We woke up and after a glance of todays agenda had a earlier than usual check-out, apparently realizing some geyser in Wai-o-tapu activates like a clock at 10:15 every day so it would be nice to catch that moment – which was 35 minutes away.

We drove there with a full 5 minutes to go, well to Wai-o-Tapu that is. To find the geyser was another matter, we were running around like headless chickens back and forth before finally hearing from someone it was a 20 minute walk – we put Juni and stroller back in the car and drove to the geyser – perhaps it was still spraying water even though we now for sure missed the start. We got there, and see 100-200 people waiting for the geyser to start, I snap off a photo and then the geyser erupts within 10 seconds. Touristing like a boss.

Suspiciously well timed

We had a lot of ground to cover today so did the rest of Wai-o-tapu rather quick, an hour or so was enough to get a good look (and photos) of the champagne pool – a body of (very) hot water with various colors coming from minerals the water brought up from deeper earth. It was interesting to see the various pools and general hazardous environment.

An attempt to catch the complete palette of the pool

Visiting the Baggins

Enough with nature, we got a milkshake to go and drove off to Matamata for a visit to Hobbiton. We had some forebodingintermittent heave rainfall but once we got to Matamata the weather looked great – there was some confusion at the ticket office which claimed I had cancelled my tour but we got sorted out quickly. We were in luck (well, we chose Friday 14:00 in hope of beating the worst crowds) since when we entered the bus with only 12 people in total.

Inside of the Green Dragon

Hobbits or no hobbits, it sure looks idyllic

The Hobbiton tour was very well arranged – loads of pictures and designed in such a way that one group didn’t block the next groups photos so it turned out to beat my expectations. It was a cuteness overload with all the Hobbit-holes and interesting to see how they faked things looking old and the level of detail that needed to be exactly as Peter Jackson wanted it seems to a mix of myth and hybris.

After the tour we had dinner at The Redoubt Bar and Eatery, top-ranked by Tripadvisor and nice but not that much deviation from the regular pub-food. After we had filled our stomachs and Juni had crawled about and charmed the personell we drove to our final destination for the day. Mona had found an Alpaca farmstead on AirBnB about 20 minutes outside Tauranga. We said hi to the family living in the house and got our room (with our own bathroom as well) and prepared for bed while we noticed that Juni started to get a runny nose.

Kayaking anyone?

After a day of resting we thought we would try to do a bit better today, first stop was Huka Falls. It was a pretty large volume of water passing a pretty tight crevice in a pretty decent speed. Apparently the turbines here generate about 15% of whole New Zealands needs, and I guess the thermal provides a healthy chunk for the remaining needs.

About 50-60m straight up, these rather young Redwood trees still impress.

We drove off towards Rotorua, and since Juni had dozed off and slept like a baby we headed all the way to Hamurana Springs north east of Rotorua. On the way to the actual spring we passed through a redwood forest – a early one comparing to the Canadian counterparts but impressive none the less. They were planted, as other various type of trees, to see what grew well and what not. Redwood didn’t become a huge success but it sure looked nice.

I wonder what the ducks think of the clear water.

Photo doesn’t do this justice, I think I stood here five minutes just looking.

The spring and downstream streams are the clearest water I’ve ever seen in nature. It’s quite surreal to see the bottom clearly where there are fish, swans or ducks. The spring itself was one of the highlights so far, the water flowing from it (approximately two olympic swimming pools per hour) was that clear since it’s spent the last 70 years being filtered through the mountain.

We doubled back after enjoying the serenity and views and planned to stop by Wai-o-Tapu but turns out that would close in 15 minutes after we got there but we could at least check out the nearby mud-pools where mud, sort of as the name implies, builder due to various thermal things. The lovely sulphur smell of rotten egg was also present.

Life’s pretty OK

The smoke is from the boiling river below.

We then drove to Waikite just half a mile across the highway for some thermal pools. It wasn’t many people there but the pools were great with various temperatures, some infinity pools and they were all heated by the neighbouring boiling river. Yep, a large part of the river evaporates since it’s boiling water than runs there. Weird.

After soaking a few hours in various pools with Juni we left as happy raisins and left home for a late snack that Mona pulled together from various left-overs from the day before.

Today was a day dedicated to the art of slacking.

I wrote up some blog posts, then entertained Juni for a few hours. Mona went shopping to fetch ingredients for brunch and later home made (well almost) pasta.

After Mona got back and we had a nice breakfast it was time for some more slacking and general browsing the web. We also examine and tested their their Sauna, then the outer spa pools with Juni – who was more happy of the outdoor activity.

As I mentioned the previous day we live next to Taupo lake which is on top of a Supervolcano, and after reading up a bit on it I have to say they are quite interesting – as in end of humanity as we know it interesting. I like the summary statement on the linked Wikipedia side after explaining that some consider an eruption would risk the survival of the entire human race “currently there are no theoretical ideas on how to at least milden an eruption and according to experts it’s unlikely to ever be found”. So, enjoy the ride while it lasts folks!

A day of slacking with Juni is less slacking than one could anticipate but we ended the day by watching first episode of Torchwood since we’re now out of Doctor Who. We were amazed that Netflix could handle the bandwidth constraint but then we had better than NZ average Internet.