Sometimes we forget how blessed we are with great
weather.
That is, until we wake up to
big clouds in Napier on Monday morning.
What a glorious weather day we had on Sunday in Napier!
So we cleaned up our act and got out of our Napier house
before 10 am. We drove 2 hours north to
Taupo, through some beautiful countryside, but in the rain and fog. It wasn’t looking good for our Lake Tarawera
arrival on Monday afternoon. But Tony and Carrie sent
their "seagulls" forward to clear out the clouds, and Dennis and I did our HIGH
PRESSURE CHANTS.
Our Monday lunch stop in Taupo at the Replete Cafe offered some interesting
choices, but we REALLY LIKED the McDonald's a few streets over ...
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| A McDonnell Douglas DC-3 from 1943! This plane served as U.S. military transport during World War II. After the war, this plane became a commercial airliner serving the South Pacific until it was retired in 1974. SO cool to see! |
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| Look at this cockpit! They had tables inside the plane so you could eat your Mac-Whatever in the plane |
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| Look at the small size of the doorway and windows! |
Carrie and I were happy that we found another Salvation Army
store to peruse in Taupo. The guys are
being very good sports about our bargain shopping. I was happy to find a cute beaded necklace
and Dennis got a Holden Race Team shirt!
Another hour plus drive and we arrived in Rotorua. Tons of hot springs in this area, and parts
of Rotorua are quite odorous! As we drove through to our final destination
at Lake Tarawera, we were glad that we didn’t opt to stay in Rotorua. The town even has traffic lights, which we’ve
seen VERY few of in the last 3 weeks.
Our “home” is about 20 minutes east of Rotorua at Lake Tarawera
~ one of 18 lakes in the area. The
house isn’t very impressive at first sight ...
but once we opened up what they
consider the front of the house, which is lakeside,
WE WERE ALL BLOWN AWAY!
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| We had access all the way down to the Lake. I went swimming! |
This area has no Wi-Fi or cellphone access, so we were pretty much
out of contact for 2 days. AND THAT IS
GOOD FOR US TECHNO NERDS! However, we
DID find free WiFi at The Buried Village just a few miles down the road from our
place. So OF COURSE we had to stop in their parking lot and
connect for a few minutes.
We woke up Tuesday morning to clouds, but we are thinking
positive and believe they will dissipate.
Next adventure …. Zipline and Luge at Skyline Skyrides! And what a blast that was!
The price was $100 NZD per person for the zipline and SEVEN
Luge rides (that’s about $66 USD each).
The Luge involves steering a gravity fed luge to the bottom of a LARGE
mountain. The return trip to the top is
on a ski lift, so one round, with waiting in line, takes about 45 minutes. They had 3 different tracks and we got them
all in. None of us had ever done this
before, and of course the guys were TRUE Speed Demons.
And then came the Zipline … SUPER FUN!! That was a first for all of us, too. It just started sprinkling when we took our zip adventure,
so we were blessed again.
Dennis shot video during part of our side-by-side zipline. But I will have to post that when we get home. Wi-Fi has not been super fast for us.
We’ve enjoyed all of our dinners at home each night, and
Tony has really done a great job grilling.
With a view like we have here, why would we do anything else?
Tomorrow (Wednesday) we will be off for our last full day
and night. We will visit the Waitamo Glowworm Caves in the
afternoon, and then spend our last night in New Zealand in Hamilton. It will be THE EVE of our FIRST St. Patrick’s
Day. We will get TWO of these holidays due to
crossing back across the date after our flight from Auckland to French Polynesia on Thursday evening.
The days in New Zealand are running out …
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