The holiday was fantastic, but damn, it's good to be home.
Ok, yesterday we travelled from Taupo to Napier in Hawkes Bay. Before we left Taupo we went to a place called Huka Falls, where we saw an amazing display of the power of water. A river was channelled through a narrow rock passage, and the force of the flow was thus increased. Imagine the flow of water down a 100-foot wide river suddenly channelled into a 20-foot wide rock channel. Suddenly the peaceful river becomes a force of destruction as it rushes through the channel before exiting the other end into a larger area again. However, the force of the water has cut out a hole in the ground and so the exit has become like a waterfall, but not one you want to stand under. :blink:
We woke up, had breakfast (I didn't bother with the spa, deciding I wasn't interested in carting around wet shorts), and then went for a walk through a nearby park. Amazing. The park was built around mud pools and steam vents. So much of it! And they're wrong - you don't get used to the smell, it just starts to make you feel sick. Revolting. The smell is caused by escaping sulphur gases from the area, and we were walking through areas where the sulphur gases just waft over you. What I DID get used to was just not breathing when you're walking through the sulphur gases.
We arrived in Rotorua today, where active volcanoes provide the tourist attraction. Isn't it funny that a city is built around an industry that takes advantage of volcanoes about to blow. Or maybe that's just my overactive imagination…
There are geysers here, and hot mud pools, and thermal springs, and steam coming from rocks in the centre of the city park, and oh, so much more. I'm sure nothing's going to happen before I leave tomorrow, but I'm also sure one day, someone will be looking at the glowing stream of lava exploding out of the city park and thinking, 'I just KNEW I should have gone to Brisbane instead…'
I'm knackered. As usual, I'll start at the beginning.
Went on the boat trip this morning, which was awesome. We followed the coastline around for a bit and saw heaps of amazing cliff faces and beaches and stuff - took heaps of photos. There was a cave formed by the water, which was about 15 metres deep, and probably the same high. Got photos of that too, as we went inside it while in the boat - it wasn't that far in though, but still pretty cool. It was about 2.5 hours out on the boat before we came back into Whitianga.
We went to an underwater world attraction for the morning, where I got pissed off 'cause I discovered the camera batteries had gotten loose and caused all the settings I'd fine tuned to revert back to default. So most of the photos from the underwater world will be Mel's.
Just got in from having some drinks. Ok, I had 2 butterscotch and bailleys, 2 bourbon and cokes, 1 beer, 2 glasses of water. And that was after 2 beers and 2 cocktails before dinner. I'm surprised I'm still standing, but I'm even more surprised that I seem to be able to drink 'so much' without actually getting that drunk. I'm pleasantly happy right now.
My mistake - it's not a seaside town, but it's a riverside town that's close to the sea.
Anyway, today was a relaxing day, with us deciding not to go to the Bay of Islands and instead just chill out around here. Turned out to be a reasonably good idea, seeing as how it's been raining most of the day. We spent the morning in town, looking at a couple of sights and having lunch close to the marina. We went to a clock museum, which was quite fascinating. There were a few other things we could have done here, but because of the rain, we came back to the backpackers instead, and watched a couple of movies on the laptop for the afternoon. Then we went shopping, and got lost a few times before finally making it back here!
Darnit! I got bitten by another spider last night while I was asleep. Now there's two options that occurred here. It either wasn't a white-tailed spider, because it hasn't come up all horrible with a white pulsating centre (instead it's just slightly swollen and itchy), or it WAS a white-tailed spider, but the Reiki I did on it today prevented the poison from taking hold. Either way, it's just slightly swollen and itchy at the moment.
Darnit! I got bitten by another spider last night while I was asleep. Now there's two options that occurred here. It either wasn't a white-tailed spider, because it hasn't come up all horrible with a white pulsating centre (instead it's just slightly swollen and itchy), or it WAS a white-tailed spider, but the Reiki I did on it today prevented the poison from taking hold. Either way, it's just slightly swollen and itchy at the moment.
Ok, we woke up around 7:45am, had breakfast in the kitchen of the backpackers, and then drove around New Plymouth for a while, looking at the beaches and stuff. We walked along a wharf at the ‘Taranaki Marina’ and then went out to Mt Egmont (also known as Mt Taranaki). It was supposed to be the highlight of the area, because it’s a Mt Fuji lookalike (big Japanese Mountain near Tokyo), but yesterday and today had too much cloud cover, so we weren’t able to see anything from probably about 200 metres up. We got to a reasonable level to sit and have a bite to eat and look out over New Plymouth, and take some photos. Along the way back to New Plymouth we stopped at a small reserve of some kind and sat by a nice little river.
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