Good People Along the Way

For the past two days (well we left 2 nights ago, but have been busy) we have been in Wellington staying in the lovely home of our new friends - Margaret and Dave and the real head of the household - Tigger!

Tigger and company were introduced to us through another new friend of ours from our travels, Caroline, who we met in Poland. Caroline is the neighbor of our hostess in Poland, Maria. And remember Maria is our friend Carissa's cousin - Phew!! It was so nice of them to host us and we enjoyed our time there.

But Margaret summed it up really well on our last night, when I was thanking her for their wonderful hospitality (and good cooking - Michael especially liking the homemade lamb sausage). Margaret is exceptionally well traveled and had in her travels also experience very generous hospitality and being that it is difficult to return that hospitality to the same person - you instead pass it on to someone new....as we hope to do down the road in our life.

We met up with Jay and Carla yesterday and plan to go whale watching tomorrow.

Sheep Dodging

Yesterday I drove the rental car for the first time. I have never driven on the opposite side of the road (not "wrong" side, just different- I keep trying to say). It was pretty strange, we keep turning on the windshield wipers instead of the turn indicator because everything in the car is the complete opposite as they are in the states, but after doing it for awhile I got used to it and stopped being nervous- that is until I had to drive through the sheep stampede!

The entire county of NZ has 4 1/2 million people (probably the population of Denver metro from Ft. Collins to CO Springs) but there are 40 million sheep. And yesterday as I was driving this totally curvy road this farmer was herding his sheep right down the highway! At the time I didn't think it was very funny, because sometimes the babies would just stop right in front of my car and baaaa and I was terrified of hitting them because I did as the other drivers did around me and just kept driving through the herd.

This and That

So.....we decided to sleep last night (Sunday) in Waganui before heading to stay with a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend. We didn't do much there, except visit a black sands beach (see flickr) and see Borat. It feels like a sleepy little town, and a nice break from the touristy places we have been going. Today, we will work our way down the west coast of the north island to Wellington.

Thermal Pools

Saturday, we went and checked out the Wai-O-Tapui thermal area. First off we saw the lady knox geyser. We were somewhat disappointed in it as they trigger it to go off as opposed to it going off naturally. From there, we walked around the thermal pools. They were quite impressive being multi-colored and very vibrant.

After the thermal pools, we took a soak in the hot springs we went to the day before. We opted to visit the spring that had the hot and cool streams. We soaked in there until we were as wrinkly as a shairpei. The combination of the hot and cold enable you to stay a long time in the water. We had a nice chat with other visitors as they stopped by and got some suggestions for traveling.

Today our plan was to drive to Tonganero National Park and do the Tonganero Crossing. Well, the weather had different ideas. It was gloomy and overcast....so we skipped the hike and are heading to the shore. We were disappointed about missing the hike as they shot the Mordor scenes there from LOTR there. We could see it from a distance though.

Other musings....
- The hostel we stayed in was the best we have stayed in so far. Clean and very friendly. We were quite pleased with it.
- We have met many Americans in New Zealand. There were about 8 staying at our hostel. It was nice to chat with them.

Buck naked in New Zealand

So far, and we have only been here like 4 days, we LOVE New Zealand!

We are in Rotorua, which is on the North Island, it has the most thermal activity in all of NZ and is full of bubbling mud pools, gurgling hot springs and gushing geysers (we haven't seen any geysers yet, but plan to see some tomorrow).

Today we went on a nice hike around a beautiful, crystal clear lake and then went to 3 all natural, totally free hot springs! Michael and I love to go to hot springs in CO, but these were by far the most beautiful to date! Had to walk a little ways into the bush to get to them. (see pictures on flcker)

The first one was listed in our guidebook. There we meet another tourist who had a hand drawn map to another one. We get there and there is one buck-naked Kiwi! He informs us that this particular hot spring, very tiny with a great waterfall, is nude only. When in NZ...so we stripped down and got in with him. Super hot, but felt great. He also told us about how good the lava ash mud (not the official name but I don't remember what he called it) was for the skin, so we covered ourselves in it, then rinsed off in the waterfall!

Then he told us about another hot spring that actually was a junction of 2 springs- one hot water and one cold water so we went over there to check it out. He came with and told us a lot about NZ.

First thoughts on New Zealand

So, we just arrived in New Zealand last night. It took all day to get from the blue mountains to Auckland (9am-10pm), but so far its worth it. The people are quite lovely, and it appears to much cheaper here than Australia. We are renting a car tomorrow to tour around it. After checking into our hotel, we found out that renting a car was going to be just a little more than taking the bus. We figure the extra freedom will be worth it. Ok, that's all for now. We haven't done much in Auckland today. Ash is getting her hair cut right now, and we spent the morning doing planning on new Zealand.

The Blue Sorta Mountains

So, we decided to escape the craziness of the Australian cities and head to the nearby Blue Mountains for a couple of nights. It was nice to be out in nature and hiking, something we really haven't done since Slovakia. Well, after taking the train from Sydney, we arrived in Kotoomba. The first thing we noticed was that it wasn't really the mountains. More like foothills, or cliffs. There was no visible peaks to us. This isn't to say it wasn't nice, as it was quite relaxing but its a
misnomer to call them mountains.

Yesterday, we did a really nice hike through the park. We walked along a cliff edge and saw some local sights (some waterfalls, three sisters, cockatoos, echo point) check flickr for pics. We enjoyed our time here, but it pales in comparison to the American West.

It was a lovely national park and very well organized. You can walk to the park from the town, or take a shuttle bus. There was also a lot of attractions nearby.....caves, skyways, scenic railroads, etc. We opted to hike instead of ride.

Other musings....
- We head to New Zealand today. I write this from an airport lounge. We are excited about New Zealand, but recognize that it signifies the end of our trip. :-( Only 23 days left until we head home.
- We are quite excited to meet our friends Jay and Carla in New Zealand. We are going to have a blast.
- Australia was nice, but its pretty much just like America with funny accents and driving on the wrong side of the road.
- I would like to put a museum in my basement when we return to America. For some reasons, museums make me sleepy and it would nice to have a way to fall asleep when I have insomnia.
- Coopers Pale Ale is a very good beer. Not sure if its available outside of Australia, but we really enjoyed drinking it.
- Both Ash and I have that lingering cold. We would like to get well!