New Zealand Diary, Day 15

Day 15: Springs & Steam
OK, admittedly this installment isn’t as steamy as the previous one. Let’s just start with brekkie, shall we?

DW and I ventured downtown, again, and this time bypassed the McCafé to find a more local place. We had seen a “Robert Harris Coffee Roasters” store the previous night, so we found it again and went in. It had a nice little self-serve cafeteria-style line, with hot selections such as pies and burritos, followed by cold selections like cereal and Danish. The patrons could bypass all that and order a cooked breakfast at the registers, which would be brought out to the table when ready. The real point of the place, though, was the coffee, which was very good. Most of the places, you may recall, made espresso drinks; Robert Harris offered those plus regular brewed coffee, of a quite delicious roast and blend.

Forgive me for waxing rhapsodic about the café. The best part of that meal was that we met a local man whose daughter lives in Florida. He loved talking with a couple of Americans, and he gave us some tips on other things to see in the Rotorua area. He was actually from Ngongotaha, a couple of km north of town on the west side of the lake. He told us of the Hamurana Spring, a which puts out around 1 million gallons per hour of fresh, cool water. It’s located a few hundred meters from the north shore of Lake Rotorua, and creates a river at least 20m wide–although not very deep–that flows into the lake.

The track from the carpark up to the spring goes through a small grove of redwoods. Around the spring itself is a fairly elaborate deck system, with one part that juts out so people can look directly down into the spring’s channel through the rock. As the track loops around the spring, there are a couple of places where, if you bring your cup like our breakfast companion suggested, you can obtain a sample of the water and have a taste. It is very good water, although not quite as exquisite as the gent had claimed, and just cellar-cool (around 50°F, 10°C), not fridge-cold.

I did take a photo looking down into the spring, but it basically looks like a wet blob, so I'm not posting it.

After visiting the spring, we took the alternate path back to the carpark to avoid the bulk of the people who were also there. On the way back to Rotorua for a forgettable lunch, we stopped by another place the gent had recommended, the Agrodome. We looked around and checked out the prices for the shows, and decided instead just to have a quick “Bo-peep” in the souvenir shop. We found the cutest little stuffed bird toys that, when squeezed, played recorded calls of the species they represented. We recognized a couple from our previous day’s hike. After stopping by the hotel for our water bottles, we drove back to The Redwoods, as we had planned, to walk the Yellow (Pohaturoa) Track.

Town & Lake

Look familiar?

The track began in the same way from the visitor center through the redwood grove, past the pool and up the hill. Shortly after it started up, it split off to the right to take us through a small saddle and then up the face of the hill overlooking the south end of the valley where the town of Rotorua lay. It led on upward past some erosion on the track to a summit, where a short path led to a lookout on the other side of the hill. This vantage point afforded a view of the lush valley between there and Lake Okareka, but we could not see the lake.

From there, the track went down through swamp gum and white oak forests, and more of the ubiquitous white pines. We came to a bridge over a small creek, but due to the recent rains the creek was now about 6 inches over the bridge. There was a young woman with two dogs in front of us, and one of the dogs was very hesitant to walk through the water. She had to fairly drag it across, while the other waited on the other side and watched. We gave her time to get across and head on down the track before we took our boots off. Thankfully the water was not too chilly, and my toes were not even numbed. Much.

There was a bit more up and down on the track, and it emerged onto a service road near a waste water processing plant, following the road on down to Long Mile Road and the visitor center. We had planned to visit there again to get some more information about something or other, but found it closed–it was after 5pm.

Back to the room to clean up and get on our evening clothes (clean shorts and T-shirt). Tonight we would eat at the Tandoori Palace, the Indian restaurant across Tutanekai Street from The Thai Restaurant. As it had been cloudy all day, and we’d recently walked through a creek, we decided to start with a hot drink, Indian Tea. It was very good, sweet, with milk. We got one vegetarian dish and one chicken dish to share, and enjoyed both the food and the people-watching.

The next day we had to drive back to Auckland and our airport hotel, so with tired muscles and full bellies we went back to the room, and were soon asleep.