01 April 2006:

Our Tauranga tour starts poorly….the bus driver/tour guide doesn’t know how to operate his PA system and is constantly generating squealing feedback noises….and I don’t mean occasional little whoops, I mean nearly constant brain piercing shrieks. Women were screaming and holding their ears, men were fainting with their eyes rolled back in their heads. And through it all the driver acts like nothing is wrong as he natters on with comments like “See the cows on the left….and to the right, those are sheep”. Finally, a woman screams at him to turn the damn PA system off…..and he does. For the next hour we ride through the New Zealand countryside in silence until we reach our destination: the thermal springs. As we exit the bus our happy, smiling, native Maori guides greet us and hand out maps of the area and prepare to do their colorful native dances. After a few minutes of smiling and staring at us our happy, smiling, native Maori guides are talking among themselves in their local Maori dialect…..or maybe it was English with a New Zealand accent….either way, we couldn’t understand the discussion. Then, all of a sudden our happy, smiling, native Maori guides are no longer happy or smiling. After another minute or so of discussion, we are told in very polite English that we should all now get back on our bus and leave…..it seems that our bus driver has delivered us to the wrong thermal spring area. We are at the Te Puke thermal springs…we are supposed to be at the Wai-O-Tapu thermal springs. Our tour (which we are now missing) is located 30 minutes down the highway in a totally different area…..and our happy, smiling native Maori guides have wasted several minutes of their time being happy and smiling for a bunch of tourists who are not paying them to be happy or smiling.

…..off we go….in the confusion of the first stop our driver has forgotten his instructions concerning the PA system (“turn the damn thing off”) so for the next 30-40 minutes we listen to “ on your left you (SQUEEEEEAAL) see a river (SKREEEEECH) it’s just a little (SQUEEAAL) river, but it’s (SQUEEEEEEEAAAAALLLL) a very nice ((SKREEECH) river none the less.” Until finally we pull in to the Wai-O-Tapu thermal springs area where, because we are now very late, our happy, smiling, native Maori guides have given up on us and have disappeared so we miss the native Maori welcoming dance and head out on our own to see the thermal springs on a brief walk…..the walk is brief because since we went to the wrong place to begin with, we are now behind schedule. The Wai-O-Tapu thermal area is a nice little place…..if you have not been to Yellowstone you will really enjoy it. If you have been to Yellowstone then you will think it is just a ‘nice little place’.  I think that areas of thermal activity are interesting, and a few places at Wai-O-Tapu were very scenic (photos will be posted if I have time).

Following  our brief walk through Wai-O-Tapu…..I just like typing Wai-O-Tapu, which is why you are seeing Wai-O-Tapu so much….we load slowly onto the bus to drive to our next destination: Lunch atop a nearby mountain….we loaded slowly because we were all expecting to hear a repeat of the earlier squealing on the PA system….but we are pleasantly surprised…..during our stop a group of passengers have cornered the bus driver, made a few modifications to the sound system (physically removing one of the two microphones that were being used) and we now have a properly functioning PA system.

We head off to our lunch site which is on top of a local mountain and you reach it via a gondola ride up the mountain. The restaurant has a fine view of the Rotorua area and I highly recommend going there. Here, finally, we did encounter happy, smiling, native Maoris doing their welcoming dance. I just wish I could remember the name of the place…I can’t, but not to worry I can give you perfect directions to it in just a moment….

Following lunch we ride the gondola back down the mountain, load back onto the bus and drive….maybe 50 feet to our next destination, Rainbow Springs. Why would be load onto a bus for such a short ride?….beats me. We could have walked it much faster, but by now we are all thinking that our driver is (as the Aussies say) “a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic”.

Rainbow Springs, sadly is a bit of a let down also. It’s claim to fame is that it has a lot of Rainbow Trout that came from California…..which is probably pretty interesting in New Zealand where there were no trout until about 100 years ago…but is not really something that I would travel what has now been more than 15,000 miles to see. The second big attraction at Rainbow Springs are the Sequoia trees which also came from California….nice, but not worth the trip. The third major attraction are the kiwi birds, which are nocturnal and are kept in a low light enclosure where, try as I might I couldn’t see anything but shadows. The fourth major attraction is an underwater viewing area where you can watch the Rainbow Trout through a glass wall as they go about their trout business……it was closed for maintenance. All, in all, not a first rate experience at Rainbow Springs.

But, I highly recommend going to the mountain-top restaurant for a little refreshment and a nice view I still can’t remember the name of the place, but if you are in the area go to Rainbow Springs and right next door to it is a gondola ride to the top of a mountain…that’s where you want to be.

The bottom line for today: Nice view from the mountain top…..not much else to write home about.