Lake Rotoroa

So after 5 nights in a typical old-fashioned NZ house, we left our base town of Thames to meet up with our Elora friend, Donna, in the landlocked city of Hamilton.

On the way, we stopped in to the Matatoki Cheese factory to buy an assortment of NZ cheese, and for a delicious coffee. Boy, New Zealanders love their organic coffee and can make a good cuppa of flat whites, as well as delicious scones.

We passed Paeroa, where we bought a can of their famous lemonade called Lemon & Paeroa, or L&P, which is a sweet soft drink manufactured in New Zealand. Created in 1907, it was traditionally made by combining lemon juice with carbonated mineral water from the town of Paeroa, but it is now owned and manufactured by Coca-Cola.

On we went to Morrinsville, where we tried to find Chris kiwi wide brimmed hat. The sun here is so intense, not really super hot, but intense that his baseball cap wasn’t doing a good enough job. No luck, but we went into a bakery to get a sandwich and had a picnic lunch in the park.

Morrinsville has a quirky and colourful ‘herd of cows’ art installation that are located around town. It was fun to see this collection of life-sized cow sculptures which highlighted the history of dairy farming in the town. We thought of the Plunkett family, especially since we saw a variation of their name throughout the area!

Eventually, we arrived at our rendezvous point in the Hamilton Gardens with Donna. Our directions to each were not so clear so we ended up in more or less the same area at the right times but without seeing each other. It was a joyful reunion when we made the connection.

After a short sit in the sun by the lake, we continued on to Anita and Bob’s beautiful Double Bay Villa in Te Miro, near Cambridge. More about the house in another footprint.Read more