Bay of Plenty: Surfing, Sailing, and lots of Sulfur

Two weekends ago (yes, I'm a little behind on blogging!) I headed northeast to the Bay of Plenty.   One reason was to take some windsurfing and sailing lessons I purchased online.   Another was to see my new American pal Amanda in Rotorua!

Bay of Plenty area is about a 4-5 hour drive northeast of Hawera.   Saturday morning was QUITE foggy and I attempted to climb Mount Maunganui.  On a clear day it may look like this: 

(kudos to nzmission.com for the picture!)

On the morning of my visit and hike, it looked like this:

So, as you can imagine, the view from the top was.... cloudy.  :(

I spent the rest of the morning doing some Christmas retail therapy in a town called Te Puke.  

Keeping in the spirit of food-driven towns, Te Puke is the Kiwifruit Capital of the WORLD!    Aw yeah.   So of course they have a HUGE tourist trap store full of kiwifruit parephenalia, including a gigantic climbable Kiwi photo op in the parking lot.

The afternoon it cleared up a bit, perfect conditions actually for my sailing and windsurfing lessons on the bay in a town called Tauranga.  I took some time before my lessons to play in the water and see some sealife...

What is the proper term for a group of snails? A school?  A slurry?

Due to the non-waterproofness of my camera, I have no shots of me windsurfing, but it was crazy fun!  I recommend you try it sometime.   MUCH easier than surfing.  You WILL get up on your first lesson!   Sailing was fun, too.  The wind really picked up by late afternoon and we were really cruising!

Me and my dinghy for the afternoon :)

Saturday night I drove an hour south of Tauranga to visit my new American friend Amanda!   We met on the Bay of Islands cruise 2 months ago, and she invited me to see the awesomeness of her town.  She lives in Rotorua, a town of about 60,000 (big city for my small-town self these days!).  Rotorua is known for its geothermal activity.   The town is FULL of neato thermal pools, geothermal vents, and bubbling mud pools.  It's only downside is the nasty rotten-egg smell, from all the hydrogen sulfide emissions.  You do get used to it after a while, though. :)

Here's some pics of a public park in the middle of town.  Steam and mud bubbles everywhere!

Sunday we went to the "Thermal Wonderland" known as Wai-o-Tapu (meaning "Sacred Waters" in Maori).  It cost a few bucks to get in, but SO worth it! 

First we saw Lady Knox Geyser.   Kind of disappointing that they have to dump a soap material in it everyday, but then the mix of the soap plus natural hot/cold chambers inside make it erupt for over an hour!   Mini Old Faithful, I guess.

The ground beneath the park is a system of streams which are heated by magma left over from earlier volcanic eruptions.   This super hot water (300deg Celsius!) absorbs minerals out of the rocks and moves up to the surface as steam, then deposits the minerals on the rocks on the ground, creating beautiful colors of green (ferrous salts), orange (antimony), purple (manganese), white (silica), yellow (stinky sulfur), and red (iron oxide).  

No touching!  Very hot stuff :)

These are called Bridal Veil Falls.   No active water falling here, but beautiful formations!

This is called Frying Pan flat.   Very deep, wide craters form as the acidic steam rises and dissolves the ground above, ultimately causing it to collapse.   I love the reflection here!

Here's another steamy crater.

Here is Sulfur Cave.  As hot sulfur gases rose, they deposited as the yellow stuff on the inner part of the cave.   Yay for chemistry!

One of my favorite formations was Champagne Pool, the largest spring in the area.   It was formed 700 years ago by a thermal eruption.  This pool contains gold, silver, mercury, sulfur, arsenic, thalium, and antimony!!

Check out the crazy colors!

It's named "Champagne Pool" because of its bubbles!   Here's a closeup of the carbon dioxide bubbling to the surface.  Incredible!

Probably the most insane crater is Devil's Bath.    When the excess water of the Champagne Pool mixes with sulfur and ferrous salts, it turns into THIS!

Holy Bright yellow green!   Can we say "pool of slime"?   Craziness.   The color varies between green and yellow depening on how much reflected light and cloud cover is above.  Amazing!

Then Amanda took me to the mud baths.  No, these weren't baths to play in.  They were full of super hot bubbling mud!    I got a few photos of the bubbles in action.

Glub-glub-glub!

 PLOP!

 BLUB!

It honestly sounded like a witch's bubbly brew!    Maybe I should ask Santa for a camera with video capabilities so I can get this all on film with sound to post on my blog!

After all this mindblowing geothermalchemical amazingness, Amanda took me to some secret roadside thermal pools that you could sit and soak in!  So basically, pull over on the side of the road, change into swimsuit, tiptoe down the bank, and wade into a warm stream!   Very awesome.  And free!

