. Even though it was expensive, it was a wonderful treat that we thoroughly enjoyed. We continued on and went through some pretty mountains call the Lyell Range. We saw the longest swinging bridge in New Zealand (my pic is too blurry of that to post, sorry!). To give you and idea of the scenery and roads that we experienced along the way, see below. The roads got crazy narrow in places.

Hmm, ya think?!?

On our way, Becky happened to see a sign for Seal Colony! Hmmmm.....Was this a place just called Seal Colony or was a place that actually had seals? We decided to find out. Cape Foulwind is where the seal colony is located. Yep, that's right. Cape Foulwind. I'd rather call it Cape Fart, but that's just me. However, Cape Foulwind didn't smell foul at all! It was, as usual, beautiful when we got to the ocean, as you can see below (and it smelled good too.)

I couldn't believe that just a short while ago, we were driving over big mountains and crossing large, fresh-water streams....much like what I would imagine Montana to look like. And now? We are at the ocean!

We followed a nicely groomed path along the craggy rocks, and then we started to hear the seals! Sure enough, there they were, New Zealand Fur Seals, on a bunch of large rock outcroppings. There were big ones and really cute baby ones too. This was definitely a wonderful, unexpected surprise that we got to witness.

Not only where there seals here, there was yet another elusive (elusive at least for me!) bird called a Western Weka. They were almost like a small, brown chicken with big beaks. There was a few of them around, some with babies! Every time I tried to take a picture of one, they got shy and would run into the bushes. Dang birdies! Ok so time's a wastin'. We needed to git, and that we did. We got back on the main road and were now trying to find Pancake Rocks. In so doing, we accidentally went to a place called the Truman Track Hike. The hike went from the main road, through what seemed like a tropical rainforest, and ultimately rewarded us with these gorgeous vistas.

It was really pretty, but we began to notice these little buggies that were biting us. They were small... smaller than mosquitos, and faster than them too. When they bit, it hurt! We enjoyed the scenery for a bit and then headed back to the main road. We still needed to get to Pancake Rocks, and wanted to get away from them dang bugs! Not much farther down the road, we finally found 'em (the rocks, and the bugs too, darn it!).

No one really knows whey the limestone rocks in this particular area are layered like they are. It's definitely interesting to see, especially with the ocean meandering through them. You can kinda see the layers of the rocks in the picture above, but the below movie clip will give you a better idea of what it was like in this magical place.

Even though we couldn't get enough of Pancake Rocks, it was getting late, and those dang buggies were biting. We did some shopping and then we went to get some dinner. As you can imagine, we were starving after such a long day of activities and driving...and we weren't done yet! We ate at the bar of a friendly pub. We would have eaten outside, but those buggies were out there too. We learned that these little boogers were sandflies. No one wanted to sit outside because of them. The inside was packed with patrons, many of which were watching the rugby game on tv (a MAJOR sport in NZ). After refueling our bodies with a nice dinner, back on the road we went. We needed to get to Greymouth that night. I love the below clip, 'cause it gives you good insight into what our lives were like when we were on the road (again). :-)

By the time we actually got to Greymouth, it was quite dark. We got lost and couldn't find the Top 10 campground. Luckily, they had a toll-free #, so we stopped at a phone booth in some odd part of the city and got directions. After bumbling about a bit more, we finally found it. I was excited because it was right on the beach. Even better? There were NO sandflies. Ahhh. We made our way to one of the last camping spots, as it was crowded that night. We were SO tired. Still, we walked over to check out the beach with our headlamps (had to! It's the beach!). It was neat. The waves were loud and we could see the lights of ships far out at sea. Soon after that, we went to bed. We left the windows in the back of our RV opened a crack so we could hear the ocean. It was loud, but really peaceful. I could even hear it through my ear plugs! We fell sound asleep, but a HUGE rainstorm came through in the middle of the night. It rained hard and the wind was so strong, it rocked our van! In fact, I dreamt that someone was siphoning gas from us, and they were rocking the van to try and get as much as possible out of the tank - lol! I thought it was for real! When we got up the next morning, I was amazed at how many people were camping in tents all around us. How did their tents even stay together, much less, stay staked to the ground? It was still really windy and a lot of them looked like they were going to blow away any second! Then....I spied something amazing that I had never seen before, right next door to us. Wanna know was what it was? You'll see on Day 9!!!

