North Island – some of our experiences

Lava Glas
On the way from Rotorua to Taupo we wanna grab a Coffee, so we stop at the next “Coffee” sign – which was a very expensive experience!

The Coffee Shop is just a add on…

Entering the building you are in the middle of an exhibition of glas products:

For 5 NZD per person you are able to watch the process of building glas products.

After that we go to the sculpture garden and get speechless!

Now the expensive part happens: Kasia and Max where almost unstoppable – they wanna buy everything!

Since we know we would never ever be able to carry them home, we decide to let them ship by the shop. A wise decision! For only 22 NZD (the shop covers a part of the costs) everything arrived home within 10 days!

By the way, we also get our coffee and unbelievable tasty carrot cakes!! All together a very nice experience.

Huka Falls
Right on the outskirts, just after the Waikato River drains from Lake Taupo, you will find the Huka Falls. They are not nearly as big or spectacular as other waterfalls that we have seen in recent months, but still very nice to look at.

Rock’n Ropes
Rock’n Ropes is a possibility to climb (a little bit) and to test your courage. Max did very well!

The first is was climbing up and jumping down – about 6 meter!

Second: climbing up 10 meter and jump to a handle.

Third: “the Swing” – a combination of swing and bungee jumping.

Last: Flying Fox

And that was it.

Prawn Fishing
Since Max was very successful fishing piranhas at Amazonas, he wanna try this too!

However, the visit has only showed: we can not fish and we are absolutely not patient!
Although we have regularly felt like Prawns has eaten the food from the fishing hook, but we have not caught!

So we did the obvious thing to avenge ourselves – we ate a large portion prowns at the attached restaurant!

However, we would rather have caught some …

Napier – a little nice town!
Napier is located in the wine growing area right on the Pacific Ocean in Hawke’s Bay. In addition to wine, Napier is known for its Art Deco city center.

But before we looked at the houses, we were still in the National Aquarium of New Zealand.

There are many sea creatures …

… Information about the dinosaurs and prehistoric shark-crops that occurred in New Zealand …

… real, live kiwis (the birds)!

There is not only the kiwi, which is barely visible in nature, because it is nocturnal. Also a very special animal lives here: the Tuatara, a bridgehead. It is the only animal that has been around for over 220 million years. They existed at the time of the dinosaurs – and they still exist today, unchanged, and only in New Zealand. The animal had hidden well, but we still succeeded in taking a picture, albeit a bad one:

In the attached cafe there was a good cappuccino for Kasia and me and a “small portion” chips at 4 NZD for Max – which was enough for all of us.
The portion was so big that we barely made it for three!

Then we walked on the beach promenade towards the city center and stopped by a playground.

Napier was completely destroyed during an earthquake in 1931 and then rebuilt in a joint effort (including army and Navi). Therefore, most of the buildings in the “Old Town” are in the Art Deco style of the 1930s.