I awoke at 7:45a, allowing me plenty of laptop time and to enjoy a cup of tea in the morning sun of the day room.

I went downstairs to the kitchen to help myself to anything in the fridge, as my host Kim had suggested last night, and made more toast with Marmite and cheese! When in NZ…

I walked down the hill to have a look at the Sunken Gardens along Marine Parade. Unfortunately, being out of season, there wasn’t much flora to admire. I was still a bit hungry and was going wine tasting, so I searched for a cafe and grabbed a savory tart to eat on my way to the pick-up point.

Frank, the tour guide for our group of 10, picked me up first, so I sat in the front seat. He used to make wine, so he shared some of his knowledge as he drove. While being outgoing and friendly, he had a quite and calm demeanor to him that made him a pleasant guide for the day.

We visited Mission Estate first. It would end up being my favorite of the four wineries we would visit for a number of reasons: I tasted wines with flavors I’d never experienced, like an herbal quality to the sauvignon blanc (of which I bought a bottle for $20 NZD) and a super peppery syrah; I was still sober, so I could distinguish these unique flavors in each wine; and the sun was still out. As the day went on, the weather got progressively overcast and colder. We were inside most of the time but still a bit of a bummer, given that the forecast was clear and warm. Not sure what happened there.

Next up were Church Road, Unison where we enjoyed a Mediterranean sampler plate rather than the usual cheese or charcuterie, and Hawkes Ridge. We tasted 6-7 wines at each place, and they all ran together for me, starting with the second stop. Which is totally fine.. it was still a fun experience, sipping on whatever was being poured and chatting with other members of the group.

There was a third-year student at university from Edmonton, Alberta who was traveling outside of Canada for the first time in his young life; his best friend was supposed to join him but wasn’t able to go at the last minute and he went on the trip anyway, despite being terribly anxious about traveling alone. Good on ya, mate! The other eight were two groups of four, two couples in each, all of them NZ residents from all over the North Island. I was surprised there were only two of us foreigners. Frank said it’s always a different mix and you never know what you’ll get.

Our final stop at dusk was a brewery. When I was back in Portland looking to book a Napier wine tour, Frank’s stood out for two reasons: one brewery stop and nearly universal five-star reviews on TripAdvisor.

After Mission Estate, GodsOwn Brewery was my other favorite stop. It’s a hop farm without any buildings on it. They serve food, including wood-fired pizza, out of a repurposed caravan and there is seating either in a safari tent with heatlamps or out by the fire, where our group sat. Frank brought out some blankets for the cold-sensitive among us (ME), and the brewer provided us with half-pint samples of three beers plus some pizza slices. And then after dark, the marshmallows came out! What a surprise treat to roast marshmallows by the fire. Not your everyday winery tour.

The tour as booked goes till 5:30pm, but Frank had checked when we first loaded up as to whether anyone had a dinner date or anything pressing. No one did, so he said he’d have us back by 6:30pm. It was 7:15pm when he dropped me off! This told me Frank is not in this business for the money and is genuinely interested in his groups having a good time.

As we parted ways, Frank surprised me with a wine glass from Mission Estate. My immediate thought was how little space I have in my bags for souvenirs and how I still had 25 days of my trip left to carry around this glass. However, it was in a small cardboard box that would fare just fine, and I was pleased as punch to have acquired a New Zealand souvenir without trying. Receiving one as an unexpected gift was so much better than buying one for myself.

I had asked Frank to drop me off at Indigo, an Indian restaurant and the other dinner option highly recommended by Kim. There was an hour-long wait for a table, even for one person, unless I wanted to sit outside with heat lamps, which despite my cold aversion was totally fine since I’d be seated right away and I had the storefront off of the sidewalk all to myself.

I enjoyed papadums, samosas, and paneer tawa and then walked up the steep hill and was early to bed again. I am reallllly enjoying this 10:45-7:45 sleep schedule I’ve been on!

I arrived on the bus at 3:45, about 40 minutes late due to a change in bus drivers that ran long because the road where they used to switch is under construction and pull-offs are hard to come by so they had to move it out of the way, yada yada.. the bus driver said it’s out of their control. What is in their control is managing passengers’ expectations and either advising us beforehand that there would be a delay or posting a later arrival time. I had arranged with my host to be picked up at the depot based on the posted time and ultimately informed him while on the way not to wait around for me.

