North Island trip coming to an end!

Well, I don't have the exact travel info right now, but we've driven over 4,000 kilometers since we left Blenheim and we're not quite through yet. We'll be leaving Mount Maunganui tomorrow morning and heading back toward Wellington and the ferry on Sunday.

We've spent the last two days walking the beach, collecting seashells and walking the base of the mount. The photos below are from the walk around the mount and our farewell activity here.

19 ft. boat that was fishing where the harbor meets the sea. Remember this is 19 feet long and that's a pretty good size fishing boat.

This is a tanker that was leaving the harbor and heading out to sea.

Here's a photo of the tanker passing the fishing boat. Sort of puts it all in perspective!

The following photos were taken from the walking trail around the base of the mount. Definitely not a swimming beach on this side of the mount.

See that thing sticking up on the left side of the picture? That's a rock that has been carved in that shape by the wind and sea. See close up shots from different angles below.

I personally think this close up of the rock looks like Captain Barbossa from the Pirates of the Caribbean when he was cursed.



















That's all for now. I don't expect to be posting anything over the next two days - not until we get back to Blenheim. Goodbye to the absolutely beautiful beach and Mount Maunganui. Hope y'all have a great day!

Ernie's Fishing Trip

So, the hunter has come home with a string of 8 fish. Not bad for a day's work! He caught 8 Tarakihi. Looks like we'll be eating fish! Hmmm, how about green curry with fish? sounds good to me!

This is the mount in Mount Maunganui. Quite impressive. We're going to take the trail around the base and then climb up to the top for a view of the Bay of Plenty

So, do you think there are any fish here?

This is a John Dory and it is great eating. Unfortunately, Ernie didn't catch this one.

This is one of the Tarakihi he caught.

Here's the whole load - all 8 of them!

This is the boat they were fishing on. They dropped him off in Mount Maunganui and then proceeded on to Tauranga to drop everyone else off.

So, pretty good as fishing goes! So long as he keeps providing food, I think I'll have to keep him around!

Coromandel

Ernie is fishing today so I've had a quiet day catching up on reading, e-mails, blogging, hot tubbing and stuff like that. In other words, no driving or sightseeing today and that's a good thing!

On Monday, we drive to Waihi to ride the Goldfields Railway and visit the now closed Victoria Battery (the old gold and silver processing center.) What was so interesting was seeing the ore kilns. These were holes up to 15 meters across and 20 or more meters deep. They were used in the early days of the mines and only for 3 years. The quartz that was mined was then mixed in these pits with lumber and then set on fire. They burned for 4 days allowing the quartz to become superheated and start to fracture. The rocks were then carted off to the stamping factory where they were crushed. They eventually stopped this process because they (town folks and mining management) realized they have totally denuded the surrounding forest and basically ran out of fuel. Can you imagine? They then switched to a crushing and chemical process that involved cyanide. What was even more amazing was that the powers that be - at that time - early 1900s - allowed the mining company to just empty all the sludge and waste into the Ohinemui River and totally polluting it. The guard on the train said that as a kid he couldn't swim in the river because it was so toxic. Needless to say, the dumping stopped and a concerted effort was made by the government to clean it up. Today, it is considered the purest river in the north island.

 This was the train engineer (driver). He stopped to talk with us and ask how we were enjoying NZ. While we were answering him, he was sizing up Ernie. He then turned to me and said I was doing a good job of taking care of him and that he was a good size boy. His final remark to me was to keep up the good work!

These ladies worked the station selling tickets and providing information. The also made the departure announcements and saw us off once the train started moving.

There was only 2 cars on the trains and we stayed in the open car. 

This is one of the original trestle bridges built in 1905

The train station in Waikino. The ride was only 30 minutes but we had a great time and super weather!

These are the ore kilns. There were 8 of them and the Department of Conservation has excavated 6 of them to date.

OK had to get in a photos of us!
















We are actually staying in Mount Maunganui which is a one hour drive south of the Coromandel region. On Tuesday, we drove 2 1/2 hours into the Coromandel region to the Hot Water Beach. This was such a unique experience and what a treat! We stopped at the cafe just before the car park and hired (rented) a spade so we could dig our pool. We got to the car park, along with 100+ of our closest friends and followed the crowd to the beach. You can only access the beach about one hour before and one hour after low tide. The rest of the time, it is under water. As the lady in the cafe said, there's a crack in the volcano that allows the steam to surface and heat the water. We were told to go where all the people are and dig once we found hot sand. We were more fortunate than the folks next to us (they also got there before us and dug their pool) in that we dug our pool so that half of it was on cool sand and the other half on hot sand. We then diverted draining hot water to fill our pool. Their pool was totally on a hot area and they couldn't even sit in it once the tide was fully out. We were also told to take a bucket with us in case we needed to get cold water from the sea to cool down our pool. We stayed for almost 2 hours and had a great time! Check out the photos:

Well, that's all for now. Hopefully, I'll have lots of fish pictures once Ernie gets back. I can't believe that we've been on the north island almost a month now and will be going back to Blenheim at the end of the week. The time has gone so fast and we've done so much!