New Zealand - Day 7

We got up early in the morning to a chilly rain. It would have been nice to sleep in a bit, but we wanted to make sure we could make our Interislander Ferry on time, and thankfully, we did just that. I actually drove our van onto the ferryboat, the Kaitaki. She is the biggest one in the Interislander fleet, and the biggest ferry in New Zealand! She was fancy too, especially for a ferryboat.

As you can see below, they pack the cars in the ferry like SARDINES! It was a tight squeeze and everyone had to be really careful when getting out of their vehicles. Once parked, you have to lock and leave the car and go upstairs to the seating areas and lounges.

Becky and I got some comfy seats for our 3 hour tour to the South Island. Kinda sounds like Gilligan's Island, huh? Ok, moving on... I got some coffee (which was quite good!) and I sat down to journal for a while. When I tired of writing, I headed over to the ship's shop (that sounds funny too, doesn't it?!? Ship shop?!? Ha ha!) to check out their wares. Y'all, I got the NEATEST bag from that shop. It's called Zip It. The whole entire bag is a ZIPPER. You can unzip it into this pile of zipper, or zip it into a purse! I took it out of the box and zipped it together. The two women sitting diagonally from me were enthralled and asked me to take it apart and put it togeter again. I happily complied. Check out this video I found, as it shows exactly how it works. My bag is lavender and pink and a little bigger than the one shown in the video. I used it a lot during the rest of the trip because, not only was it compact, it was satchel-like, leaving my hands free. It was also big enough to hold my camera, video camera, wallet and keys. I <3>

Once in Nelson, we made good use of the I-Site there. I-Sites are information centers that are all over New Zealand. They cater to all tourists needs for info and are very popular. We used Nelson's I-Site to make a reservation for a horseback riding expedition the next morning at 9am in Richmond. Yahoo! I LOVE horseback riding and horsies. I also used the I-Site to email David. Our emails back and forth to one another were increasingly positive and promising, and I was plenty thankful. Anywho, once we got all info'd out from the I-Site, we headed out to explore Nelson. It was a cute town with all sorts of shops and restaurants, one of which we stopped at to have a nice lunch outside. It was pleasant, especially with the violin music coming from one of the talented, but broke (I guess?) musicians on the corner. This little, dizzying video gives you an idea of what it was like. :-)

After our late lunch, we went looking for the other non-existent yarn shop that we were told surely sold fabulous yarns. The first one was a dud, and this second one was closed and didn't look like it sold yarn at all! Sheesh. When are we gonna find us some good wool yarn?!?!? Enough of Nelson, time to get out of the city and head back out to the country. Our aim was to camp at a DOC (Department of Conservation) campground in the Nelson Lakes region. We got down to Nelson lakes, but had a heck of a time trying to find the campground. In the process, we drove on a narrow, windy road that turned into dirt road and ultimately took us to to the top of a mountain. Once at the top, we were rewarded with an amazing view of Lake Rotoiti!

...still no campground though. Shoot. Ok, back down the mountain we went. For fear of annihilating our brakes, I had to put our little van into stupid-low, first gear. That's how steep it was! After getting back to the main road, we found the Ranger Station place, now closed, but were able to get more info to find our campground of choice. Excellent! Off we went again and we found it! For a DOC campground, this one happened to be top-notch. It had real working potties, hot showers, a kitchen/gathering room, and even a couple washers and dryers. Fancy shmancy for $6! The lake and mountains there were shrouded in clouds but it was still super pretty. Check it:

Becky and I hung out on this gorgeous pebble beach for quite some time, just taking in all the awesomeness that surrounded us. We journaled until it got dark.

