Next morning my alarm bleeped
into life at 7:30am. Bleary-eyed I turned it off and lay there for a few more
precious minutes, listening to the water tumbling over the small waterfall only
a few metres away. I may have dozed for longer than I had anticipated for I was
woken with a jolt by a car driving past. We hadn’t seen or heard any traffic in
the night (for any of our free-camping nights in actuality) and suddenly there
was a large vehicle driving past my window. It stopped just outside, a few
metres from our campervan. I peered through the crack in the curtains and wiped
away the condensation on the window with the back of my finger. Through the
droplets of water I could see a blue Toyota van, similar to ours only not a
camper version. Two burly men got out. I wondered if we had accidentally parked
up where we shouldn’t have as we had passed a few farmers houses on the gravelly
track to get there. But no, there were no signs to say that we couldn’t so I
relaxed a little. I then nearly relaxed too much (if you know what I mean) when
the next thing one of the men brought out of the Toyota was a large hunting
rifle. I hoped that there wasn’t a bullet with my (or James’s) name on it, and
thankfully they didn’t seem interested in anything but tooling up and heading
into the undergrowth. Heaven only knows what they were hunting: the nocturnal
Kiwi, Rainbow Trout in the river, or some kind of “Deliverance” hunt for people
inadvertently wandering into their domain. They left soon after they arrived,
and they also left their lights on but I certainly wasn’t going to go chasing
them down in my briefs and hiking boots.
 |
| It may not look it but it was a great little spot! |
When we finally departed our
little spot we were driving towards Rotorua and all that it had to offer us.
Quite a well-known place and a bit of a tourist trap, but we had never seen any
geo-thermal springs so we knew we must attend. After a short drive we were
parked up in a spot right on the lake-front and putting coats and waterproofs
on. The weather Gods were not being kind to us on this day and as we exited the
campervan we were greeted by the other reason Rotorua is famous. The
sulphurous-eggy smell that clouds the small town due to the geo-thermal
activity in the region. We took a wander round the town centre and as it came
up to lunchtime I realised that I wasn’t particularly hungry. This is because
every now and again we would catch a big miasma of sulphurous gas in the air
and my stomach would do somersaults. I honestly don’t know how the locals stand
it. I didn’t want to visually gip or cover my nose as it might look insulting. Once
we had visited the information desk we knew roughly what we wanted to see and
drove out of town towards Lake Tikitapu (the Blue Lake) and Lake RotoKakahi
(the Green Lake).
Further beyond these two lakes
was the Buried Village. James wanted to see what it was all about and I had a
fair interest myself so we carried on down the road until we pulled into the
car park. Grabbing our brollies and waterproofs we entered the museum area and
were accosted by the lady behind the desk, calling out “wait” just as we were
trying to get through and out onto the walk. After she gave us a run-down of
what we would see she then hit us in the face with a cricket bat,
metaphorically-speaking, of course. It was $32...each. Well, you know what
happened next. We made our excuses about not having a wallet or something and
headed back to Tony and the Blue and Green Lakes. Between the two lakes there
is a viewing platform where you can see both lakes: Green on your left and Blue
on your right. The visual impact is probably a bit more impactful when it isn’t
hoying down with rain, but you could definitely make out the difference in
hues.
 |
| The Green Lake (I think) |
After the Blue and Green Lake
we ventured down towards Whakarewarewa. Yeah, exactly, I can’t pronounce it
either, but I’ll bet it’s worth a boat-load of points in Scrabble. It is billed
as the only working geo-thermal Maori village and it looked good from the
leaflet. We parked the van and walked down the road to where a large arch lay
before us and began to head inside. No sooner than we had got within 6 feet of
the arch some troll…I mean “gate-keeper”… came rushing out of a nearby hut and
ordered us to buy tickets first. After she informed us that the price was $32
each we set off back to the campervan in a huff. She came running out again and
shouted over to us when I was trying to sneak down a little side path to get a
couple of pictures. We took the hint and left. As we had spent the night in the
sticks the night before we were looking to stay in a proper campsite that
night, and we found a good one, albeit a little pricier than usual but probably
because Rotorua is a bit of a tourist trap. There was the usual stuff available,
but in addition to all that was a hot mineral spa pool. Well, we just had to
try that out didn’t we! We waited until we were sure that there was nobody else
around and made a bee-line for it. There were two pools and they could probably
hold about 5 people each, but they were more like hot-tubs outside than what
they had been built up to be. Saying that though it was a lovely dip. Warm and
with a small waterfall built into it we stayed in there for about 40 minutes,
enjoying the relaxing sensation of basically a hot bath outdoors.
 |
| We are both wearing trunks! |
That evening we did our usual chores
and then decided to play a few games of cards. The triple Unification of all
three belts (games) had happened a few nights earlier and we felt the need for
a new game. We searched the web for the rules to a game called “sh*t head” and
within a couple fo hands we had mastered it. We left the small netbook on the
table between us playing through the shuffled albums that we had added before
setting off on this trip. Earlier, I had taken my jumper off as it was too hot
with the heater on. Then, we turned the heater off as it was far too warm and
stuffy. After a while (and please stick with me on this one, I know it doesn’t
sound an amazing story) I got a bit chilly so thought I would go and get my hat
from the front seat. I was wearing my Warehouse (Primark) jogging pants and the
damn things are just too baggy – I think the sizing index is made for huge
Maori rugby players. As I got up to get my hat, my baggy pocket caught the
corner of the netbook screen. Me and James both looked on in horror as our
shiny little Samsung netbook plummeted to the floor. James almost managed to
catch it but his hand was just too slow.
The thing about laptops and
netbooks is that they are not designed to be thrown around and thumped into
things. Some of you may already know what the diagnosis was from this little
scenario. The Blue Screen Of Death. We tried and tried to fix it there and
then, but it just wasn’t to be. If it hadn’t been playing iTunes then it may
have survived with just a minor scratch to show for it. But all we could get
out of it was the Samsung Recovery program so we set this going in the vain
hope it would have fixed it by the morning…
No comments:
Post a Comment