Te Waipounamu

Sunday, the 10th, was a lazy day that started with an alfresco breakfast on Parnell Road and ended with a presentation by Ted Simon, a British motorcyclist/journalist, who spent four years riding around the world in the mid-1970s. Ted is accompanying a tour group that was staying at hotel and leaving Auckland a day after us.

Te Waipounamu (Land of the Green Stone--jade) is the Maori name for the South Island, and the name of the company we are renting our bikes from. On Monday morning, they gave us a ride to the depot to pick up our BMW F650 singles. RA was to have a bike with a low seat, but the two bikes are the same which means she is a little tippy-toe and I am a little cramped, but it all works; at least RA’s blue bike, Zele--named after the license plate (25ZEL)--is more comfortable than Miss Piggy!

The ride out of Auckland was easy, and we headed for the Coromandel Peninsula and Coromandel Town. It felt good to be back on two wheels and the twisty roads got us back in the groove. On Tuesday we continued around the peninsula with a stop in Paeroa to see the big L&P bottle. Lemon and Paeroa is the “world famous in NZ” fizzy drink made of Paeroa mineral water and lemon. It is now produced in Auckland and owned by……..Coca-Cola; we’ve had a couple of bottles and it tastes pretty good, especially the “dry” version which is similar to ginger ale.

Next stop: Mount Maunganui and the beach home of Zeta and Richard Robertson. We met the Robertsons in 2002 at the wedding of the daughter of one of RuthAnn’s best high school friends. Heather married a New Zealander and there were several Kiwis at the wedding in upstate New York. I kept the business card Richard gave me and when I sent them an e-mail last fall promptly received a reply. We were invited to visit them on our trip and had a wonderful evening with them and Fay, a Rotary exchange student from Germany, who was staying with them for a week.

At Richard’s suggestion we visited kiwi360 on the way to Rotorua to learn about kiwifruit. We took a very informative tour in the kiwicart and as a result will be looking for the kiwifruit more often in the supermarket when we get home.

The short ride to Rotorua took us to the Agrodome and very entertaining show centered around New Zealand’s sheep and wool industry. Nineteen champion rams were on stage along with one who got naked during the shearing demonstration. Sheep (and duck) herding, sheep auctioning, cow milking, wool carding and spinning were all part of the fun.

The North Island is volcanic, and in the Rotorua area the thermal activity and Maori culture are the primary attractions. You can smell the sulphur in the air when you approach the city and soon see wisps of steam rising into the air all over town. We had a nice soak in our hotel’s thermally heated pool before going to bed Wednesday night.

Napier, on Hawke Bay, was leveled by an earthquake in 1931 and much of the rebuild was done in the Art-Deco style. The Marine Parade along the beachfront makes for a very interesting and pleasant evening stroll.