Te Araroa Trail – Hamilton Gardens
Sunday, December 3, 2023
Today is the first of my vacation days based out of Hamilton. It’s a combination rest / vacation period where I’ll be enjoying some of the tourist attractions in the area, but at a fairly leisurely pace.
Hamilton Gardens was on my list for today and I caught a 9:35 bus from Hamilton transit center out to the gardens. It was kind of a misty morning with heavier rains expected in the afternoon.
I arrived at the gardens and started making my way through the “enclosed gardens”. This is an area dedicated to recreating smallish gardens to represent historical gardens or gardens styles from other countries. There was a Japanese Garden, a Chinese Garden, Italian Renaissance Garden, Indian Garden, and many others to view. Each garden area included the garden style for that area/ period as well as buildings and architecture that matched. I spent a couple of hours walking through these gardens.
The misty rain would turn to sprinkles at times and I made my way to the cafe to get a hot cup of coffee and get out of the rain. As I drank my coffee the rain picked up and I ended up skipping the other gardens catching the bus back into the center of town.
My afternoon was mostly just relaxing around the hostel, but I did get out to get a haircut and pick up my food resupply for the next section of my hike to Te Kuiti.
