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our last day in Rotorua was spent at the Agrodome which is a sort of sheep show and farm experience in one.  with various extreme sports round the corner to keep everyone amused.

the day started with an excellent edutainment show where we learnt all about different varieties of sheep and cows and sheep dogs.  there was quite a multinational crowd and we were four of only a dozen or so genuine kiwis (see how i described ourselves there!)

after the show (which was very touristy, but very good) we got in the back of a tractor pulled trailer and were dragged round the farm to look at and feed various animals

 

i’m not a great animal person so i stayed on the trailer when the girls got off to feed sheeps etc.  however i wasn’t safe as this long necked sheep thing climbed up to join me, pulled off the lid of the spare food and had its fill.  then a normal sheep followed it up and joined in.  meanwhile this chap jumped off the other side just as the farmer lady came along thus framing the sheep !  This happened twice whilst i was standing up there, so i think she was suspicious i was causing the kerfuffle rather than the brown long necked sheep thing.

it was good fun even though i’m not selling it very well.  we also got to see some more kiwi plants and drink more kiwi fruit wine.

after that we drove round the corner to watch bungies jumpers and zorbers.  we were going to have a go on the zorbs but it was very expensive just for 2 minutes rolling down a hill so we gave it a miss.  we’ll be back though.

and this isn’t a real giant dog.

once we’d seen all that the agrodome had to offer us we headed to our last night of holidaying in a motel in Tauranga, back near where we stayed the first night.  we tried to find the town centre but failed, but then succeeded.  there was a giant tooth on a roof to prove it.

finally, here’s a katydid on the wall of our motel.  this last motel was nice and warm as it was heated by thermal waters, which also filled our private spa pool on the veranda.  it wasn’t quite warm enough to stay in too long, but jane and i braved it briefly.

 

here are some more photos:

 

and the google map view:

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another day another jumping, scurrying wee beastie in the house.  at least we know that new zealand has nothing too vicious.

this time it was a cricket zooming about in the garage.  each square is half a centrimetre wide so you can get a bit of an idea of the size.

 

esther caught this one for me after all the palava last week with the cockroach in the bathroom.  crickets are much nicer, although more jumpier

you can tell it’s starting to get a little colder here now as the insects start to find their way indoors.

this website is getting to be a great help in identifying the strange things we see around and about

it’s interesting to compare the cricket above to a cicada which also make a lot of noise and were the sonic soundtrack to the summer.  this picture is from over christmas one morning when i saw one warming up in the morning sun on top of a fence.

esther had her first day back at school in yonks today.  quite a few of the boys who had been on the school camp didn’t turn up as they were worn out from camp.  the school said kids could skive if they wanted (so i guess that’s not really skiving).

And jane’s put up the notice board that she asked me to do 6 months ago, but never quite got round to.  she’s done a great job though !

 

i managed to get us 4 tickets to see a mini-concert by the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra.  They were a freebie as thanks for subscribing to have the NZ Herald newspaper delivered to the door.  we applied and got some

it was a great nearly two hours of music with lots of background info on the music and how it was being played.  we all loved it.  the audience was mostly old people but that was funny as well.  (the picture at the top was just after we’d been let in to the Town Hall which is why it looks so empty both on and off the stage.

The town hall also has some famous toilets which are nice and Victorian.  just like the ones we visited in Scotland last UK summer.

I’ll now hand over to jane who will tell you about school camp.  The pictures below were taken from the window of a law firm which i visited at lunchtime for a talk.  note the rather large boat in the harbour parked up by the fuel storage area (rather than the wharf for some reason – possibly because it’s too big to fit in the proper boat parking area)

 

 

I spent the morning at camp again. I was on orienteering for the 3rd time and the on the “Scream Machine”. This is where you are clipped to a rope which is suspended from the ceiling and there is another rope attached, which a dad whirls round at high speed, which makes you swing round at high speed and scream. Actually, I was just crowd control for this one, which was quite easy as the children were so tired by then. Esther really enjoyed camp and so did I.