Unlike previous stops, this bus drop-off is separate from the i-Site information centers for tourists that are all over New Zealand. It’s nice when they’re located together for restroom usage, bag storage, and any info needed, such as local cab numbers. I have international data usage on my phone (a godsend), so I could have looked up a cab, but I decided to do the 15-minute walk with my bags, even knowing the last part was uphill, because I wanted to stretch out after the longer-than-expected bus ride.

There are two ways up the hill. I now know that one is a steep but flat walking path that leads directly to the Airbnb listing. I took the other, which was… stairs. So. Many. Stairs. I would get to the top and find… more stairs. My roller bag is about 35 pounds, the same weight the larger bag I usually travel with is when packed, so my small bag is DENSE.. haha. Oh, well… I made it.

And it was so worth it. The house is full of large picture windows for ultimate viewing of Hawke’s Bay, which sounds like ocean tide as it ebbs and flows. The bedroom includes a day room facing both east to the sun and south to the bay. Delightful.

I got settled and it was dark by the time I wandered down the hill to Marine Parade, the promenade lining the bay. There were Christmas-type lights strung on the tall trees, and like when I was in Barcelona, I managed to find a fountain with changing colorful lights. It was a geocache that brought me to it, but alas, I hadn’t noticed that the last several cachers to seek it came up empty, as did I.

I took a brief peek inside the Emporium Hotel for a taste of the art deco architecture this town is known for. The worst natural disaster in New Zealand history, in terms of lives lost, was the 7.8 magnitude earthquake in 1931 that killed 256 people here. Essentially, the entire town slid out into the bay. When they rebuilt, art deco was the architectural style of the time and about 80% of the buildings here retain it. They have an annual art deco festival in February to celebrate it, including vintage cars on display, and there also happens to be an annual Hot Rod and Classic Car Festival here this weekend, so it’s been fun seeing them on the road here and there.

One of my host’s restaurant recommendations was Bistronomy, where you can either do a 6-course meal for $75 NZD or a la carte small plates. I wasn’t hungry enough for the full meal, and some of the a la carte plates sounded delicious. I was very surprised at how very small the small plates were, like a maximum of 5 bites each. But they were delectable, the presentation was beautiful, they were unexpectedly filling, and the whole experience was a treat. I enjoyed a glass of pinot noir, a parsley soup, a tarahiki sashimi, a butternut canneloni, and salty chocolate ganache balls. The total bill came to the equivalent of $34 USD!

Back up the hill for a shower, laptop time, and early to bed at 10:30pm.

With just one night in Taupo, today was another travel day.

Bee and Graeme offer bread and spreads for guests to have a light breakfast, and I took advantage of the opportunity to try Marmite for the first time. It’s a salty brown paste that is kind of like soy sauce in spreadable form? With cheese on top, it’s a pretty tasty savory version of toast.

Bee and Graeme have only been hosting for four months and have been nearly booked solid since, so they shared some guest stories. Bee brought up the Jehovah’s Witness pamphlets in my room as a means of sharing a story about an hour-long discussion/debate she had with a guest who is a missionary. Different interpretations of the Bible and such. I was prepared to fend off any questions about my beliefs and was relieved when they didn’t come.

I packed up, and Bee said she would take me to a breakfast place with a view of the lake where I would have two hours before boarding my bus. So nice to have rides from hosts with my bags!

Graeme was working on the deck, and I went out to say goodbye and thank you. He asked me, I guess because I work for Airbnb, what they should do if they receive an inquiry from a gay male couple. He would want to put them in the room with the twin beds, and I replied that they’re going to want to stay in the queen bed together. He then said he’d prefer to take them out back and shoot them.

I dismissed the racist comment he made yesterday when we were up at the Dam — he characterized Asians and Indians as rip-off artists — as the backward mentality of a 75-year-old man. I understand it is the responsibility of the privileged to speak up for the oppressed, and I’m learning how to do that back home. I’m an American in New Zealand. Racism is racism, but it didn’t feel like my place to challenge this man on his beliefs. Which feels like a cop-out as I write this.

