Sorry for the long delay. Here is the next part of the Rotorua trip. As stated before, we had a great time there. The next day we decided to go to this place called the buried village. The road out to the village went through pine and redwood trees and there were two very beautiful lakes. Blue Lake and Green Lake.
The road to the buried village
Blue or Green lake, I don't remember which.
At the buried village we went through a museum and then walked around the village. It was amazing what went on there. One of the survivors survived only because her shack was made of corrugated metal. Her children and husband died in the mudslide, with one of her children dying in her arms. It was a very sad story.
In the museum at buried village
a carving from the buried village
The felt hat was turned to ash.. They preserved it.
A sewing machine lodged into a tree due to a volcanic blast
Water pump for the village
Grinding wheel
Trench to the houses
all the houses were like this
More buried stuff
Houses excavated from the mudflow
I think this was a bakers place, buried village
Where a house used to be
stream by the village
little "trees" in the river
Old canon
Kids at the falls, buried village
Stairs down to the falls
stream before the falls
After the buried village, we went back to the AgroDome and decided to do the farm tour. This was a really good time as we got to feed animals and all that.
Wooly Bully
Hand feeding the ostriches
small deer
feeding time
Silly llama
Feed me lady!
Kids trying to get the deer to come to them
Kiwi fruit trees
Old truck at the farm
More llamas
Red Deer
This llama was chasing Marty
cow petting
Lamb huggin
IT'S SO FLUFFY!!
Kelsey got to pet two cows that day
feeding time
After the AgroDome we decided to go see where they filmed Hobbiton for the Lord of the Rings movies. We actually went to do the tour on the first day, but it was raining really hard and spending an hour and a half walking through the hills and dirt would have been really hard. So we went back the next day and it was beautiful. Unfortunately, we can’t show the pictures until, probably after the Hobbit movies come out. I wish I could show them because it was a really cool experience.
Cool rock formations
Hobbiton tour starting point
On the road to middle earth
On the tour bus to Hobbiton in Matamata
We had such a great time that weekend and I would highly recommend that you go and enjoy the same sights. We were going to go camping up far north.. but this was just as wonderful.
We haven’t been really going out very much, but summer is getting ready to end and fall is about to start. Hopefully we can have a few more small adventures before it gets too cold.
Back with more when there is more to show..
Wow – thanks for sharing your families trip! Too bad you couldn’t “sneek” those pictures to me
BTW, had a good laugh when you said you’re wanting to do more trips before it gets cold in the winter. I’ll have to do some research to see what your coldest temperature is for your winter time – because nothing will stop me from doing things in the winter unless it’s about -30C along with some wind chill – makes for abit of a cold ski if you’re on top of a mountain. Aaron Nolan can fill you in on our winter’s here in Montreal when he gets back to New Zealand (hmmm – maybe I should ask him to pack me in his bag to go back home to see you all??? Time to start shedding some pounds – I seem to have put on winter tonnage this year – darn!!!).
It’s not that it’s cold…it’s just wet. And not Seattle rain, I mean…RAIN RAIN. So it kind of limits the outdoor things you can do.