Above is the promised picture of Waihi Beach, our home! And now for new places, new friends, new experiences and new geology to write about; pretty good week in the books! Thursday morning Sam went off for training and I went into town with Ian to pick up our new car! While I was in Tauranga, I did a little shopping for some stuff that Sam and I needed for work. I needed black shoes and possibly some new shorts. And I found them! I got super lucky. I went into SaveMart, which is like a Goodwill of sorts, and the just so happened to have black canvas shoes in a size 8. So lucky. Friday we broke in the new car with a drive down to Rotorua. Sam was competing in a kayak regatta on Lake Tikitapu (Blue Lake) in Rotorua and naturally the chauffeur (me) was in attendance. Let me just say, I am loving having the car. I feel so much more independent and ready for adventure! And the AC works, which is always a plus. But since it's a little old, it doesn't have an AUX plug. Or a CD player. It's back to the classic cassette tapes. So now we just need one of those cassette/AUX converters, otherwise we're listening to radio static 80% of the time. On the way to the lake, we stopped at Kuirau Park in Rotorua. It's a public park, but has a lot of little things to see. Rotorua is known for its geothermal activity. This includes hot pools, mud pools, sulfuric deposits and geysers. It's pretty darn cool. At the park, as soon as you step out of the car, you can smell the sulfur emanating from the different pools. The first thing we saw were the little pools with steam rising from them. Even just standing next to them, you can feel the heat. One of the lakes was very green, again from the sulfur being built up. And the mud pools were real neat! The heat makes them bubble (or I guess boil would be more accurate) so there is constant movement. We stopped to eat there and then we went to one of the hot pools to stick our feet in the water. The park has public spa pools to stick your feet in; they take the hot water from the springs and cool it down enough to be bearable to the touch. One that we tried was still on the hot end though! We had a nice chat with a couple of guys from the US that were traveling around NZ and then we left the park to head to Blue Lake so Sam could have a practice paddle. It was pretty calm to practice on and was just a gorgeous place to be. To end the day, we went back into town for a grocery shop and dinner before driving out to our accommodation for the night. Through kayaking, Sam was put in contact with Jess, who will be living near us in Waihi Beach for the summer, and she offered for us to stay in a house that her and her friends rented for the weekend (also known as a 'batch' over here). We met everyone after arriving and then went to bed relatively quickly after that; it had been a long day and we all had to be up pretty early in the morning. Too early, if you ask me. I hate having to wake up before 7am... But at 6:45 Saturday morning, I was awake and moving, albeit barely. I am not a morning person so I probably made a phenomenal first impression with everyone at the house. I drove Sam down to the lake and hung out a bit to get everything organized. Then I took off for an adventure on my own. I drive to Wai-o-tapu Thermal Wonderland, which I hate to say was a very touristy thing to do. But whatever, I guess I am one. Wai-o-tapu means "sacred waters" and on their land they have a number of walks where you can view different aspects of thermal activity. They range from collapsed craters with steaming water or boiling mud at the bottom and yellow/greenish sulfur crystals, to pools of extreme temperature with carbon dioxide causing bubbles to rise to the surface to ponds turned green due to the sulfur mixing with all the other minerals contained in the water. They also have a geyser, called Lady Knox, which they set off everyday at 10:15am using a environment safe soap concoction. This works because underneath the geyser are two pools of water, one much hotter than the other. The soap allows both water temperatures to mix, causing steam to to shoot out of the ground. Lady Knox eruptions can reach heights of up to 20 meters. Geysers are obviously hard to predict in terms of cycles, so for the sake of tourism, Wai-o-tapu manually erupt her everyday. If they didn't, she would erupt every 24 to 72 hours, depending on amount of water collected. There were quite a few people there to see the eruption at 10:15, including this guy from France who tried to get the crowd to sing with him in a call and response form. It was weird. He actually had the crowd going with him for a bit and it was funny, but then he tried two more songs and the enthusiasm died...except his. Luckily, he was saved by the worker who came to tell us about the geyser! I went back to the regatta and watched for the afternoon. Sam was racing in both the U18 and U23 age groups, so she was doing quite a bit of back and forth the whole day. Late in the afternoon, Jess, Richard, Daniel and I went for a run around the lake. There's a 5.5 kilometer route that links up with a few other tracks; you could go running out there for hours. And I wouldn't complain, the views are amazing. After the run, we went for a swim to cool off and then made our way back to the house. After a shower and dinner, we played some card games, including spoons which I hadn't played in ages. Pretty good night! Sunday morning I was up even earlier (I know, I didn't think it was possible either) because Sam's first race was early. I mostly hung out at the lake all day; Sunday was the 200s, they're real quick and more interesting to watch, in my opinion. In the afternoon, Jess, Richard and I went for a drive to explore the other lakes around the area. Everything felt so pristine and beautiful. There's a volcano that erupted in the 1880's close by, and you can see the flat part where the crater must be from where the top was blown off by the eruption. Richard was trying to figure out the best way to climb it, which honestly sounds like such fun. I had quite a little internal moment while sitting on the dock with those two, just looking out at the lake with the volcano rising up across the way; all I could think was I can’t believe I get to call this incredibly surreal place my home for the next few months! In the afternoon I was forced into a kayak. Okay, maybe it wasn't a complete force, but I didn't really have a choice in the matter. Everyone was racing the 5k except Dan, who instead got a great core workout by keeping both of us afloat in a k2. To our credit (or really Dan's, if I'm being honest), we went quite a ways without falling in, including sitting still and balancing while we watched our friends start their 5k. And then, naturally, he tipped us in on purpose. Well, more accurately he just stopped keeping us up and since I have zero balance in a boat, in we went. I dried myself off, Sam won the 5k, we packed up the car, grabbed a burger with the guys, and headed home. We found out that we weren't on the roster at work until the weekend, so early this week we went for a walk from Waihi Beach to Orokawa Bay. It's a very secluded beach and during the week it's especially empty. It was just gorgeous, and the perfect place for a picnic and to lay out in the sun. I think I’ll use that as a nice running track during our time here. This blog might get a little boring once work is in full swing, but I promise I'll try to remain entertaining and update you on any and all adventures! I mean, work might just be the next big adventure :) til next time!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Meet AnyaHi, Hola, Bonjour, Ciao!
I’m Anya Phillips, a data analyst and travel enthusiast who is always on the lookout for the next adventure! Categories
All
|