Right, first things first, we got the Maori greeting spelling wrong in the last blog, so that’s been corrected in the title of this one which means ‘Hi, good day’ (Kia Ora), ‘Welcome’ (Nau Mai).

So from now on, we expect all of you to use a Maori greeting and a Nose Rub and a Forehead ‘touch’, when we meet any of you, our blog readers 😂😂 from now on 😂😂

Well after our few days in the Bay of Islands, we set off for what we thought would be a five hour drive to a place called Tairua on the Coromandel Peninsula, but with all the ups and downs of the mountains we had to drive over, it actually took us 7 1/2  hours and we were rather tired when we arrived.

Again the view from our room balcony was stunning looking out over a beautiful bay, which once again had many islands and although Whales and Dolphins use this bay, on the two days we were here we didn’t see any – grrr!

For the first time in the six weeks we have been traveling, we managed to do a paddle in the sea (no, we didn’t manage a swim, but the paddle went down well), where we managed to find a few nice shells to add to our collection.

We were a bit spoilt for choice, because there were only about 50 million (estimate 😂😂) of them to chose from!

After a couple of days just chilling in a really peaceful place, we jumped in the car for a three hour drive to our next destination, a place called Rotorua, which for a change, was away from the coast and a very popular tourist destination, with a lot of Maori culture and where, unlike a lot of New Zealand, about 70% of the population are of Maori descent 👍.

On the first night of our arrival, there was a street market, with lots of food stalls and live music at several places throughout the market 👍👍.

Then it was time to start exploring some of the many attractions this place had to offer and where else could we start, but to try and see the bird that the NZ culture and The NZ people are named after – the world famous Kiwi bird 👍👍👫

The place we chose to visit first, was a Kiwi hatchery, where they are breeding the birds and then releasing them back into the wild 👍👍

As we were doing a guided walk round a Kiwi sanctuary, the guide got a message on his phone that a hatching was taking place, so off we rushed, up and down some steep tracks through the woods, down to the hatchery, where we had a real treat waiting for us!

The Kiwi bird is about 2 to 3 times bigger than a Chicken, but the Kiwi egg is huge, at least 5 or 6 times bigger than a Chicken egg and no wonder, because the Kiwi chick is really big and you have to wonder just how it gets in the egg, even one this size!

Many New Zealand birds are under threat from predators introduced by the Maori’s first, then by the European settlers 👿👿

The following night, we went to a Maori village for a tour, a meal (all cooked in hot springs in the floor), which was delicious – yum yum, followed by a cultural show, which was fantastic 👍👍👍

The next day, we continued to explore the Rotorua town and its surroundings, consisting of a lot of ‘old’ Colonial style buildings and big open spaces and parks.

What we forgot to say, was that when we arrived here, we could smell, what we thought were drains!, but which turned out to be the smell of the Sulphur Springs, that were all around the town and which provided a lot of springs of clean water and heated swimming pools around the hotels etc.

That’s all for now, as tomorrow we set off back to Aukland to catch the next cruise across the Pacific and it might mean that we are out of touch for three weeks or so – so bye bye for now 👫🍷🍷