Wednesday we had plans to set out on our own for a few days. It helped having Adam who was comfortable driving on that side of the road. It's a good thing, cause every time we hit a round-about, which was like every block I was so confused by how it all worked. We wanted to visit some of the other places that Adam had served and mission sight see, plus do some things that were touristy that he couldn't do while he was on his mission.
We got up early and set out for Hamilton. Really it didn't feel that early cause come six in the morning we always felt wide awake. It was hard to try and sleep in. Really the only thing we wanted to do in Hamilton, was go to the Hamilton Temple. We were in a rush and we figured we wouldn't make the session. We kinda soon found out that nobody else was in a rush when we got there, so it was all good. I was a little confused where I was supposed to go for everything, and finding a worker to help was tricky. They were a little more sparse than here at home.
I fell in love with this temple. It was just so simply beautiful. There wasn't crown molding, textured/pattered carpet, crazy chandeliers, or gold plated anything. Just pictures on the walls in a white atmosphere. Just simple. Even the Murals that were in the celestial room were just recently put up in the last five years they told us. It was so humbling to see it just simply laid out, and have the spirit be just as strong. The temple was just as beautiful to me as any other that I've seen. I loved it.
Some of the scenery around the temple. Not too shabby eh?
We stopped by the visitor center where an older couple from Orem were serving. They were telling us that they couldn't place our accents. Ha! Then he said it's cause we were from Southern Utah. Not sure what that meant, but I guess we talk weird. After we walked around we headed out to Rotorua to the Whakarewarewa Forrest so we could Mountain Bike. The drive was beautiful and reminded us a lot of Hawaii how the trees made a tunnel over the road.
We originally had planned to do these trails that you were shuttled up, then just road down. We found out they only run on certain days, and Wednesdays wasn't one of them. I found out later I was happy for that, cause downhill freaked me out a bit. Adam was bummed tho.
The trails we did end up doing were a lot of fun. We rented our bikes for a few hours and headed out.
I laughed at the time that we followed the easier kiddie trails, because of me, but once it got harder I knew it was a good thing to start with those ones. I am so ever grateful for a kind patient husband, cause I wasn't much fun to be around when we first started. This was one of the main touristy things he wanted to do while there and I felt all this pressure to keep up and make sure he had fun that I was super grumpy. I finally stopped, apologized and promised I'd keep my complaining at sucking to a minimum. We had a lot of fun after that. I still kept to the easier trails, and him to the harder when they branched off and came back together. I don't want to know what his were like, but I fell over on the mountain a few times, banged my head on a fallen tree I tried to smoothly go under, and almost landed myself in a ditch. In fact, I still don't know how I didn't end up in that ditch. Ha! You could hear Adam laughing often when having to follow me. I'm embarrassed he probably got a bunch on film too.
They had planted California Redwood Trees in this forrest, and they were huge and beautiful. Add in the ferns and it was pretty ideal.
We got done with a half hour left of our rental time and I let Adam go back to do his thing. He had a blast going at his own speed. When he got done he talked to the local about a good fish and chips shop. The guy also told him this lake we should go each our dinner at, cause it was pretty. There wasn't once on our trip that we got directions from a local, that we didn't get lost. We got lost a bunch. BUT we did find the shop, and it had the best fish and chips that we had on our trip. So yummy.
This is Blue Lake, and it was AMAZING. We were so glad the guy told us to come eat our food here. If we were staying in Rotorua longer, we probably would have come back up here to play more.
After dinner we wanted to try out the infamous Geothermal pools. Everyone says Rotorua stinks, cause of all the sulfur smells. We didn't smell it until we got here. I guess people still use these pools to heat their houses. We didn't get spa treatments done, but we did pay to have a private hot tub for a half an hour. So glad we did, cause the general ones were super full of people at the time and it gave you an all day pass. We both like hot tubs, but not for super long, so we actually didn't stay in it for the full half an hour. It was warm and stinky. But it felt nice after our mountain biking. Glad we didn't pay for the full day admission. I don't know how people stay in them that long.
There were a few things Adam said I had to have to eat while in NZ. Fish and Chips, meat pies, their chocolate, and their ice cream. Because they have so many dairy farms, anything dairy related really was amazing. Plus they had flavors you wouldn't normally see here. This one was Lemon Passionfruit. It had passionfruit chunks in it. It was AMMMMAAAZZING! Ha! It was the first one I had, and I was sold on it. I think we got ice cream twice after that, and I ate a lot of chocolate and fish and chips. :0) When we were done we did some shopping around the spa at the touristy shops, then headed out to Tauranga to spend the night.
This is one of my favorite stories from Adam's mission. He was racing his companion home down this hill in the dark to get home. He thought he'd be clever and cut across the grass and he face planted it into this sign he couldn't see and fell off his bike leaving a dent in the sign. THIS sign was a different one years later, but still in the same stop, and still making me laugh and needing a picture by it.
One of the other places he lived.
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