North Island

One thing leads to another when doing boat maintenance, so after a month in the UK we decided we had better go straight off to explore the country before becoming immersed again.

Having been told that there were excellent and reasonable places to stay with kitchens available we had decided to go by car rather than camper van, and this has proved to be the case. Every room has had at least a kettle and toaster with a sink, and good clean communal kitchens and bathrooms nearbye. We are very impressed with the facilities so far, clean, freshly decorated, and with friendly and helpful staff.

First stop was Rotorua, the heart of the geo-thermal area of the North Island. Our accommodation here had the additional amenities of natural hot pools, steam 'ovens' for cooking, walks through an area of bubbling mud, steaming vents and sulphury pools; and even warm ground for pitching tents (under-floor heating must be the ultimate in camping luxury!). In spite of this we decided to visit one of the thermal parks which had a wonderful variety of mineral pools in bright colours from scarlet to pea green and blue. Also a geyser which is persuaded to perform at a set time each day by pouring a (biodegradable we were told) sulficant to break the surface tension of the water below. A bit of a cheat, but the story was that the geyser was first seen to perform when some convicts at a nearbye prison were using the hot pool to do their laundry and the detergent set it off. A good story anyway. One thing we learned was that a 'geezer' is a household water heater (or an old codger I suppose) and a 'guyser' is what we had seen. Didn't know that before.

When C and F were here in January they hiked one of the 'Great Walks' of NZ, the Tongariro Crossing - managing to climb a couple of extra volcanoes en route as well as the pretty strenuous track. We gave it a go too, but decided to keep our options open (G. has a damaged foot) so left our car at one end so that we could go as far as we wished and return. (Usually a bus leaves you at one end and collects at the other.) We were certainly not alone on the trail, there must have been hundreds of people strung out along the path, probably a saturday wasn't the best day to choose. Anyway we made it to the highest point with wonderful views all around, then had the path nearly to ourselves on the way back. It was a gorgeous clear day, though with a bitingly cold wind; and the volcanic scenery is stunning.

Our final couple of days was spent in the limestone karst area in the west. An area of caves and over and underground streams; lots of trout fishing. The particular attraction for us were the glow worms that live in caves and rock overhangs. Not the same as the European glowworms evidently. These are the larval stage of the funus gnat. They stay at this stage for about 6 months during which time they attach themselves to the rock, and produce about thirty silk threads which hang down and have sticky blobs of mucus on them. Small insects which hatch from larva carried into the caves by water fly upwards towards the glittering lights overhead which they assume is the sky - and the glow worm gets a tasty dinner. We had a fascinating after-dark walk along a path in a rocky area with twinkling lights all around us.

Now on to the South Island so watch this space.