SUBURBIAN OASIS

The nine-hour bus journey to the city of Hamilton started out on the morning of the 4th of June. Miia who, as mentioned above, very easily has the tendency of getting motion sickness while travelling by bus was certainly not happy about the prospect of a scenic bus drive of nine hours. However she took it like a man and doped herself full of motion sickness medication before the bus left Wellington. As we drove through the scenic cities like Matamata and Taupo the only thing Miia seemed to feel was a slight drowsiness, which was a relief for the accompanying party. We arrived to the city of Hamilton in the evening and were glad to notice that once again we had succeeded in finding us a lovely host for our time in the city. We were welcomed to the lovely suburb home of Christina, Nina and Lulu with a hearty homemade dinner, soft beds and a hot shower. And after 9 hours in a bus -boy that felt awesome!

Come morning we found ourselves in the middle of a small oasis. The property didn’t look much at first but when we descended to the backyard we found a small chicken run with Henny the hen and few fruit trees surrounded by the walls of bamboo. In these peaceful surroundings we helped the lady of the house as much as we could until an exciding news came down the wire inviting us to continue our research in Rotorua. This only meant that we would have to leave our newly found host and her lovely small property much sooner than anticipated. However we were really happy that despite of all the set backs with our research we were finally blessed with some of good luck. We took as much as we could out of the few days in Hamilton although we didn’t visited the New Zealand’s biggest mall; an easy decision if you would’ve seen the balance on our bank accounts ;)

So once again, only after a week in the Christina’s garden oasis, we packed our bags on hopped on a bus, which took us to Rotorua; the city everybody had told us to visit but a place we had almost decided to skip. Well at least we would get to see some natural geo-thermal activity and perhaps a glimpse of the famous stratovolcano Mt. Ruapehu!

With Love Miia & Lotta