the only people for me

...the only people for me are the average ones, the boring ones who get by, sometimes talking about something vaguely important, often not, not really needing to be saved from anything in particular, desirous of a rich tea and a digestive at the same time, the ones that yawn and can't help saying a commonplace thing because they are human, and be, be, be, like the plants and trees of a forest; growing slowly individually and collectively insignificant yet magnificent and you see the the whole existence for what it really is in itself and everybody sighs; "Ahh".

Cape Byron

Goodbye New Zealand / My other lives

The final weeks in New Zealand have been spent catching up with myself, doing all of those things I said I would do earlier on but put off for various reasons. Also visiting the family members that, by lack of forward planning, I'd neglected to visit until after The Road Trip.

Having gotten me into surfing Richard took it upon himself to introduce me to winter sports (in which skiing is his thing, having zoomed over the snow since early childhood with side-parting and Aran knitted sweater) one day shortly after I returned. I'm clumsy, I know and acknowledge that fact, also my travel insurance covers me to go just about anywhere and do anything except NO WINTER SPORTS coverage under any circumstances, so I thought better of it and watched Richard do his thing.

Ascending Mt Ruapehu

After dressing warmly we drove to Whakapapa and took the ski lifts up to the ski area, although the weather was bright and cloudless the wind while we were riding the chair lifts was surprisingly cold. Mt Ruapehu is a very active volcano and the lava flows were clearly visible on the way up from the vantage point of the chair lift, numb fingers and gritted teeth. I suppose that adds something (excitement?) to the experience, as in the volcano has erupted several times within living memory with skiers on the slopes being pursued downhill by the steaming sulphurous contents of the crater lake and a few thousand tons of ash and rock.   

The view's not too bad...

Spot the accident

I sat in the cafe (yes, there's a cafe there too) for a while watching the skiers zipping here and there between collisions. Before long Richard popped in to see if I had seen him, I hadn't (all the people out there looked a lot like little black matchstick men) and offered to go around a few more times so I could watch him and take some pictures or film. A while later I watched as a tiny figure cut quickly across underneath the great volcanic pinnacles that loomed hundreds of feet above, went out of control and collided with a sign. Some other people in the cafe saw this too and gasped, some went to call for a a paramedic team to go up there and help the figure who was by now moving and later attempting to retrieve a ski that had come off and made its own way downhill. Later, Richard appeared ashen-faced and nursing his arm and we had to take an unplanned trip to the medical centre.

At least the nurses were pretty.

No breaks thanks to some youthful bendy bones!

Sometimes I catch myself playing the farmer, I was left to mind the farm for a few days when the family went to Jess' Inquest. Every day I would get Lass and Storm and go on a drive to check on the farm and maybe paint the odd thing. Now and again I'd be able to gather up some stray ewes on the lane and put them back in a paddock. It seemed so easy, except it wasn't. I left a very expensive bull in the cattle yards because I assumed the one I could see far away in the paddock was the one that had been delivered. I couldn't find the hole in the fence that all the sheep were getting through, two of the dogs fought and I couldn't get one of them back into his kennel for two nights. I held the fort, but it was pretty shoddy. No, I'm certainly not a 'natural' at farming.

Out pig hunting

However, as I have said before; I love the tempo of life that working on the land brings and I cannot emphasise the way I feel about the life in retrospect even now weeks after I've left New Zealand I crave the peace to hear and feel the wind from the hills whistling through the bush and the long rough marsh grass on its way to my ears.

Heath takes a sleep

One project I completed to moderate satisfaction was the construction of a cider press (in order to press the juice from crushed apples or any old fruit for that matter) as I completed it and it actually worked (for a change). It did produce a puny amount of juice on testing, however with more apples available at harvest time and more 'cheeses' of crushed apple I'm sure that it would prove useful if only on a hobbyist scale.

The artifact nears completion...

Yes, it's basically a car jack in a wooden frame. Simple but quite effective.

Goodbyes, I'm not good at them (I'm sure I've said this at some time before), I feel as if I have spent only a little time with my cousins but in my own way I've changed a lot in their company, or perhaps my attitude to change has. I'm not really sure right now but what matters is that I am eternally grateful for their openness and hospitality in taking in some random (Impostor?) from halfway around the world and taking the time to introduce him to themselves and to their lives. That's all I really wanted; to meet and forge bonds with this far flung branch of the family, to be a friend. In the end they gave me so much more. I can never thank them enough.

