Auckland and Tauranga

We’re across the Pacific and enjoying New Zealand for a few days. As we expected, weather has cooled, although I doubt our friends and family will feel too sorry for us. We’re experiencing low 70s with a lot of wind.

Our first stop was Auckland and we chose to figure out public buses and go to the Auckland Museum. What a treat! They had some really interesting sections, such as a special exhibit celebrating the 60^th anniversary of Hillary’s conquest of Everest and the sections on WWII, volcanoes and natural history. But they’re best known for their Maori collections.

The Maoris’ arrived in New Zealand as part of the great Polynesian migration, probably from the Cook Islands.  You can imagine their arrival—it’s cold, they don’t have adequate clothing and their seeds don’t grow in a temperate climate. They were a belligerent bunch and promptly murdered several of the first European’s  (Abel Tasman) crew. They were kinder when the ubiquitous Captain James Cook arrived 100 years later. They also warred constantly among themselves and spent a good deal of energy warring with the Brits, who, as you can imagine, did not deal quite fairly with regards to land.

Pictures 1 and 2 show details of a Maori Marae, or meetinghouse. The carvings were spectacular and covered the entire interior of the building. Many carvings show warriors with their tongues out, like the close-ups in Picture 3. We were told they did this to intimidate their enemies. Now we know what Miley Cyrus is doing…. Picture 4 is a not-great picture of a Maori canoe—not great because there was no way we could get a picture of the whole thing. It’s 50 meters long and carried 100 warriors, who rowed on their knees. The canoe is designed to slope to the center, where one non-rower bailed with a bucket!

Picture 5 shows us leaving Auckland—beautiful city, beautiful day!

Our second stop was Tauranga, which is becoming a large shipping port that rivals Auckland. This part of the North Island is known for its geothermal activity. The most famous spot is Rororua, which we have visited before. So we decided to go to Hell’s Gate, which is also known for its geothermal activity and was named by George Bernard Shaw when he visited the Maoris’. The quote is something like “Egads! This looks like the gates of hell!”

Hell’s Gate sits over a magma spike that is only 2.5 km below the surface of the earth—that’s really close! It was held in check by a large lake that covered the area to a depth of about 100 feet. Suddenly the natural dike that held the lake back broke 10,000 years ago and the entire lake flowed into the Pacific Ocean. Without the weight of the water, extensive explosions occurred and opened all these geothermal areas.

Pictures 6 and 7 show views across some of the geothermal pools. Temperatures range from approximately 40-120 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Celsius is the boiling point).  Picture 8 shows a close-up of one of the mud pools, bubbling away. Picture 9 shows a fumarole, which is that black hole in the middle, where steam escapes from below the surface.  The yellow substance on the rocks is sulfur, which escapes through the fumarole as gas and solidifies when it meets the air. We saw one area similar to this that was all black instead of yellow and our guide told us that this was the result of fire. Spontaneous combustion occurs when solid sulfur reaches a temperature of approximately 120 degrees C. Who knew?????

All the geothermal activity creates a lush plant environment near the openings. Picture 10 shows a group of Ponga (fern) trees.

Following our morning hiking through all the geothermal stuff, we retired to a catamaran on nearby Lake Rotoiti for lunch and a sail. It lacked the extreme scenery of the morning, but was lovely, as you can see in Picture 11.

On our way back to the boat we drove through the agricultural heartland of the North Island and saw how kiwis grow, as shown in Picture 12. They grow on vines that are trained up, as shown. When long enough, the vines are laid on trellises and look much like grape vines.

Another great day in the country where there are more sheep and cows than people! By the way, with the declining price of wool, there are more cows than sheep. On to Wellington and Nelson….