New Zealand, Day 5 (Boston Marathon registration day!)

As registration period for the Boston Marathon was occurring during my time in New Zealand and Australia, I made sure to make a note to register. And, well, this wasn't ACTUALLY the day (in the U.S.) when registration opened. What a tease, noting it on the wrong day, given the timezone difference (despite it being the correct date on the calendar.)

This day called for flying to Queenstown. It was rather amusing being in such a small airport in Rotorua that we were this close to the airplane while still sitting at the gate, and seeing the luggage being loaded.

While I had a brief layover in Auckland, onward to Queenstown. And the views even starting at the airport were great.

The driver that picked me up made a slight detour to a scenic overlook for a few minutes, and explained some of the things to avoid in town (between a couple of the taxi services and one of the restaurants). As with the greater sweep of the entire trip, every new vista was better than the last. The mountainside surrounding Queenstown was really quite special.

After checking in at the hotel, I walked down the hill to get to "downtown" Queenstown, and enjoyed  the vista en route.

Meandering around town, there were a couple of statues that stuck out, such as the Moa (extinct, huge native bird), and stopped in one of the stores that sells greenstone. I wound up getting dinner at a great steakhouse, Flame (boy, this place was HAPPENIN'!), and then dessert at the creamery and chocolaterie (Patagonia) that has a great view of the lake and enjoyed the sunset from upstairs.

New Zealand, Day 3 (cont'd) and Day 4

Hobbiton was part-way between Auckland and my next destination: Rotorua. So, where everyone else who was in the group that started in Auckland went back, I was picked up by another tour operator and brought the remainder of the way to Rotorua.

About 90 minutes later, I arrived in town, checked in, and made my way out to wander around for a bit. A little over a block away was a sizable playground area amid a cute city park right along the edge of a lake.

Other than the restaurants, despite it being mid-afternoon on Saturday, almost nothing was open, surprisingly. One souvenir shop (where I wound up buying a pair of possum-merino wool gloves) was open. Amid its wares were these cute items (which I was able to resist buying):

Along the main drag I was walking up were these sculptures and a huge mural being painted.

I was far enough away from some of the other things in a different part of town that I past on the drive in (most notably the Zorb -- mildly regretting I didn't try to do it), that I did relatively little beyond doing my run for the day, getting a very late lunch (really good Italian food), relaxing in the room for a little while before returning to this strip to get dinner. I tried to walk along the path that looked like it went around the lake (probably a few miles), but I had such a hard time breathing -- not because of anything physical for me, rather because Rotorua is likely the stinkiest place anywhere. It smells of rotten eggs because of all of the sulfur in the hot springs and geysers that are in the area. Youch!

Day 4 had my two outings. First off was an ecothermal tour with multiple stops. Wai-O-Tapu had lots of colorful hot springs and volcanic features; not too dissimilar from part of Yosemite National Park. (For some reason, the photos uploaded backwards here. Oh well.)

After this, we made a brief stop to see the Lady Knox geyser erupt. Unlike Old Faithful which has a natural, regular schedule for when it will go off, Lady Knox is a geyser that requires manual intervention to actually erupt. It was discovered accidentally decades ago when workers who were scouting some of the area discovered the hot spring and, when washing some of their clothes, the geyser went off. While they have a regular schedule for it erupting, it only happens after they pour some soap into the opening (breaking the surface tension of the water underneath).

Finally, we went to the Waimangu Volcanic Valley, heard about the Mt. Tarawera eruption in the early 1900s and toured the resulting geothermal park.

Our tour guide pointed out the obvious error on this sign, where so many would just leave it unremarked.

After returning to the hotel and doing that day's run, a couple of hours later it was time to go to Te Pa Tu -- a nearby Maori village -- for a dinner experience.

We arrived for an opening ceremony (no photos permitted, given it is considered sacred), walked around to four different huts where we were shown different aspects of Maori culture, attended a brief show (including a haka, where several of us joined in), and then had a scrumptious dinner.

While, yes, I did join the approximately dozen men who went up to (horribly) perform a haka, as I was traveling solo, there are no readily found photos or video of me doing so. (I didn't ask anyone to take any for me, and I wouldn't know how to get in touch with any of the others to see if I was incidentally in what they recorded.)

Despite the fact that many of the items on the menu for dinner are things that I wouldn't ordinarily eat, I made sure to try everything. And, boy howdy, was it all great! Everything was served family-style, and there was FAR more than enough brought out to our table of 6.

Fish roulade

Smoked eel (not too dissimilar than smoked whitefish)

 Simple rolls and butter, having had a dome with smoke removed moments before

 Consommé (the lowlight of the dishes)

Roasted pork (Mmm...)

 Duck (something I usually detest, but that was VERY good)

Simple salad (nice and refreshing)

Can't remember the first veggie, then sweet potato, then lamb (quite good, even though I don't usually like it), and eggplant (if I remember correctly)

Trifle for dessert