My dear father would like to see pictures of cousins etc etc so I undertook a few awkward (another common trait?) photo shoots before I left.

Richard and Brigette, for some reason I waited until it began to rain to ask for some pictures...

Callum, Brigette and Richard. It's definitely raining now.

Lass, no relation.

On uploading these pictures it occurred to me that I haven't taken any of Hope and Eilish that would meet the dad seal of approval, there are a few of Dorrien in my first New Zealand post but none recently. Whoops.

I spent a few days down in New Plymouth Visiting John (the original) and his family and generally getting my act together for leaving the country in just over a week. John is NOT a farmer and in an interesting parallel has a long career as a high school teacher (that unsurprisingly he began because 'of the holidays'). 

Mayer, John and..John

Somehow I managed to cut both Janis and Finlay out of the picture. However as we were eating one night Clive called on skype from Byron Bay in Australia (another coincidence as that's where I'm jabbing this down on my little traveling laptop) and we had a little Neeson conference (I guessed that this happened frequently due to the apparent ease of the situation) around the dinner table.

Finlay and Mayer paying attention to their uncle Clive.

Janis, John and Clive on the screen.

After NP I went back to the other side of the Whanganui river for the final week of my visit, again I waited far too long to take some photographs and pretty much took all of them of the final day (if I'd taken many earlier I would have taken endless portraits of poplar poles in various stages of planting).

Heath says 'VROOOM VROOOM!!!'

Effie had grown a fair bit in the intervening two months

Granny time with Lyn

All too quickly it was time to leave the farm and to leave New Zealand, but not before more dad-friendly photography. 

Like herding cats

This sequence never fails to bring tears to my eyes; firstly the adults are distracted by the children...

Then Heath gets the grumbles...

...Effie has her turn...

Monique took this one, Heath picks up the baton again...

The young family goes home on the quad, I like this picture.

A literary cliche of an old man once said that one life was too long, that he was tired. As I get older (bah) I have come to believe one life is not enough, that to be fulfilled my soul whatever that means- needs to live a thousand lives in a thousand different places, some similar the the one that I've happened across and led me here to a shopping mall cafe in downtown Auckland (I've written this all over the place). 
In quiet moments (and believe me, I have a lot of them) as I stare at the world, moving past as a moving window dream, I imagine these lives. How I'd commit to a path, work hard or sometimes not, be myself, be somebody different by recognisable. Ernest, focused, dedicated to each of their paths, or just perhaps if something had worked out differently.
I would dream of being a wine maker in a green valley, bending his back always to the cycles of the ancient craft, a scientist using the same skills of patience and attention to detail to perfect that one vaccine. A goat farmer in the Cretan mountains living simply in a rudely built house with the bleached wood and a wife with beautiful smiling eyes. A Bollywood filmstar struggling against prickly heat and to keep his heroic bouffant lustrous enough for the movie that will be his one big break in the face of male pattern balding. A fisherman who lives in a simple cottage (painted pastel blue) in a Cornish harbour village who goes out into the face of the angry blue ocean God in order to snatch a meager living from the salty cold. An apprentice brewer in Munich, learning a trade, dreaming of returning to his own country to establish his own brewery producing honest, pure, good German style beers. A carpenter who feels in the velvet softness of freshly sawn timber the purpose of his fingers to shape and to join and to create. A jet pilot flying low through the mountains, forests and rivers flashing past. A cruisey surf bum living in a van nowhere in particular, an ex-pat English teacher living and working in a insignificant but populous city in India. A travel writer who leaves a part of his happiness everywhere he goes replacing it with scribbled 2B pencil notes in battered notebooks, an amateurish singer-songwriter who writes deeply unpopular folk songs straight from the heart and stuck forever on the pub circuit but enjoying each day for what it brings. 
What I've enjoyed most besides making friends with my Kiwi cousins is the chance to play dress-up with one of these other lives, to try it for size. Needless to say if I ever find myself in possession of a bit of money I'm buying a farm!

I will miss all the new friends I have made in New Zealand as well as all of the 'new' relations I've come to love. I can't help feeling like I'll see them all again one day. The same goes for the landscapes that I have walked/driven/chased sheep through in the past six months. New Zealand really is a magnificent land, it has left its mark on me and I will surely take these experiences with me wherever I go.

Goat 

Taranaki

Ohura river

Goodbye New Zealand!

