Day Seven: The Temple, Lakes and Waterfalls and Fun with the Carters

Everyone should know Marcie and Kevin Carter.  They are the best people and so fun to spend time with.  They are great to talk to, laugh with, and play games.  And it turns out they are perfect to visit in New Zealand, too.  We knew them from our service in the Headquarters Mission.  They served as the zone leaders on the first floor during much of the time we served as zone leaders in the Collections Zone.  With the Hiltbrands, we started going to dinners every month or so because we just enjoyed each other.  This was the first time that we had actually spent "days" with them.  It was perfect and wonderful.  They are great hosts and shared New Zealand with us for the three days we were with them. (Have I mentioned the blessing of new friends which come as you serve a mission?)

Saturday morning, our first task was attending a session in the pretty Hamilton New Zealand Temple which was built in 1958 and became the 11th operating temple in the Church at that time.

Sunrise as we are heading around the temple.

We accidently were very color coordinated for this picture with Gary wearing his Elder Blasnek tie.

Halls and Carters

It was very interesting how they duplicated the window design in the landscape.

We then headed to breakfast at this fun restaurant which was attached to a plant nursery.  Fun things to see, the food was excellent, and we loved eating outdoors in pretty setting.

At the order counter---don't forget your pets.

The hot chocolate looked and tasted delicious!

I ordered the french toast with berries and bananas.  They baked the bananas and at first I was a bit hesitant (sometimes food is like that when it is different than you expect.), but it actually was great. Who knew--warm berries and bananas with whip cream is tasty.

In the parking lot.....Hire a Hubby car!

Then we headed home and changed clothes and headed on an adventure that the Carters had planned. We had no idea what we were going to do, but it was so fun.  We took about a 2 1/2 hour car ride--itself

fun in a foreign country...and ended up at this dam at the Waikato River.  This river is the longest one in New Zealand flowing from the east to exit out on the west coast into the Tasman Sea.  It is 425 kilometers long (about 260 miles). We passed it many times on our journey to this dam. It is nearby the town of Taupo and the lake you see behind the dam is technically the river as well..

We had tickets to take a boat ride on the lake to see Huka Falls, but first we had another fun adventure....

We all lined up along this bridge next to the dam.  The pond below is the natural flow of the water from the bottom of the lake above.  Like many dams it produces electricity.

This location has one other special claim to fame.  In the Hobbitt, the stream below this dam was used to film the famous "barrel" scene.  In the show, you see the Hobbit and friends escaping in these barrel through the raging water.  In reality, they only filmed barrels heading down the rapids and added the people later through "movie magic."  The actors never came to this actual spot. So, someone had the idea of daily releasing the water from the two large sides of the dam so that tourists could come and watch the water as it goes down the canyon below.  They do it four times a day during most of the year.

So we are here lined up waiting to watch the roaring water.  Down stream there was another view area where there was another crowd of people.  I happened to catch this guy flashing the peace sign--"posing for a picture". I teased him about it since it seemed quite far to actually see a person aiming the camera at you.  However, he said no.  He was posing for someone.  He waved and someone waved back so I believed him. They both took pictures of each other he said.  Tourists are usually friendly people to talk to.  It has been fun to meet and visit with people from different places while in New Zealand.

Gates opened for us at 2:00 pm and water started flowing....

It starts to reach the pond and in the next 10 minutes the water level will increase about 20'.

As the pond fills up, then the water is forced into the canyon below

The mouth of the canyon.  This is the beginning of where they threw in the barrels and filmed them shooting down the canyon.

It was loud and amazing to watch.  Later we watched the scene with the barrels and it was fun to know that we had been there.  Such a tourist trap---but it was free and a beautiful day to be outside. So, if you ever wondered where that fun canyon was in The Hobbit, now you know!

We headed next on our boat tour of the lake to Huka Falls.

The boat owners has bills along his ceiling from different countries. I guess the whole ceiling had been covered but due to the weather and water, many were falling apart so he took them down and is trying a different way to attach them to the roof and protect them a bit better.

A black swan taking flight off the lake....

Near the shore you could see the trout.  The guide explained that in New Zealand there is only wild catch trout.  No trout farms of any kind.  So if you want to eat trout, you need to catch it yourself.  They did that to protect the various species of trout in New Zealand.

You have to love a good "reflection" photo!  This is a bridge that is part of a bike trail along this river.

