Today we left Coromandel at about 8:30 am and stopped for a “flat white coffee” before heading south down Route 25 towards Rotorua.
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| A Flat White Coffee |
This route takes you through a beautiful valley that is quite flat and suited for cattle farming. Just as we grow corn in our US Great Plains, they seem to be heavily invested in dairy and sheep farming. The road through the valley leads you to Warier Falls.
Warier Falls Location should you desire to get some exercise that will take a 90 minute hike (tramp, in New Zealand speak). Since we were on a time table to get to Rotorua in time to see the Agrodome show (more about that later), we satisfied ourselves with just taking a picture.
Meeting Route 5 (The Thermal Explorer Highway) at Tapapa,
We got to the Agrodome with about an hour to spare before the farm tour and farm show. This is an interesting tourist attraction that takes you into the paddocks and lets you meet the different types of animals that are typical to the New Zealand dairy, beef and wool industries. They also raise some alpacas and llamas but they apparently do not do well in the New Zealand climate.
Earline and I got a private tour for the two of us because the majority of visitors were from Asiatic countries and they required language assistance. Leann was a great guide and let us taste honey made from their farm as well as a wine made from the kiwi fruit. The honey is much different that what we are used to. It is thicker, much like a margarine spread but sweet. Peru has a confection made from condensed milk called Dulce de Leche that comes the closest to describing this honey. The kiwi wine was not what I would choose to drink. We also tasted kiwi fruit juice that was quite tasty. Unfortunately, the kiwi fruit was out of season. It is interesting that the kiwi fruit grows on a thick vine in vineyards much like how we grow grapes. Another crop that they grow is olives and they press them for their oil. Again, they were out of season.
Following the farm tour, we watched the farm show that was amusing. The show director brought out the many types of sheep used in their wool industry and demonstrated how to shear a sheep. He then had some of the Asians attempt to milk a cow and finally showed how important a trained sheep dog is to raising these animals. Outside, he showed how the dog could work a flock of sheep to direct their movements.
We then moved on to our Hotel Ibis in Rotorua. This hotel is near the Lake Rotorua and near the center of the tourist activities in town. After checking in, Earline and I took a walk while it was still light around the lake to the Government Gardens that have lawn bowling and croquet greens. There is a beautiful building there called “The Bath House” that is now a museum, built in 1908 as a tourism spa but it closed in 1966 as other spas in the area opened. We wandered around the park and found Whangapipiro with a temperature of 212 degrees F. The waters were piped to the various spas and to this day are still piped to the nearby Polynesian spa. It is also called Rachel Pool after a notorious English cosmetician who promised youthful complexions because of the softening effects of the silica water on the skin.
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| Black Swan |
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| Maori War Canoe 60 feet long |
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| Azaleas in bloom |
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| Maori Carvings |
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| Government Gardens |
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| Tulips at the Government Gardens |
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| The Bath House at the Government Gardens |
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| Yarn Bombed Tree |
After other interesting sights, we bought a nice 2014 Vidal Reserve Pinot wine from the Marlborough Region of New Zealand and walked down Tutaznekai Street (called Eatery Street because of the number of restaurants) and stopped at a local brewpub to try a coffee stout beer and to feel Earline before she got cranky. With our wine in hand, we returned to our room for an early bedtime.
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