 

we had a great idea for our last full day in rotorua – we got up early, went back to the Redwoods forest and did a big stomping 2 hour hilly walk before breakfast.  this was the view we were greeting with after climbing a big hill.  we sat here and ate our tim tams. Tim Tams are chocolate biscuits named after a horse that won the Kentucky Derby in 1958.  interesting hey ?

from our biscuit paradise we viewed te puia which we’d visited earlier in the week.  the picture above is of the seats where i overheated my bott, and where the geysers pop out.  neither geyser is going in this picture as it made the picture too steamy.

here’s another ponga. and here’s my well earned breakfast

now, new zealand has a really cool thing.  artists paint the street boxes (you know, those green metal boxed you see all over the place).  i don’t know whether it’s an official thing or not.  i tried to ask this chap but he had his headphones on.  we drove past later in the day and he’s progressed this picture really nicely.

after our brunch (the walk took a little longer than expected) we went to the Rotorua museum.  you weren’t allowed to take pictures of the statues, so here’s a shadow instead.

it’s a really interesting museum set in an old spa/hospital type thing where people used to go and receive the waters. some of them also got electric shocks and other strange treatments.  ultra violet rays for baldness for example.

here’s a book about a popular mannikin.  there was also an excellent mirror science exhibition thing which we played in for ages.  i’ll post those photos separately.

after that we went and did a spot of crazy golfing.

it was quite a small course and had lots of mice running round which wasn’t too pleasant.

but it was all jolly good.

i worked from home today as jane was at school camp.  she sounds like she had a great time and esther is having a whale of a time (not literally – they are in land a bit, unless one has swum up the river to the water hole, which apparently contains eels, but no whales as far as we know).

 

i successfully followed jane’s written instructions and got kezia to and from school successfully.  Warren from up the road popped round for a coffee in the afternoon too which was nice.

jane came back in time for tea then went to bed exhausted (she’d been supervising air rifle shooting as well as various other things) and has now gone out again with Warren’s wife to meet some choristers in Burger King.  Nope, i didn’t understand either.

(photos are from a couple of weeks ago)

jane had read in a guidebook that there was a really lovely local red wood forest, so after breakfast we headed over for a stomp

this ended up being a two hour stomp up to a fantastic view point which i seem to have avoided taking any photos of !

along the way we got to see lots of information about native trees including this which i think is a ponga, or ‘silver fern’ the leaf of which is proudly worn by the all blacks.  and by the way, it’s a prime contender for a flag if/when NZ finally dumps the queen !

here’s an interesting fact – as the leaves drop off they make a nice little sheltered ’emergency hut’ underneath.  keep that in mind next time you get stuck in a new zealand rainforest.

 

this is a local beastie we found in a geocache

and it’s the first forest i’ve been in which smelt of peppermint.  we kept getting whiffs of it all over the place due to the white peppermint trees.  very strange

after walking round the forest for ages we then went and walked round the 3d maze for ages.  jane and i versus esther and kezia.  jane and i won of course.  after all they are only kids (!).  but it was a very close thing.

we took it nice and slow whilst the girls ran around like mad things.

and that i think was the end of day 7.  i think we might have gone in to town for a bit of a wander as i seem to have taken lots of pictures of shop mannequins !

one thing we did do each evening was play a game of pictionary.  which was jolly good fun for all the fambily.

esther went off to her camp this morning.  she got a lift with a friend so we can’t say how she settled in.  but she was very excited about spending time with her friends and doing activities.  hoorah.

kezia was back to school and had a good day.  she’s been given a topic on pollution and the sea and has already started work on it.  as it was just the three of us this evening we went to burger king for dinner (just the thing for my upset stomach) and came home to eat Pavlova

Like many other countries, New Zealand claims to have invented the Pavlova.  It’s ‘kiwi as’ apparently.  Kezia was reading a story called Pavlova Palaver which contained the recipe they used to make it. 

i’ve been off work sick today with the stomach upset i’ve had all weekend.  i attempted to watch lord of the rings, but it’s a bit long isn’t it ?  so i skim watched it and i don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that after 3 hours it still didn’t actually end.

jane’s helping at camp tomorrow so i’m in charge of getting kezia to and from school.  see ya

it was the last day of the easter holidays for the girls today.  this fortnight seems to have gone on forever and the weather is still really nice and warm (walking outside in the day is still t-shirt or light jumper weather).

