eNZed - day 11 (25-5-5)

We woke up slowly today, but (with dave's patience pressed to the max) A and I finally made it to Waimangu (why-ma-ngoo) Valley Thermal Area. Dave was feeling squirrelly so he dropped us off and headed to Waitapu to hike the squirrels out.

We had some time to kill before hiking out to meet the boat tour on the small lake, so we hit up the cafe for some soup and tea. Yum. Earl Grey with sugar and milk is so wonderful =)! While eating we noticed a little display case full of rocks (ooh!) and of course I could resist examining them through the glass only so long with the incorrect lables before I had to find someone to correct them. It was great! They looked at me and said, "yes, other people have mentioned that as well, but we don't know how to correct them, so we haven't fixed them." This is when my geo-geek puffs up with pride and says, "well good thing for you I'm a geologist and know all about these things.." but out loud I say, "well, I could fix them for you, I'm a geologist.." hoping like hell they'll open that box and let me play with their rocks!

It turned out they had to coolest rhyolite (super explosive volcanic rock) sample EVER - I should have taken a pic, but I'm new at this vacation thing. (skip ahead if you don't care about rocks) It was light gray and full of vesicles. Some of those vesicles were filled with these magenta red spheres that were about 1/2 cm diameter that sometimes spun freely in the matrix and were sometimes fixed. A few of them were intact, but most were broken and I could see the the magenta went all the wat through and the crystals radiated out from the center, with a possibility of a small nucleus. I wanted it, but of course I just asked where they found it. The man told me they found in down in the valley, but I never saw any.

Anyway, soon after the fixing (which made me feel all useful) we started the hike down into the valley. At one of the first lookouts, A made another Maori friend to the effect of, "..hey have you seen that new Star Wars movie? You sure look like the queen.." Uh huh.. that's why we call her Queenie!

The walk/hike was nice, especially the Wallaby (imagine rabbit saized kangaroos) pair we saw! It was pretty funny cause we saw it and I was all excited to take a pic, but we weren't sure hoe scared of people they were. So when another couple of people started sown the path, we totally shushed them and made them stay where they were until I snapped a few. They then came up and told us that wallabies aren't afriad of people in New Zealand cause they are protected.. They thought we were rather amusing yanks.

The boat ride was fun, but would have been better if we would have been able to understand what the guide was saying.

On the bus ride back from the ride, Dave hopped on to our suprise. He told us of his adventures with hiking and fog..

He convinved us to go up to the restaurant Arorangi On the Hill for drinks, but they weren't open. They had some cool mushrooms growing in their parking lot though...

We went back to town and hit up Hell's Pizza for dinner and then went back up. The place was empty, but open so A and I had dessert while Dave chatted up the Chinese waiter who had to sit up there even though no one was eating. Dave got some great pics of the city lights and the moon with Rotorua.

Before heading back to the Park, we tried to go to the Luge, but they were closed.

To see all the pics from Day 11, click here!