We Motor to Rotorua

    We said our goodbyes to Peter Jamieson. It was fun learning more about New Zealand from Peter, Kim and Douglas. Among other things, I learned why the settlers brought gorse with them: it was called "poor man's fence", and would contain the sheep and stock. Slow growing in the northern climate, it was easy to control, but in New Zealand, like rosemary, lavender and many other bushes you'll see, it exploded. Now it is also known as a farmer's "second mortgage" - his first mortgage is the cost of his farm, but his second mortgage is the cost of digging out all the gorse. The list of introduced species in New Zealand is incredibly long and filled with regret. 

    All three parks in Wanganui were closed because of a terrible windstorm a week earlier - 120 to 150 kph winds (hurricane force begins at 119 kph) which took away roofs and brought down many trees. 

    I chuckled about the signs which alternated between "Wanganui" and "Whangangui" - the latter pronounced like "fanganui". The local Maoris have insisted that the extra "h" be included to change the punctuation. Other Maori dialects do pronounce it as a "w", however. But the weird part for me is that they use a Roman alphabet but still argue that there should be a "wh" in a word that they want pronounced like an "f"! So odd...

    Jeanie told us about a local radio personality called "The Radar" who announced one day that he would henceforth be known as "Te Radar" - "Te" means "The" in Maori anyway, and he explained that the Maoris needed his "h" to change the name of Wanganui to Whanganui! 

    We drove north through scenic green hills north of W(h)anganui and we found some interesting shoes, and some black swans that found us quite approachable. There were also flocks of white sheep, looking from a distance like maggots, so we sang sheep songs: "Sheep may safely graze", "Baa, baa, black sheep", and of course the ever-favourite, "I see...a baaa'd moon a-risin'"...(baaa-dump!) 

    We drove through the Tongariro National Park, an alpine area where we began seeing geothermal activity. There are three active volcanoes in the park, and steam rising from volcanic vents in the sides. There are steam vents at probably hundreds of locations in this region of New Zealand; dozens that we could see from the road. 

    One volcano, Mt. Ruapehu, erupted as recently as 1995 and 1996. We saw a geothermal heat capture plant, but I didn't notice any electrical generation, which surprised me a bit. But there are thermal pools for tourists and locals to bathe in, some smelling quite sulphurous, at many locations - and warm mud pools, too. 

    We had lunch in Taupo beside the beautiful lake. Taupo had a small eruption in 1850. We found a Douglas DC3 airplane that we were quite welcome to go inside and photograph, unlike Ronald Reagan's Airforce One in California. 

    We stopped at the Wairakei Terraces and photographed a geyser and a geothermal capture plant. There are seven major active volcanic regions in New Zealand. One of the eruptions, 126 years ago, destroyed what was then the "eighth wonder of the world", the very beautiful pink and white terraces. There are lovely photos and paintings of them from when tourists flocked to see them. 

    That eruption happened near Rotorua, where we are staying right now in a "sleep-out" (what we'd call a "granny flat") that is part of the property that Isabel's third daughter Katrina rents with her husband Jeremy and their four children Josh, Scott, Elizabeth and Deborah: ages 6, 4, 2 and six months, respectively. Very cute, very polite kids, too. David (Isabel's husband) arrived on the bus, and we were able to make ourselves useful by picking him up from the bus station while Jeremy was working late and Katrina was busy with the four kids.

    

    Photos from our drive are here. 

    We're sleeping on top of a volcanic hotspot. The Pacific plate is being forced under the Australian plate here, and the pressure of the subduction causes tremendous heat, which melts the rock; very nearby under Lake Tarawera there is a magma chamber only 2.8 kms from the surface, and this whole town is riddled like a swiss cheese with geothermal vents. 

    We spent Friday touring the public park in the centre of town, which has dozens of these vents, mostly hot water and bubbling mud pools. Maoris used to lower baskets of food into them to cook; they used the pools to bathe, and to stay warm in the winter; 

    "Pakeha" (people of European origin) townsfolk used to bring their laundry down to the hot pools. One was called the "lobster pool" because when fair skinned townies went swimming in it, they'd come out looking red like lobsters. 

    We also visited a lovely restaurant at the top of nearby Mt. Aorangi, and to the old "Great South Seas Spa", an ambitious old bathhouse where people went to "take the cure", but which is now a superb museum of the bathhouse days as well as an excellent set of galleries on Te Arawa, the Maori tribe which had control of this area.  The link to photos of those is in the next entry: more on Mt. Aorangi, the Waitomo Caves, and arriving in Hamilton.