Thanksgiving in New Zealand

Day 27, Tuesday, October 12th – Written by Aus in Rotorua, New Zealand

Happy Thanksgiving to all our Canadian friends and family.  We missed you all for Thanksgiving.  We have had a great time here in New Zealand though, and we decided to splurge a little bit last night on a big evening out, seeing as it was a special occasion.  So we did enjoy a nice Thanksgiving, and even managed to get a Thanksgiving dinner with chicken and potatoes and gravy!  I will start though from our last entry and continue chronologically to follow our format thus far.

On......ummm, Thursday I believe, we did a bus tour up to Cape Reinga, which is on the northern tip of the North Island in New Zealand.  It is getting difficult to remember the days of the week now, as we are so much in ‘holiday’ mode.  Anyhow, on Thursday we set out for a ‘Dune Rider’ tour up to Cape Reinga and 90 mile beach.  We were up early and on the passenger ferry to Paihia to meet our bus.  When we boarded the bus we immediately felt like we were in the wrong place, as the highlight of the tour for us was to be the dune riding, or sand boarding, which is like toboganning but instead of snow it’s on sand dunes, and the rest of the bus had an average age of about 65.  However, it was the right bus and this tour also featured some beautiful scenery that attracts the tourists.  We did feel The Bay of Islands in general were a bit of a different style of tourism than we the ‘adventure’ tourists we were expecting in New Zealand.  But the trip was great, and we did get our sandboarding, as well as some nice scenery along the way.  Here are some photos of that day.

The ancient Kauri trees on the drive up... little tree hugging...

At Cape Reinga.....

 And the sand dune rides.....me first...

 
 Then Kim....

She had a good wipe out.....

But she was OK! ;)  All part of the fun!

We both had to go again it was so much fun, I managed to make it most of the way across the little stream at the bottom too....

And now the bottom of 90 Mile Beach, where the bus actually drove along the beach for about 60 miles, pretty neat...

 On Friday we had to leave Russell and the cozy Top 10 Holiday park we were staying at, and we set out on our way to Hot Water Beach and Hahei.  Due to the length of the drive we did not make it quite all the way, as we also had to stop and have our Spaceship (that’s our rental van) serviced in Auckland.  We only made it as far as Thames, a nice little town at the bottom of the Coromandel Peninsula.   We stayed at a place called the Dickson Holiday park, at which the highlight was a lounge with couches that we took advantage of to take a break from cramping in the back of our van.  Saturday we made it up to Hot Water Beach, and the drive there was quite something.  I took the opportunity to test my skills at driving on the left for the first time, and I’d like to think I did a great job, but Kim was still a bit carsick and scared after the drive, due to the fact that it was on some very narrow coastal and mountain roads.  But we made it safely and Kim told me I did great, so I guess I passed my driving on the left trial by fire.

Hot Water Beach was great fun, we had heard about it from the Kiwis we met in Samoa, also from Tina in Auckland, and from Chrissy back home, so we had to check it out.  Essentially it is a beach where there are some hot springs below, and you can go on the beach and find a hotspot, then dig your own hot tub at low tide.  Pretty cool we thought, so we grabbed a shovel and a bottle of wine and hit the beach in the late afternoon for low tide.  It was quite busy, we were amazed at how random the placement of the hot spots seemed to be.  They were very localized, as you could be in a hot pool looking two feet over at a cold pool.  The hot spots were quite hot too, too hot to touch even, so you had to be careful where you sat within the pool.  Some people dug up a cold pool close to their hot pool so that cold water could run into their hot pool and make it a more managable temperature.  Anywho, a picture is worth a thousand words they say.....

Digging a hole....

Saturday night we stayed in Hahei Holiday Park, a nice little campervan site with a great view of the ocean.  We grabbed an early night in anticipation of our early morning Sea Kayaking adventure the next morning.  Some photos of the site....

A nice view....

Kim in our home while in NZ, our Spaceship named Dexter...

Sunset beach walk....

