This is my mom-in-law birthday! Happy birthday, Mommy!
First day to begin our great Kiwi road trip, we were so
excited and feeling great! I tried not to spend time to sleep inside the car,
just wanted to stay awake to see how beautiful the landscapes of NZ are. It was
a sunny morning with 15°C outside. We waved goodbye to the family, and watching
both Lydia and Annie to walk til the main gate waving goodbye to us. Our car
slowly disappeared from their sights. I know it was such a bitter feeling
because of our short stopover in Auckland! Don’t worry we will come back again,
definitely.
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| Goodbye Auckland! Till we meet again. |
From Northcote, we passed through the Auckland Harbour Bridge
and entered the State Highway (SH) 1. As we cruised down the motorway, the
scenery gradually changed from the suburban view to the green farmlands. We
saw lesser cars on the road while making our way towards Rotorua. The green
countryside and the Waikato River come into view just before the Huntly town.
We continue pass through some lovely farmland and bush. The lush greed paddocks
of dairy farm accompanied most of our trip before we enter Thermal Explorer
Highway/SH 1 + 5 from Hamilton city. We didn’t stop at Hamilton due to
time constraint, but from the guide book introduction, this city has a population
of around 15,000 and is carved in two by the Waikato River – the longest
river in NZ. The Thermal Explorer Highway combines of scenery of farmland, lake
land and forest. Halfway through the Thermal Explorer Highway, we know we are
close to Rotorua when we smelled the sulfur from the geothermal steam. It was
about 1230PM and total time for driving spent: 3 hrs and 30 mins from Auckland.
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| Scenery along the SH1 and SH5 |
Tonight we will stay in BK’s Rotorua Motel, at Victoria
Street. Mommy made a quick lunch for us, and we geared up to visit this city. Rotorua is famous for its
geothermal and active volcanic field, as well as its cultural experiences. It
is deemed as another Queenstown in North Island which offers plenty of extreme
outdoor activities. The city is sited on the southern shore of Lake Rotorua, which was formed
from the crater of a large volcano in million years ago.
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| Left: One of the bedrooms; Right: The BK's Rotorua Motel |
NZ is so famous of her sheep wool industry and farmland,
and there is no doubt we get to experience this from our visit to Agrodome. We watched the world famous
sheep show, visited the woolen mill and shearing shed. From there I know that
the best wool is from the Merino sheep, followed by Romney, Corriedale etc. I
wasn’t an agriculture geek so not really into some of the explanation, and I spent
most of my time to observe those sheep. They are so cute!
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| Top left: Sheep show; top right: Sheep shearing show; The rest: pictures of different types of sheep |
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| One of the farm tours - to see how the shepherd dog do its work to chase the sheep |
After the farmland tour, we detoured to the Agroventures,
just minute away from the farm. If you are opt for some extremes, this place
does offer a range of fun activities from bungy jump, freefall, swoop and
agrojet. Many of these games aren’t available in Queenstown, especially the
Zorb – rolling downhill in a plastic ball! Well, we are not into this kind of
adventure but the landscaping of NZ.
Our next place of interest was to see the panoramic view
of Lake Rotorua and the city. We took the Gondola ride (cable car), and
tried the luge – a fun filled gravity ride on a three-wheel cart. At first we hesitated
to go after we saw the winding track built on the hillside. But after we tried,
we just so regret that how come we bought one ride only! We explored the 4 km thrilling
and scenic luge track. From the top of hill, we took off downhill and through
some twists and turn, we able to see some very beautiful landscape of Rotorua
until we reach the redwood forest. At the bottom, we rode the chairlift back to
the top of track.
We did a short walk around the Skyline and as usual,
photography time.
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| Panoramic view of Lake Rotorua and downtown from the Skyline |
Before we return to motel for dinner, we enjoyed the hot
mineral bathing in adult pools of Polynesian
spa. This day spa is located at central, overlooking the Lake Rotorua.
Probably because the hot pool too
“strong”, I passed out after immersed myself for 30 minutes in the hot bath. It was kind of unconsciousness, and I thought I was just too tired and need a short nap, until my hubby and the rest of family came to wake me up. Thanks to one of the staffs there, she actually spotted me first before any of our family knew about this. Well, bad experience because I haven’t try all the different pools there. What was the most funniest part is that my father-in-law thought I must be too hungry, so quickly hand in money and ordered me to go out have some food first. Yeah, it was quite a panic, for my hubby. =)
“strong”, I passed out after immersed myself for 30 minutes in the hot bath. It was kind of unconsciousness, and I thought I was just too tired and need a short nap, until my hubby and the rest of family came to wake me up. Thanks to one of the staffs there, she actually spotted me first before any of our family knew about this. Well, bad experience because I haven’t try all the different pools there. What was the most funniest part is that my father-in-law thought I must be too hungry, so quickly hand in money and ordered me to go out have some food first. Yeah, it was quite a panic, for my hubby. =)
Ok, very long and detailed post. Hope you won’t get bored
by my writing.
See the rest of the posts about this Great Kiwi road trip
2 comments:
bored? naa.. it was interesting post!
more pictures!
arGh!
you rented a vehicle there?
Yes Richard, we rented a 7-people seated van (Toyota's Estima). Thanks for support, more to come, but will need more time to select the photos because is packed with works these two weeks.
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