Into wine country, geothermal activity and Maori land

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After a long drive via a couple of towns to the Tongariro national park we really appreciated the privacy of a double room with ensuite!!!! Luckily recovered from Belmont, the next day we managed a fantastic hike in a good time. The Tongariro Crossing is one of the best walks in New Zealand. Its just 16km long, but with a 750m steep ascent. A very harsh wind at the top prevented us from doing an extra detour up Mount Ngauruhoe. So we finished with a few hours to spare and had luckily followed advice to pack our books! The scenery is fantastic, through alpine scrub, old lava flows, crater floor, geothermal areas, emerald and blue lakes and virgin bush. The mass of different colours we saw were quite astounding and we were left with that great sense of acheivement at the end! From here we drove to Taupo and had a packed day of visiting 'Craters of the Moon' an area of mud pools, craters and steam vents, Rapids, waterfalls, a prawn farm, a bee farm and the best bit, going on a Jet boat ride and getting soaked!

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Onto wwoofing place number 3.... Oruawharo Homestead in Takapau. The house is the 2nd largest privately owned home in New Zealand and we certainly felt as if we'd landed on our feet as we drove up the path! We were given our own double room with king size bed (complete with electric blanket) and ensuite bathroom! They also had a gym room which Lizzi could use every day!! The house as well as being a family home is used for functions such as weddings, and does lunches, morning, and afternoon teas by prior arangement. There are plans for a truffiere once the soil is at the correct pH, a 'Tower of Babel' and a Yew tree maze. We got stuck into all sorts; painting a shed, photography and the production of brochures on the house, spraying, woodcutting, cleaning out the chickens, cleaning, and helping at the lunches. Lizzi got the chance to experiment with cooking in the AGA and Nick got to practise on the tractor and put scaffolding up to play on the roof! We spent most of the time at the house as we were so happy there but also managed to find time to do a bit of wine tasting and visit the towns in the area. Hawkes bay is one of the best producers of wine and apples in New Zealand and the main town, Napier, is built in Art Deco style after an earthquake severely damaged the town in 1931.

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Leaving Oruawharo and heading north from Napier, at an altitude of over 585m is Lake Waikaremoana. Following advice from the information office we planned a walk called 'Lou's Lookout' as our stopping point so as to avoid driving around the lake on unsealed roads. Easier said than done when someone had taken away the sign from the layby of where to stop, meaning than we ended up driving around the lake looking for the place anyway! The walk itself was worth it but the drive certainly wasn't, going downhill on the skiddy unsealed roads wasn't much fun and at one point we had to get ourselves out of a ditch on the side of the road. With no time for anything else we headed onto Gisborne our stop for the night and a very welcome bottle of wine! Exploring Gisborne we walked into a brewery where we were greeted with tankards of free beers and a personnal look around. Gisborne is famous for its Chardonnays but we had to pay for wine tasting in Gisborne itself which makes it less fun. We did however talk our way into the back of a small winery and get chatting to the wine maker there, to see how he measures the levels of sugar and alcohol in the wine and control the wine making process. You must take a degree in wine making for this job and it is highly thought of in this country.

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A very rainy day abandoned our hopes of a gorge hike so we drove north for hours until we reached Tauranga a really pleasant, fast growing city. To work off the boredom we went swimming, but Liz's Raynauds played up and gave such bad cramp that she couldn't make a fist for nearly 2 days! Our hostel here had a great name 'Just the Duck's Nuts'!

Getting up too late to join the kiwi fruit pickers we opted to climb Mount Maunganui instead. An extinct volcano, which is more of a steep hill than a mountain but the views of the coast were lovely. From here we drove to eggy Rotorua and transformed ourselves into full-on tourists!! Lizzi got the chance to do 'Freefall Xtreme' body flying, which is like sky diving but without the plane. Nick had plenty of fun watching and filming it! Next stop, cheesy Agrodome, where we went to the sheep shearing show, Nick volunteered to go on stage to feed a lamb, and although the whole thing was cheesy and touristy, it was good fun! Being in the centre of geothermal activity we visited 'Hell's Gate', one of the many areas where you can get up close with large steaming sulphurs pools, bubbling mud pools, etc. however, like many things in Rotorua, it had put its prices up, making this an expensive place to visit. To save money we saved our spa experience for back at the hostel, that had its own natural spa, which we enjoyed in private together with a glass of wine under green lighting! The next day in Rotorua was spent exploring the town and visiting the 'Buried village', a Maori settlement buried by ash from the eruption of Tarawera in 1886, which also destroyed the famous 'Pink and White Terraces', previously considered to be one of the natural wonders of the world. The pinnacle of this trip was the Hangi that we attended. A Hangi is a Maori feast cooked in an earth oven; being a tourist event we also had a formal welcome, Maori cultural show and bush walk, where we spotted glowworms. Nick was honoured to be the Chief, which meant that we were given preferential treatment and front row seats! Nick's job was to accept the peace offering, provide a speech on behalf of everyone, lead a song and perform the Hungi (nose touching) with the Maori chief.

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It was back to Oruawharo Homestead for us for another week, this time we made lots of fires, and so Nick had more practise on the tractor, the reason for doing this is to clear all the wood from the fallen branches and trees and to help the woods to regenerate. Lizzi also attacked the vege patch and fell over countless times trying to pull up giant cabbages and stubborn sweetcorn!  There was an Australian tour party staying including 80 year olds still able to manage to climb the biggest mountain in the Tongariro park and more lunch parties.

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For our wedding anniversary Nick decided on a trip to the Mission winery where we had a historic tour, tasted the  wines (for free of course!) and  sat out in glorious sunshine with picturesque views, drinking coffee and eating the biggest chocolatiest brownie we had ever seen.  After treating ourselves to a massage in Napier and a picnic in the park, the plan had been to do a small hike up one of the local peaks but felling too relaxed we opted instead for the aquarium and oppossum world.  We then made a fantastic discovery called 'Vibra-train'  this is a type of resistance training, where you can have the equivalent of an hour and an half in the gym in 15mins which we got to try out for free.  (Ask us if you're interested, we're converts!) and rounded off the day with a drink in a spanish bar before heading back o the house!  All in all a good day!  Unforunately it was soon time to leave Oruawharo, but not before 80 people in 2 coach parties had to be fed lunch on our last day, leaving the washing up and heading onto Taupo and Auckland to sell the car.