Despite its stinky smell, Rotorua is a pretty amazing place.   And it was fabulous to hang out with another American chick and share stories on what we miss from the good ol' US of A....

Until next time, cheers from the town you smell before you see!



Kiwi Cuisine Part 3: Cookies, Scones, Paua

Houston, we have a problem.

I've discovered New Zealand Girl Scout Cookies.   And they're delicious.  And, in typical Girl Scout cookie fashion, somehow the entire package VANISHES in a mere 2 days.  :)

In other high fat goodness, I finally was able to try a "World Famous Eltham Cheese Scone".  Eltham is a cheese town, complete with tons of farm and a cheese factory (Interestingly enough, the Cheese Factory was one of our changeover points on the Round the Mountain Relay.)   Just this spring, the town set the Guiness Record for the World's Largest Scone--- topping the scales at 121kg!  (that's 266 pounds!  and 1982364928319839 calories) :)

Tasty cheesy fatty goodness! Yum!

In a slightly healthier food udpate, I tried some paua!   As I was removing a mole on a patient of mine, we were chatting about what he likes to do.  He said he had been "paua-ing" earlier that day.  I grilled him on everything paua-related, and as I was putting his bandage on, he said "Would you like me to bring you some?"  Of course I accepted!  The next day he showed up with a bag full of freshly caught and shucked paua!

They're blue green and slimy when fresh.

All my nurses gave me different suggestions on how to cook them, but I just tenderized the heck outta them with a fork, lightly coated them with flour and pan fried them.   TASTY!

And as a bonus, he gave me the shells, too!  How beautiful.

A Kiwi Thanksgiving

The leaves may be falling off the trees in PA, and the temps are finally under 100deg F in AZ, but it continues to get sunnier, warmer, and drier here in NZ.... just in time for Thanksgiving!

To celebrate fall, I hoped to make my mom's delicious pumpkin cobbler recipe.  Two main ingredients of it are canned pumpkin and yellow cake mix.    After a frustrating 2 hrs and three grocery stores here in Hawera, I couldn't find either ingredient.    The stockpeople looked at me like I had three eyes when I said "canned pumpkin".  Sadness!

However, after a little venting through social media (Thank you, Facebook!) a week later I received a package from a lovely friend with both ingredients inside!!!   I decided to attempt a pumpkin pie instead.     Yesterday (Thanksgiving), I stopped at the grocery store after the gym planning to just buy a pie shell and head home to bake.   While strolling the aisles, I got a *little* homesick for a Thanksgiving meal.   Then the shopping spree began!    And within 2 hours, I had shopped and prepped a mini Thanksgiving feast!

I invited my Kiwi tramping buddy over to enjoy the grub.   The only turkey in the grocery store was ground turkey meat, so Turkey Meatballs it was!!

And here's the obilgatory pumpkin pie, made with pumpkin shipped with love and generosity from Ohio, USA.  Thanks, Abby!   I'm taking the pie to work today to share with my coworkers.   :)

Giving thanks for all the support and love from my blog readers!
Happy Thanksgiving to you!

She'll Be Runnin' Round the Mountain!

You know that mountain I tramp on all the time?  Well this past weekend was the "Round the Mountain Relay", a 150 km (93 mile) relay run around the whole Mount Egmont!

With my original team falling through, I ended up being an extra member on a 5-person team from Wellington.  The rules stated that teams need at least ten runners, but these guys had orginally hoped to be hardcore and do it with only 7.  At the last minute they only had 5 people, so they were happy to take on some extra help (aka me)!

These guys were quite organized- they had rented a van and reserved a lodge near the start/finish.   They invited me to participate as little/much as I wanted to.  So I was brave and decided to spend the entire weekend with them!!

The lodge was quite awesome.  It was eco-friendly and ran on wind/solar/water power only.  It had a huge treehouse complete with a flying fox zip line, which of course we had to try out.

Whee!

The race started at 2:45 am, so that left about 3 hours for sleep on Friday night.  It was pitch black outside but the starting line was bright due to all the headlamps, taillights, and reflective vests. 

And they're off!

The run had 21 legs, all of different lengths and difficulties.  My teammates were quite hardcore runners, so I requested the shorter/easier ones.  I ran legs 3, 10, and 15 on the map below.

I began my first leg at about 3:45 in the morning.  What a rush to be running on the road in the dark, with only the light of your headlamp (and a tailight of a person in front of you, if there happened to be someone there!)

Here I am finishing my first leg, and Peter taking over (and some spectator wrapped up in a blanket!)...

Since we started at 2:30 (and were awake since 1am), it seemed like forever until sunrise.  But when it finally came, the mountain looked beautiful!  

We were quite awesome at the changeovers.   Here's Peter ending and Alastair (our fearless captain!) starting...

 (note the sogginess.  it was drizzly/windy most of the afternoon).  So much for a pretty mountain view.