When we walked back to the van, I showed Becky a sign I saw on the edge of the woods that indicated that their might be Kiwi birds around. These, as you may be aware, are the national bird of NZ. What you may not know is that they are very elusive and very nocturnal. Hmmmmmmmm..... NIGHT HIKE!!!!! We grabbed our headlamps, locked up the van, and headed to one of the trail heads near the lake. This, my friends, was MY first night hike ever! I was excited! We really wanted to spy a Kiwi. I'll tell you what though...it was PITCH BLACK in them thar woods and oddly enough, absolutely silent. Shhhhh.....we're huntin' Kiwis! But heck, the only sounds we heard were the occasional burbling of a small stream or two that we crossed. That was it. Not even a stick or a leaf dropped in those woods. Funky. We gave up huntin' those wascally Kiwis and made our way back to camp. We were beat and needed to get up early to head back to Richmond for our horseback riding adventure!!!

New Zealand - Day 6

OH BOY! I slept! Not only did I sleep, I slept comfortably and soundly. Becky did too! Not bad for our first night in our camper van. I awoke when the sun came up and journaled while Becky slept in for a bit. She still wasn't 100% well, and I knew rest was still really important so I tried not to move too much so she could sleep. After she woke up, we took showers in the camp's shower facility and began to pack up to leave. While Becky was taking her shower, I befriended our next door neighbor, who slept in a tent the night before. He was a very friendly fellow from the Coromandel Mountain region. His name was Krommers. He thought it was cool that we were from the USA! He and I chatted for a bit. Like us, he was also heading to Wellington that day. I asked if he knew the ferry schedule, which he did not, but he did have a book that had the phone number for the ferry, and even dialed it on his cell and handed it to me. Sweet! The schedule for that day said that the last ferry was going to leave at 2pm...and I knew there was no way in heck we were going to make that one. Shucks. Krommers finished packing his car, said goodbye and headed out. Not much later, we followed suit. We had a LOT of driving to do today! We travelled down Route 1 and soon found ourselves, believe it or not, in a desert! Rangipo Desert to be exact. Y'all... there is NOTHING out there, just vast open spaces of low-lying shrubs and some grasses. The picture above is of Mount Ngauruhoe (a volcano!), and was taken while there was still a bit of greenery on the flat land that stretched before us. Mount Ngauruhoe, was apparently "Mount Doom" in the Lord of the Rings movie. The volcano is currently inactive. The desert is largely uninhabited, with the exception of Waiouru Army Camp, which is used for training. The mountains that loomed in the distance were now getting big enough for snow-capped peaks, as you can see below:

Mind you, this is still summer time in New Zealand, so you KNOW it's cold up in them thar mountains! After stopping for a few picture ops, we continued driving south, with me at the wheel. I was zipping along this flat stretch of road, when all of a sudden, a policeman coming from the other direction braked hard and turned around to follow us. I looked down and I was speeding and didn't even realize it! UH OH. I pulled over immediately, and of course, he pulled up behind us with his gumball machine goin'. GHEEZ! I knew I was getting a ticket...but a million things were going through my head....was I going to have to go to court? Was I going to JAIL? What the heck is the speed limit here again? How fast was I going? Maybe he'll give me a warning since I am a dingaling tourist? Nah, I ALWAYS get tickets when I get pulled over. Sure enough, I got a ticket for doing 120kmh in a 100kmh zone. Whilst he was writing the ticket, I saw our friend Krommers pass us. I watched him hit his brakes for a sec and look in the

rearview mirror of his car, then continue on. I waved and chuckled,"Hi Krommers!!!" The policeman came back to the car. He pointed out the three convenient and easy ways to pay the fine. Yay. My fine was $120(NZ). Apparently, your speed that is clocked on radar (he actually got me on laser) is the amount of your fine. It bummed me out for a while, and poor Becky had to deal with me being quiet and bummy, but I recovered. At least I wasn't going to jail our court! We pressed

on....at 100kmh, TOPS. ;-) We saw more pretty scenery on the way and stopped at one wool shop. It ended up being mostly (very nice, but very expensive) clothing with very little yarn. Shoot! We are not having any luck finding good wool yarn in New Zealand. You think with all the sheep around it would be a lot easier! When we were walking back to the car from the shop, a train went by! This is the Overlander and its route runs between Auckland and Wellington. You can see it's being pulled by a diesel engine rather than a steam engine. It would have been cool to see the steam engine, but it was still neat to see nonetheless! More pretty-ness unfolded as we travelled on, as shown below.

