Pics
Well, here we are on our 11th day and there’s hardly been a spare minute. I’ve already jumped to our second day. Now I have a few moments when we’re not dashing about, I’ll re-cap on the first.
Heather and Niles have a wonderful pad in a particularly good place for train spotters. The train lines go through the back garden. It’s a superb vantage point as it seems to be a passing spot where the trains often stop and wait for another coming in the other direction. New Zealand train drivers are a very friendly bunch and always give each other an ‘Ivor the Engine’ toot as they come alongside and then another one or two as they move on. The result is, neither Niles nor Heather are ever late for work as the trains start running and the drivers start their merry tooting, from 5.30 am and continue till 11.30 pm.
Still, as they say, it’s cheap and there are at least sixteen good pubs within walking distance. We had a good look at one on our first evening. We had an excellent meal there. A massive scrumptious blue-cheese topped burger ended up on my plate. Well, that’s not where it ended up but you know what I mean. To wash down the grub we ordered some jugs of beer called Steinlager. An excellent choice. The girls were on various other drinks so Niles, Brian and I worked our way through three jugs of the beer. At the end of the evening, there was an argument as to how many jugs of beer, on average, each of us had drunk. Three jugs of beer divided by three blokes. I used decimals, Brian, fractions and Niles went home for his slide rule. Each of us came to a different answer, not only to each other, but also, each time we made the calculation. Finally we all agreed that the answer was 42. Excellent beer!
Next day was a leisurely one, spent mostly in the park and museum that are only minutes from their front door. As on the first day, the sun shone and the clean air was warm. The strange plants and trees provided backdrop for dozens of photographs. Star of the show was Heather’s favourite tree and we right away saw why she loved it. It’s a massive old thing with vast rambling above ground roots. I could see a craggy old Tolkein enjoying its company. While we were there, a Canadian family came up and asked us to use their camera for their photo with the old tree. They were descended from the original Canadians from a time, long before we and the French arrived and they were very proud of it.
There was a glasshouse complex in the park where some amazing plants grew. Huge lily pads in the ponds and brightly coloured trumpets hanging down. The strangest sight was in the Fernery. That was an unshaven old gentleman dressed in a dressing gown and wearing slippers on his feet. We wished him good day but didn’t like to ask what he was doing, dressed like that in the middle of a park at midday. Then we heard helicopters and several policemen and cop cars arrived so we assumed he had escaped from somewhere. Turned out he was a government minister just out for his constitutional.
The day ended with that wonderful meal at the Sky Tower.
Next day, after messing about packing and shouting at each other a lot, we hired a rattlebag of an old car and drove down to Rotorua Getting away from Auckland is pretty much the same as from any big city in the world. The Auckland population measures about a million. That’s one quarter of all New Zealanders, so there’s a fair amount of traffic. However, it rapidly thins out and shortly after starting our journey, there was really only one road to follow all the way to our destination. We avoided the only major town on route and headed for Cambridge. Even that slipped by with hardly any notice taken of it. We stopped, thereabouts, at a little shop that sold hot pies and drinks as well as filling in as post office, supermarket and bordello. I don’t know about the girls but the pies were terrible. Cardboard pastry, tasteless meat and little of it. They are available across the country and are known as Mrs Mac’s Pies. The advertising poster carries a fifties style image of dear old granny Mac in her kitchen and carries the slogan, ‘If it’s not Macs, take it back’. Just leave out the word ‘not’ You have been warned.
The journey had been a speedy one with both Brian and I keeping pretty much to the speed limit of 100. That’s 100 k, not miles. We soon slowed down when we met a a long stretch of resurfacing New Zealand styly. It seems they cannot afford road rollers out her and depend on the odd passing motorist to bed in the chippings. Thy do request that the speed is lowered to 50 k but the truck coming the other way was late for lunch and passed us, doing a ton. The result was a sound like heavy machine gun fire and the car was spattered with a small mountain of gravel. A chip in the windscreen in Kiwi speak is ‘a chup in the wundscreen’ but it will cost us just as much.
Rotorua aught to be twinned with Bridgewater. They have lots of things in common, I’m sure, but the main thing is that, in each case, you can smell them long before you can see them. The small of Hydrogen Sulphide was particularly strong where we were bedded down for the next two nights as we were right across the road from the park. This must be the most unusual park in the world. Several areas are roped off with danger signs surrounding them. Steam rises from the ground. Pools bubble menacingly. Shrivelled trees and bushes endeavour to survive on the edges of pits of grey soil, baked brittle dry by the escaping gasses from below. As I said, all that was on our doorstep.
Also on our doorstep was an establishment called ‘Kiwi Paka’. It is a backpackers place with good looking accommodation, a small heated pool and, most importantly, a bar. I think, if it had been up to some us, that would have been our final halt for the day before turning in but good sense prevailed (and happy hour ended at 6pm!) We’d come for the thermal activity and that’s where we headed next, looking for a remembered eating house on the way. The whole town seemed to have grown since we last visited so, after a fair tramp round, we gave up looking for it and settled in at an excellent fish (fush) place for Dory and chips, washed down with another local beer or three.
To be fair, turning up at a swimming pool at 10pm would have meant disappointment in most countries. However, our disappointment came, not because they were closed but because they were heaving with people. We decided that our idea of relaxing in pools heated from the volcanoes below the town would be spoiled in the company of the busloads of Japanese teenagers. Well they looked like teenagers. Most people do, to me.
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