On the road in New Zealand: Part III: the return leg

Today at the pharmacy, buying some expensive drugs for my poor old lungs (flu in Istanbul and smokey Indian air had made me puff through most of the small supply I brought from home) I came to describe (as you do) what I was doing here to the pharmacist:
"You're a lucky guy" he said.
"Did you win the Lotto or something?"
It made me smile right then and there in front of the counter, I suppose I am a lucky guy, doing what I've dreamed of doing, traveling to where I want to go when I want to go and in my own time. I wanted to tell him that it was easy to do; drop everything and run away to see what's out there and to fall in love with the big, stupid world one piece at a time. 
Except it isn't easy, you have to be brave-stupid, pig-headed and pragmatic at the same time. You have to learn how to accept, and to forgive and to let it pass. Finding the money is one of the easy things, besides, you don't need that much.
I didn't, I would have sounded like a dick. I can't help it.
Some things are better left unsaid, so I smiled at him, denied winning the jackpot, amiably said goodbye and let it pass.

Te Anau

I drove into the bank of low cloud you saw in the last entry (all those months ago) and to me at least didn't seem to emerge for four days. At this point I envisioned the rest of the time I would spend in Fiordland would be enveloped in a chilled cloud, I'd also envisioned clearing off quickly if this was the case. You can see the situation well enough in these two photographs; the signboard above shows the view I should have seen as I stood o the lakeside. The photograph below gives the real picture.

The YHA in the town was a nice little place, a former lodge and not too expensive so I decided to stay a couple of nights at least and take the opportunity to do a walk below the clouds. I chose the section of the Kepler Track before it climbed up to the summit of a mountain, ordinarily the hike (called tramping here for some reason- I'm guessing sounds more rugged) takes three days and involves staying in huts two nights along the way. These require a hut pass that you buy and would be a super basic bunkhouse arrangement with little or no heating and the company of other walkers. 
I chose not to go for that option. It sounded way to serious, hell, they'd all go to bed at 8pm and wake me up at 5.30am to rustle and click before striding off to be all outdoors or something. The day walk was rather enjoyable and to my pleasant surprise I was alone for most of the time with my thoughts and meditations, once or twice I surprised a couple of hikers coming in the opposite direction, hurtling around a corner, disheveled + unkempt bum lurching out of the undergrowth it seemed chattering away to myself. Heeheeheeeeeee!

Inna bush

A friend I met along the way sizing me up for a meal.

Lakeshore

Lake Te Anau

That evening a couple cooking dinner at the same time as me told me that the cloud was only to be found inland and that the views in Milford sound were unobscured, so the next day I set of in that direction and lo and behold! The joy when after 10 minutes in the car I popped out the other side of the cloud into the clear blue skies and snow covered peaks on all sides!

Scenes along the road to Milford, it seemed everywhere I stopped that seemed quiet I'd be joined a matter of a minute or two later by a tour bus disgorging it's giggling snap-happy occupants all over the place. Obviously Milford sound is quite a popular tourist destination.

Icy cold desolation along the way.

The car has done surprisingly well throughout the journey, only after a long climb like the one that leads to the Homer Tunnel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer_Tunnel does the engine begin to get a little hot and make a strange smell. The scenery along the way reminded me a lot of Scotland, maybe the Cairngorms. Whatever the recollection the sights along the way were grandiose and built the expectations for Milford sound itself.

Hello!

While stopping to take photographs just after the tunnel I turned my back on the car to photograph a couple of Kea ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kea ) sitting on a road sign, when I turned back the rest of the gang had crept up behind and were setting about my venerable wagon, Kea are notorious for their mischievous antics around new objects in their environment but seemed particularly  interested in the rubber parts of cars which their beaks seem almost custom made to pull off.

Set upon by the local hoodlums

'You parked in the wrong neighbourhood...'

'Don't mind me, just pulling your windscreen off'

I let the Kea have their fun for a few minutes and intervened a couple of times when one got a little too close to getting a windscreen wiper off, I've heard they can, if left to their own devices remove all of the rubber parts from the outside of a vehicle, most of the plastic fittings and some metal ones too. It was nice to see the car was parrot proof in the short term, but I had to go.

The road to Milford Sound has many opportunities to stop and view the beauty of Fiordland, lakes, waterfalls rivers and mountains can all be walked from the roadside car parks. One observation  I couldn't help make was the DOC paths are almost too accessible, removing the 'wild' completely from, well, the wild. That isn't a criticism, it's more a reflection on the kind of tourist that the area hopes to attract. 

