The next leg of my journey is a five day loop to Hamilton, Waitomo Caves and Rotorua. Michael and Johanna accompanied me into Auckland this morning, showing me some important landmarks for ‘when Karen gets here’, the new mantra. So now I know where the Airbnb is I’ll be staying in after Rotorua, where the Auckland Art Gallery is, some great cafes, a grocery store, more than I/we will ever have time for. I’m sad to leave my friends, hosts, playmates. Off they go back to Portland tomorrow.

The first stop in my travels is Hamilton. I’ve been told by numerous people that there’s really nothing to see in Hamilton. It’s about 2 hours south of Auckland and there’s a lot of agricultural in the area. I think there’s agricultural industry here too like manufacture and/or sales of farm equipment. A taxi driver today told me that there’s a big international agriculture conference that happens here each year. And with that, the only other thing to see here is The Hamilton Gardens. Wow!!…amazing, beautiful, huge, well done, and worth the trip to Hamilton if you like gardens. Amazingly, it’s a free entrance. They have a lot of local sponsors and they ask for donations but there’s no admittance fee. Some history:

There are several parts of the garden with the most popular being the 18 theme gardens, sort of a history of gardens and styles. Even though that covers a large area, it is a small part of the 133 acres in total.

I didn’t have a favorite garden theme but did like some better than others. They are so well done, I truly felt transported to different parts of the world. I started in the Japanese garden and went from there:

English Garden:

This next one made me laugh and I love it…

There was more, of course, and New gardens are being added. It was time for lunch so I headed for the cafe…reasonably priced and very good food, overlooking Turtle Lake.

I visited other parts of the garden after lunch, walking the many trails, going to the Victorian Garden Display houses and the Women’s Suffrage Pavilion. I’ll leave you with a few more pictures and let you know that tomorrow I move on to Waitomo Caves for a walk and boat ride in the caves to see glow worms and who knows what else!