Back from Rotorua

I'm back in the big city from Rotorua. Urgh that was a foul bus journey, and I've got one double to time on Thursday. 8 hours on a coach! There's a couple of rest stops, but still! Yargh! I'll get DVT.

But anyway, Rotorua (or Rotorua as they say in Maori, it's different) was awesome! I stayed in the Astray backpackers which was nice enough, and had the room to myself for three nights! I could snore as loud as I wanted! Germans be damned!

On the first day there, Friday, I went aalll the way up to Rainbow Springs to take pictures of Darroch Street then walked miles and miles and miles down the main road to find Steeles Lane. Rotorua's really not made for people with no transport other than legs, or less than $50. So when I'm back in May I shall come prepared and slightly more loaded! I've yet to Zorb! I didn't come all the way to New Zleand to NOT roll down a hill in a big plastic ball. T'would be mad not to. They also have floatplanes on the lake. DeHavillands, no less! Not that that means anything to anyone....

On Saturday I took a mooch about the lake. Oooo it's a nice lake. And huge! Lots of awesome birds too. Lots of red-beaked gulls, which weirdly enough sound exactly like black-headed ones. Why is it there's only three species of gull in New Zealand, yet millions in the Palearctic? There was also an island with hundreds of shags (no giggling, mother). Pied, Black and Little Black ones. And because I am awesome and get to have two springs there were lots of wee chicks about as well! Moseyed on round to the museum where I learned that Lake Rotorua is the oldest continually existing lake in New Zealand. Suck on that, Taupo! Also, the city is entirely with the crater of a volcano, formed after an eruption 220,000 years ago. See, I didn't just come to New Zealand to zorb and drink lemon and paeroa, though those are good reasons because lemon and paeroa is amezzin.
I also had a look at the bits of geological awesomeness that you can see for free, which isn't much. It didn't smell as bad as I'd heard. I was disappointed. I thought there would be retching in the street but not once did I retch, other than from the smell of my shoes. Chuh. Either my sense of smell has been deadened from years of living with Salem or the smell really did disappear the day the Pearsons left.....who knows?

Why is it whenever I go somewhere I always manage to happen upon some kind of local shindig? In Paris there was that big do at the Arc de Triomphe. And in Rotorua there was Diwali. I'd overheard someone in the tourist info place saying there would be fireworks by the lake at 9pm so I moseyed on down there to wait and was idly watching fireworks on the other side of the lake when all these people came marching along, drumming and dancing and whatnot. I had no idea what was occurring but watched anyway. Then the fireworks started and they obviously don't have the same kind of regulations in NZ as they do in the UK, if at all, because they were way closer than at any British display, and consequently, even more awesome.

On Sunday I got up late (benefit of having the room to myself: no idiots rustling in their bags at 6am) and wanted to finish my book (Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell. Which is as awesome and lemon and paeroa and more so!), so I didn't go out till 12. Went back up to Rainbow Springs to do the Kiwi Experience, and twas quite an experience! I saw a chick that had only hatched their night before needless to say, the glass was covered with my brains as my head did actually splode from teh kyoot. Boom. The Kiwi Experience people take the eggs of north island brown kiwi and incubate them there, look after the chicks and release them back into the wild when they're big enough. Those people get to hug kiwis for a living. I must find a way to work there. Also saw two adult kiwis that they use for captive breeding. They're huge!

On Monday I got the bus to Ngongongongatahahahaha, or some such, to look for Gomez Corner but three women at three shops and three maps couldn't help so I walked aaaallll the way back down to Rainbow Springs to look at the fishes. Rainbow Springs is a park full of native plants, huge redwood trees, aviaries of native birds like kea and kaka and tuis and pool full of enormous trout. Also a slightly surly donkey who begrudgingly let me fuss him. Is there any better kind of donkey?

And then today I got the bus back to Auckland. Tomorrow I'm flying off to Queenstown (town, not land, I keep saying land. It's confusing). And then the joy and excitement of an 8 hour coach trip to Franz Josef where I start work in the 58oncron motel.