NZ Adventures 8: Rotorua

After a fall she took the day before, Dolly and Gene decided they wanted to rest and not come on the last group adventure together.

We decided on Rotorua. When we got there it was pouring. The one day we had a massive amount of rain during NZ’s supposed “rainy” season.

We decided to play mini golf. As with any game where math is even slightly involved there’s no point in aiming to win, instead the goal becomes beat Dan. I managed to do it on one hole – I got a lower score! Don’t let this fool you too much though – I probably got double or triple Dan’s score in the entire game!

With as much rain as was coming down, we were basically mini golfing out of small lakes. Holes like the one below were almost impossible.



The group after spending a good hour or so in the rain.



After getting entirely soaked, Dan and I decided to go down the hill in a Zorb. It seemed like something that should be a bit scary, but I was surprised at how not scary it was – it was like going down the hill in a huge water slide.



There we are!



After a morning of zorb-ing and mini golfing it was time for lunch. We ended up at a weird part of town in a little strip mall with a meat pie shop, sushi shop, Subway (there were TONS of Subways in NZ) and Domino’s Pizza. I was firmly against Japanese food when I could eat so many things that I can’t get in my tiny town. So we chose Domino’s.

Domino’s had a deal on for two large pizzas and some sides. As Americans, we were quite surprised at how small the large pizzas were.



Rotorua is a hot spring town. Luckily, after lunch the weather cleared up so we were able to walk through a hot spring park and enjoy the much warmer weather – and slowly dry off.



So much steam!



I wasn’t missing Japanese Onsen too much until we found the hot water pools for soaking your feet. After a cold, wet morning a soak in the onsen sounded kind of nice.





I liked the signs on the garbage cans. Isn’t the penguin cute?



This was a super-forest-y bit of the drive on the way home.



The next few photos are for all of you Lord of the Rings fans . . .





The sisters hanging out outside the information center/gift shop.



Unlike Japan, I hadn’t felt the need to take a photo of the bathroom until I found this sign.



On the way home an absolutely gorgeous sunset broke out. It was a bit of a challenge to capture the light as I saw it, but Dan managed to stop the car at the perfect time to get it exactly as we were seeing it.



Look at all those light beams.



Dan and I decided we needed to make sure to get a picture of sheep since the sheep population is larger than the human population.

They posed perfectly for me – I wondered if they were sheep models.



When we got back to Paeroa, we thought we’d better do the last of the tourist things we hadn’t done yet and get our photos with the enormous L&P bottle.



Then it was dinner time. We went to a fun pizza shop where the guy almost has more hats than wall space.



I got ginger beer. Probably a year ago I wouldn’t have liked it at all, but a friend here has gotten me hooked on honey-ginger for tea in the winter and it felt so good on my throat that I’ve recently found myself really liking ginger things. This was DELICOUS.



I got Spankopata for dinner. I think it’s Greek, but it was delicious and so full of garlic that I probably could have kept vampires away for a week – but I haven’t had anything with that much garlic in a long time, so it made me really happy.



After dinner, it was back to pack for our departure from the B&B the next morning.

One last adventure

When H, R and I realized that we were going to have one last weekend adventure together, we decided to plan to do something a little bit more epic than usual. We decided to aim for the islands Teuri and Yagishiri, off the coast of Haboro, Hokkaido.


View Larger Map

Friday night, I picked H up from the train station and we crashed at R’s house for the night.
We had a lot of fun laughing as the last of the preparations were made before bed.



Saturday morning it was raining, so we decided to take our time and not rush out to the islands.
Since we decided not to hurry, we thought we might try to see some famous wetlands in Uryu-cho. As we drove down the tiny, one lane, gravel road, we came upon a bear. It was a baby and we were in the car, so it wasn’t very scary, but it was quite exciting because we all had heard bear warnings, and kind of wanted to see one, though we didn’t want to get hurt.



When we got near the area for the wetlands, we discovered that we would have to hike in and none of us were dressed well for that, plus the people coming back were wearing bug nets. With H’s allergic reactions to mosquitoes, we decided it was a good idea not to go down the trail, but to just go see a small waterfall.




As we continued our drive for Haboro, R and I decided that we wanted to stop at every Michi-no-eki along the way. Michi-no-ekis are a cross between a rest stop and a town information center. Most of them have cool local products.

In Hokuryu, we found a michi-no-eki with sunflowers and dragons.



I ate the sunflower seed ice cream. It was pretty yummy.

Our next stop was in Obira, to get a photo of their welcome sign, complete with a dinosaur head. This stop also resulted in a new pair of kitty shoes.



Next was a stop at the oldest building in Hokkaido and it’s michi-no-eki.



H decided to have a lick of ice cream.



And was surprised when her tongue actually landed on the ice cream.



That night we decided with the rain that had been coming on and off, that it would be  good idea to stay in Haboro and head for the islands the next morning. We stayed in a nice Youth Hostel.

On Sunday, we got up fairly early for breakfast and our boat ride to Yagashiri.



On Yagashiri, we had a nice walk in the rain and a peek through the oldest building on the Island – it used to be a place to stay, a bank, a post office and a shop. Maybe the first shopping mall?

We also saw some sheep and upon finding out the population, decided there were likely more sheep than people, and thus deemed Yagishiri the New Zeland of Japan.



This post is turning out longer than I thought. So, I’ll continue our island adventures in the next post.