Fri Feb 3 (Buried Village and Redwoods Forest, Rotorua):

Rotorua Museum

The day dawned cloudy and cool.   Terri and I decided to drive up in the van with Martel, instead of biking the 20km or so to the buried village of Te Wairoa.  Robert decided to do his own thing and Fran wanted to go to the bike shop to get the verdict on her bike.

So in the end, only Eric, Jenni and Carole met us in the parking lot of the buried village.   The staff in the village are all in European 1890's dress since a British missionary and his wife settled in the area and encouraged the Maori to adopt European customs.  Prior to the 1886 eruption of Mount Tarawera that buried the village and the Pink and White Terraces themselves, the Terraces used to draw many European tourists to the area.

There's a small museum describing life in the village before the big eruption.  It also had some artefacts that had been retrieved from the buried village. Then we took the one-hour tour that took us through several half-ruined, excavated buildings of Te Wairoa.

On our way back, we stopped at the Blue and Green Lakes, which are only separated by about 50 m of land at their closest point.  Yet, as their names imply, the colours of their water look different.

Blue Lake (Rotokakahi)

Green Lake (Tikitapu)

Fran, in the meantime, had picked up her bike from the surly head mechanic who diagnosed the problem as a bent front derailleur, which they had supposedly fixed.  However, when she took it for a test spin, it was even worse than before.  Not trusting the original bike shop, she took it to the shop next door (Rotorua has eight bike shops, after all!).  That mechanic immediately saw that the front derailleur was set too high and the bottom bracket was loose as well!  After his work on the bike, the gears worked much better and Fran was much happier.

After lunch, Robert took Carole, Martel and myself via bike path to the Redwood Forest.  So we rode through mud flats where there were steaming pools of water and mud, etc.  Then we did a 45-min hike through the redwood forest.  The trees were planted just over a century ago as part of research to find the best-growing tree for commercial purposes.  The California Redwood was one of three species that did exceptionally well:  it grows at approximately twice the rate that the redwoods grow in California.

Robert

Mary, Carole and Martel

Martel in awe of the experiment that worked!