McCrain's
in Middle Earth
A travel dialogue of our adventures
in New Zealand
In February 2004, Jim and Kathy McCrain began a five month oddessy in New Zealand. Kathy was transferred to Auckland for a temporary work assignment, and Jim followed her for moral support. (Isn't he just the greatest husband?)
What follows is Jim's account of this adventure.
Rotorua: Thermal Capitol of New
Zealand
June 12, 2004
Kathy
and I took a trip to Rotorua, New Zealand this weekend. Rotorua is known
for several things, but chief amongst them is the enormous hot springs
and thermal areas in the region. Only three hours southeast of Auckland,
this area is home to literally hundreds of hot springs, hot pools and
lakes, mud pots, boiling pots, and geysers.
We didn't expect there to be as much diversity and abundance of thermal
features as we found. The area is very reminiscent of America's
Yellowstone National Park, although on a much smaller scale.
The thermal features found in both places are very similar. The only
two things that make me like Yellowstone better is that Yellowstone
has more of everything, and they are all in one 
location. In Rotorua,
all of the different thermal features are located on private land, so
a separate"entrance fee" is charged at each location. That
can get quite costly if you want to see a lot of them!
Of
course, there are more things to do in Rotorua than just visit the thermal
areas. Kathy and I like to go hiking and we both love trees, so we spent
a good portion of our first day walking through more forests. Imagine
our surprise when we found a grove California Redwood trees!
Yes, you read that correctly! There is a very large grove of California
Redwoods growing in Rotorua. They were planted in an experimental forest
back in 1864. Surprisingly, they really "took root" and grew
amazingly fast. It has been proven that these trees grow at a rate three-times
faster 
than in the United States. When Kathy and I first got to the
forest, we could smell that old familiar smell that only comes from
the floor of a redwood forest. It was like "a little bit of home"
during our stay in this country.
After
visiting the redwoods, we hiked around a couple of lakes. Blue Lake
is smaller than Green Lake,
but they are both very beautiful. The trail around Blue Lake is gentle
and well-graded. The trail around Green Lake is rough, un-tended, over-grown,
and steep. Still, the views that we got from both trails was worth all
of the effort. And then we saw Lake Tarawera.
This lake was 
enlarged (not formed) by the eruption of Mt. Tarawera
in 1886. During this eruption, several Maori villages were buried and
lost. Over one hundred people were known to have perished, and an untold
number were also lost. Several of the villages were never found again.
But the resulting enlarged lake today offers some spectacular views,
as well as a number of very tall waterfalls.
It was a very busy and tiring first-day in Rotorua. Little did I know at the end of the day that there was so much more to come!
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