Remainder of drive to the East Cape & Tiniroto

We stopped at Tolaga Bay to walk the longest concrete wharf in the southern hemisphere – 600 meters long.

This cave was carved in the cliff face on the right side of the wharf

Check out the waters at the Mahia Penninsula

We got to Tiniroto on Sunday afternoon to find that Jean and Terry had a new family member – Patch! One of their ewes gave birth to two lambs but she was only interested in caring for one of them, so Jean is bottle feeding Patch until she is off milk and eating grass. I had several chances to feed her also. What fun!

 Tiniroto is a small town that consists of a post office, a tavern, the community center, the school, several large stations (ranchs or farms), several smaller stations and a large Maori community. Their house sits on a high rise and has the most amazing views. While driving around over the course of a couple of days, we stopped at Te Reinga Falls. If you look closely in one of the pictures, you can get a hint of the rainbow we saw at the bottom of the falls.

You really have to work at seeing the rainbow in the lower right quadrant. I guess it's expecting a lot of my little camera to get a clear shot of it. Oh well, you can't blame for trying.

The following photos are specifically for our granddaughters Jasmin and Gracie. They are the really serious animal lovers in the family.

 Jean took us to this really cool river to hunt for fossils – and give her dogs, Tigger & Teddy a chance to run around and go swimming. While walking down to the river, we saw one of the most unusual trees we’ve ever seen. See if you can figure out what is so strange about this tree.

 Ernie & I drove to Lake Whakatemoana for the day and walked to Bridal Veil Falls, Aniwaniwa Falls and Papakorito Falls.

Bridal Veil Falls

Aniwaniwa Falls

Papakorito Falls

The road to the lake was quite interesting since it was both sealed and unsealed road (paved and unpaved). What was surpriing is that we saw a sign that said unsealed road for the next 105 kilometers. Since we were just driving another 20 or so kilometers, we weren’t very concerned about that. We’ve gotten quite accustomed to driving un unsealed roads. What was surprising was that the road alternated between unsealed and sealed section without any obvious rhyme or reason as to why. Just to give you an idea of the road, take a look at this photo

 This is a ‘red shield’ highway which means it is a major highway. While this hasn’t been the norm for us in our travels, the point is that it does exist and you need to be prepared for it.

We spend four lovely days with Jean and Terry and said goodbye to them on Thursday as we made our way to Wellington for the U.S. vs. Australia World Rugby Cup game. I don’t even remember the name of this lake that we passed but we were so taken with the fact that the water was so still that you couldn’t tell where the land ended and the water began.

 The only hiccup on the trip to Wellington was that the gorge before Palmerston North was closed because of slippage and we had to take a detour via Saddle Road. What a trip!!!!! This road would be a challenge on any day but with all the traffic now using it – and I mean logging trucks and other heavy trucks – the edges of that road are starting to slip. I don’t know how much longer they are going to be able to use that as a detour. I’m just glad that we don’t have to do that one again.

Ernie just gave me the high sign that it’s time to leave for the game to watched the US play Australia. Actually, we watched the US get creamed by Australia. There was a method to their madness as far as their player selection for the game. Since they will be playing Italy on Tuesday and have a good chance of beating them (while they had no chance of beating Australia), the managers did not play their best players yesterday to allow them to rest up for Italy and avoid any possibility of injury.

While it was not a fun game to watch from that aspect, it was so great being in the stadium with so many fans supporting the USA. The understanding in New Zealand is that the fans support two teams - the All Blacks and anyone playing against Australia. We went to the Chicago bar before the game and were surrounded by US fans. Drank a few beers, talked with a bunch of folks, got our picture taken several times (some because of Ernie's moustache but mostly because we were wrapped in little US flags. We couldn't find any US hats or t-shirts or 'flag-capes.' The only thing we could find were the stringers of mini-flags that you can hang as decorations. There were 40 flags on the string so we cut it in half and we each wrapped our string around our necks - like a collar. Ernie talked about face painting his moustache red, white and blue but chickened out. He's all talk!

We head to Mount Monganui and the Coramandel tomorrow and will spend a week exploring that area before heading back to Blenheim on 10/2. I’ll post more once we settle in there.