Hot Water Beach on Lake Rotorua

Dec. 3, 2012

We left Mt Maunganui, but not before I found a photo that shows an aerial shot of the volcano, as well as the route we took back – you can see how we kind of traversed the volcano’s midsection, and you can also see the overhanging cliffs above and the straight drop down below.  Just to give you an idea of what we did yesterday…..

So – today we headed south, to Rotorua.  People jokingly call this Roto-Vegas, because it’s very built up and a lot of tourist-centered activities happen here.  But Rotorua is also the center of a lot of geothermal activity, as well as a very vibrant Maori population (about 35% of the population in this area is Maori) – so we thought we’d head here.  Besides, this is in the north center of the island, away from the coast – we finally encountered sun and warm weather!  And it's SPRING in NZ, so there are gorgeous flowers all over and we smell the perfume as we go driving down the road – just lovely!

 

I just had to take some photos of the McDonald’s in Rotorua, because I’ve never seen a Micky-D’s that featured local art and culture.  I thought it was pretty amazing that they did that, and that the carvings were really gorgeous!  (We go to McD’s for the free wifi, NOT for the food!)

We stopped at a camper van repair spot, our rent-a-van company sent us there to get a new battery – apparently our “house” battery wasn’t holding a charge.  So now we’re set to freedom camp – though that’ll be tomorrow night or so.

We leafed through our guidebook as well as the holiday park info book we found, and decided on a park – managed to wend our way through the rest of the tourist traffic as well as rush hour Rotorua, and found the place.  Once parked, we headed down to Lake Rotorua – in this park alone, there are various geothermal features:  the camping area is backed by a boiling hot stream; on the other side of that are pools of steaming hot and boiling mud; there are hot pools of mineral water to soak in right at the park; and the lakefront beach area has steam vents that heat the water and the sand.  

People dig down into the sand to create spa pools that are heated by the steam vents, letting in some lake water as well as the heated water under the sand – but if you dig down too deep, you really can get scalded, because the “jets” of steam are super heated.  We lay down in one of the pits and enlarged it a bit, but the back end of the pit was too hot and we eventually gave up.  You can even see the steam bubbling up in the pits – and in the lake, too! 

When I went down to the lake at sunset, I found that I could identify hot spots with my feet – places where the steam came up actually created nice warm sand!  It’s a weird phenomenon, all this geothermal stuff – tomorrow we’ll go out geyser hunting, and look at some of the bizarre colored pools.

 

You can't quite see it in the photos, but there are also flocks of gorgeous black swans gracefully swimming all over the lake!

There's also a small Maori village next to our holiday park, so I may go check that out tomorrow as well.  Supposed to be traditional and colorful, without the commercial exploitation that so many of the "pay and visit" places have developed.

The only problem with all the geothermal activity is that there’s a very distinct sulphurous odor through much of the town.  It isn’t much here, unless you stand directly in front of the steam coming off the boiling mud – but that egg smell definitely permeates most of the town.

 

Mosaics, Mural Town, and Mount Maunganui

December 1, 2012

(Sorry, this one is out of sequence - took a while to get all the photos in that I wanted to post, so I'm just leaving it out of sequence.)
 

Our day began with a dip in the hot pools at our holiday park – a quick refill of the caravan’s water tank, so we can freedom camp – a photo shoot of the lovely murals around the hot pools – and then we were off.  (I’m adding one photo of each mural, plus details, for all my art and bird watching friends – anyone who is interested, click on the photo and enlarge.  Anyone not interested, just skip the myriad photos.)

We spent a little time in the town of Waihi, then headed east along the northern coast of central North Island.  We stopped in the town of Katikati (katty-katty), which bills itself as Mural Town – and yes, they have murals all over the town.  (Yes, photos below.)  And the dark blue bird with the reddish comb on his head is a pukeko – we see them all over the place.  They’re more common than kiwi birds!

Our destination today was Mt. Maunganui Beach – lovely long white sand beach peninsula, backed by dunes, with an extinct (we presume) volcano at the west end of the beach, and various rocky outcroppings along the beach – one looks like a tombolo, but we can’t tell if the lowest point truly is hidden at high tide, so we think it’s a faux tombolo.  The Bay of Plenty and the Pacific Ocean is to the northeast, and Tauranga Harbour is to the southwest – so we’re on a very long and narrow peninsula with the volcano as the end of the exclamation point.

