To begin with, I want to correct a something from a previous blog. Our ship landed this morning in Tauranga, New Zealand after sailing overnight from Auckland (it is only a 2-1/2 hour drive by car). Tauranga is a city of 115,000, which makes it the sixth largest in New Zealand. The ship actually landed close to Mount Manganui, a very famous and expensive seaside resort. This is home to Marine Drive, the second most expensive residential street in New Zealand. A small lot sold on this street just last summer for about $US4 million. At the foot of Mount Manganui is a mountain that I have climbed in the past, and referred to as Mount Manganui. Well, that was wrong. While the little seaside community is correctly called Mount Manganui, the mountain itself is called Mayo, not even Mount Mayo, just Mayo. Don’t ask!
Here is some interesting background. When we first came to New Zealand in 2006, there were some 60 million sheep living here. That number is now down to 36 million, as the sheep ranchers traded the sheep in for dairy cows as dairy is a much more lucrative business. In fact, dairy products has now become New Zealand’s largest export, followed by lamb. Also, I found it interesting that New Zealand has 382 golf courses. On a per capita basis, this is second in the world only to Scotland.
Our coach took us south through Mount Manganui, and a number of other smaller towns including Te Puke, where they grow kiwi fruit. In case you forgot, the kiwi fruit was imported from China and was called a gooseberry. Ever mindful of marketing, the name was changed from Chinese gooseberry to kiwi because no one wanted to buy Chinese products. Anyway, our journey took us to Rotorua, which is the New Zealand city with the largest percentage of Maori’s, almost two thirds, although I didn’t see any of them.
Our first stop was the geothermal reserve, where you can see a tremendous amount of geothermal activity such as erupting geysers, steaming fumaroles, mud pools, hot spring water and even boiling waterfalls. This wasn’t the most impressive geothermal site I have ever seen, but it is the most active area open to the general public in New Zealand. By the way, the name Hells Gate was coined by George Bernard Shaw upon his visit here.
We next headed to Lake Rotoiti where we were to board a 55 foot catamaran for a tour of the lake. In Maori, Roto means lake and iti means number one. Rotoiti turns out to be the first lake the Maoris discovered as they make their very first trek inland from the coast back around 1300. Right next to Lake Rotoiti is Lake Rotorua, which is, you guessed it, lake number 2. Anyway, the winds were significant and we had a beautiful sail while we had a pleasant lunch of sandwiches, meat pies, fruit and deserts. We headed back to the ship to wrap up this nearly six hour tour.
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I now have to go back in time almost a week to January 23, when a most impressive thing occurred, that got absolutely no mention in the official Beverly blog. We were at a party in a stateroom which faced forward, and were there was a most incredible sunset. While it was beautiful by any standard, this sunset produced a “green flash,” a most uncommon atmospheric phenomenon, which only a few people ever see in their lifetime. I happen to be looking in the right direction, at the right time, and saw it, along with just one other person. All last year on the World Cruise, our Captain, G.A., kept telling us about it but we never saw it, and I almost concluded that he was pulling our legs. Well, he wasn’t, and I will never forget it. If you want to know more about it, just Google green flash.
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