Auckland - Rotoroa

My first blog! Well, Jess and I are having a great time! We flew into Auckland two days ago. Air New Zealand is bomb. Great food. We spent the first full day wandering down to the warf, then over to the Auckland Domain ( doesn't that just sound cool?)

The Auckland War Memorial Museum was awesome! We spent a while in there exploring the history of the native Islanders who inhabited NZ, as well as the geographical layout and some interesting rock and fossil displays. The third story of the museum is entitled Scars on the Heart. This is the area dedicated to WWl and WWll. This was by far my favorite museum ever. Then we checked out some indoor garden.

I really love it here. We spent the one night in Auckland, and the next morning we jumped onto the Kiwi Experience bus. Our driver is awesome. He points out all of the interesting things along the way and makes the driving fun. The countryside is diverse with a mix of the dense native vegitation and the grassy farmland that the Europeans introduced. There really are TONS of sheep. Lots of sheep. I like them. The hillsides look so peaceful. Yesterday ( our 2nd day) we drove to Hot Water Beach. The weather there was drizzly. The wind on the beach was roaring, but the temperature was really not that bad. We walked out onto the beach a little ways and dug our toes into the sand and before long we could feel our toes start to burn... .many people had dug little baths for themselves. Fun fun.

Today we drove to Waitomo. On the way we stopped at Karangahake Gorge. This was fun. We hiked along a trail above a river across some hanging bridges, back around and through some old mining tunnels complete with the tracks. Very interesting. And just a beautiful walk. After that we made it to a little town with tours out to the hobbit hole hills where they filmed Lord of The Rings! We did not do the tour, but we did take photos with Gollum....

We are travelling with HEAPS of English youth. They are very fun and it adds to the cultural experience talking with them. The internet so far has been hard to come by and expensive. SO I prewrite all of this stuff, log on, then quickly download it all. That just may be how we do it here in NZ. Love Everybody talk to you soon!

PS Food so far....
Mince Pies, many premade veggie sandwhiches, More meat pies...chinese one night (tasty) hmm, not much else yet.