New Zealand – Australia Part 2
The 1,076 foot Sky Tower just outside our hotel in Auckland.
Never did get up there. People can SkyJump off it.
The next morning we are off to Waitomo to see the
glowworms in watery caves. Road art.
The sky looked ominous.
The Huntley Power Station is the largest thermal generation plant in New Zealand.
It is capable of generating 31% of the countryÕs electricity needs burning mostly natural gas.
Many houses were small but well kept and with nice views.
The people gate at Waahi Pā in Hamilton, NZ where King Maori Tuheitia Paki lives.
The auto gate.
We stopped at a small town for lunch. Maori culture was very strong in New Zealand.
The first white settlers treated the Maoris very differently from how Native Americans were handled.
Each figure in the totem was carved by a different Maori artist.
Another Maori totem awaited us at the entrance to the Waitomo caves.
The area leading to the caveÕs entrance was lush.
No photography of the glowworms was allowed inside the caves.
The countryside on our way to Rotorua.
Modest homes and everyone seemed to have a fence.
A colorful one of interesting design.
We saw many of these mounds in the middle of pastureland.
They are bedrock that would be very difficult to remove.
The geology of New Zealand is noted for its volcanic activity, earthquakes and geothermal regions.
It is on the boundary of the Australian and Pacific Plates, therefore lots of mountains.
After settling into our Rotorua hotel we were treated to a Maori dinner buffet.
Part of the welcoming ceremony required us to elect a chief. Guess who got the job?
Our meal was steam cooked.
After dinner we were treated to Maori song and dance. The big guy worked up quite a sweat.
Group members participated. Far left is our Globus guide for the trip, Roxy.
After breakfast the next morning we went to a Rainbow Springs Nature Park.
They had sequoias in their gardens as well as several bird species.
Red-Crowned Parakeet.
Duck.
Our guide talks about the sequoias. They are all young trees.
They had fish too. Trout are stocked in nearly all the lakes of New Zealand but they may not be farmed.
You cannot get trout in a restaurant. You can eat what you catch but there are daily limits.
Tuatara lizards.
And nice flowers.
The mighty Moas used to live here.
One of their most important activities is to increase the population of the native kiwi.
After rabbits found their way to the islands, aggressive hunters of rabbits were introduced
to kill them off but the flightless kiwi, who had no predators before this, were also killed off.
This group harvests eggs in the wild, hatches and raises the chicks and then releases them.
Stuffed examples. The real kiwis are kept in the dark.
Next we visited the Agrodome and learned all about sheep.
Here are the varieties grown in New Zealand.
Our entertaining host showed us how to handle and shear a sheep. He was very fast.
Then kids got to milk a cow.
And feed baby goats.
He demonstrated how sheep dogs work.
We then drove back to the Rotorua Lake and harbor. There is a sacred island in the middle of it.
The harbor area had many black swans.