3/8/15 Waimangu

We got on the coach after breakfast (by the way our driver, Logan, is very informative about the area) and headed to Waimangu volcanic valley.  Our first view was of the mountain, Tarawere, which is a restlessly sleeping volcano, having erupted five times in the last 18,000 years.  In recent history, there was a huge eruption in 1886, which completely destroyed all plant, animal and bird life for miles around.  There was another big eruption in 1900 which resulted in the world's largest geyser, and in 1917 there was an eruption of Frying Pan Flat.  There was loss of life in each of the eruptions, but the worst was the one in 1886 which completely destroyed several Maori villages.  We took a lovely long walk with our local guide, Steve, who also pointed out native plants and birds.  We had to stay on the path as just off the path was just a thin crust in spots.  Steve put a probe in the ground next to the path and it measured 212 degrees.  He said that last year a new guide stupidly stepped off the path into the bush to take a leak and crashed through the crust.  He got burned quite badly on his leg.  My favorite part of the walk was climbing up stairs to get a great view of Inferno Crater Lake.  The water is a pale blue and is covered in steam.  The water temperature can reach 180 degrees.  At the end of the walk we took a boat ride around Lake Rotomahana.  Many hot springs discharge into the lake and we saw large groups of native ducks, scoots, and lots of black swans.  We also saw a hawk overhead who was  looking for fish.  There used to be white and pink terraces formed by silica from the hot waters flowing into the lake and rising for up to 85 feet, but they were destroyed in the 1886 eruption.  We took a bus back to the visitor center and had lunch in the cafe.  Lana and I elected to be dropped off in time to poke around, but as it was Sunday, most of the shops were closed.  We walked back to the hotel and will go out again for dinner soon.  Tomorrow we leave here and will head to the south island of NZ.  Sorry about not putting any pix on lately, but the space on the ipad is full and I have not had enough time to send then to the cloud to make more room.  I will have to come up with a faster way to get the pictures on the blog.

3/7/15 Auckland to Rotorua

We hopped on the coach after breakfast and were on our way to Rotorua.  We stopped off at Hamilton Gardens and had a 45 minute stroll in the gardens.  There were so many different types: Japanese, Chinese, Indian, English Country, herb, contemporary, Italian Renaissance.  We had a lovely walk and took pictures.  Our next stop was to an organic farm where we had a home-hosted lunch.  Our hosts were a lovely couple who have a herd of dairy cows.  Their youngest son has taken over most of the day to day operation of the farm now, but they both still help in the busy times.  The cows are milked twice a day, twelve at a time.  Apparently they line up in some sort of pecking order to be milked and woe to the cow who tries to cut in line!  The milking process takes 2 hours each time.  Quite a commitment.  The lunch was lovely, a variety of sandwiches, homemade mini-quiches, blueberry muffins, watermelon, barley-lemonade, and apricot cake for dessert.  The cows are grass fed and we heard about the rotation of the fields which takes a month to repeat.  There were many flowers, bushes and fruit trees around the farm house - lemon, persimmon, mandarin orange, sour apple.  We had a lovely time, but eventually had to board the coach for the rest of our journey.  Rotorua is a volcanic area and we passed many dormant fumerols along the way.  Our hotel is just a ten minute walk from town.  Lana and I did laundry before dinner - very nice as the machines in the hotel are free to guests.  We had dinner as a group in the hotel dining room and then went to bed.  The rooms here are very nice and big.  We have a patio overlooking a horse racing track and a separate room with a jacuzzi tub.  Tomorrow we will go to see the volcano.

3/6/15 Auckland, New Zealand

We had an early wake-up call this morning and after breakfast, walked down the street to catch a local bus to the Auckland Museum.  We were met by a local Maori guide, Prince Davis, who was very interesting and explained much of the Maori culture to us.  We were given the traditional Maori greeting which consists of standing forehead and nose together while clasping shoulders.  This is done twice while saying Kia Ora (pronounced key-aura), the typical Maori greeting.  He walked us around the gardens and pointed out many of the ferns and trees that were native as well as some stories from his youth - a very interesting man.  We ended up in a treed area where his wife, Cathie, was waiting with tea and refreshments of grapes, cheese and crackers, and ginger cookies.  They were quite a lovely couple.  As we got back to town, some of the group elected to take a ferry ride around the harbor, but since it was spitting rain, Dave, John, Lana, Nancy from Minnesota, and I decided to poke around the downtown area.  We found a lovely place for lunch and then did a walk about the Queen Street area.  We had heard there was a craft market down by the waterfront on Friday nights so with maps in hand, we went to look for it.  Dave stopped off at the Maritime Museum and we said we would meet up with him later.  We walked a bit and then I stopped to ask for directions and some ladies pointed up back in the direction we had just come from.  Apparently, there was a footbridge that was not clearly marked on the map which cut out a lot of walking.  The Volvo Ocean Race was in town and there was a lot of hoopla going on about that.  We could not seem to find the market, but finally found a janitor in one of the buildings in the area who said there is generally one there on Fridays, but not tonight.  We saw a huge ship down the way and stopped to look at it.  It must have been 350 feet long and 75 feet tall - it hailed from Georgetown, Bermuda.  On our way back over the bridge, we stopped to asked someone about it and learned that it is owned by a Russian who owns a vodka company.  He only uses it 17 days of the year - what a waste!  We stopped into one of the Volvo tents and watched two short movies about the Around the World race.  The people who do this are more than slightly nuts!  There were pictures of men almost being washed overboard, covered in ice, etc.  In one clip, a ship ran aground on a reef off the coast of Africa and were lucky to be alive.  I stopped into a grocery store on the way back to the hotel and bought bananas for dinner as I was still full from lunch.  When I got back to the room, I found that Dave had not had any luck either as he got to the Museum just a half hour before closing so didn't go in.  We got our bags ready for the move tomorrow and then read before going to sleep.  The internet here is sketchy at best so have delayed the blog.

