Continuing South in New Zealand....

We are now in Wellington on the bottom of the North Island. Tomorrow morning we are catching a ferry (way too early I might add). We spent the last couple of days in the thermal wonderlands of Rotorua/Lake Taupo area in the middle of the bottom bit of the north island. I had forgotten to mention that in the park behind the hostel we were staying in in Rotorua, there were numerous thermal things. Some of them had boiling mud, others just steaming water. It is forbidden to walk in the park at night because they break through relatively randomly and you could fall into one that hadn't been cordoned off yet. Some are obviously old and have weathered wooden fences around them, others newer wooden fences and some just orange snow fences (these we took to be more recent additions to the thermal family...

Jacob was very impressed with the park the first time he saw it. On the bus the next day we went to a big pool of boiling mud with burps coming up all over it. It was about 50 feet in diameter. The kids were still impressed. In the afternoon we went to what Alan and I both thought was one of the coolest natural places either of us had ever been, Wai-o-tapu, but unfortunately the kids suddenly decided that they had come to the end of their geothermal ropes and refused to be impressed. They couldn't help but mention a few things were cool-- sulphur caves and lakes made of natural silica glass sheets built up over 700 years..., but generally they complained their way around the entire 3 km trail. At the end I was ready to hire a babysitter.... (none were available--sadly mum left us after Thailand). I must say that the web site link above doesn't even do most of the place justice.

We spent most of the day just on the bus today. The Magic Bus is pretty good usually for stopping every couple of hours at a scenic spot or a tall place for the crazy people to hurl themselves off. Today was more of a straight drive down from Taupo to Wellington. We did pass Mount Doom (or the mountain they used for it in the Lord of the Rings). Unfortunately there was some cloud around it and we couldn't see either of the two mountains beside it.

Tomorrow I am really hoping to see dolphins from the ferry, but I told the woman who said they would be there PLEASE not to mention it to the kids. They were totally bummed when we didn't see any of the promised dolphins on our Gulf of St. Lawrence ferry ride two years ago.