I didn't get a good photo so I will skip posting a bad one, but we passed a geothermal plant along the lake.  Because of the volcanic action in this area, there are many areas of hot springs and this plant has harnessed some of that and provides energy for New Zealand. The process was very interesting, but I didn't take notes and can't remember all the details.  It is considered a very green energy source with very little waste.

And at the end of the lake is the famous Huka Falls.  The river goes from 100 meters wide to about 15 meters creating this powerful water fall.

It is a favorite for very experienced kayakers.  You have to have permission to get in the water to run these rapids.

We were able to watch about five finish their trip through the falls.  Pretty scary from our point of view!

After our ferry ride, we hopped in the car for a short drive to the city of Taupo.  It sits on another lake which was formed due to volcanic activity.  You can see an "island" in the lake that is actually the top of one of the volcanos which had erupted many times over the centuries. 

It is a combination fishing and tourist area with art thrown in.  It was a fun place to walk around.  We were trying to find a place to buy some postcards but no luck on a Saturday late afternoon.  We did find a good place to enjoy dinner together.

 

Some of the art work around the city....

And the nature as well....long at this huge leaf

and even bigger tree (the leaf didn't go with this tree.)

Some more artsy stuff around the town

Heartland

Fishing community for sure

If you look closely over the sails you can see the top of Mt. Taupo which is how the city got its name as well as the lake.

Another swan picture with her goslings 

And a sunset picture to end the day as we headed back west to Hamilton.

Another great day and more adventures still ahead  (it is now May 4th so you can see that I am behind in the whole blogging thing, but I will keep at it.  We are moving into our house this week--and leaving the basement so life is going to be even more unsettled for a few weeks.  But we are so excited to finally get settled in our house and start "real" life, whatever that is.) :)

Day 6: The Night Sky

I mentioned that one of my wishes in New Zealand was to see the night sky. As my first trip south of the equator, I wanted to see the Southern cross and whatever else there was to be seen.  Christchurch and Wellington  had too many lights and it had been cloudy in Picton so I hadn't had a real chance yet.

Elder Carter knew the perfect place and we headed out there after the gathering.  The Church owns a camp outside of town and we parked in the road into that property. The world around us was dark and made viewing the gorgeous night sky perfect.  Parts of the Milky Way crossed through the sky.  Kevin was able to show us the Southern Cross and how to determine where south was.  I didn't know this--but there isn't something like the north star in the south.  Sailors and travelers had to use points from the Southern Cross and another star below it and triangulate the position of south in the sky.  You can see Orien on the low horizon.  It was amazing!

From the internet--how it works

Here is my one poor attempt to document the night sky....This is the Southern Cross and the lower pointer stars which help determine south.

It looked just black in my picture gallery so I didn't try to take another one showing the swirl of a portion of the Milky Way.  Now I wish that I had since I was actually able to capture some stars.

This definitely was one of the highlights of the trip for me!

Day Six: Train to Hamilton and the Carters

Another early morning as we were heading to catch another train which would take us north to Hamilton, New Zealand.  This train is called the Northern Explorer. The tourist ticket goes from Wellington to Auckland, but since we were stopping at Hamilton, we had to purchase our own tickets (or pay our travel agent $35 to book it for us.  Travel agencies make their money from the tour companies, hotels, airlines, etc. which they use for their customers.)  This became important as we tried to check in on this Friday morning.

I had printed out our confirmation along with our other travel information and tucked it into my file in my backpack.  As we arrived at the train station, we handed it to the agent expecting to get our seat assignments and be on our way.  She couldn't find us in the computer at all.  What?  However, unlike other places, she was going to make this work for us.  She kept my confirmation and sent us to put our luggage in the baggage area tagged for Hamilton and gave us a hand written card to sit in the dining car.  She said it was a full train, but they would make a space for us and let us know.  We followed her instructions and sat in the dining area in seats with lots of leg room and open space in front of us.  We weren't the only ones sent to the dining room as two other groups eventually joined us.  I was concerned about putting our suitcases in the luggage car--what if they didn't have seats for us?  I became even more worried when I pulled up the confirmation notice on my phone (we had left our original with the agent.).  As I reviewed it, I discovered that I had accidently booked our tickets for FEBUARY 28 not March 28--both on Fridays.  I was sure that we were going to be off the train.  And since this train only goes this direction every other day, it was going to make a problem for the rest of our trip. Darn!