The racist comment was a hurtful generalization. The anti-gay comment this morning was hateful, and I said, “Come on now. Love is love. People love who they love, whomever they may be.” He grunted and changed the subject. That was all I had in me on my way out the door.

In the hours since I left, I have really been struggling to reconcile Bee and Graeme’s generous hospitality with Graeme’s bigotry and how to confront it. I have been really heartened by the friendly spirit of the people of New Zealand, and I thought I was getting the same here, until I wasn’t.

I decided that my public Airbnb review would reflect both the unapproved change in rooms and how much I appreciated the car rides I received. Privately, I emphasized to Bee and Graeme the importance of welcoming *everyone* from the global community to which they’d opened their home. I hope they give my feedback some consideration.

I awoke at 7:45, an hour before my alarm, after 8 hours of sleep (most of the time, if uninterrupted, I will sleep 9 hours, so I’ll set an alarm to make sure I don’t go past). This was a good thing, as I had prioritized blog posts over Facebook posts during the last few days of laptop time. I wanted to share photos of my adventures, and it took a while to choose, arrange, and caption them.

I was a bit sad to leave my listing in Rotorua. It was a very comfortable and private space, and my hosts Diane and Mike were lovely. I packed up and used a free pass for the city bus that Mike gave me to get back to the InterCity depot and took the one-hour bus ride to Taupo.

Like Diane, my hosts Bee and Graeme were very accommodating of the fact that I was arriving by bus and getting around mostly on foot, and they offered to pick me up. I walked to a local bakery for a small sandwich and Graeme met me there and gave me a ride back to their house.

They have two spare rooms in their house, one with a queen bed and one with twin beds. The queen bed is the one they’ve listed on Airbnb, with the optional use of the room with the twin beds. When Bee showed me to my room, the one with the twin beds, I didn’t think, “Wait, what” right away. I guess in the moment I thought that I’d booked a cheaper room to stretch my Airbnb credit as far as possible.

I even saw the queen bed unmade in the other room, and Bee apologized that she usually has a tidier house but she has been fighting a chest cold for 3 weeks and gave in to her lack of energy. I didn’t put it together that that was the room I’d booked. I later realized when I looked at the Airbnb itinerary for tomorrow’s checkout time. I’m too tall for any twin bed, but I’d already gotten settled where there was much more floor space for all my stuff, so I didn’t ask to switch. I did provide the feedback, from the perspective of someone who understands Airbnb host responsibilities and guest expectations, that the room listed and booked is the one that should be delivered, and they appreciated that.

With my one day in Taupo, I knew I wanted to see Huka Falls. What I didn’t know about was the opening of the spill gates at Aratiatia Dam, with a viewpoint overlooking the resulting rapids. Graeme is 75 today and spending his birthday building a deck outside his home with Bee. He needed nails, and as much as he wants to keep moving, he recognized that he needed a break, so before going to the hardware, he drove me up to the dam and walked me out to the viewpoint to watch the opening of the gates and the rapids come down. Beautiful! He doesn’t make much of his birthday, but he said it was a treat to both see something he himself has been wanting to see and to share it with a traveler too.

Our next stop was a lookout point over Huka Falls and then he dropped me down at the Falls so I could first enjoy the view and then walk the hour-long trail path along the Waikato River and back into town. The trail ends at Spa Thermal Park, where you can park your car, walk a little ways through a park path, and find yourself in some free hot pools. There is construction going on there now to build a coffee shop and bathroom facilities and benched seating into the rocks to enjoy the pools. Seems a bit of a shame to commercialize the spot, and a dog walker in the park said as much.

It was another half hour through the park and back to the listing, and after an hour and a half of walking, I was pooped (my back in good shape, though!). I rested in my room until I got hungry.

As has become my custom over the last week, rather than go out to eat in a restaurant, I walked to a local takeaway for a veggie burger to bring back to the listing. Bee showed up while I was waiting for my order as she and Graeme had decided on a takeaway night. I ate and chatted with her while she waited on her order and rode back to the listing with her (it wasn’t far, but I had walked a lot!).

I chatted with Bee and Graeme a bit but spent most of the evening resting in my room and taking care of online business: bill-paying (regular life carries on…) and more Facebook photos of today’s sights.

