Easter Holiday to Rotorua

We decided to head south to Rotorua for a four night camping trip during the Easter break. It worked out really well because I had just finished a set of night shifts and had five days off. The summer weather has extended well into the Autumn here.

I don't think they really have an Autumn or a spring as we know it in England. There is really only a summer and what they call a winter, but in reality it is more like an English Autumn.

We were warned that the roads would be really busy heading south for the Easter break and that we would need to allow loads of extra time for the trip. It is about 200km south from Pukekohe and should take anywhere between 2-3 hours to get there.

We left at three in the afternoon, which allowed us five hours to get there before dark. We ended up reaching the campsite by six. The journey was very pleasant and the roads were quiet. I spoke to a friend who had also made the trip and he thought it was busy! I guess that is the difference between here and the UK roads. I don't think they really know what a traffic jam is here!

A New Zealand Traffic Jam!

The town of Rotorua

Putting up the tent

Rotorua is situated pretty much in the middle of North island and there is a lot of volcanic activity in the area. It is famous for its hot pools and mud baths. Tarawera volcano overlooks the area and it had a violent eruption in 1886 which killed lots of people.

Boiling mud pool in the local park

Mt. Tarawera

And again form the other side

The town itself has a population of 65,000 people and is very clean and pretty. Rotorua lake is one of the main focal points and it is basically an old volcanic crater that has been flooded. The lake is very large and is about ten miles in diameter.

Hot pools at Lake Kairau

Rotorua is geared towards outdoor pursuits, therefore we were very interested to see what was on offer. There is the chance to do tandem parachuting, river rafting, power boating, tramping, mountain biking, adventure racing..........the list goes on! Needless to say, if you are an adrenalin junkie, then this is the place to visit.

We managed to visit the local Maori village, where we were shown the famous Haka by the locals. Quite intimidating when you see it close up!

Pronounce that one after a few beers!

Trying the Haka with the locals

Hmmmmm....been out in the sun for too long!

The ducks on Lake Rotorua

We also drove around Tarawera volcano and went up the Gondola to have a go at Luge racing.

The chair lift to get to the Luge

Charlie in the lead

Rotorua is a great place, although it does smell of rotten eggs! We will be heading back there again in the future. Our next trip will be down to Taupo in the Tongariro National park at the end of April.

Some Snaps of the Past 2 Months.

Port Waikato & Rangitoto

Rainbows End

Charlie in his new uniform. Happy 11th Birthday
Tramping on the Coromandel.

The family came to stay.

Here's just a few snaps of whats been happening over the last 2 months. For more info read our '2 month catch up' post.

2 Month Catch Up.

Sorry I haven't been on here for a while and updated the blog with all our news from sunny NZ. Things have been pretty hectic over here since January, the weather has been constantly great so we've found that all our free time has been spent in the great outdoors exploring the sights of this country (and getting a nice tan!) I've heard that the weather back in the UK has been pretty poor.

So here's a quick catch up of what we've been getting up to since I last posted anything on here..... At the end of Jan Cherry, Gary and Bill flew out to stay with us. They stayed with us for a few days then, along with Charlie, they did a week of road tripping around North Island before coming back to stay with us for another 4 days before flying back. They all had a great time and it was good to have them all here. They can't wait to come back again.
Charlie has now turned 11 and the day after his birthday he started at Intermediate School - big difference than primary but he is slowly getting used to it now. He had his new best mate over for a sleepover on saturday and they didn't get to sleep until 1235am sat night/sun morn!

Just some of the things that we've been getting up to over the last coupleof months in our spare time include Tramping on the Coromandel peninsula, going to Rainbows End theme park, taking the ferry to Rangitoto (Aucklands youngest volcano) then climbing to the summit and all around the island, going to Kelly tarltons underwater world to say hello to the sharks, going up the sky tower, a 90km bike ride out to Port Waikato and some more tramping in the Hunua range on a couple of routes that we hadn't done before. Charlie has still been busy with his swmming training and various galas - he also made it to zone day to represent his school against schools in the county, Hayley has still been constantly running and got a good time of 1 hr 43 mns in the Pukekohe half marathon despite the heat and I've still been trying to keep myself fit with cycling, running or walking between juggling my body clock with the shift work.

Obviously around all the fun we have to fit in time to work. Hayley has settled really well into her part time job, the hours fit great with our lifestyle. I have almost finished my PA (like a trial period) - I've only got one more thing left to complete before its all done. The work is great, busy but fun. Very different than policing in the UK (for those of you that I've spoken to by phone or email I'm sure you're getting the picture by now!) We are looking at a move further south once my trial is complete - we're hoping to look at moving somewhere between Aug - Nov time.

Well, Easter is almost upon us - I've been out here in NZ for almost 8 months now and Hayley & Charlie have been here for 5 months already. We're heading off on a camping trip for Easter to Rotorua so we'll put some snaps of our travels on here and an update of how it goes.

Hayley has been putting all our pictures onto the flickr website as its a great way to display all our pics - she's separated them up into sets so they are fairly easy to view. She'll keep doing that. You can visit the site at www.flickr.com/photos/hayleymarsh/
We are also both on facebook now too so thats another way to easily keep in touch.

Ok thats all for now - sorry its taken so long to update but we'll keep it back on track now.

All of us are loving it in kiwiland so far. There seems to be no let up to the summer at the moment, temperatures have hit the 30's with most days still around 25 degs at the moment. Awesome!