 

i was at church 7am to 1pm doing sound this morning (usual mixture of gremlins making it as challenging as ever unfortunately).  then, after lunch, we headed over to our local beach Long Bay.  This time we headed south ‘up and over’ the cliff to do a couple of geocaches.

at one point we saw this sign so thought we’d give it a go.  at the bottom was a deserted little beach which only revealed itself during the low tide.

we had a bit of a wander about, watching out the tide didn’t come in.  there were some great trees precariously dangling on the to cliff

then we climbed back up to do another geocache.  which we failed to find.  but we did meet some other cachers who were very nice and did another cache with them just up the road.

and on the way back to the car we saw this really weird plant so we stopped to inspect

and it was only then that we found it was also covered in funky caterpillars

i’ve no idea what the plant is.  this spiky mini-balloon things were quite intriguing

 

it turns out the caterpillars are for monarch butterflies

they seemed to be directional.  i guess to confuse predators and photographers.

 

anyway …

 

we did see a monarch butterfly today across the road from where we live.  we went across to an open home which was for sale – I think jane’s mentioned previously that this is what people do at the weekend.  we weren’t just being nosey neighbours though (honest).

in fact this was the nicest house for sale we’ve seen so far – and i’m going to go along to watch the auction in a few weeks’ time to see how much it goes for (and how auctions work).  All good preparation for if/when we eventually think about buying somewhere

and in other news we found this on our walk.  it’s a little bivvy bag tent type thing in a bush. 

for those in twyford it reminded us of Pongo Stonks tent in the corner of Lodge Road near the Chocoloholics place.  there used to be a tent in the scrub land there and the girls (jane included) made up a story of a chap called Pongo Stonks who lived in Brogoly, Brogoly Park with his wife Pongolina and their dogs Poodle Popkins and Poodle Wadge.

anyway it looks like the Stonks have followed us to New Zealand which is nice.

here are some little oysters

don’t stand on them with bare feet though folks as they’ll cut you and you’ll get infected and have to have your leg amputated (maybe)

here’s a small crab

i’m still feeling a bit crook, kezia’s back to school tomorrow and esther’s off to camp.  (nearly) back to normal life again.

we decided to do a stomp round a bit of Rotorua lake before breakfast so headed over to the aptly named Sulphur Point for an interesting, but pongy, walk.  we saw lots of rare birds who like to nest round there but i’ve forgotten what they are.

there was all sorts of interesting other stuff like ‘cameron’s laughing gas pool’.  very apt for all the UK politicing at present perhaps ?

anyway, we made it to a lovely cafe for breakfast where we managed to get a discount as we had some vouchers.  nice.

then it was off to Rainbow Springs which has loads of native birds and trees and things.  And also rears young kiwis.

you weren’t allowed to take pictures in the kiwi hatchery area, but you can see some of the pictures of stuffed kiwis in the slide show down below.  as part of the hatchery tour you get to go in to a room which has three kiwis in their little enclosures, so you can sit and watch them.  they are quite amazing things.  And the tour guide was really funny for his strange vocal quirks (ask Jane next time you Skype her!)

Rainbow Falls itself has a cold water spring under it and you get given a plastic bottle when you come in (if the lady remembers) so you can fill your own.

 

kezia improvised.

once we’d learnt all about trees and birds and things we then went up to the road to the nearby luge.  everyone we know recommended that as a family activity so we had to do it.

there’s a couple of pictures in the slide show below but these were taken on the gondolas on the way up and down.  we had two zoom downs each on the luges and all enjoyed it.  although i didn’t particularly like the chair lifts that brought you back up from the bottom of the luge track

 

 

then we went home, had tea, and then went back to Rainbow Springs for the night opening.  you probably can’t make it out as it moved, but here’s a kiwi sitting in front of the camera in the darkness in its outside pen (the ones from earlier in the day were inside).

then it was back home to our increasingly chilly accommodation as the nights were starting to get colder

i know you like looking at pictures of the girls, so here’s some of esther and kezia being amazed and laughing

 

 

here’s the slide show:

here’s an aerial view of the luge track

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