Sunday May 16th, 2010
I woke up today at 7:30 and got ready to leave. Right before we left the lodge took a picture of our group. They said they were about to redo there website and they would love to put a picture of us on there. It will be fun to see on a New Zealand site. We left the lodge at 9:00am and we headed down to Cook's beach. (We were suppose to go to Cook's Beach yesterday but it was raining and we decided not to go.)
Our bus driver, Peter, had a friend, John, that lives near Haiha. John is a environmental manger. We picked him up and went to Ferry Lodge Landing. He gave a us a little lecture about the area. It was interesting. He taught us about how the Maori lived.
(Some of this may not be correct, I'm trying to remember exactly what he said). Originally they never fought one another. Then times got bad and food got scarce and they started fighting over food. The place we went to was a perfect area for defense. If they saw other people coming down the river they would run into the bush and it was very narrow so there were only a few places people could pass. They could protect the area's with a few people and be fairly safe.
After that we went to take a peek at Cook's Beach. The area had a lot of holiday homes, and it was very easy to see why. The place was beautiful.
---Cook's beach got it's name from Captain Cook. He was the second European to come to New Zealand. His job was to map out New Zealand and they say he did a great job.
After leaving Cook's Beach we started heading toward Hamilton. It was about a 2 and a half hour drive. Getting out of the Coromandal Peninsula was a mess for me. I took a Dramamine and it helped a lot, but I had to keep my eyes on the road the whole time. I thought I was going to get sick. (Dr. Swanson was right, the road are small and very curvy).
We stopped in Paeroa, which is the place where the Lemon and Paeroa (L&P) drink was started, and we ate lunch. Then we got back in the bus to finish our trip to Hamilton, we had about an hour left to go.
When we got to Hamilton we went to a place called The Garden. It was really cool. They had different gardens that were from all over the world. The American one wasn't so good. It resembled the west coast and was dull. The Chinese, Japanese, and Indian gardens were really neat to see. They even had gardens that were just herbs. And gardens that were all vegetables. We spent an hour there but I think we all could have stayed longer.
From The Garden we made our way to downtown Hamilton and we went down Victoria, it's the main vein through Hamilton I think. We unloaded the bus and got everyone situated in our rooms. I spilt a unit with Alec once again. We share the sink, toilet, and shower, but we have our own rooms. They have twin size beds and a little TV and then just enough room to walk, they are very small but nice.
Once we got all situated most of us headed down Victoria street. We went to a store called The warehouse, which is like a Wal-Mart but doesn't sell food, and I bought two t-shirts and a rain jacket. From there the night got very fun. We went to Burgerfuel, a pretty good burger place and ate. It was probably only 4:30 or 5:00 but we were starving and it was great. It was a very fun and relaxing day. (Which I needed very much.)
Taylor Bowers