Look, another KiwiExperience bus...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milford_sound

Mitre Peak dominates the sound.

The Sound itself has been hailed by some as  natural wonder of the world, it certainly is a beautiful place and very tranquil when the pleasure cruises are out of earshot. It also is like nowhere else on earth I've seen. I would have loved to seen it before the car parks, hotels, airports, campervans, pleasure cruises and bloody juicy rentals moved in. 

A friendly Robin

 From Te Anau I went in search of the regular, everyday south island town, something to contrast the resort towns I had visited recently. I also wanted to see a slice of ordinary life and spend a quiet day strolling around the streets where ordinary folk live, seeing what goes on. The town I chose was Cromwell, it was conveniently located just a (relatively) short drive from Queenstown and absolutely no-one I had met in a backpackers hostel had said they were going there or had been there. That's usually a good sign.

Every town has to have a 'thing' to be a symbol of the settlement, Te Puke has a giant Kiwi fruit, Ohakune has a giant carrot, and so on. I guess if it doesn't have a big thing then it's not a proper town, I've no Idea who started this idea, but now it has it's inertia, big things are popping up all over the country, sometimes against the will of the local people (they are follies, after all). Cromwell has four big things in one: an apricot, apple pear and nectarine. The fruit is a reference to the regions long association with fruit growing.Predictable really. 
I like this idea of having things, though I wouldn't like to have to fund them as a taxpayer. Coming from a land where the symbolic landmarks are accidentally appointed old things it has a certain charm. 

Suburban Cromwell, bin day.

Cromwell has a long and interesting history, on the surface the streets are long, wide and orthodox in their suburban-ness, the town centre is truly awful in it's 90s town planned way. I find this truly charming, even down to the bleak slightly out of town pub/grills that seem to have taken the new build pub idea and run with it down the drive in boozer route. Below this is the goldrush town of the mid 19th century, only a few visible landmarks remain of the great ore-seeking enterprise of former times, the shanty towns for migrant workers from all over the world, have been excavated and the relics are now in the local historical museum guarded by a pair of old dragons. The main street and much of the town that stretched down to the banks of the river were flooded when the Clutha dam was constructed from the 1980's onward. Except it wasn't as I learned the developers demolished the main street and then used modern gold extraction methods to harvest the nuggety goodness that had been buried under the  town for its short but colourful history. When the waters had risen the hole where the town had been was filled in and landscaped into terraces. Very interesting. Apparently the old bridge is still in place 10 meters below the waters surface, I had a look, but couldn't see it. 

Wedding photos by the new lake Dunstan

A few notable buildings have been moved to a new site clear of the waters and make up a historical precinct

Cromwell today, you can see submerged land toe the bottom left

Clutha dam

Life wasn't easy for the early settlers, the Scally family fell victim to typhoid

I enjoyed wandering around Cromwell, checking out the local history and learning about a piece of little know history, I even took a swim in the local leisure center! However the accommodation was a little too expensive for an extended stay so I took off for Queenstown (again) for a few days more in a resort town.

I moan about how fake it is, but it is rather pretty.

Up the gondola

Views across the town.

This visit I took a ride on the skyline gondola for a good view of the town, I was surprised how small the centre of town is, I also decided I had wandered around enough to be able to identify most buildings in the 'CBD' from the mountain. There was a lot of wandering. So I had my last Fergburger and headed to pastures new.

Lake Wanaka on the way.

I find the formula of staying at least 3 nights in a place even if it is too quiet or too busy then driving for no more than 4/5 hours most agreeable to my quite specific sensibilities as to what it is to road trip. I'd hate to have to move every day and not be able to take my time along the way. I headed north to Hokitika and along the west coast northwards. Along the way countless stunning views and places of interest invide a little exploration.

Pebbles with writing on, somewhere (probably Bruce Bay)

Check out that sea mist!

That's that. 

Along the west coast there are many indications of glaciation, just a short distance from the main highway there are several easily accessible glaciers. Now I was (and still am) quite excited about this as I'd never seen a glacier before. The thing that struck me first is how blue they are; blue like children colour ice in drawings. Astounding. What does it mean?