Anyway, it’s a beautiful beach with a boardwalk on the streetside of the dunes – we walked around, checked out the volcano, chatted with people, found a great storm drain cover, and found a place where we’ll freedom camp.  Freedom camping is prohibited along the beachfront, but people recommended the side streets around the public restroom – so we plan to head back there.
 

Right now we’re in the neighboring town of Tauranga.  The central business district (CBD is New Zealandish) has free wifi – 24 Mb every 24 hours.  (Why don’t we do that all over the USA???)  So we’re relaxing with some coffee (well, a decaf latte for me) and catching up with our family and friends. 

And tomorrow is volcano climbing day.  With maybe a late night or early morning excursion to the beach to see if we can find a penguin or so.

Climbing the Volcano – the Whole Volcano

Dec. 2, 2012

We did it – we actually climbed the entire volcano, despite the fact that it took us about two hours to climb up and a third hour to come down – it was around 6 miles round trip.  

We started to hike up the vehicle road, which is wide and basically packed gravel.  The base of the mountain is grazing land littered with huge boulders (spewed from the last eruption?) and sheep are kept on the land, to provide a fire-prevention zone.  There were a few very cute baby sheep who haven’t yet been shorn, and lots of parent sheep who are already in their summer coats.

Hike hike hike, up up up, through the grazing area and then into the forest, with giant ponga (tree ferns), evergreens, and indigenous trees.  Tons of birds, especially the indigo blue tui with white chevron stripes on the shoulder of each wing – lots of bird calls, and flittering wings all around.  Stupendous views of the bay and the harbour, because we were ascending on the southwest side of the volcano.  Up the road, then up the gravelly stairs, and we were there, up on the summit, with 360 degree views – gorgeous, amazing, stunning!!!!!  We couldn’t find a crater or anything, but I supposed over time the original caldera would be filled in.  I believe the last eruption is estimated to have been about 1200 years ago, so that might be why the summit was a large open area instead of a dent or hole.

At any rate, we wandered around admiring the various views (and the tombolo really is a faux tombolo), the length of the beach on the ocean side, watching freighters come in, and just enjoying being on top of the volcano.  This was a Maori pa, a settlement or fortification, and the mountain still belongs to the Maori people, as does a neighboring island in the inner harbour.  (There was a layer of shell in the ground, maybe two inches under the top layer of soil – I’m guessing the Maori created sort of a midden by tossing clam shells down the hill from wherever they were living.)

And then it was time to head back down.  Somehow we ended up on a different track that took us round the other side of the mountain, meaning the side facing the ocean.  And instead of having numerous switchbacks the way the other trail did, we seemed to circle round and round the mountain, on a narrow gravel path, which were on narrow ledges and sheer cliffs and the occasional overhanging cliffs and protruding boulders overhead.  Plus we were still walking on tiny gravel covered packed earth, so there was the occasional skid from one or the other of us.  I don’t really know how to explain it, other than to say that you need to remember that scene in “North by Northwest” – Cary Grant and Eva St. James are trying to get away from the villains by running around the presidential faces on Mt. Rushmore – there are drops and cliffs and barely enough room for their feet – that’s what the hike down was like, with strong ocean winds swirling around us.  It was one of the hairier hikes I’ve been on, the kind where the vertigo kicks in and the occasional panic attack, mixed in with “Why couldn’t I have been born a bird?” and “We climbed this volcano why???”

Somehow we made it down the narrow ledges and cliffs and into the grazing pastures again, and we walked down the rest of the volcano.  And rewarded ourselves with some gelato, for quick energy and a cool down.  And a more relaxing afternoon.

Because we were freedom camping, and didn’t drive much the previous day, we noticed that our internal power meter was down in the danger zone.  Despite periodically running the engine, the charge just wasn’t holding.  A quick call to the rental company reconfirmed the fact that yes, we just didn’t drive around enough – so we’re currently in the holiday park at the base of volcano Mount Maunganui, with electricity and nearby showers, and cute bunny families hopping around.

That’s about it for our excitement – and what a day it was!