ruth and ed in nz

Hbbiton aka Matamata is where this fairy tale begins. In actual fact waking in a holiday park that had free thermal baths so we had a dip in these before heading into town to shoot up the elves…
Matamata was a typical New Zealand town set out on a grid with one main street and tons of car parking. At the end of this main street was the Hobbiton tours shop, full of every nationality in the world trying to get a piece of the small furry action. It looked so trafficked that we decided to give it a miss and leave the harried halflings to themselves.
Following our noses we headed down the “thermal explorer” highway. The first thing of any great impression was the power station firing out great gouts of white smoke and steam amongst an unfathomable medusas head of shiny pipes.
Following this and a fresh tank of gas we came upon a little enclave of entertainments before Rotorua.
Firstly – Prawn World. Pay to go and fish the worlds first geothermal prawns. We did not try our prawn pinching hands but we did eat some lovely fishy delicacies. There was also the opportunity to hit a golfball into the lake under the pretence of trying for a hole in one which was fun.
Secondly – Honey World. Just down the road from their aquatic friends their flying insectoid neighbours were busily cranking out the golden sweet stuff. Not only the edible type but for cleaning, waxing, moisturising, healing and doing just about everything, ingenious and fun to watch in their see through colonies.
Thirdly – but not least at all was Huka falls. A short fall at 7 to 9 m high but more powerful than a truckload of energizer batteries. This raging torrent of water comes from a river about as wide as a couple of football fields and funnels into a channel about the width of a single lane road. This little geological corset sends the water into a foaming bright blue bubbly sucking and slapping frenzy. Then to muted gasps of tourists shoots the water 100m further down out about as far as it falls down, a place where swimmers would end up like that one sock that always goes missing in the wash.

Refreshed from the falls we headed into Rotorua and out the other side in search of a decent camp site and not too bothered with the fleets of campervans covering every parking inch of the town itself.

Following a good tip off a man from Ipswich in last nights campsite we found a big thermal park called Wai o Tapu where we were made sick with the smell of Sulphur and amazed by what actually comes welling up out of the ground in all its strange mineral colours. Slightly worried that the world might collapse under the feet, or explode into the sky we left for the night vowing to return to the smell tomorrow to see an erupting Geyser.

Sticking to the trusty DOC camping strategy we came upon a nice lakeside venue next to a Maori spiritual mountain. The wardens of this delightful spot were 3 sheets to the wind and slurred us a nice introduction and told us of a nice walk by the lake. They took our money between them (man and woman) then bid us good evening (after mentioning that they had been to or knew people in London) hiccuped and bounced off each other as they tottered away.

So we walked and ate instant noodles and settled into a noght of squashing sacred Maori mosquitoes in the province of Rotorua.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007 at 10:51 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.