Fox glacier as seen from a clearing in the bush

The second thing I noticed was that the glaciers were shrinking, clearly they had been much larger recently. There were visible marks on the rocks where the ice has reached recently. This is pretty much what I'd heard was going on around the world as a combination of reduced snowfall and higher average temperature in the years leading up to the present day.

Ice climbers give an idea of the scale of the glacier front. Unwary climbers have been crushed by huge blocks of falling ice in the past, it is very hard to recover the bodies.

At both Fox and Franz Josef glaciers you can take a gentle walk along the glacier river side (the water tastes quite like you'd expect, with added grit) to a safe viewing area quite some distance from the ice (will squash someone eventually) where you can get a good view of the glaciers. Being New Zealand there are a variety of extreme sports options such as taking a helicopter to the top of the glacier and going ice climbing, jumping out of an aeroplane over the glacier etc etc... No, I didn't. My budget is a bit too downscale for these kind of activities.
Arthurs Pass is as spectacular as you can comfortably get. The car just about withstood the climb with just a suspicious burning smell and a bit of overheating. Also as a reward for the trip I was treated to a simultaneous sunset painting the mountains in red and pink hues and full moon rise. 

The same moon rise taken by fellow traveler Shanna with a decent camera and stolen be me.

Sunset on the mountainside

Moon over Arthur's pass village

Arthur's pass backpackers hostel was a pleasant surprise as it was quite empty! he handful of guests recognised each other from staying in other places together and there was a friendly atmosphere for the night I stayed there.In the morning there was a thick frost carpeting the world and the weak morning sun just about brought the air temperature above freezing. This created the most spectacular mist which looked epic but stopped me seeing much on the way to Christchurch.

The mist clears.

To my surprise someone replied to my open couch request for Christchurch, as couchsurfing experiences go it was pretty impersonal and a little busy for my liking, however, with a car and my own things to do I could cope with that. The host was really nice and gave me a key with which to come and go as I pleased so no waiting for someone to get home (as in Chania where I had to be out all day until 12.30am when my host showed up). It was interesting to experience this side of couchsurfing in contrast to how I prefer to host and be hosted, I'm pretty sure that's not how it was intended to be, or then again maybe it was. I'm not sure. In any case in New Zealand it hasn't really worked for me with the exception of a few hosts. 

One day I went to the RNZAF museum in Christchurch, I like Aeroplanes, what can I say.

DH Vampire with early RNZAF roundels before they stuck on a flightless bird.

I got to spend a little time with my cousin Jethro in Christchurch too, in all I spent a week in the city. As I've already explained what is going on there (after the earthquakes) I won't go into it now. I did get to explore the city a little more and pretty much figure out the one way system around the CBD. I even ventured out of the city to some of the surrounding towns and beaches.

Christchurch from the Banks peninsula hills.

Sunset at Sumner

Note to self: Clifftop houses in a seismically active zone might not be such a good idea

Gold

Christchurch is an interesting city in the way it has evolved before and after the natural disasters earlier in this decade, staying longer this time allowed me to see how everyday life functions in a 'square doughnut' around the city within the four avenues. Shopping malls and retail parks have replaced the old city in peoples lives. It's difficult to find anywhere to have lunch in the old CBD, the foodcourts in the malls are crammed with just about everyone, meetings are held in McDonald's. I hope that when the city is redeveloped it regains its centrality and also its intolerance to bad driving. I have never seen such bad driving in a developed country; usually utes, usually involving jumping a red light, sometimes on a pavement. It seems the earthquake has also damaged manners.
In Christchurch I re-united with Wendy and we began to travel north together, the return to the North Island was underway! 

We stopped off in Kaikura because it is in my opinion a great place to spend a little time (especially if you love wildlife) and just far enough to overnight before catching the Cook Straight ferry without having to stay in Picton (which no-one really wants to do) or Blenheim. The Kaikura peninsula has one of the best walks in the world; where else can you go for a stroll and turn a corner to find a snoring seal? It has has history, archaeology, epic views, geology and of course just up the coast... BABY SEALS! 

Remembering what happened last time I was there I made sure my camera battery was charged and I arrived in decent daylight conditions. As a result my photos are a bit better than last time, and I made some videos too.

It was nice to see the little fellows again, frolicking in their pool and learning to seal, their numbers had lessened I guess as a result of pups leaving the stream as they become old enough to make it on the beach outside. 
With our joy reservoirs topped up, we headed north up Highway 1 through breathtaking coastal scenery and made the Picton to Wellington ferry in good time.