In total I ran about 16 km's (all the other guys did MUCH more!).  I learned it's quite difficult to pace yourself, because you want to give it your all each time, but then you have to remember you have to do it again in another hour or so!

My last leg was the toughest.   But I made it!

I did the least of the hard work, but these guys powered through, especially at the end, and we finished the whole shebang in 11 hours and 50 minutes.   Ninth place out of 51 teams!  Not too shabby.

Here were are, right after running the last 100 meters to the finish together as a team!!! Soggy, tired, but happy.... and eager for some celebratory beverages :)

To Steve, Peter, Alastair, Dave, and Alex--- thanks for a fabulous weekend!  I couldn't have asked for a more diverse, hilarious, kind, adventurous and not to mention SPEEDY five men to run around the mountain with!

Spirals, Stairs and Elevators

The plan for last weekend was supposed to be to do New Zealand's best one day hike- the Tongariro Alpine Crossing.   Food was purchased, accomodation was arranged, bags were packed--- but the weather on the mountain didn't cooperate (winds to 70km, rain, snow to 1000meters--- um no thanks!).  I was quite bummed, but once we got exploring the area other than the Crossing, it ended to be a fun weekend!

The town is called National Park, and 460 people live there.  It's about 3 hours from Hawera, via Wanganui (more about Wanganui later).   There are plenty of shorter tracks and sites to see in the town.

Like Tawhai Falls...

And Taranaki Falls..

And Linzunderthe Falls....

And Linzontopofthe Falls!

(yup, that's me up there!)

New Zealand loves to tribute food items to towns (ie Manaia and its bread). Here, the town of Ohakune (a few km's from National Park) claims itself to be the Carrot Capital of New Zealand.

Another neat site near National Park is the Raurimu Spiral.  If you're at all interested in engineering, you'll love hearing about this!    In the 1880's, folks were trying to build a railway from Auckland south to Wellington (the two biggest cities of the North Island).  In the center of the North Island, the steep slopes of the volcanic plateau created a building snafu.... it was nearly impossible to build a reasonable route (without a huge detour) over those mountains.   In 1898, RW Holmes solved it... with a Spiral!

This may be hard to understand just through pictures (and no play by play explanation with pointing), but here we go.  Below is a model of the spiral in the Ohakune visitor centre:

The whole shebang is actually (from top to bottom) one complete spiral, then thru the tunnel, down the left side, then a hairpin turn.  This engineering masterpiece creatively tackles the 433 foot elevation change here, much too steep for a standard train track.

Right now, the commuter train only goes through once each direction daily, and we were fortunate to be there when it was descending down!

Here's the hill of the spiral in the distance:

 Look close and the colors in the middle are the train travelling counterclockwise around the spiral, into the tunnel.

 Here's the train again, exiting the tunnel heading L->R towards the hairpin turn:

 At this point we ran down the steps of the observation deck, SPRINTED for the car, and zipped on over to the Raurimu station to see the train up close!

Some people are tornado chasers--- I guess this classifies us as train chasers :)

In other fun steep climbing things, I spent Sunday in the town of Wanganui, about an hour southeast of Hawera.   The town is based on the Wanganui River, and a canoe race was going on that day.

On the other side of the river is Durie Hill, which is home to the Durie Hill War Memorial Tower, seen below.

Durie Hill can be climbed one of two ways:  a walkway with 191 steps, or a ride on NZ's only earthbound elevator.   Guess which one I did?  Both!!

I trekked UP the stairs for a huffin, puffin workout.  
You can then climb the two dozen extra stairs on top of the Elevator's machinery tower for some decent city views:

Machinery Tower

Next climb was the 176 steps of the War Memorial Tower (109 feet tall!):

From the tower lookout, some more awesome views of Wanganui City and River, and beyond!

So, back to the Elevator--- I took it back DOWN the hill, but I'll share my photos in reverse to pretend you took the elevator UP the hill :)

Durie Hill elevator--- NZ's only public underground elevator!

 Built in 1916.   You first approach a loooong lighted (but still creepy) pedestrian tunnel cut into the hill....

(Trust me I was looking over my shoulder the whole time!)

 At the end of the tunnel, you reach the operator's room (green) and the elevator shaft (red).  Ring the bell, the operator comes out of her room, opens the gate, you pay her a gold coin, and she gives you an elevator ride of 66meters... all underground through the Hill!   Neat.



After all those stairs, I was ready for a break.  I headed to the Botanic Reserve, found a sunny patch of grass, and relaxed in the sun by a small pond.

Although the start was nasty, fortunately the weekend ended with some sunshine.  Hopefully the next time we plan to attempt the crossing the sun will cooperate for the ENTIRE weekend!

Here's hoping the skies stay as blue as the water for all my future adventures!