Water, water

It's a while since I posted. I've come onto the blog several times but seem to be lacking in "blog mojo"...

Anyway, I'm back now. Been continuing to enjoy exploring our new home - and it really is home now with the sale of our Wellington house and the purchase of our Rotorua home both being completed this past week - and the longer we stay in Rotorua, the more we like it. It's stunningly gorgeous, and the weather is amazing here. Sorry to dwell on something so mundane, but Wellington's weather is ... not fabulous at times! However, the gorgeous Bay of Plenty seems to be much nicer. It's a whole heap colder though - huge frosts here, with average morning temperatures well below zero C both here and at work (work is colder!).

I went walking yesterday around the beautiful Hamurana Springs with a friend. It's a lovely spot that reminded me a lot of Waikoropupu Springs, but lacking the sense of danger I felt at Pupu. I'm looking forward to taking the family there for a walk soon. I loved watching the sands dancing in the spring, as though invisible goldfish were puffing them from underneath. The main spring is over 15m deep and the water slips up from a deep crack in the rock. The surface of the water was constantly shivering, and looked almost like a petrol slick - not that there were colours, but that kind of silvery shimmering that petrol on water gets. The spring is crystal clear and not hot (unlike nearly every other spring in the area!), although apparently it is not drinkable. People occasionally throw coins in, and we were talking to a man there who has dived the spring (not sure I'd want to - it's very narrow!) and he said that when the coins stay in there for a while, they go brittle and crumble, so it's obviously got some kind of chemical contamination in there.

My friend also took me to Okere Falls, which was like a slightly smaller version of Huka Falls but not quite as violent. It had the same glorious blue-green aerated water, and I enjoyed watching a group of slightly mad tourists white-water rafting down the falls. We saw the same group as we were walking back to the carpark and they looked a trifle damp.... some people might have used the phrase "wringing wet" instead.