Lake Tarawera & Burried village

We have only a few days left in New Zealand, and there's this feeling again... sadness on one side and excitement on the other. It's been really nice down here. The weather, the food, the people... everything was excellent. This time I've really got to know my parents-in-law, and as I expected they are really-really down to earth, no BS, nice folks. It will be sad to say goodbye this Saturday when we leave, but we will see them in a few months in Uzbekistan, so, that's good. :)

NZ is a country of sandwiches. Everyone seems to eat one at least once a day, every day. Katy and I made a few dishes Uzbek ones and Katy's parents seemed to love it. Only ones I made this fried egg-plants with tomatoes and other vegetables when I put a bit too much of red pepper. So, that one time it was a bit spicy for them to eat, so we had to mix it up with the plain rice the next day to make it less spicy.. Katy's mom also made us these delicious desserts and main meals for dinner..

Anyways, Rotorua (the city where we are now) means the second lake in Maori language, and is located around the lake Rotorua. There're many beautiful lakes around Rotorua and some of them are so big that I mistaken them for the ocean. We went to one called Lake Tarawera. As always in New Zealand the scenery was absolutely astonishingly beautiful. We took many pictures that day and I made Katy and her mom go here and there and pose for one. haha~ They thought it was funny... But even though by doing this I do fit this profile of the "Asians" going around the world and snapping pictures like there's no tomorrow, in the end when I look at them 5~10 years later, I always think "thank God I took these pictures back then..." :)
On the next day we visited the Burried village, which had a nice walk and sort of museum of the site that was a center of tourism back in late 1800 (1882 if I'm not mistaken), when the nearby voulcano errupted and destroyed everything around it for many many miles.

Little waterfall in the Burried village and us near the head, which had a nose similar to Katy's. That's actually was the reason why we took this photo. :)












Rotorua has many hot geysers sites, and you often get this smell of sulphur in the air. Some of them have such incredible colors, like the ones shown below...








This wasn't waterfall but a fast stream, before it fell off the cliff. I finally had a chance to play with the shutter speed on my camera, and got that silky effect that I saw so many times elsewhere in the pictures. As for us 3 on the tree, I set the camera on timer and had to run fast to be in the shot. haha~













Still Burried village.













This picture was taken on the lake Tarawera.


























This family of black swans was absolutely beautiful. And the came really close to me. And below are the pictures where I asked Katy and her mom to pose for me, then I'd set the camera on timer and run run run...

On the way back from the lake Tarawera we stopped by the recycling place. If you think that people recycle a lot in Korea then think again. In New Zealand it's a science. You don't just separate food from recyclables, but you have to grade the recyclables by the number that they have and you have to wash them before bringing them to the recycling. So, milk bottles go to one cage, soft drinks to the other, meat packages to the other, beer bottles to the other and on and on and on... It was kind of fun though.. as you can see by my face... :)