Tauranga, NZ - February 8

Tauranga, NZ - February 8

We woke up this morning just in time to watch our entry through the reef and into the harbor in the Bay of Plenty. Hapag Lloyd's Europa is already docked (they were in Auckland with us too) so we spin around and dock with our stern to theirs. We had nothing planned here except to wander around the town for a while, but Jim went down to the information center and said they had some interesting tours. We ended up booking an all-day tour in a semi-private car with one other couple which would take us through the countryside to Rotorura for a visit to a Maori village and the thermal springs. It was a great trip, we thoroughly enjoyed the other couple; they had just boarded in Auckland so this was their first tour of the trip and our guide, Carolyn was good too..

We traveled through several small towns and much agricultural area – mostly growing kiwi now, but a lot of cattle too. Where are the sheep?? We had a quick stop at a kiwi place to see how it is grown (much like grapes) and tasted several different kinds of kiwi, slices, juice and wine... all good, but I've always liked kiwi.

When we arrived at Te Puia we did a quick walk through the old village that showed how the Maori lived a century ago and then went to a cultural performance. The meeting place is called Te Whakarewarewatanga o te ope taua a Wahiao.  It was interesting and the singing was excellent. After that we walked to the Geysers and Ngamokaiakoko mudpools areas which was what I was most interested to see. It's not a huge area, but there are several geysers, one shooting about 90 feet up, so it's pretty impressive; it continued to discharge the whole time we were there. There are hundreds (thousands?) of small vents throughout the area that steam and you can hear the gurgling down inside. I probably liked the mud pot area best and had a lot of fun trying to capture some of the mud blurps with the camera.

We took a different route back to the ship so we saw even more of the countryside and had a stop for lunch at a small restaurant overlooking a lake – altogether a great day. My foot is a bit sore, but I made it! After a quick shower to get rid of the sulfur smell I decided it would be a good idea to get off of it for the rest of the evening... so I mostly read. A little before 9:00 we passed an active volcano on our port side but it was really getting dark so it was difficult to see much, but you could see the puffs of smoke/steam coming out of it. That was all for my day... I was asleep shortly after 9:00.