On the way home...

I'm now in Bangkok airport and the flights could be worse. Window seats all the way, my longhaul flight seats are so far back there are only 2 seats in my block so only 1 person to climb over. And a free upgrade to business class from London to Newcastle, which means I'll be able to use the lounge at Heathrow!

But it's still a long journey!

Auckland

[No photos today as the blog site is not working over the camp wifi, so the only way I can get this blog posted is to use the email feature.  Will add photos at a later date if I can!]

Auckland, City of Sails.  I've never really been sailing - I'm not too keen on the idea of a mode of transport where you essentially let the wind push you over on one side.  I know there's all the physics involved that says the boat is highly unlikely to tip right up and sink, but my brain refuses to believe it.  Still, I thought it was about time I faced my fears and this seemed to be the right place to do it, so I booked myself on a 2 hour excursion on a genuine America's Cup yacht.

Amazingly, I survived!  Towards the end, I even started to enjoy the experience a little bit.  But for the first 90 minutes or so I was the ultimate white knuckle sailor.  I don't have many photos of the experience as I couldn't let go of the safety rail for long enough to operate my camera, I simply clung on for dear life and watched in astonishment as everyone else walked calmly up and down this boat that felt like it was listing to near vertical.

Unfortunately, I had initially sat right next to the wheel, so when the crew decided it was time to let the public have a go at steering, I was the first one offered a chance.  I say unfortunately, as at the time I was in such a state of panic that I immediately turned down the offer as it quite frankly terrified me.  Later on, I would have been happier to have a go at steering, but by then I had missed my chance.  I did manage to find the courage to stand my turn on the grinders, helping set the sails as we tacked and jibed our way across the harbour.

I also discovered that lying on the floor braced against the lower side of the yacht was actually a good place to take photos from!

After the sailing, I had about an hour to recover my composure before meeting up with Robert for dinner (Robert being the nephew of my A-level german teacher).  We had a very pleasant evening - took the ferry over to Devenport, had a short stroll around the area which had some great views back to Auckland and then found a wine bar and then a nice restaurant.

Today has been quiet so far - I took a drive out to the Waitakere Ranges Regional Park - an area of rainforest just northwest of Auckland.  There were some nice beaches with very dark coloured sand and some nice rainforest walks (I picked a walk that claimed to be 3 hours long but actually only took 90 minutes).

Back at the campsite, I am doing a marvellous job of denying the inevitable.  However, I really should stop updating blogs and surfing the internet, and get started on my packing, as tomorrow is when I leave this beautiful place and head back to Newcastle.

White Island

It will have to be a quick blog today as the wifi costs on this campsite leave something to be desired!!  That will teach me to log on and read emails before writing up the current day's blog :-(

Today was White Island - a trip to an active volcanic island, some 20km off the coast of New Zealand.  The journey out took about 90 minutes, at one point accompanied by a large school of very friendly, very energetic dolphins.  I must be about the only person on board the ship who didn't manage to get a decent photo of them - I'm really not quite sure how I did that!

Once on the island, we were provided with gas masks and hard hats and split into groups.  Hard hats were compulsory although in the event, unneeded.  Gas masks were really just in case the sulphur fumes got too strong for you, you could manage without if you really wanted to.  We then walked around inside the older areas of the crater and saw a completely different world.  There were fumiroles spouting steam like there was no tomorrow, huge pits of boiling mud and water.

There were sulphur piles and collapsed sulphur piles, leaving a fantastic yellow tint to the ground.

The main crater lake is apparently so acidic that it has a negative value on the litmus scale.  The whole crater landscape was so alien that after we'd been walking there for 30 minutes, you could have easily convinced me we were on the moon.  Of course that could have been some sort of effect of breathing in so much sulphur.....maybe I should have worn the gas mask more.....

After the walk it was time to get back on the boat and come home - no dolphins this time, but we did see a shoal of flying fish and I did (just) manage to capture one of them on film! [Prizes for the people who can spot the fish in the photo]

Finally, it was my last long drive of the holiday, up to Auckland.  A city day is planned for tomorrow (small matter of a speeding ticket to pay) and I've booked on to an America's Cup Sailing Yacht for the afternoon as Auckland is supposed to be the City of Sails.  And in the evening, I'm meeting up with the nephew of my A-level German teacher for dinner.  I'm going to have to dust off my conversational skills though, as apart from the occasional call home, I don't think I've had more than a 10 minute conversation with anyone since the first night in NZ when I went for dinner with Pen & Alex!  Oh, I guess there was Terry the guide for my Tongariro walk....but then I was paying him....he had to talk to me :-)

Mud, mud, glorious mud....

If there's one thing Rotorua does well, apparently, it's a spa day.  All the geothermal activity in the area means there is a plethora of hot pools and mud baths for you to visit.  After a bit of research, I decided to book in at Hell's Gate spa for a geothermal walk, mud bath, sulphurous spa and a massage.

