The Road to Rotorua

Dave is up early and tackling Science at 7:30 AM. He can see the light as he is making great progress in Physics. John is tutoring him and is able to incorporate everyday things that we are doing and seeing into the lessons.

We head into Napier to see the artdeco buildings. The entire town was destroyed in 1931 by a 7.9 earthquake and when they rebuilt the town, they had some fun making sure all of the buildings are painted in great colors and shaped in different ways. This is a great tourist attraction. We stop at a toy store and buy a Frisbee and Boggle. We have great fun in Gabriola with Boggle and it, along with Scrabble will keep our minds happening on the boat. We also hit a great bakery and buy desserts for tonight as we will be having dinner with Ken and Shirley and Michelle at their condo in Rotorua. We also find a second hand bookstore and the girls buy The Queen’s Fool by Phillipa Gregory and I buy Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (he has just written the sequel but I can’t remember the story). One more U-Turn as we have to get gas and it’s on the other side of the highway ad it’s off to Rotorua.

We follow another winding road and end up at lake Taupo. It looks like the Shuswap but is even bigger. There is quite the breeze coming off the lake, so we don’t stop for long. We hit Rotorua at rush hour and it feels like Kelowna. Rotorua is the adventure capital of the North Island like Queenstown was in the South. Ken and Shirley are on the North end of the lake and we enter from the south. Another 30 minutes of winding and very narrow roads has us looking at Shirley who is flagging us down on the road.

Our total reward is a great roast lamb and chicken dinner complete with mint sauce and every vegetable under the sun here in NZ. They have a 3 bedroom place and John and I get to sleep with a roof over our heads as he has a 3AM conference call with the boys at Tango. He has had several of these over the course of the trip and this one should be easier than the one at the base of the Himilayas!