Just south of the Coromandel, where the Bay of Plenty begins, there are lots of kiwi fruit orchards. (Note that in New Zealand, a kiwi is a kind of bird or slang for a New Zealander. The fruit we call kiwi in the US is always called kiwi fruit here.) I wish we had taken photos of the kiwi fruit orchards, but it was raining and we thought we'd see more. Kiwi fruit grow on vines that are stretched on wires, sort of like vineyards but on a larger scale and with more draping vines. I've never seen anything that looks quite like them. Below is a nice photo of Dave taken in Whakatane (pronounced Fa ka TAHN ee), which is near the south end of the Bay of Plenty.
This next beach is just south of Whakatane. That headland you can see in the distance is called the Eastern Cape. When we planned this trip, we planned to drive around that cape to Gisborne, on the other side. On the map, it looked like it might take four hours. In Whakatane we found out that it takes nine hours, more hours than we wanted to spend in the car. (This is typical of New Zealand. What looks like a short distance on the map often turns out to take forever because the roads are so slow.) So we drove across the mountains, the short cut to Gisborne. Those pictures of hillsides covered with tree ferns in an earlier post were taken on that road through the mountains. An interesting note about the history of the Eastern Cape. In the early days, before a road went around the cape, if people wanted to travel with horses and carriages, they travelled at low tide and drove on the beach as fast as they could, to travel as far as they could before the tide came back in.
We spent two nights in Gisborne in a cabin right near that beach you can see below.
Gisborne is the site where Captain Cook first set foot in New Zealand in 1769, the first known European to do so. His landing site is just below the hill we were standing on to take the photo below. In fact, as far as we could figure it out, he landed close to the place where all those logs are stacked up below us. I've written quite a bit before about lumber as a big export from New Zealand, which you can get a glimpse of in the photo below.
The beach near where we stayed was lovely. Dave got a big kick out of watching the people on the inflatable boat below practice surf rescues.
On the outskirts of Gisborne are lots of vineyards. The area is called the Chardonnay capital of New Zealand because most of the country's Chardonnay grapes are grown there. I'm sorry the next photo is blurry, but we were too lazy to stop the car to get a photo of something we found very amusing: sheep grazing among the grapevines. An easy way for farmers to keep the grass under control.
A little further up into the hills on the road going north from Gisborne was some gorgeous country.
Our next stop was Rotorua in the middle of the North Island a few hours south of Auckland. It has been a tourist attraction for more than a century because of its hot springs. The building in the photo below used to be the train station and it's now the tourist information center.
Another similar building is the old hospital/sanitorium where people with medical problems came to stay and partake of the hot springs. It was built more than 100 years ago, and is now the city museum. It was fun to see the old treatment rooms with their old fashioned bathtubs inside. The minerals in the water were so corrosive that the pipes were continually rotting out.
In Rotorua, hot springs are everywhere, as you'll see from the next photos. There's a faint sulphur smell everywhere in town, and a stronger smell near each spring. We found a hot spring in a gravel parking lot. It was a place in the ground where some water was coming up. The water was so hot you could barely touch it.
We left Rotorua and drove to Auckland, where I had an academic conference to attend at the University of Auckland and where Dave went sightseeing. One of his first stops was Devonport, a charming little village a ten minute ferry ride from downtown Auckland. You can see the city in the background.
The next photo was taken in Auckland, looking toward Devonport.
We didn't get a lot of pictures of the University of Auckland, which is an urban campus with lots of unremarkable buildings. (Since they are the chief rivals of the University of Otago, where I teach, perhaps it's good that I'm not waxing poetic about the campus.) Below is the iconic clock tower of the University of Auckland.
On the University of Auckland campus is a Maori marae (pronounced mah rye), a gathering place where ceremonies are held. There are many more Maori on the North Island than the South Island, so we saw many maraes on our trip.
We spent two nights in Gisborne in a cabin right near that beach you can see below.
Gisborne is the site where Captain Cook first set foot in New Zealand in 1769, the first known European to do so. His landing site is just below the hill we were standing on to take the photo below. In fact, as far as we could figure it out, he landed close to the place where all those logs are stacked up below us. I've written quite a bit before about lumber as a big export from New Zealand, which you can get a glimpse of in the photo below.
The beach near where we stayed was lovely. Dave got a big kick out of watching the people on the inflatable boat below practice surf rescues.
On the outskirts of Gisborne are lots of vineyards. The area is called the Chardonnay capital of New Zealand because most of the country's Chardonnay grapes are grown there. I'm sorry the next photo is blurry, but we were too lazy to stop the car to get a photo of something we found very amusing: sheep grazing among the grapevines. An easy way for farmers to keep the grass under control.
A little further up into the hills on the road going north from Gisborne was some gorgeous country.
Our next stop was Rotorua in the middle of the North Island a few hours south of Auckland. It has been a tourist attraction for more than a century because of its hot springs. The building in the photo below used to be the train station and it's now the tourist information center.
Another similar building is the old hospital/sanitorium where people with medical problems came to stay and partake of the hot springs. It was built more than 100 years ago, and is now the city museum. It was fun to see the old treatment rooms with their old fashioned bathtubs inside. The minerals in the water were so corrosive that the pipes were continually rotting out.
In Rotorua, hot springs are everywhere, as you'll see from the next photos. There's a faint sulphur smell everywhere in town, and a stronger smell near each spring. We found a hot spring in a gravel parking lot. It was a place in the ground where some water was coming up. The water was so hot you could barely touch it.
We left Rotorua and drove to Auckland, where I had an academic conference to attend at the University of Auckland and where Dave went sightseeing. One of his first stops was Devonport, a charming little village a ten minute ferry ride from downtown Auckland. You can see the city in the background.
The next photo was taken in Auckland, looking toward Devonport.
We didn't get a lot of pictures of the University of Auckland, which is an urban campus with lots of unremarkable buildings. (Since they are the chief rivals of the University of Otago, where I teach, perhaps it's good that I'm not waxing poetic about the campus.) Below is the iconic clock tower of the University of Auckland.
On the University of Auckland campus is a Maori marae (pronounced mah rye), a gathering place where ceremonies are held. There are many more Maori on the North Island than the South Island, so we saw many maraes on our trip.
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