Another 6:45 rise. No time for sleep while adventuring!

I walked 20 minutes into town and caught the 8:00a tour bus to the Hobbiton Movie Set. I’m not an adoring fan of that world, but I read The Hobbit and the LOTR trilogy and saw the movies, and I knew about this tour stop from seeing it in other travelers’ photos and thought it would be pretty cool.

It was amazing! The Hobbiton set for the Lord of the Rings trilogy had been made of polystyrene and was dismantled after filming concluded. When Peter Jackson began production on The Hobbit movies, he wanted to return to the gorgeous land of the Alexander farm and approached the family about building a real village out of stone and wood. They agreed and are still business partners on the tour site.

The care and effort put into the details give it a truly special feel. There are 44 hobbit holes and each is distinct. They get bigger and more elaborate the higher up the hill you go in accordance with hobbit prestige. The doors open, the surrounding orchards grow real vegetables, there is laundry strung about here and there. It’s all very adorable and charming, a word I can’t stop using about New Zealand.

Our tour concluded with a drink at the Green Dragon Inn. We were offered beer or cider, and I chose cider to drink by the fire. Cozy and charming!

After the hour-long ride back into Rotorua, I ate at Eat Streat, a covered central walkway between a cluster of local restaurants and bars. I chose Mac’s because they were still serving breakfast, and I have a bit of a breakfast fetish. Avocado toast with salmon and a hard-boiled egg and some greens and a mushroom sauce thing. Om nom.

While eating, I looked up nearby caches and saw that there was one overlooking Lake Rotorua nearby. Beautiful spot! And I found the cache, so that was a bonus.

I walked back to my Airbnb listing to regroup and take care of some business. Among other things, as I mentioned in a previous post, I was supposed to call InterCity for a refund on the canceled dolphin tour due to weather conditions. When I finally did this afternoon, I was surprised that they issued one!

I headed back out, swimsuit and towel in hand. Since I arrived in Rotorua, I’d been looking forward to visiting the mineral pools at the Polynesian Spa as they overlook Lake Rotorua. Yes, please.

It was a very windy day, and when I arrived at the spa, the power had been out for about 20 minutes. The staff estimated that the pool heat would last another hour or so if the power didn’t come back on. They also couldn’t run my credit card, and the $30 NZD ($21 USD!) entry would take up most of the remainder of my cash. It being my last day here, I went for it. Good call. The power came back on not long after I began soaking and the pools hadn’t lost any heat and I would later retrieve my cash and pay by card upon exit.

There were 7 or 8 pools of different temperatures and depth. I sat only in the two facing the lake until the sun had gone down! What an embarrassment of riches, sitting in 104 degree mineral water with a sunset view of a lake. Making my way around all the pools, I spent two hours total soaking. So relaxing. So luxurious.

Whakarewarewa – The Living Maori Village

There are several attractions here for tourists to experience Maori culture, some of them outside of town where people pour in by the busload. Two of them are in town, within walking distance of my listing, and both centered around an active geothermal area.

As described in the first comment of this TripAdvisor post that helped me decide where to go, Te Puia is supported by the New Zealand government and operates in conjunction with local Maori tribes. They have a kiwi house, which my InterCity bus driver yesterday got me interested in seeing (they are nocturnal, so in order to see them, night is simulated in an enclosed space). Whakarewarewa Living Village is an actual Maori village, with about 25 families or 60 people calling it their home. There is no kiwi house, but the tour includes a performance of the haka, a traditional Maori war dance that I have wanted to see in person for years, so this made for an easy choice (also, Te Puia’s website is pretty slick and Whakarewarewa had a more authentic feel for me, also echoed in the TripAdvisor post).

I walked about 20 minutes to Whakarewarewa and arrived early enough to sit front and center for the 30-minute cultural performance. I was so close to the performers that it was difficult to capture the experience via photos and video, which was simultaneously a relief because I wanted to be immersed in it and disappointing because OF COURSE I wanted to savor it forever.

