Kerri's favorite beach

Piha, surfing paradise west of Auckland,

And the Kitekite falls hike

Giants

On our way home we passed a few giants...We saw this black boat sailing into the harbor and tracked it. It was about 4-5 times bigger than Dave's boat and it docked next to a sister white boat about the same size. Wow!


The Kauri tree is the biggest trees in this hemisphere, and the most ancient. They are huge but unfortunately many were cut and lumbered in the early 1900's. A few remain, this one was listed as 800 years old.

Sledging river

This the sledging river, we returned to it the next day so we could get pictures of the area. You hike down to the river on an extremely steep path,, climb over the fence area, climb down the rock and then jump in the river. The area is full of caves that they used to lower the women and children over the tops of the ravine to these caves where they would hide and live for periods of time when the different tribes were at war. The war-time philosophy was that if they could kill the women and children, the enemy would naturally die out. By the time white settlers landed on the south end of the island, many of the Maori's had killed each other off. The original settlers were up at the Bay of Islands because of whaling. It was very interesting too, though our guides were not pure Maori's, they did speak the language. They also said a rather lengthy and heart felt prayer before we got in to invoke the good will of the Gods so we could have a great visit to the river. It really was a good experience.

Dolphin Watch, Bay of Islands

We left that area, which is about three hours south of Auckland, picked Dave up for his 3 day weekend, and headed to north about 3 hours to the Bay of Islands. We stayed their one night and got up early to try and swim with the dolphins. The law states though that if there is a youngster with the pod, we can't get into the water. Well, I think that if you watch a pod long enough, you are going to see a youngster, which we did. So they took off through the bay looking for another pod but we did not find one. They gave us a little
tea break on one of the islands where we hiked up the hill to a sheep pasture...it was extremely windy but fun.

Hiked up to this hill top

Horseback Riding

then we went horsebacking through a beautiful ranch, passing through a herd of young cows. The rancher had just sold his sheep and bought a bunch of
young cows to begin a dairy farm, the staple of this country, exporting dairy
products. They are very protective of their dairy business.
and we love the ice cream cones.!



And we ended the day in the hot steaming baths here in the land of volcanoes also. It is hard to imagine how these people have survived throughout the years here when they are surrounded by non-steaming, volcanic mountains.

Sledging

Well, what more can I say. The next morning we were picked up to go sledging. I climbed into a van full of 20 somethings, but they in fact were going rafting, Ker and I were the only sledgers. We each had a guide. Near the end of our experience, I told my guide he should be proud of us, we thought we would be a disaster; he responded by saying they had thought so too. But we did good! You jump in the river on your sledge and off you go. What a blast.

Tamaki Village

The influence of the Maori's is reawakening here. The youth want to recapture the language but the biggest Maori population is in Rotorua. Families stay together and they have "marketed" their culture into cultural nights. The chief, here on top, is born into the chief role, father to son. The second guy is the warrior in the musical presentation, their voices were spectacular. I wanted to bring them home for American Idol. We also learned from the village historian/carver that they cannot move into their homes until they have the carved history of the family on the eaves of their homes, as seen in the museum.
The historian is one of the most important people in the village. He told us the history of the south pacific islanders as they populated the different islands; they are all related. I asked him where they came from originally and he told me the story "from the bible" how Nephi came from Israel, corrected, the land of Abraham and crossed to the south American area and then migrated to the islands. He said a few times that you can read about Nephi in the bible. He says some people think they are from the Amazon area but they believe they are from farther north in the Mexico/Central america area. I told him that he was telling me the Book of Mormon story...which he did not know. I wish I carried BofM's around with me!

Rotorua Wild Life Preserve

HA! Kerri thought she would photograph this big daddy
hugging his close friend and he tried to attack her. What a
roar! She about dropped the camera and ran and then remembered the electric wire and fence separating them. We also saw some cute alpacas, local deer and some wallabys. One little guy had escaped the cage was trying to get back in. We tried to pinch his bum to help get him back through the fence,but we couldn't quite get it done. There were two on the inside trying to pull him through too, but I think he spent the night outside repenting for his disobeying mom and dad.