Tauranga & Rotorua

Tauranga is a nice coastal city in the western Bay of Plenty. It attracts a lot of tourists during the summer months but at the moment it's pretty dormant. Most backpackers over here are looking for work. The Bay of Plenty is the kiwi fruit region of New-Zealand so there is a lot of seasonal work over here and the harbor has a fish factory and a recycle factory. Unfortunately I came to Tauranga at a bad time. There was a major sports tournament going on for school children and every hostel in town was packed with kids. I had to go to the only hostel that had beds left and they also had 30 kids running around. 30 kids can make a lot of noise. But it's a nice hostel and I met some good people over here.

Tauranga itself has a lot of history. 1 of the 7 waka (ocean travel canoe) in which the first Maori settlers arrived landed here and there were lots of early Maori settlements in the area. A replica of such a canoe is on display in the city center. It's actually not that big, I find it hard to comprehend those first Maori traveled a few 1000 km of ocean in these canoes. Tauranga also was home to one of the first missionaries in New-Zealand. From here Archdeacon Brown christened the Maori tribes in the region, halfway the 18th century. He also taught them to read and write (Maori had no written language) and he learned them the newest agricultural techniques. But the Archdeacon will probably be most remembered because he tended the wounds of both British officers and Maori warriors after the battle of Gate Pa. That was a major battle in the land wars between Maori tribes who wanted to keep their land and the Crown who wanted to confiscate as much of it as possible. The Missionary house still exists and the garden around it is a weird mix of native trees and European pines and oak trees. I was delighted when I found out that Tauranga has a Belgian beer house but when I got there I was in for a disappointment. They only had Stella, Leffe and Hoegaarden. I'd rather drink dish water to be honest.

My last day in Tauranga I visited the neighboring city of Mt Maunganui. It's a beach side resort with a spa, long golden beaches and surf breakers. The city is named after the mountain that lays next to it. I climbed the mountain and from the top you have a spectacular view
 of both cities and over the Pacific ocean. On the way down I walked through a meadow full of sheep. There were lambs that couldn't been older than a few week (their legs were still to big for their bodies and they were all wrinkly) but still they were out there in the cold rain and heavy wind. They breed some tough sheep here in New-Zealand

After my stay in Tauranga I headed inland for Rotorua. This city is a big tourist attraction because of all the geothermal activity that can be seen around here. There are hot springs, bubbling mud pools and fume holes with sulphide gases coming out of them practically everywhere you go. Because of all the sulphide it smells like rotten eggs over there. This landscape is what Dante's hell must look like. Many names around there refer to hell one way or the other. Despite the smell many people came to live there. Maori used the hot pools and various mineral pools to cook food and to cure diseases or heal wounds. They even found use for the most toxic pools where they would bury their fallen warriors so the bodies wouldn't fall into the hands of their enemies. European settlers opened spa's here in early 1900, as was the fashion at the time. That's why in Rotorua beautifully carved Maori houses can be seen next to English garden and Victorian architecture.

You can see a good deal of geothermal activity in and around the city for free, but for the most spectecular stuff you have to go to one of the thermal valleys, 25 km out of town. And buses don't go there so I thought I would miss out on them. But luckily I could hitch a ride with 2 German girls who stayed at my hostel so I went to Waimangu thermal park. There you can see the Inferno Crater Lake. The lake steadily rises for a certain weeks until it overflows. After that it drops again to its lowest level and the cycle starts all over again. During the cycle the lake changes color from gray/green to bright blue.For a brief period in time Waimangu had the biggest geyser in the world. It would shoot water and rocks up to 400 m and that for up to 6 hours. But in 1904 the geyser stopped working all of a sudden.

The next day I went to a Maori cultural evening. It is quite the commercial affair, many busloads of tourists were dropped of in a Maori village (well, a Maori movie set rather) and it's not cheap. But it's the only way to see pre European Maori rituals and habbits. The show wa performed with lots of humor and the hangi feast (traditionally cooked meal on hot stones in a covered up hole in the ground) was tasteful. I got to see a fully carved war canoe in action, the tribes sacred cold water spring and some glowworms. I learned that glowworms aren't actually worms. They are larvae that can't take a shit so they burn their poop. But larvae-with-glow-in-the-dark-poop doesn't sound merely as good as glowworm and that's why they changed their name.

The last day in Rotorua I went to Whakarewarewa, also know as Redwood forest. It's called Redwood forest because that is easier to pronounce and because the forest was used as a test site for trees. In 1902 they planted over 100 tree species over there to see which species could be used for timbre production in New-Zealand. Most of the trees didn't make it but the Californian Redwood did exceptionally well. They even grow 3x faster over there than in their native California. Redwoods are giant trees that stand 70 m tall in the forest, between native fern trees and various other foreign trees that managed to survive. The walk through the forest was great, I fell like a little Hobbit wandering through an Elven forest and except for some birds and 3 mountain bikers I didn't see a living soul.
 

The missionary house in Tauranga

The garden of the missionary

View from Mt Maunganui (thanks to Eric, an American student, there is at least one picture of me)

view from Mt Maunganui (it rains a lot over here did you know?)

Watching the sun come up on the smokers deck in the hostel in Tauranga. I had to get up at 6am for this, but well worth it.

 

The Inferno lake in Waimangu thermal park

The Crater lake in Waimangu thermal park

Mud pool in Rotorua, the are actually very hard to take pictures of without a multi shot function on your camera

Sulphide fume hole in Rotorua

My Hangi meal. Chicken, lamb and potatoes. Yummy!

Redwood forest. This river looks chemical but I can assure you the water is as clean as can be. Rotorua is a weird place.

Redwood forest

Victorian style museum in Rotorua