I wasn't quite sure what a geothermal walk was going to be.  It turned out to be a marked path through the grounds of the spa, taking about 45 minutes to walk at a slow stroll, all the time feeling as if you are being boiled and steamed alive.  The track started with a bit of a stark warning - especially given the recent death of a young boy after he fell into a hot pool in one of Rotorua's spa facilities.  It wasn't this one though, because he had to climb over a fence to get to the pool and Hells Gate doesn't have fences!!






Have you ever looked at a coal or wood fire after it's been burning for hours. The flames have died down and everything that's left is white powdery residue.  That's basically what this landscape looked like, except that it was also dotted with pools of water or mud, bubbling and boiling away like a witch's cauldron.  Trust me - I was not tempted to stray from the path and dip my toe into any of these pools!



All the different hot pools in the park had names.  Most seem to have been named by George Bernard Shaw - I'm not sure what the connection is with him, but there's definitely one there somewhere.  Half way around the walk, we were taken through a short piece of woodland where we came across the Kakahi Falls - at approximately 40°c, these might just be the worlds first natural hot shower!  Apparently Maori men used to bathe here after battle and wash off the blood.  The sulphur is also good for cleansing wounds.



A little further on and we saw more geography in action - a minature volcano that spurts mud rather than lava.  Apparently this unique in that it is the only known mud formation higher than 1m tall (it currently stands at 2.4 metres and is still growing, it errupts every 4 - 6 weeks).  I'm not sure when it last errupted, but it didn't look ready enough to pop to make it worth hanging around just in case!






The problem with photographs, though, is that they can't convey the smell, the sound or the oppressive heat that you were subjected to on the walk.  So here's a small video that will at least give you an idea of the background sound that is constantly with you.

And the strangest thing of all when you turned to walk back to the building, was to realise that this entire park is set within what would otherwise be a perfectly innocuous piece of countryside with fields and fences that would not look out of place anywhere else in the country (or in the UK for that matter).

After the walk, I had a fabulous mud bath, sulphurous spa and massage. [Sorry, for some reason I failed to get any photos of me in a swim suit covered in mud.  Please try to control your disappointment.]   I also stretched my boundaries and had my first ever cup of tea.  Manuka tea, sweetened with honey.  You know, it wasn't that bad!

I am now back at my campsite listening to various children having some quite impressive tantrums and waiting for a phone call to let me know whether my trip to White Island will be going ahead tomorrow or not.  If it is, then I'd better get an early night as I will need to leave the campsite around 7am tomorrow morning!

[Post edit - call has arrived, White Island trip is on.  Night night, here's hoping it doesn't errupt tomorrow until after I'm back from the trip!!]

Cheese-tastic (but not the dairy variety).

Mum & Dad will back me up when I say I always knew today was going to be tourist-tastic.  But wow - it out cheesed all my expectations!

This morning I took a leisurely drive across to Rotorua - taking my time to get there as I didn't have anything to do until this evening when I was booked in for a Mitai Maori authentic village experience.  According to the blurb, we were going to witness a genuine Maori welcome, war dance, entertainment....eat genuine Maori food and have a night-time bush walk.  All truly authentic with not a smidgen of commercialism about it.  Yeah, right ;-)

Everyone who had booked was collected from their accommodation.  I was rather worryingly on bus #13, and I swear it was the wobbliest, squeakiest bus I have ever been on.  But it got us there in one piece, eventually.  We were then herded into a traditional Maori canvas marquee with trestle tables, chairs, wine glasses etc etc, and serenaded by an elderly maori gentleman alternating between saxaphone and vocals playing what I assume were traditional maori songs.

Once all the bus groups had arrived, our compere welcomed us and introduced the evening.  Firstly, he had to figure out which tribe we were.  That is to say, how many different nationalities we had in the group.  It turns out, we were the tribe of 17 countries.  I hang my head in shame - we should have been the tribe of 18 countries, but I kept quiet.  Because what the compere was doing was getting people to call out their nationalities, and then he would welcome them in their local language.  He did impressively well - managing all the different scandinavian languages, several eastern & western european as well as asian and arabic.  But I failed to admit to being welsh.  Not because I couldn't cope with "croeso", "sut mae" and "iawn diolch".  But I'd been paying attention to the phrases he had learned in all the other languages.  And I realised, I don't know the welsh for "chocolate cake"!

Anyway....once we had got through that part of the evening, we went outside and watched them open up the oven.  essentially, they heat stones and then put the food over the stones and cover it with damp sacking to bake.  This is the covered hangi:

And this is the food.  All Sue-friendly - meat x 2 and potato x 2!  And as you may be able to tell, the meat was the traditional chicken and lamb.  Both native animals of New Zealand and obviously always staple parts of the Maori diet...?!?!?

However, before we ate we had the entertainment.  Firstly, a genuine Maori paddle-past in a war canoe.  Then a Maori welcome, haka, songs & demonstrations of Maori games and fighting skills.  I was amused to see that a lot of the games were essentially juggling passing patterns with sticks rather than clubs.  And the women did a lot of poi swinging, including their most complicated pattern of cross and follow!