Fierce competition for the best seats on the ship.

Along Queen Charlotte sound, I even saw the seal that follows the ferries in and out of the harbour at Picton again.

Farewell the mainland

Overtaking the slower Blubridge ferry

Preparing to disembark at Wellington

We stayed in Wellington for a night then headed north to regions unexplored in Hawkes Bay. The town is famous for its sunny disposition (it is in the rain shadow of the rest of the island) and its art deco remake after the earthquake of 1931. It is a pretty place, though it seems I wasn't overly impressed enough to take many photographs. On the first night there we heard music coming from along the sea front and followed it to find a free festival in the art deco colonnades/ open air concert-dance venue. It was a celebration for Matariki ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matariki ) which is marked around the shortest day of the year. There was the predictable Maori reggae band (Maori like reggae, island time etc) food stalls, amusements and best of all lots of people to check out.   

'It's Makariki Bro!'

Sunny Napier

Napier and Hawkes Bay were a nice destination for a break from travel, it definitely felt as if I was back on the North Island, the people had changed as well as the landscape. This changed even more along the 'Geothermal Highway' to Taupo and Rotorua.

There's something going on underground...

State Highway 5 winds through rolling hills and vineyards but then the hills become increasingly steep and it suddenly dawns on you that you're driving over the lips of a huge crater. Lake Taupo is a collapsed supervolcano (caldera I think) that erupted in the 2nd century AD coating much of New Zealands north island in a blanket of distinctive ash (rust red in colour- heamatite, formed over 700 degrees). The area is still very, I say VERY active today in a volcanic zone stretching from the south of the lake at Mt Ruapehu north-eastwards for 220  miles  until a little volcano out to sea called White Island that erupts quite frequently. Here and there the earth is visibly steaming and there are several 'Volcanic attractions' to visit along the way, which, being a tourist I did.

A large fumerole at 'Craters of the moon'

It's quite terrifying to think that as you walk around on this landscape, that there is huge uncharted chambers below ones feet filled with boiling water corroding the rock with their acidic fumes.

The colours are caused by the minerals present in the superheated water below.

The park called 'craters of the moon' was impressive and in spite of the high (relatively) entrance price I thought it good value. Please bear in mind that I've never seen anything like this before so I was easily impressed, Kiwis or visitors who live near such things may not be as overawed as I was. I thought it was all pretty neat.

We decided to stay a few days in Rotorua to explore the area and it's sights, just outside the town is the long visited 'Geothermal Wonderland' that after the destruction of the pink and white terraces near Mt Tarawera in 1886 has ben the areas premier tourist attraction. On the day we visited we arrived just in time to buy a ticket and quickly drive to the Lady Knox geyser.

The Geyser in its resting state

On one side of the geyser there was a sizable viewing area filled with tourists ready and waiting for the spectacle to begin. We were told that it would start at 10.15am. Sure enough a cheerful fellow in a high visibility coat appeared at 10.16 precisely and began to inform and entertain. It turns out that below our feet was a large chamber of superheated water sub-divided into two chambers, the upper chamber being slightly cooler. Naturally the rhythm of eruptions are roughly every 36 hours or so, so the cheerful fellow dumped a carrier bag of washing soda into the hole as he does (I presume) every day at 10.25am precisely and went off for a cup of coffee at the cafe/visitor center. Meanwhile the washing soda dissolved in the hot water and decreased the inter-molecular forces in the top chamber making the water in the two chambers suddenly mix which caused the water in the the lower chamber to flash boil (a loud rumbling noise from underground!) before the steam forced water out of the spout at high speed and pressure. Much photography occurred.

In goes the washing soda

*RUMBLES*

*FOOOOM*

*WHOOOOOOOSH!*

The rest of the park was a collection of volcanic pools with a few kilometers of track linking some great viewpoints. I was disappointed to find my camera was not quite capturing the colours I could see, the pictures you see here are enhanced by a free photo editing programme I  have since downloaded. Still there is no substitute for seeing it. And for that matter smelling it!

Boiling mud pools

Sulphur condensing around a vent.

It never gets old, does it?

