The countryside around Auckland was so beautifully jewel like in it's greenness. We went for a ride to see it and visited a working sheep farm. Again, I was amazed at the strength of sheep, to stand up with a wet coat of wool. We saw lots of Pukekos in the fields, lots of brilliantly black and white cows and grapefruit on the trees. Nina and I took some of those along for the rest of our touring around Lake Taupo. Breakfasts in the hostels was oatmeal, half grapefruit, coffee or tea and toasts. Good fuel for all the walking we were doing.
The bananas growing in the suburban yards still amaze me. This is wintertime with almost frosty mornings! Goes to show that tropical plants can take a lot of very cool weather and still thrive.
The "Villas" of New Zealand are very charming. A lot have, of course, been completely redone inside and are exquisite and exquisitely expensive. This one was in the very trendy area of Auckland.
In that same area, we saw some large historic houses that had been completely restored. By noontime, with the sun out, it warmed up to about 18 degrees celcius and was very comfortable. The sun was harsh though, and I always wore a hat.
Now we're on the bus to Rotorua. We had to backtrack south, to a town called Hamilton, I believe, to then get on a route that took us through passes to Lake Taupo. We saw a lot of hills, mountains, snow and trees.
This fork in the road would go East or south and we needed to go East to get to Rotorua. The sculpture is like a giant blanke draped on the rocks, very similar to the blankets the Maori wear at ceremonial occasions.
In Rotorua, there were a lot of this type of sculpture mounted on the lamposts. The lake is a spiritual place and the area is full of geisers, steaming pools and spas. The population of natives is very high in the North Island, and especially in the northern portion of the island.
There was a park right beside our lovely hostel. It had steaming pools everywhere. The pools were fenced and the signs indicated that wandering around this place at night was not recommended. It was pretty cold at night, what with the altitude and being inland. We didn't go out much other than for the odd dinner. One night, we went to a "carvery" for dinner, that's a buffet with roast beef, and took in a local drink called Scrumpy, which is alcoholic cider. It;s fizzy and delicious and a bit dangerous. Well, we did have a very good dinner that night!
One of the lovely steaming pools. There was even an area with a shallow rectangular pool that you could soak your feet in but I didn't have a towel on me that day and it was pretty cool to boot... so the boots stayed on!
There was a smell of sulphur on the odd accasion, but we got used to it pretty quickly.
More steam. In some parts of the town, the steam vents pop up into people backyards and become a problem I wonder if some people have had to move out of there home?
Other places with paving stones had steam seeping up and making mineral deposits all over around the venting.
This was a small adjunct building to a large Marai. I'm not sure how they are used. Maybe offerings? The carving on the roof is beautiful If you click in on the image and enlarge, you might be able to see better.
This was the large Marai. It had some wonderful, scary carved faces on it. There is a lot of Paua shell included in the eyes etc. I was lucky that there were no too many tourists to obstruct the view of this mysterious place.
Black swans. They were everywhere. They obviously do very well even in this cool climate. We were warned not to approach and/or feed them as they could be quite nasty. Beauty with a bad temper!
This is a ceremonial canoe. All locked up in its own cage. They don't take it out too often from the looks of it. The carving on it was wonderful. The wood they used was not identified, but the colour was incredible. We were lucky in meeting an elder and chatting with him for quite a while. He was minding an arts centre and was interesting in talking politics of the Aboriginals. They are a very politicized bunch and very determined to preserve and restore their way of life.
This was the Rotorua Museum which had once been a spa in the late 1800's. It was wonderful inside. This is where I discovered Schweppes Lemon lime bitters drink! OMG! I love the stuff. I've bought some Lime cordial, bitters and lemon juice to make it at home!
This is a sculpture near the spa. I loved the curves. I took a lot of pictures of sculptures to show to mu husband. He really likes to see what other people are doing. It looks like patinaed bronze to me , but there are so many new finishes now that it is hard to tell.
This is the wonder of plants. No sculpture can even come close! This was in a garden beside on of the spa from the 20's . We would be going to to a Maori Hangi for our dinner that night, so we went back to the hostel and lounged about reading. I read a book of short stories by a Saskatchewan writer that I found at the hostel . The story of how the book got there was probably as good as the book was!
Okay, somehow I obliterated the bronze sculpture picture and have not figured out how to undo my edit. I'll include it in my next post.
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