Please excuse the sarcasm and cynicism.  I'm sure what we saw was genuinely of Maori origin.  It was interesting and entertaining.  But non-commercial?  Maybe not.  I did have a sneaking sympathy for the look of boredom on some of the faces during the performance.  There's a certain point of view that deplores the fact that this performance is what Maori tribes have had to embrace in order to survive in today's world.

After the entertainment we went back to eat, and my goodness but the food was good.  I could happily eat there every day for the next year.  It's not very often I can go down a buffet table, take something from every bowl, and then clear my plate with enjoyment.  Maybe I was a Maori in a previous life, who knows!

So, another interesting way to spend an evening.  I am now back in my van and have realised that I have already become accustomed to the smell of rotten eggs sulphur that is pervasive around the whole of Rotorua.  Tomorrow is spa-day - bring on the mud bath, spa pool and a 60 minute massage.  I'm definitely looking forward to that bit, but reserve the right not to take any photos!

Art Deco

My plan for today had been to find a wine tour.  Unfortunately, public holidays got in the way of that idea so on to plan B (because there is always a plan B).  Napier is also the Art Deco capital of the world. I know nothing about Art Deco.  Ergo, I should take the opportunity to learn.  Bingo, a 2 hour tour with the Art Deco Trust.  Perfect.

Actually, this tour was textbook training course style.  They sat us down in a room and told us what they were going to show us with a slide show.  Then they walked us around town and showed us the buildings.  And then they took us back to the room, provided tea and coffee, and showed a 30 minute video telling us everything they had just told us!  I seem to recall that format from my P&G training course days!

I was a little disorientated at the start, though.  When the tour guide stood up and, speaking in a broad Scouse accent, said that his name was John Williams and the other guide was called Sue, I thought I'd fallen into some sort of bizarre quasi-parallel universe.  But it turned out his name was Ron, not John, so that was OK.

Ask me a question about Art Deco, go on, I know it all now!  I can tell a ziggurat from a zigzag, a power line from a sunburst.  Actually, that's about all I know.  Although I can tell you why Napier is built almost entirely of buildings in the Art Deco style - the entire city was flattened in a huge earthquake and fire in 1931 so this is one of the only places in the world where the entire city centre was designed and built within a 2 year period, 1931 - 1933 being right in the middle of the Art Deco period.

On a side note, I jinxed the sunshine by buying a new pair of shorts, so the tour was in the rain and the photos aren't great.  But here's an example of a ziggurat and some eyebrows.

This building shows zigzags and sunbursts and probably some other elements as well.

And this statue is called "A Wave in Time" and depicts the daughter of one of the main architects involved in the rebuilding of Napier.  Of course, the Art Deco period was also the time when women became empowered and did things like learn to drive themselves around in their cars.  A detail for which I am very grateful, otherwise I'd be a bit stumped on this holiday!

Are you impressed by how cultured I am???  Don't worry - I'll have forgotten it all by tomorrow :-)

I've moved on to the north of Hawke Bay this evening, I'm currently camped at Gisborne in a large campsite on the sea front.  There doesn't seem to be a lot to do here, but to be fair, I only chose it because it provided a coastal route between Napier and Rotorua (that and the vain hope that there might be a Richard Armitage lookalike hanging around).  Moving on to Rotorua tomorrow for some hot springs therapy and maori culture before I go to Auckland.

New Year's Eve

That was possibly the strangest, definitely the most sober New Year's Eve party I've been to in several years!

Napier had two major parties going on to celebrate New Years.  Both of them required driving to get there & back, so I decided to go for the free gig rather than paying out.  And I'm not unhappy with my choice.  The City Council official event was held right on the sea front and consisted of an open air concert from 8:30 followed by a firework display at midnight.

The gig started with a band called "Hit List" - apparently a local group who have made it quite big on the circuit doing covers of all sorts of music (I would verify that, but you try google searching for a band with that name!).  We had major hits from pretty much every decade since the '60s and were encouraged to sing along and clap, the usual stuff.

At about 10:30 some guy called John Rowles took to the stage.  And boy did the crowd go wild.  This guy was handing out long stemmed roses from the stage, mopping his brow on a handkerchief and then throwing it out.  I kid you not, there was a crush at the front of the stage of women (and men and children) trying to get his attention.  It would have been understandable had the guy been in his 20s or 30s, but this guy was easily in his 60s (sorry, Dad, it's just wrong!).

Well then he began to sing, and it all became clear.  He is the Tom Jones of New Zealand, in terms of voice, repertoire and stage act (hip grinding included, although his style is not as smooth as Sir Tom's). He even mentioned the great man in a way that implied they had met and been friends in the past.  But then he did the same with Elvis, so a cynic would wonder.....  But unlike most NYE parties, the closer we got to midnight, the slower the songs he sang and the more people cheered.  As an outsider looking in, it really was quite a strange experience.

Anyway, the time arrived and the fireworks went off.

Happy New Year!