3/5/15 Sydney to Auckland

Today was a travel day.  We got up early to get to the airport outside of the city.  We left Louise at security, but just by happenstance, we got Bruce as his flight was delayed.  He walked us through customs and then we lost him as he was traveling on a different airline.  We had a nice flight into Auckland where we were met by our Kiwi guide, Di.  My bag was searched as they thought they saw candy on the x-ray (and they are very strict here about bringing in any food, seeds, etc.), but it was my laundry pods that they had spotted.  It was a good thing as we heard later that a man from the last group that came through from Australia had forgotten that he had an apple in his backpack and he had to pay a $400 fine!  Despite the security search, Dave and I must have gone through the VIP line at passport control as we met Di and waited at least a half hour before anyone else from the group got through.  We took the coach to our hotel in Auckland, had a few minutes to freshen up and then took a coach down to the waterfront to have dinner.  The dinner was very good, but the service was extremely slow so we lost the time for our coach to pick us up and most of us elected to walk back to the hotel since it was a pleasant evening (a couple of them took a cab).  Brian, Di's boyfriend, joined us for dinner and he walked back with us.  We stopped on the way to exchange some currency at an ATM.

3/4/15 Sydney

We had a lovely day today.  We started by walking to the Maritime Museum.  The "boys" enjoyed going through the ships on exhibit outdoors, while the girls went through the exhibits inside.  My favorite was a display of x-rays of a variety of fish - very interesting.  We took a local ferry (transportation tickets given to us by Louise) to Circular Quay, where we enjoyed lunch at the same food court we ate in yesterday.  We walked over to the Museum of Sydney - it was okay, but nothing to write home about and then walked down to the Queen Victoria Building.  It is a shopping arcade, but we were mainly interested in the lovely and massive clocks hanging from the ceiling of the third level. We then walked back to the hotel to put our feet up before dinner.  This is our farewell dinner in Australia and we will say our goodbyes to Louise as we will only see her briefly tomorrow when she puts us on the plane to New Zealand.  It has been a lovely two weeks here.  We have seen some new things and enjoyed anew some of our favorites from our last trip here in 2007.  I am hoping we have better internet connection at the next hotel so I can put some more pictures up.

3/3/15 Sydney

We had a very full day today.  We picked up our laundry after breakfast and although it had been washed and dried, I would not say it was folded properly.  I had to refold and hope that some of the wrinkles fall out - oh, well, at least we will be clean.  We left the hotel at 8 AM for a sightseeing tour by coach.  We visited The Rocks, which is the site of the first settlement here, and then drove around the coast stopping at various places to walk a bit.  We went to the famous Bondi Beach, where we watched the surfers and dipped our feet in the Tasman Sea.  We came back to the harbor area and went to Altmann and Cherny for a talk about opals by the granddaughter of the first owner of the company.  She explained the different mining styles and differences between the various opals.  We then walked across the street and took the elevator to the 39th floor where Bruce has his office.  The view from the conference room was amazing!  The windows look over the harbor and we could see both the bridge and the opera house.  I don't know how anyone can get any work done with that view. The Queen Elizabeth ocean liner was in port and was a massive ship.  We ate lunch in the food court of his building.  We then took a harbor cruise and saw many of the places we had been to in the morning, but this time from the sea.  We came back to Circular Quay and then went for a tour of the opera house.  The tour guide was delightful and gave a great talk about the history and building of this wonderful building.  It was quite the story as the design had been originally rejected and the estimates for completion were way off.  It took 10 years more to complete than originally thought and was millions of dollars over budget.  Some of the group were going to the opera, but the six of us who were not ate dinner together at the side of the opera house and then walked back to the hotel.  Tomorrow is a free day until dinner time so we will see if we can fit in all that we have planned.

3/2/15 Port Douglas to Sydney

Today was a travel day so right after breakfast, we boarded the coach for the hour trip to Cairns.  This time we could see the sugar cane fields and the coast that we had traveled along in the dark the other day.  We had a coach trip around Cairns, which looks like a nice seaside city, before going to the airport.  We had a two and a half hour flight, dropped our things in our room and then headed en masse to the laundry down the street.  It was $10 a bag - wash, dry, and fold.  We will pick it up tomorrow morning.  We were told there was no laundry in the first hotel in New Zealand so wanted to make sure we had some clean clothes.  We then met Louise's husband, Bruce, back at the hotel and all went for an orientation walk around this side of the city.  We are about a kilometer from the harbor.  We ended up across the street from the hotel where we had a nice dinner.  We don't have unlimited access to the internet here so I will be unable to download pictures for a while.