Thursday, April 14, 2011

Natural springs, a winery, and more city parks

Having crammed so much adventure in so few days, we decided we needed a bit of a respite. After all, we were on vacation. Once we left Tongariro, we headed to a small town about an hour away called Turangi. In 2006, the population was a little over 3,000. It reminded me of the Midwest, except that there were small mountains surrounding it. But the smell, the town size, the friendliness of our hotel owner, and the free laundry all made it feel somewhat familiar. And it had a trampoline! But I was not super interested in that given the state of my knees.

We checked in to our quaint hotel, gingerly made our way to get some fish and chips, and then settled down to rest. The next morning, we slept in and then headed to some hot springs to soak our sore bodies. About ten minutes away was a place where you can rent a private room that has natural hot spring water pumped into a 8 X 8 cement pool. There were ample warnings to avoid submerging your head to avoid some horrible disease. But the pool felt really good after our hike the previous day. We left the springs feeling refreshed and walked a short, flat path to check out the other hot springs. I got caught up trying to take action shots of bubbling mud. I think you'll agree it was well worth my time.


The thermal pool was nice, hot, and smelled only slightly of sulfur.


Amoebic meningitis? And we thought the caves were an adventure. Here, we had to hold our heads above water for the entire 20 minutes!


I know--an amazing shot. This is one of about fifty pictures I took to catch the mud bubble action shot. Days later, I found the camera function for taking a series of photos.


Our next stop in Turangi was a winery, where we had some lunch and did some wine tasting. The food was pretty good and the tasting was interesting. Instead of trying a bunch of different types of wine, they had us try different vintages of the same grapes, which we had never done. A relaxing lunch in the shade on a nice day. Then, while our laundry dried in the sunny afternoon breeze, we took a stroll along the local river, where we watched some old guys fly fish and some young kids swim across the river. It was like a modern day Mark Twain book. I did a little bit of jumping on the trampoline because it was a novelty and then we headed to bed.


Roasted tomatoes and squash, mushrooms, sausage, poached eggs on toast. Simple but delicious!


Don't worry, only half of these were for Emily.


Hanging the laundry added to the small town feel. Emily also of course hung laundry, but the shot of her has my underwear in the picture. We only want so many pictures of my underwear on the internet.


The fly fisherman in the river was idyllic (though I'm not sure he knew what he was doing--he didn't look anything like Brad Pitt in "A River Runs Through It").


After a relaxing day, I was ready to jump on the trampoline. How many hotels would we be at with a trampoline? Well, one more in New Zealand.


The next day, we drove couple hours farther south to a town called Palmerston North, where we hit a mall and a city park. I have to admit that I like visiting malls in foreign countries because, to me, indoor malls are so closely tied to American teenage-dom. So, I like to compare them. But usually, as was the case in Palmerston North, they are pretty similar to the ones in America but with different chain stores. Oh well. Next stop in Palmerston North was a city park, which was pretty nice. It had a tiny train that people could ride, a botanical garden, where I saw pitcher plants for the first time, and a bird display with some native birds. I have to say that most birds endemic to New Zealand are a bit sad evolutionarily speaking, which is why they didn't do so well when man arrived. However, they are interesting looking sometimes (read "kind of ugly" until you learn to appreciate them), like with the Kea, a giant green parrot. Palmerston North was a nice little stopover on our way to Wellington, which was mostly a stopover on our way to the south island of New Zealand.


Look! A mall. It looks so . . . much like a mall in the US.


Giant Emily? Or tiny train track?


The kea was green and pretty large.


The next day, we drove to Wellington, where we grabbed lunch at a trendy cafe near the harbor that had terrible service but pretty good food. We also visited the city park, which we arrived at by taking a funicular up a mountain. There was a stop in the middle of the hill for the university, which I thought was cool. The view of the city from the top was pretty amazing and we wandered around the gardens. They had a hot house like Palmerston North, where they also had pitcher plants. But in Wellington, they were gigantic, and they also had Venus fly traps. I spent a lot of time looking at them. We also found the funicular museum interesting. I know what you're thinking: He just said that a museum about old cable cars was interesting--what a loser! And if you're not thinking that, but instead you are wanting to know more about the old funiculars, you are a total loser! But seriously, the museum was way more interesting than I expected. Funiculars are very clever engineering solutions.


Our brunch location wasn't too bad.


Relaxing with a view.


Carnivorous plant!


Huge carnivorous plant!


The old funicular had clever seats.


The modern funicular coming towards us.


Bare feet were more common than we expected.


Departing Wellington literally meant departing the north island for the south island, but is also represented, to me, our transition from the first half of our trip to the second half of our trip. The second half had events spread out, included longer drives, and had us staying in less populated areas. That was a little concerning, mostly because there would be a greater number of isolated areas where the Nissan Sunny could break down.

Our first step to getting to the south island, making the ferry on time, did not go exactly as planned. We were supposed to arrive at the ferry terminal with our car ready at 7:15 am or something like that. So, of course we set the alarm on a smart phone and an alarm on the iPad for the correct time. Both were still on California time. Unfortunately, our smart devices were a little too smart and adjusted for daylight savings that night. Even though clocks were changing in the US, they were not changing in New Zealand. Fortunately, clocks stateside were springing ahead so we ended up rising an hour early instead of an hour late, which would have been much worse. Still, we were a little grumpy that Apple had kind of messed us about. We made the ferry easily and were on our way to the south island where we would visit Abel Tasman National Park, a glacier, and fiordland.


The Wellington harbor an hour earlier than we wanted it to be.

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