We stopped for lunch in a town called Bulls and ate at a place called Mothered Goose. Becky picked it out, and I'm glad she did. Come to find out, this place used to be an old bank, and was actually the site of New Zealand's first armed robbery! Crazy, huh? The place was BUSY, so we sat on comfy couches in the corner, chatted and people-watched as we waited for our food. I got pumpkin fritters with beet relish and feta, while Becky got a lamb dish. Both were super tasty! (I couldn't help but to start eating mine before I remembered to take a picture - lol!)

After our yummy lunch, we continued to head south. We did stop, on a whim, at Peka Peka Beach. It was overcast and cold, but still very beautiful.

In the below shot, you can see Kapiti Island.

So, not only could you drive on Peka Peka Beach, I found out you can skinny dip there too! I did see two cars, but alas, no birthday suits on such a cold day. :-)

We hopped back in the van, and headed to Wellington. We decided to stay in a Top 10 campground. It was fairly close to the ferry terminal and they had a lot of ammenities like internet, washing machines and dryers, hot showers, and a JUMPING PILLOW! Becky was so excited to jump on it. We arrived at the Top 10 campground, and went into the office to pay for and obtain our camping spot. There was a doggy in the office! He was sooo cute. He was a big 'ol dog, but he was trying to sleep in this teeny, tiny cat bed! LOL LOL LOL! He cracked me up!

While the Wellington Top 10 wasn't in the most beautiful part of town, it ended up being a good choice. I bought a membership card that would give us discounts on future stays on all Top 10s throughout New Zealand, but best of all, it gave us a nice discount on the ferry trips too (which were fairly expensive). Not only that, but they could make the ferry reservations for us too...which were rather involved. Last but not least, these Top 10s would give Becky a safe place to stay after I left the following week. Anyway, since we could, we went ahead and got a reservation for the ferry early the next morning. After that, we parked in the campground and Becky made a b-line for the jumping pillow. It was so good to see her feeling better and having fun! Ain't she cute?!?!?

Here's both of us jumping away!

Here is a movie of me jumping and being a goof!

All that jumping makes for a tuckered out Becky!

We were spent after all that! Believe it or not, there were no kids around when we were playing. I think they were frightened of us - lol. They showed up after we left to go to dinner! Speaking of which, we walked a ways down to a take-away place and got some chinese food. Poor Becky lost her appetite though. We walked back and when we got back to the van, Becky had some snacks instead....healthy stuff like fruits and carrots. She's so good! We got out our camping chairs out because it was still light out. Get this, it doesn't get dark until after 9pm at night! That worked out very well for camping. So anyway, we sat in our chairs and Becky taught me how to knit!!!! Granted, I kinda suck at it, but I can knit now! I was so excited. I had brought my knitting needles and yarn with me from home, so I was so glad I could actually do somethin' with 'em! Becky told me that knitting can be very therapeutic and calming. I ended up doing a lot of it when I was on my way back to the US, and I couldn't agree with her more!

New Zealand - Day 5, Part 2

So yes, off to the Polynesian Spa we went! This was NOT free, but Becky, having never been to a spa before, really wanted to go...and so did I! We were famished after walking all over the park early in the morning and then hiking up the mountain late in the morning, so lunch was of the utmost priority. We had a nice spa lunch in their outdoor pavilion of the spa. My sandwich included avocado. Did you know that avocados are grown in New Zealand? They are not watery, they are a wonderful creamy goodness, on par with California avocados....soooo tasty. My guess is that they are not imported to the US because after such a long trip, they would be totally grody to the max. I digress on the fab avocados though...moving on.... We went to the Adult Pools and Priest Spa part of this place and it was NIIIIICE. There were several soaking opportunities to take advantage of, and if I remember correctly, we took advantage of ALL of them. We were almost like kids.... "Hey! Lets to go this pool! Let's go to that pool now! Oh, this one is HOT!" "Ha ha ha - This one is stinky!" LOL. Some "adults" we were!!! Here's what it looked like, along with some individual pics of us in the pool closest to Lake Rotorua. That one was awesome to sit in and look out over Lake Rotorua and see all the neat birds in the bird sanctuary there.