The town of Rotorua has an interesting smell, the rotten egg smell of hydrogen sulphide is stronger in some places and almost unnoticed in others. Hot springs have been harnessed for electricity generation and for geothermal hot pools since it was first discovered that various temperatures of water were to be found just flowing from the ground. The town is built upon a network of subterranean vents and passages, some small while others larger, I spent quite a lot of the time wondering if the locals worried about a steam vent opening up in the middle of the lounge and swallowing up the coffee table and the cat. In some parts of Rotorua the air smells of rotten eggs (hydrogen sulphide) while at others it smells like burning tyres (I really don't know) and assorted cough drops. I can't complain as a visitor as I took to the waters in the Polynesian spa pools which are the spacial descendants of the early 'priest pools' of the 19th century. I find the minerals in the water are therapeutic to the skin and the temperature of the pools (36-41 degrees) soothes aching joints and muscles.

Leaving the Rotorua area and approaching the Coromandel peninsula via a nights stay to check out Whakatane (to find not much in particular going on) the pace of the road trip increased. Wendy had to be in Auckland in a few days for a flight and I felt like i should be heading south back to the family. We drove along the coast of the Bay of Plenty, past the industrial areas of Tauranga (looked like Birmingham by the sea) and northwards to Whangamata where I had a coffee with a crazy local gentleman and his quite ordinary friend from England (he saw my Exeter uni shirt and wouldn't stop talking about archaeology, which is fine by me except we had to be going) before checking out the local beach before heading north again to Whitianga which due to having walked all around the town (there's not much of it really) when I first got here I know quite well.

Rainbow! Looking out to Mercury bay.

Cathederal cove is there somewhere.

The hostel in Whitianga is great, they have free sea Kayak hire and the sea is just across the road, yes literally it's just across the road! There are plenty of nice places to walk in if the wind is not too cold, a shopping street, a marina (checked on Alex's boat) and LOTS to do in the locality. Probably the most fun in my opinion is hot water beach where as a consequence of a geological fault opening up under the sand hot water flows through the sand to the sea. All you have to to is dig a hole and you have your own little hot spa pool. There were a few people there, so I can't imagine how crowded the beach might get in the summer peak days (it's technically winter here! Haha!) as the are with hot water is around 20 meters wide with a central strip way too hot for digging. Yes, I could have spent a lot longer on the Coromandel.

Climbing to see the view over Coromandel

The view

After a little loop of the Coromandel, we made a quick visit to Thames where I witnessed the first real cockroach infestation in a hostel I'd seen in this country, then drove cross country via Hamilton to Raglan to do a little bit of surfing.
Raglan was much quieter than I remembered it, though the pub bore in Valentino's cafe bar was still there, the off season really is the best time to do this kind of spontaneous travel as there was ample room available at the hostel for extending a stay, the facilities were not in the slightest bit crowded, the beach and Manu bay were not crowded and best of all it was still pretty warm. There were a couple of days during the week with bad weather and I gave myself aching elbow joints from all the paddling in cold water but it was worth the diversion. I can't say yet that I can surf, but I've got over a weeks falling off the board out of the way.

My Mitsi Mirage 'Father Dick Byrne' gone all surf bum.

I would like to post some pictures of me falling off surfboards, sadly I was too bust falling off surfboards to take any, so here's a nice picture of the beach where I did my babysteps.

Ngarunui Beach

Stormy seas, I got beaten up by the waves a number of times.

After a lovely week in Raglan it was time to drop off Wendy in Auckland and head south towards Taumarunui, time for a brief trip to Mt Eden and to spend a day wandering around Ponsonby in the cold, wind and rain. Also the most crazy buffet dinner in a Korean barbecue place somewhere a stones throw from the skytower, all that meat and your own little hotplate grill to cook it on! Best of all it has a bring your own licence, wine was drunk. I went back to the hostel happy, tipsy and bloated with random meat.

Mt Eden, it's a volcano

Awoockland

More volcanoes.

There was time for a little diversion to Piha where it was so windy we got sandblasted.

Piha Beach

Sea stars, everywhere.

I was supposed to head back to Richard's farm but as he was marshaling at a motocross event south of Lake Taupo, so I went across to see what that was about...

erm...

The last day of the road trip was spent riding around in a cool two-seater buggy chasing the last rider in the races around ready to signal the next race was clear to start. There were lots of races to watch with varying levels of rider capability and money spent on the bikes. To my surprise there was also a category for racing quads.

If I'm honest, I miss being on the road, the feeling of waking up in the morning and not knowing or caring where I'd lay my head that night. the feeling of choice that comes from having nowhere in particular to go, exploration of the abouts places, watching the world change around you as the black ribbon flow-hums along beneath. Perpetual change.