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  • Day 13

    The Kiwi Experience

    November 13, 2013 in New Zealand

    Rotorua, Bay Of Plenty, New Zealand
    Wednesday, November 13, 2013

    Wednesday 13 November

    A good trip to Rotorua, stopping at Waihi, an old mining town that still has an operating open cast gold mine. It is a BIG hole, (see pics ). Devon Merry Mystery Tourers eat your heart out. You want mining, this is it and the end result is so pretty! Interestingly, there is also the remains of a Cornish pumping tower on site, that used to pump 7000 gallons of water out per hour, in the 1800s.
    Lunch was taken harbour-side at Tauranga. Geraldine and I hovered over Safe Sex on the Beach, but decided it was far too chilly and settled on a Naked Grape! Before you think this trip has turned our heads, be assured, they are Mocktails!! Whilst on the subject of drink, we have taken the grape aspect of our trip very seriously and are trying out a different variety nightly. Our favourite so far has been a Villa Maria Sauvignon Southern Clay, but Napier looms and I expect it to have a run for it's money there. We arrived here at Rotorua late afternoon and are just a block from one of the geo thermal areas. A faint wiff of hydrogen sulphide lingers on the air and we have many physical geographical features to cover over the next couple of days. Tonight we visited a Maori village for a traditional hangi meal. The meat is cooked in traditional manner over hot coals buried under ground. It was very tasty and tender, accompanied by various salads, garlic bread and gravy(?!), the like of which have never graced an authentic Maori banana leaf I suspect. It certainly beat hands down the meal on the harbour at Hong Kong so that's a mighty plus. It was a good evening, but not a patch on the the Maori performance at Waitangi with Chief Peter earlier in the week, but then what could top that?
    In seriousness the highlight of the evening for us was the true Kiwi Experience. We were led through the bush to a series of large enclosures in the hope of seeing a live Kiwi, NZs national symbol. It is a strange but haunting flightless bird, that is almost mammal like and snuffles around in the undergrowth for its food. These are a small group of captive birds, part of a study programme that will not be able to be released into the wild. To our joy we saw three and for me, it sealed a perfect day.
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