Me:

Becky:

The last pic is actually of the old tiled baths that date back to 1931 (the first hand-excavated pools were dug back in the 1870's and could apparently cure most anything (and I mean ANYTHING!!!)). The acidic water still bubbles up through the pumice stone at the bottom of those old 1931 pools. They were closed in 2003 and are now protected as a historic feature. The new pools that we actually soaked in surrounded the old ones, but the water is the same. So after we turned into total prunes, we showered, got dressed and continued our journey south.

There was something I REALLY wanted to see, and it was called Mud Pool. I read about it in NZ Frenzy and just had to experience it. This was yet another free attraction and one of the biggest boiling pools of mud around! Upon our arrival at Mud Pool, we were disappointed to find a big 'ol fence that had been put up around to keep visitors out. It looked as if someone had been doing some construction and built brand new viewing platforms, which were not open to the public. Luckily, there were a few other visitors there and they showed us how to maneuver stealthily through the woods and around the fence to get in. And that we did. :-) The below movie shows all that we saw. Majorly nifty stuff!

Mud Pool had all sorts of high notes and low bass notes of percussion to it. I found the bass notes to be hilarious...almost like someone belching, but a LOT. It doesn't take much to make me laugh I guess. :-) BUT, time's a wastin'! Gotta get a move on! We snaked our way back around the fence and sat in the van figuring out our next leg of our journey. Whilst doing so, a van load of friendly men folk (locals, I guess? They had NZ accents) parked next to us and tried to strike up a conversation and even offered us beers. We thanked them kindly, but declined - we really wanted to make it to the southern part of Lake Taupo, and to do so, we needed to go go go! They probably thought that American chicks were big meanies, but we were at least cordial to them!

Next stop? Huka Falls! Yet another attraction mentioned in NZ Frenzy. The water was moving incredibly fast and was a gorgeous topaz blue. Check it out!

We went down closer to the falls and it was so loud that we almost had to yell at each other just to be able to hear. It was very powerful, yet very pretty. Here's a little movie to give you an idea of what it was like:

After Huka Falls, we continued south to Lake Taupo. This is the largest fresh water lake in the Southern Hemisphere! It's really pretty. Check it out:

We continued on along the coast of Lake Taupo on Route 1, all the way to the southern tip of the lake...a fairly long way. We then headed north on 41 for about 5km to Tokaanu, to our final destination for the day, Oasis Motel and Campground. Why here? Well, they had their own geo-thermal pools that we could soak in! I guess we didn't get enough at the Polynesian Spa earlier in the day. The other interesting thing is that Becky and I were finally going to camp in our van for the first time! YAY! We arrived at camp, got situated, then went to the little restaurant next door for some fish and chips. After our dinner, we went back to the van and began to get ready for our night "outside". Here's a few pics from the campground:

Shown below is Becky soaking her toes in the camp's hot mineral pool (which we took full advantage of later that night!)

We basically just camped in a field. The pasture next door had horses!

Here's our RV set up for night night.

Sunset at the Oasis Campground

Here is Becky journaling outside. It was chilly and the mosquitoes got a little too hungry, but we persevered!

To help get our core temperatures back up, we went for a soak in the camp's mineral pools. There were several older folks in there, but they were very friendly. Why do we always find ourselves hanging out with old people?!?!? Not that it's a bad thing, but an interesting fact nonetheless. Anyway, the bath was just the thing to make us warm and groggy, so afterward, off to bed we went. I sure hoped it would be comfortable in the van and that we would sleep well in our little bed. We had a LOT of driving to do to get to Wellington the next day, at the very southern tip of the North Island. More on that on Day 6!