Day 4 - January 25

Waking up to the smell of pancakes from the breakfast buffet was a blissful start to all of our days. Today began at 7:00 AM and packing up the car was a priority because there are 2 places we wanted to visit. These are 2 popular, historical places that have been labeled a must-see on multiple different New Zealand headlines. This being said, we hopped into our rental car and drove an hour and 40 min to the first stop, “Tree Church (ecosystem)”. This is located in Ohapu and is a stunning sight to see when in New Zealand. The quote “One man's dream has turned into this naturally growing chapel made of almost nothing but trees” describes the feeling of a dream in which one person gets when viewing this amazing place. The founder Barry Cox drew the plan and wanted a place of peace in his backyard. This wish turned into construction plans and actual work put into this dream. The quote above was said by him in addition to the journey. Seeing how fulfilling the sight is, all of us were ecstatic to finally arrive. All of this excitement cause a bathroom break halfway through where Jill, Alyssa, and Rachel stretched their legs while the boys John and Jackson bought a newspaper and talked about the sports before reading the rest of it during the ride. Once arriving at 8:30am, we found the tour guide and walked around the area taking tons of pictures. The sight was so amazing and hands on, that the pictures looked professionally taken when Jillian took them all herself! 

We left the “Tree Church” after walking around for quite a bit of time, to head to the Te Wairoa Buried village which is about 20 min away from the Church. This village is special to New Zealand because it is a Maori village obliterated by an 1886 volcanic eruption (Lake Tarawera). It is widely raved about by tourists and is a special piece of history by showing the village now that was affected by an earlier weather pattern in past times. Jill and Alyssa loved the buildings while John, Jackson, and Rachel were more interested in the scientific components such as what exactly happened to cause the eruption. We got out our bars we took from the hotel snack bar this morning and ate some of them to keep up our energy before the car ride back to the hotel. 


Heading home was a tiring journey from walking around all day. This being said, a Restaurant called “Pita Pit” is right off of the highway we are going down to get back to the Royal Park Lodge. It is fast food which we were all willing to eat because we just wanted to get in a warm bed after the chilly adventurous day. The menu items we choose were fairly similar throughout the 5 of us. This includes Jill ordering a Garden (V) Pita, and Alyssa, John, Jackson, and Rachel ordering a Chicken Breast Pita. All of this food was the handed to us at about 4:30 PM as an early dinner/late lunch as we got back in the car ready to hang out back at the hotel. Once we arrived at the hotel 1 hour and 45 min later, Jill told us about her vegetarian journeys and about how she was willing to eat meat on this trip just to get a full feel of the culture and lifestyle of this astonishing place. We were intrigued by her decision to give up being a vegetarian and wanted to see more of what she plans for her future due to this big change in her diet and daily lifestyle. After this discussion, we finished eating the pita from the car and watched some Netflix until the drowsiness once again took over. This drowsiness was the call to bed as all us shut off the lights to get some shut eye along with preparedness for the holiday which lies ahead tomorrow.