As I already revealed, we spent the next morning Sea Kayaking around Cathedral Cove and area.  That was great, too.  We had heard about some world class kayaking in New Zealand, and we found this place easily, so we figured it might be what we had heard about it.  It was great, but I’m not sure I could call it the best in the world, so we will have to continue our quest at the next suspected world class Kayak destination in Abel Tasman park on the south island.  We set out early and had about a three hour tour including a nice little rest stop at Cathedral Cove and beach.  We saw some great wildlife including a penguin believe it or not (not the type you are picturing, the emperor penguin, but instead a little blue penguin).  We also saw some stingrays and diamond rays below the water, and a fur seal bathing on the rocks, as well as a variety of birds.   Hard to capture all that wildlife as you can’t really have your camera ready in a sea kayak, but here are some photos of the trip that we did get.

 Cathedral Cove...

After our kayak adventure, we headed south down to the village of Te Aroha, where our friend Chrissy stays when in New Zealand, with her Kiwi husband.  It was a nice little town, complete with Hot Spring and its own little character.  We stopped briefly but still had some energy for driving, so we decided to carry on and get closer to Rotorua, where we would stay the following night.  We headed out from Te Aroha towards Rotorua, and decided to stop for the night in the village of Matamata, home of Hobbiton, the movie scene from the Lord of The Rings movies.  We had intended to do the tour, but they were asking quite a bit and we had heard it was a bit of a waste of money, so we skipped it.  Either way, a nice area with lots of farming and you could get the feeling of ‘middle earth’.  We stayed the night at a neat little holiday park called Opal Hot Springs, which had its own hot springs, bonus!

We set out Sunday morning for Rotorua, which is the geothermal capital of New Zealand, and a bit of a tourist Mecca for Maori culture as well.  Seeing as it was Thanksgiving, we decided to splurge a bit and grab a warm hotel room to escape the cold and rain.  Segue to side note about New Zealand weather --- it is cold here, especially relative to Samoa and Fiji.  Even though it is spring and would be the equivalent of our April, it is cold, with some nights dipping to zero during this current cold front.  Brrrr!  So we grabbed a room at the Best Western Braeside Resort, which is just out of town and conveniently not smelly.  The room even had its own outdoor hot tub, which we had to take advantage of!  It wa so nice to have a warm bed and a place to spread out, we really had no idea we would be this cold here.  In the afternoon we took in some Geothermal areas and got to smell the sulphur.  For our evening we decided to take in some Maori culture and have a real meal for a change.  We found a package that included both---a traditional Maori performance and a Hangi meal.  Hangi is the Maori name for food cooked in the ground by geothermal energy.   It was good, and buffet style, so I really took advantage and stuffed myself----just like a Thanksgiving at home!   The performance was neat too, a little bit of history and education about Maori, and some entertaining dancing and song, including the Haka....a warrior dance.  A bit intimidating really, with all the tattoos and the tongues out, but most of all the crazy eyes.  I think he was half joking, but the speaker told us the tongues out means you look delicious (yes, cannibalism did exist among Maori until surprisingly recently.)  The Maori contact with westerners is actually even later than in Canada, so neat to learn about how the Maori have interacted with the European settlers.  Here are some pictures from Roturua our Kiwi Thanksgiving.....

Boiling mud...which stunk!

 Boiling pool of water...

 Enjoying a non-stinky and safe hot tub.....

Our evening out.....

Kim cozied up watching the show...

We had been hoping to do Zorb Rotorua, which is essentially a giant hamster ball which you add water to, hop in and then get rolled down a hill, but the windy weather would have made it lame we were told (very slow ride) so we skipped the exZORBitant costs for rolling down the hill in a hampster wheel.  Too bad :(

So that was our Thanksgiving weekend, we hope yours was as fun for you as ours was for us. We truly feel thankful for all the great adventures we’ve been able to have thus far, and will have in the future, and we are grateful to all who contributed to our trip experiences with your wedding gifts... we are truly enjoying ourselves!   We are also of course very thankful for our great families and friends, and we miss you.  Lots of love to all.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Cheers,
The Knotty Travellers