An audience participation section got us on our feet and singing, a song about forbidden love between two ancestors of the performers brought me to tears, and the haka came and went too quickly. My friend Kristina attended a haka about 10 years ago and said the performers went through the motions perfunctorily, as if they’d done it for a million tourists, because they had, and I was so happy that this troupe committed. And then they generously posed for photos with every audience member.

Following the performance I went on a guided tour of the village, learning about the hot pools and seeing food cooked and how the villagers bathe.

Lunch was a traditional hangi meal, meaning it was prepared in a geothermal oven. Apparently, meat cooked this way just slides off the bones, making it ultra tender, but of course I’d asked to exclude the meat, leaving plenty of vegetables: corn, carrots, and sweet potato, some salad greens, stuffing (sans gravy), and bread pudding for dessert.

I considered following one of the nature walk paths around the village, but at this point, I’d already walked 8,000 steps and I’m being mindful not to push my back too far on any given day since I still have a long trip ahead of me!

Redwoods Treewalk

My next stop was seemingly nearby, but the map is deceiving as the most direct route is not actually accessible to the public by car or on foot. I was looking at a 50-minute walk on the main roads, so I asked the staff at Whakarewarewa to call me a taxi.

The treewalk is a loop of 23 platforms surrounding redwood trees and connected by suspension bridges. They offer daytime entry, a “Nightlights” experience, and a combo ticket in between at dusk. The in-between ticket costs $10 NZD more than either of the other two, which makes sense because optimal viewing is when the lanterns are illuminated and there is still enough daylight to see the trees around them.

I’d looked up today’s sunset and found it was at 5:30pm, so I was aiming for a 4:00 or 4:15 start, figuring I’d walk the platforms and bridges slowly (the whole thing only takes about 40 minutes at a normal pace). However, by foregoing the walks around Whakarewarewa and from Whakarewarewa to the redwoods, I’d arrived a bit too early, at 3:30pm.

I went in to get a ticket anyway and made the mistake of asking when the lights would come on without specifying that I wanted the dusk experience. The folks at the desk said the lights wouldn’t be coming on until 6:30 or 7:00. What?! One said I could view the lights at 5:30 but it wouldn’t be the same experience. I only realized just now upon writing this out that, due to my miscommunication, they were telling me when optimal viewing for the night experience would begin.

This led to me thinking I had, like, 3 hours to kill. I postponed buying the ticket to figure out what I wanted to do. I think perhaps most people (?) would have foregone the lights and just taken the day walk through the trees.

However:

1. Even those who don’t care to know and/or know very little about astrology (myself included) can probably tell you the defining characteristic of a Taurus: they’re goddamn stubborn (bull-headed).
2. I really love pretty lights at night. It’s my favorite part of Christmas. I always hang string lights in my home.
3. A thing I am particularly skilled at is passing time. Generally speaking, the pace at which I move through life is pretty slow. When I was a kid, my mom used to say I had two speeds: Slow and Stop. This hasn’t changed a lot in my adulting.

There are several forest paths surrounding the treewalk, and at 4:00, I headed out on the 30-minute loop. I hit my 10,000 steps not so far in; given that I was in the opposite of a hurry and being mindful of my back, I walked reallllly slowly. When I came to a crossroads where I could head back to the starting point or continue on the 1-hour loop, I decided to continue on to pass some more time. I enjoyed the fresh forest air and crossing paths with locals on their afternoon runs.

I managed to turn a 60-minute loop into 90 minutes, arriving back at the ticket office at 5:30. The lights around the trees had started to come on, and I thought the desk staff had really gotten things wrong! It seemed like a good time to start the walk, so I bought my ticket and walked up the spiral ramp to the first platform. The first few platforms were perfect dusk light. And then, dusk was gone and night fell. The lanterns were really beautiful. And… the scene would have been much prettier with the trees in view around them. I’d passed too much time! Alas.

Once I completed the treewalk, I wished for the second or third time today that they operated a shuttle for non-driving people like myself. I walked about 15 minutes to a nearby Turkish joint. As I went to place my order, I realized how completely knackered I was. The sun and the walking had done me in. I ordered a takeaway falafel kebab (like a Mediterranean or Middle East burrito) and asked them to call me a cab.

And I’ve just spent way too much time writing this post. It’s after midnight and I have an early morning. To bed, to bed…