By Jen.
By this time, we had chosen a shipper and found out that we could drop off our vehicle for shipping the next week. So, we just had a few days to spend until we had to prepare the van for shipping. First stop for spending some time was Hamilton, the lovely city in the center of the North Island. We stopped at the Soldiers Memorial Park.
The paddle steamer, Rangiriri.
The main reason that I wanted to stop at this park was to see the paddle steamer, Rangiriri. This ship was ordered by the government to be used during the Waikato wars, but arrived too late to see any action. Instead, it spent its days transporting goods and people up and down the Waikato River. It was left abandoned after running aground over 100 years ago, and thus is in a pitiful state. But, it had some interesting features during its day, including a secret weapon. This secret weapon consisted of a series of pipes with holes that when a lever was pulled could pour out scalding clouds of steam along the sides of the boat!
Walking along the river provided views of interesting artwork.
We also made a visit to the Waikato Museum, another wonderful free museum in NZ.
From Hamilton, we thought we should make a visit to the infamous Rotorua again. Upon arriving, we found too much of it to be expensive tourist traps, so we ended up just heading to Rainbow Mountain. This is a colorful volcanic mountain with a walk to the summit. It has cooled in recent years, allowing vegetation to recover, but it still has hot spots. In fact, as you walked, you could feel the temperature differences.
It still has steam vents.
Fun colors.
From the summit, you could see a typical NZ highway and why you have to go so slowly on them.
Because I missed my own cat, I decided to go to a cat cafe there in Rotorua. It wasn’t quite as fun as I had imagined (the cats are more interested in each other than you), but it was still pretty fun.
Then, to do something different, we went to a really nice restaurant for lunch that specialized in using native ingredients. It was very tasty.
To finish off our travels in NZ, I really wanted to observe the night sky and have some southern constellations pointed out to me. So, we made our way to Whakatane, where they have a small observatory that was going to be open Friday night. This meant we had 2 days to spend here.
We went to the museum, where they had some interesting local artifacts.
We visited a cave that was once big enough to accommodate 60 people, but has since filled in.
We made a visit to the top of the hill in Whakatane where you can see out to the surrounding islands.
Whakaari/White Island, chain-smoking volcanic island with a nefarious past.
Finally, that night at 730pm, we visited the observatory. It was a bit slow to start, but it only cost $15 per person, and we got nearly a private examination of the stars through a stellar telescope. I learned how to identify Scorpios, Centaurs, the Southern Cross, and the celestial south, which is not conveniently marked by a star (unlike in the north).
The night sky.
Then we made our way to Tauranga to get the van prepared for shipping, a multi-day process.
