Back in New Zealand again!

We left Cairns last night at 11:00 PM after a delicious dinner in a Greek restaurant. It turns out that there are lots of Greek immigrants in Australia. Melbourne has the largest Greek population outside of Athens. Megan and Matt introduced us to Greek food after their year in Athens, so we were not novices anymore and we enjoyed our dinner.


the Air New Zealand flight was full, but comfortable. It was a four hour flight, but with the time change we arrived at 6:00 AM, which means we basically didn't get any sleep last night. We rented our car in Auckland and headed south, towards the town of Hamilton. Mike has the knack for left side of the street driving now, so aside from the occasional time when one of us walks to the wrong side of the car to climb in, we are making our way smoothly. It was about a three hour drive from the airport to Rotorua, but we stopped in Hamilton for breakfast. By the time we arrived in the "Roto-vegas", the motto/nickname provided by the new horrible marketing campaign for this wonderful little town. It is the center of Maori culture, with large parks and shows available to the public to teach us about the indigenous people of New Zealand. It is also on a lake, so there are lots of the lake activities. Finally, it is a thermal area, with boiling mud, sulphur smelling air and geysers. Why in the world they thought people would be more inclined to visit it with the Vegas comparison is beyond me.

We checked into a $99 NZD a night motel (that is about $78 US) which has its own hot tub (you fill it up yourself- water is plentiful here), kitchenette, starter carton of milk to flavor your tea, and oldish but comfortable furnishings. Even better, for $12 NZD we get two hours of wifi computer access, something I have been waiting for so that I could upload my photos to this blog site.

After a short nap we walked around town a bit. It is a glorious day which is particularly welcome after the oppressive rain and humidity of Cairns. The government gardens is a beautiful park in the center of the city that is about 100 years old. In the British style it has bowling lawns and croquet. We enjoyed walking around, seeing the rose garden and enjoying the weather.

We have a list of the top ten restaurants in New Zealand, and if we can, we will try to have dinner tonight in the only one on the list located here in Rotorua. More on that tomorrow maybe.

Bye,
Deanne