City of Sails: Mid-Sem Tour, Day V – Mt. Tarawera and The Redwoods, Rotorua

We scaled Mt. Tarawera!! It is a dormant volcano that is considered to be sacred land by the Maoris because of the 1886 eruption which buried alive many of their ancestors. It is also sacred because it is the highest ground where their ancestors lived. We had to take the 4WD to the base camp and from there, we trekked around the crater and then into the crater. On our way up the mountain, we got to see the Tea Tree plant and I learnt sth new, that the Manuka honey is from the Tea Tree plant! We also passed by the Kaingoroa forest, a man made forest which is used for forestry. The trees just take 30yrs to mature and then they are harvested by high tech machines and exported to Korean and Japan.

The ride was so bumpy, we had to clutch so hard onto our seats to avoid falling off it. We took the most difficult and longest trek (had to make our money’s worth. =p) with our guide, Art. It was just the 3 of us. One of the benefits of traveling in winter, during the off-peak season, is that you get exclusive service. Unfortunately for us, it was foggy that day and we cldn’t see anything other than clouds when we reached the summit, which is at 3680 feet. Nonetheless, it is still the most impressive place that I’ve been to in my life. Can you imagine how much more impressed I’d have been if the weather was good?!! From the brochure, I had absolutely no idea that it’d be this challenging. We were on all 4s when scaling a rock slope. Then, as if things cldn’t get harder, we had to go down the scree into the crater. The scree is this steep path that leads down to the crater of Tarawera. The whole crater is formed by heaps of loose rocks and so was the scree. Art taught us that to get down the scree, we cldn’t walk, we had to shuffle our feet as closely as possible and slowly slide down. In some sense, the scree is like snow, in that you can’t get a good foothold. At first, it was really scary because we were SO HIGH up and the slope is 39.5°. I remember how my legs felt weak when I overlooked the whole crater. So, I just focused on the ground. After getting the hang of shuffling down, I started to enjoy myself. It was quite fun sliding down the slope. The view of the whole crater was so breadth taking. I can’t stop going on about how magnificent it was. At first, the crater walls were just reddish brown and then, as we walked further down, they were a brilliant green. It felt as if I was walking thru an enchantered garden.

Back from Mt. Tarawera to i-site, Rotorua, we bumped into 5 Koreans, Rose and Jin amongst them, from AU. How coincidental! We split with them to head to Whakawerawera forest aka the Redwoods. We boarded the citybus to get there. The citybuses provide good service. You can actually ask the driver to stop anywhere along their route and at the same time, you can flag them down anywhere along their route. The Redwoods is very pretty. The redwood trees are tall and had nice big barks. Originally, I wanted to bike thru the forest but Yeefang isn’t a confident cyclist so we trekked instead.

We were lucky shoppers that day. There was a sale by Farmers going on and we managed to get many good steals. Hehe..