Tauranga (Rotorua), New Zealand

Our first port of call was Tauranga, New Zealand.

Mt. Maunganui in Tauranga

This port is considered an access point for visiting Rotorua, known for its thermal activity and Maori presence, so we booked a tour to check it out. Our tour guide provided us with a lot interesting information as we made the scenic drive from Tauranga to Rotorua:

• Kiwi growers plant tall hedges around their crops in an effort to block PSA disease...there is a ban on the commercial sale of trout in New Zealand to preserve recreational fishing;
• Maori sculptures are never made in the exact likeness of a human (often with three or four fingers, never five), because God is the only One who can make a perfect human;
• Tauranga was the site of the last battle between the Maori and British troops;
• Rotorua's population is more than 30 percent Mauri, larger than the national average (16 percent);
• Tourists once visited Rotorua to see the famed pink and white terraces, but a volcanic eruption in the 1800s destroyed the terraces and killed more than 100 people; 
• The Redwood trees in Whakarewarewa State Forest Park are two to three times the size of other same-age Redwoods around the world  because the lack of winter season in New Zealand allows them to grow 12 months of the year, etc.

While in Rotorua, we visited Kuirau Park to see some steaming, boiling pools of mud, and walked alongside Lake Rotorua. We missed seeing the prettiest wood building in all New Zealand (The Bath House Building), only catching a view of it on our bus as we were leaving.  No picture, not happy.  In hindsight we should have stayed in Tauranga and skipped the 90-minute (and expensive) bus ride to get to Rotorua.

If you look closely, this Maori sculpture only has three fingers.

We'd never seen black swans before.  Nor did we know they were aggressive.  The Asian tourists did not heed this warning.  Three of them lost limbs.  

The MV Rena, a shipwreck a few miles off the coast of Taurunga.  You're thinking old right?  Nope, this is a 1,800 container ship that smashed into the Astrolabe Reef on May 5, 2011.  This is such a large accident that New Zealand is still figuring out what to do.  There was a big oil spill as well, which had been cleaned up by the military and port authorities before we got there. 

The shipwrecked MV Reva.