Writing back...5 Water park and Kauri Trees

On the way down from the peninsula, we crossed to the eastern side, in between we could see some kauri trees conserved, sadly in the pictures is really difficult to show how big they are.

Next to this place we visited a WaterPark, for which we made few pics but plenty of videos, there were a lot of interesting gadgets and mechanisms driven by water. The nicest of all of them a big clock with a pendulum.

We headed towards Waihi, where in the early 1900 a huge gold mine was exploted for thirty years. We walked around the river that they used, and we looked at the railways that they had in operation, plenty of tunnels through the mountains. We walked also through some of them. Interesting, the buildings they used to get the gold out of the rocks where already ruins. Strange to see ruins which are only a century old, they looked more like 500 years old.

We continued and drove to "hot water beach" a long sand beach in which you can make a whole on the sand, and in some places really hot water is coming out. Amazing place! We made a whole big enough to fit both of us, and we stayed for around two hours inside. We had to mix the hot stream often with cold water to lower the temperature. There were a lot of tourists, but it was still fun and relaxing.

Near there, there was a nice hidden beach called "cathedral cove" which had a very nice geologic natural formation, like a big arc between two beaches.

We drove down to Tauranga and enjoyed half a day boat trip on a catamaran looking for dolphins, to swim with them. Unfortunately in this time they had baby dolphins and in new zealand it is forbidden to swim with them. But we saw plenty of them, and they came really near to the boat and were kind of playing with it.

Then a catastrophe occurred, we drove to Rotorua because nearby there is some thermal nice places. But we wanted have a look at the museum of art and history and learn some stuff about the Maori people (aborigines from New Zealand). While we were in the museum, someone broke into our van, stealing all our chargers, Danielas toiletry bag and our camera.

We were really angry, but while at the police station we were told about the earthquake in Christchurch, so we still were happy that it could have been much worse...

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