The first was the “Polynesian Spa.”  This spa pipes in water from the hot springs of Rotorua into seven different mineral pools.  These pools are high in alkaline and acid making them good for skin and muscles.

Later in the evening we attended a Maori cultural demonstration, which included a traditional “hangi” — a meal cooked in a pit either by the Thermal energy of Rotorua or by the heat from extremely hot stones.   The cultural demonstration was really fascinating as they demonstrated tradional weapons, instruments, and the war dance known as the “Haka.”

Happy Birthday honey!  I love you!!

The steaming pits in Rotorua are truly fun and captivating to watch — and it’s so neat to think that heat is coming up through the earth’s crust and boiling water.  In fact, locals have even figured out how to heat their homes with what they call “geothermal heating.”  The neat thing is that these steam pits are all over town, some used for commercial places (like the Polynesian Spa), some used for heating homes, and some just for public enjoyment in local city parks.

Here are some pictures (and even a couple of videos) of our first few days in Rotorua.  More to come as we finish out our time here:

One of the highlights of the past few days was taking a city bus out to the One Tree Hill area.  One Tree Hill is located inside a large park (Cornwall Park) in Auckland and was originally a volcanic peak.  Many Maori tribes trace their history to this area (since it was both a fertile area and a defendable location).  The area was later owned by Sir John Logan Campbell and was then donated to the people of NZ toward the end of his life.  We enjoyed our walk here, not only because it was a nice day, but also because we took the “path less traveled by” and cut through an active sheep pasture to get to the top.  The sheep sure gave us some funny looks, but for the most part ignored us invading their pasture!

On the walk to One Tree Hill, we also noticed a large facility called Alexandra Park which described itself as a “Trotting Club.”  Our guess was that it was used for horse racing (since that is very prevalent here), and since the sign said “Every Friday, Free Admission” we figured the time and the price were right.  After grabbing an incredibly generous portion of chinese food for a total of about $6 USD for both of us, we headed to the horse races.  We were a bit embarrassed to have to ask simple questions, but the locals and workers were friendly enough (as most kiwis are) and explained the whole system to us.  We stayed for several hours, betting $1 on this or that horse, and ended the evening only about $10 USD lighter for the evening of entertainment and beverages.  Another reason that we enjoyed this so much was that there were absolutely no tourists.  It was mostly older men and couples who come for the inexpensive dining, very social atmosphere, and reasonably priced entertainment.

We spent a few days in Wellington which is NZ’s capitol and is located at the southern end of the north island.  While in Wellington we visited the Te Papa museum.  We continue to be really impressed with how hands-on the museums are here.  There is so much to see, smell, touch, and interact with.  It’s a teacher’s dream museum.    We also took the cable car up to the top of one of Wellington’s hills.  On the way down, we decided to walk through the gardens.

While in Wellington we wanted to make sure we took a tour of the Parliament buildings since Wellington is the capitol of New Zealand.  It was very fascinating.  We especially enjoyed meeting the Speaker of the House.  Dan even got to shake his hand and have a conversation with him!  He was interested in our travels.  After taking the tour, we spent some time watching the Parliament in session.  The first part we watched was unlike any other governmental hearings we’d ever seen.  Well . . . actually it was similar to the energy level put out by the show Judge Judy.  The members of parliament (or MPs as they are called) had a one hour opportunity to question one another and while they were answering one another we heard nearly all of the MPs shouting things such as “get your facts straight” or “you know that’s not true.”  After this one hour questioning session it turned back into the calm proceedings like you see on C-SPAN.

Dan knows he has a tendency to get motion sick so he took some medicine as a precautionary measure, but I didn’t take anything since I don’t normally have a problem.  The ride started out smooth and we were enjoying our conversations on board the boat, but then we started to see and feel the boat go up and down as we crashed into the waves.  We could even see the water splashing the sides of the windows of the ferry.  Now . . . before you start thinking that this was a small boat let me clear that up — we were on a large ferry (large enough to have many cars stored on board and large enough to have cafes/stores/etc.), so to see the water splashing as high as our windows was a surprise to us and to our stomachs.  It was so rough that the stores had to close down in order to tend to the sick passengers.  Luckily neither of us got sick, but we were too close for comfort for several hours!

We are now making our way back up north, so we decided to take the Tranzcoastal train up to the North part of the South island today.  The train started in Christchurch and made its way up to Picton.  It was a fun (and cheap – about $25US) way to get there.  Along our journey we went through 21 tunnels and traveled along the coastline for several hours (hence the name Tranzcoastal).  It was also a comfortable way to travel for several hours since we could get up and walk to other cabins in the train and we even had a cheap lunch on board.

When we got to Picton we walked around the town for a while.  We were overlooking the harbor and remarking what a beautiful day it was when we turned around and saw black skies!  On our way back to our hotel it started to snow.  Yes, I said SNOW!  We couldn’t believe it.  All we could do was laugh (and try to walk quickly back to our hotel).

Our next destination was Christchurch.  We ended up making it a pretty quick trip (mainly because it’s a big city that seems a lot like any other big city).  Despite it’s name, “Christchurch,” the city is really more about shopping, bars, and nightlife which isn’t really our thing.

We visited the cathedral in downtown Christchurch which seems to be what the city was built around.  The church gave us a lot to think about after our quick visit inside, but probably not in the way you may think.  You have  to go through the gift shop in order to exit and it seemed a shame that they were selling so many tourist items at the church (including trinkets such as gold penguins).  It reminded us of the instance in the Bible (Matthew 21) when Jesus gets upset and turns over the tables of the money changers and those buying and selling in the temple.  While it is good that many people come to visit churches such as the one in Christchurch, we continue to ask ourselves if God would want all of the commercialization.

We’ll attempt to add the video we shot to this post as well.