However, when the agent finally got back to us after the train was already going--she simply let us pay for the tickets and had us stay in our seats in the dining car.  It was perfect.  Quiet, lots of viewing area, and leg room.  It was the perfect spot to watch the scenery as we traveled along.  (And we checked our credit card and discovered no charge for the February tickets which were supposedly non refundable. No idea what happened or why, but it worked out in the end.)

A beautiful train station....

a bit of a drizzly day and our last views of the southern Pacific Ocean (called the Tasman Sea between New Zealand and Australia).

Another couple also assigned to the dining car....notice the free space we have to enjoy the views.

That is our handwritten Reserved sign saying these were our seats.

There was a mixture of landscapes as we took this 8 hour train trip north.  From the hill pasture lands filled with sheep....

the valley pasture and crop farms...

streams

and deep mountain gorges.

Our engine car as we made a turn in the mountains.

I found this description on a travel website of the journey--

“It's an epic 681 kilometre (423 mile) journey across the interior of the North Island, through every kind of scenery there is, from coastline to volcanoes to mountains, lush green farmland to thick New Zealand bush.  It takes you the length of the historic North Island Main Trunk Railway, started in 1885 and completed in 1908, over feats of engineering such the Raurimu Spiral, Turangarere Horseshoe and Makatote Viaduct.  It's one of the world's great railway journeys and one of my favourites, far more historically and economically significant than the branch line used by the TranzAlpine train on the South Island.”

That sums it up pretty well.  Although the Raurimu Spiral was a great engineering feat at the time, to drive on it was not that exciting, but it was a smooth and fun ride nonetheless.

...until we came to a stop!  It turned out that there was a problem with the track ahead and they were waiting for engineers to reach the spot and assess whether we had to wait for a repair or could proceed over the damaged area.  We sat for over an hour.  We waited so long that the cows in the nearby field came to check us out.

I took the opportunity to get a picture of the unusual pin and link system they had on the railway itself. The New Zealand Railway is narrower than standard tracks using a 1.04 meter rather than the more standard 1.5 m.  

More cows came to check us out.

Since we were in the dining car and just waiting, we tried out ice cream bars. Yummy.  New Zealand is known for their dairy products and this was an excellent example.

Fortunately, we had Wifi signal so we could keep the Carters updated on our situation since they were picking us up in Hamilton.

After about 1 1/2 hours, we were finally given permission to slowly drive forward over the damaged track and continue our journey north.  Here are the engineers getting ready to fix the problem after we passed by.

Carters (Marcie and Kevin) met us at the train station with Subway sandwiches and chips and zipped us all to the Hamilton Institute Building for a get together with the senior missionaries serving in the New Zealand Hamilton Mission. What a treat.  Two of the couples were leaving soon so this was their goodbye plus a couple had recently arrived  (They pointed out that you could tell they were new because they couldn't pronounce the names of their wards yet.  Māori words are tricky, for sure.) It was so fun to listen to each of them introduce themselves and share about their experiences and their connections with each other.   The same experiences we have felt with senior missionaries both in Salt Lake and in the Arkansas Bentonville Mission......

And their Institute building was amazing! A couple of classrooms, a large gathering area with a kitchen, ping pong table, etc.  However, I found out that they have to provide  breakfast foods and a light lunch every day Monday through Friday plus some dinners for 5-80 people depending on the occasion.  They also taught some classes along with the Institute staff.  There was two full time couples serving there plus some service missionaries.

Gathering together...

And, we made some connections--this couple is neighbors and good friends with Sister and Elder Baird who served in the ABM with us.

This couple is related to Eric Wing, our Institute director in Arkansas. They are serving in the Hamilton Institute and she said that Eric tried to recruit them when he heard that they wanted to serve a CES mission.  However, they were hoping for New Zealand since he had served here as a young man.

She had some fun things to share with us....we could relate.  (The small caption reads "This meal ain't gonna nourish and strengthen itself.")

They have two large refrigerators in the kitchen.  One for the students.....

...and one for the Institute (for the senior missionaries who are making meals for Institute.)  We were always wishing for a dedicated refrigerator. 

We got a view of the New Zealand Temple after we left the gathering at night.  Beautiful spot on top of the hill on Temple View Street.