Traveling with Ray Owens

Another lovely day in paradise. We had breakfast in the hotel in Taupo. Breakfast for me has coffee as the most important ingredient. Actually it is the only ingredient. I have been sorely disappointed by the performance of the Hilton coffee machines. I can’t get a decent cup of coffee. In fact I can’t get a full cup. Just a splash in the bottom. Poor, poor pitiful me!

We set off in our coaches at 9:00 for our trip from the national park to Auckland. We have several stops on our way. The first was about 20 minutes down the road. We stopped at Huka Falls. The falls is a few hundred meters from where the lake drains out and becomes the Waikato River, which flows all the way to Auckland. The river at its origin is about 100 meters across but it soon enters a canyon carved into lake floor sediments laid down before Taupo Volcano’s Oruanui eruption 26,500 years ago. The canyon narrows to about 15 meters across. Imagine turning on the garden hose full blast and then putting your thumb over the end. The same amount of water comes out but it is much faster. The Huka Falls is not much of a drop but the water is moving very fast over the falls, 58,100 gallons of water per second. It is a pretty spectacular falls for a wee little specimen of a waterfall.

We are driving through an area where a great deal of geothermal power is produced. The area has a lot of thermal vents. The steam and hot water that is in the ground is captured and piped to steam turbine generators. New Zealand has over 90 percent of its energy from renewable sources. It is on track to be 100 percent by 2030. They put their money where their mouths are. If only we had the collective will to help save the planet.

Also the heart of the New Zealand timber industry or farming is located in the area we drove through. It is still hard to believe that the timber industry plants a crop of trees this year that will not be ready to harvest until 2050. But that’s okay because this year’s harvest was planted in 2000.

Lunch was at the Zealong Tea Estate. The lunch consisted of little cute tea biscuits and sandwiches. There was also tea. The owners were immigrants from Tiawan. They wonder whether the tea plants that grew in the northern hemisphere would thrive in the southern hemisphere. New Zealand does not allow importing seeds, or plants with roots intact. They only allow plant cuttings to be imported and they must be subjected to a several months of quarantine. He imported 1500 cuttings and after the quarantine there were only 130 surviving tea plant cuttings. He carefully nurtured the plants and soon had a large and modern tea estate consisting today of over 1.3 million tea plants. He began to use modern equipment to prune and care for the plants. This resulted in the ability to certify the tea as 100 percent organic, no chemicals. The tea evidently is pretty good. There are pictures on the wall of the former Queen sipping some Zealong tea. King Charles also enjoys the tea. My palate for tea is only ranked worse by my palate for wine. So although they offered we opted not to purchase any tea.

Our arrival at the Grand by Sky City hotel in Auckland was a bit of a spectacle. Three bus loads of senior citizens all shlepping their suitcases into the lobby, all having to check in. It took a minute. Penny got us in a room that we can stay in for two additional nights after our Viking post extension ends before we fly to Brisbane, Australia.

We went out for dinner. We walked a few blocks around the hotel and wound up at the Dragon Boat Chinese restaurant. The patrons in this restaurant were almost exclusively oriental folks. There was a lot of large groups including a group of flight attendants from an oriental airline.

The food reminded me of eating in Hong Kong restaurants. You could order whatever you wanted but they were often going to bring you what they thought you needed. Tonight I ordered chicken with cashews and vegetables. That is what they charged me for but what they served was cashews with shrimp and vegetables. As I would expect the shrimp came with tails attached. I was glad no heads and feet were attached. It was good.

We are on the 9th floor of the hotel and have a nice view of other tall buildings across the street.

A good day to take a coach ride with several interesting stops.