So glad to be tourists again!

Kia ora!

Am sure you've heard by now that New Zealand is COVID free so other than no international travel, life is beginning to feel like the old normal again.  We've been supporting the more "Buns & Beers" call to action to help the local economy by eating out often. Didn't take much arm twisting for us to take up that challenge! 😁  

We've also been taking some fun sight seeing trips in the area.  The highlight for the week has been our hike up & down a sleeping volcano called Mt. Tarawera.  It had a massive blow out in 1886 that lasted for 6 hours and killed 120 of the Maori villagers who lived nearby.  Our time on this impressive giant was a guided small group hike and we had a blast.  We climbed 3,700 feet and then walked the perimeter.  Then we ran down the inside of the volcano in scree (loose volcano gravel) that allowed you to jump like the astronauts did on the moon.  It was the strangest/coolest sensation.  The good news is that no one ended up going down face first (known as a scorpion because your back legs flip over you head)!  Our guides were adamant that if we were going to fall, we should do so on our hind cheeks not on our face cheeks!

The sights from the top were amazing!!!

Hanging on as it was windy.  Notice another volcano off in the horizon

Hiking along the edge was a bit spooky

The down slope wasn't for the faint of heart 

Emptying our shoes of scree at the bottom

A memorable day for sure!

We checked out a cool geothermal park,  Orakei Korako, which required a boat ride across a river to reach the area.  Filled with hot water, mud pots and all types of heat/sulphur loving algae, the location is magical and sacred to the Maori peoples.






After seven weeks of lock down, we are certainly enjoying our freedom to explore the country.  We get antsy if we stay too long in one place so our blog title of "Untethered" is certainly still appropriate.  For the next several months, we plan to further explore this amazing country.  There are discussions between NZ and Australia that they might try to open a travel corridor between the two countries in the August/September time frame.  If possible, we'd head back to Australia to spend more time exploring some of the places we didn't get to see during our first adventure on the continent.  

For now, we are where we are supposed to be.  We hope you can say the same.

Stay Curious!

Cheryl & Dan 













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