The heat is on

Tuesday, 07/08/2012 - 54 A.D.

52 Northcote Road Camp Site does not like you taking showers for more than nine minutes at a time, so they make you buy special tokens for a dollar each. I hadn’t realised that the timer starts as soon as you insert the coin in the meter, rather than when you get the water running, so that countdown began while I was still fully-dressed. Cue a scramble to get buttons undone, etc. And is it me, but why do blokes of a certain age have to make the most disgusting sinus-based noises in a communal cleansing area? They should also sell Vics at reception for a dollar.

Getting out of our campervan bay was a bit of a tight turn so I decided to reverse her back into the bay behind, then swing around with a hard left. Reversing went fine, but the clearance wasn’t great and The Chariot got a little stuck. She wouldn’t start for the next few turns of the ignition and I got the feeling the whole campsite was watching us, but with a few revs applied she got going again. Apply revs - might have to remember that on a cold morning on an incline of a mountain sometime! Oh, forgot to say that the official make of our vehicle is a Toyota Hitop, which is essentially a Hiace with stuff built into it and a coffin put on top to give it a clearance of 2.3 metres (no good for most inner-city multi-storeys). The good news is the guidebook says they just keep on going and going and going (a bit like this blog).

Getting The Chariot through Auckland city centre wasn’t too taxing, given that there was daylight and it wasn’t rush hour. We parked up at Auckland Domain Park, just south east of the city centre, and pumped the meter for the maximum four hours available. Now, four hours is not a great deal of time to see a city of 1.2 million inhabitants (the whole country numbers barely 4 million), but we weren’t really clued-up on the 14 or so attractions that the official tour company mentioned. We only really wanted to see the Sky Tower and stroll around the streets. It had been a while since we’d been in a metropolis – go past one week ago and we were in a new city every few days! So in a way this was like a return to our roots.

The Sky Tower is the tallest building in the southern hemisphere. Mainly it’s used for telecommunications, but you can go up to the viewing platforms and look out across the city. You can also freejump from the top, albeit while guided to the platform at the bottom by a wire. We just stood around and took pictures like tourists, craning our necks upwards and hoping the grey skies would be merciful until 2.50 p.m. when our time on the meter expired.

We pottered around Auckland with no further plan of attack, just taking in the atmosphere rather than the attractions. It was just good to be in a big city again after a week on the road, almost akin to being civilised for a little over four hours. Plus we’d had our nine minute showers that morning, so at least we could stroll around without feeling like the Stinky Grayboys after a night of freedom camping.

Speaking of freedom camping, that was the plan for this Tuesday evening. We took to the road again and left the Auckland region, heading for Central North Island, i.e. the big chunk of area in the centre of the northern island. According to the good old guidebook, “If New Zealand were a cinema, Central North Island would be its blockbuster film.” Does that make us highly-talented actors? Puh! Anyway, Rotorua was our ultimate destination on Highway 2, followed by 27 and 29...

An aside – I may have moaned a little about how NZ town names all sound similar, at least in the Northland region. It sits better with me to know now that they all have their root in Maori dialect and they’re not just made-up words. Examples of words used are “wai” (water) and “puke” (hill). Therefore, the following settlements could exist:

Nui-manu = big-bird

Hau-rua = windy-hole

Iti-kare-ika-whanga = small-rippling-fish-bay

Bombing along the road doing 100 (kilometres an hour, unfortunately) and battling against the setting sun has become a new game. It’s as if we’re vampires trying to get to our coffins on the eve of destruction. In reality, we just need to find somewhere to park The Chariot before nightfall, otherwise it gets a bit hairy navigating those raised hairpin bends with only our headlights for guidance. But we’re getting better at it, and we get somewhere before twilight.

We’re up in the jungle hills on a road that went off the map. No one can see us here. Sweet dreams are made of this.

And sweet dreams to you, Rest of the World. 

Wednesday, 07/08/2012 - 55 A.D.

Bit of a weird one this morning. We’d found last night’s little secluded glade by following the route taken by a school bus, at least according to the road signs. When something drove past and disturbed me from my slumbers, I assumed it must be the bus and that morning must have arrived. Then something else drove past, right past the van in fact, and parked up close by. How dare they try to share our little corner of the southern hemisphere! I asked Tim if he’d seen who they were and, while peering through the crack between the curtains, he informed me they were two blokes with rifles. Rifles? Hmmm. Really hope they’re hunters, not poachers, because poachers might be angry that someone has witnessed their little racket. And, errr, really hope they are hunting animals and nothing more sinister! Wisely we chose not to get out of our sleeping bags at this point, lest our new companions see the van rocking from side to side and start assuming all sorts of things. After a little while they mooched off down to the river and we never saw them again. And they left their lights on, but we couldn’t be bothered running after them to deliver the news. 

[The sinister rogue van.]

[Note the body language between vehicles.]

Not sure if it had anything to do with relief from the aforementioned incident, but over breakfast we found ourselves fervently discussing the big bang theory (not the TV show, the sciency ting). It was a highly interesting chat and beats our normal topics of conversation over coco pops and cornflakes. Apparently there are four outcomes for the fate of our universe:

1.      All matter suddenly stops expanding and explodes again in another big bang.

2.      All matter keeps on expanding infinitely forever.

3.      All matter suddenly stops expanding and then contracts in a reversal of the previous process to form nothingness.

4.      We wake up to find it was all a dream.

Tim tried to throw his banana skin out of the window and into the undergrowth, but somehow it landed on the roof. We drove towards Rotorua with it still up there. One of the guidebooks claimed Rotorua is the most visited tourist destination in the whole of the north island. It’s famous for the volcanic activity in its vicinity and there are lots of geysers and mud pools blowing out smoke and hot air. In fact, the first thing that hits you as soon as you get out of the vehicle is the strong smell of sulphur that comes and goes in varying degrees of strength. I didn’t mind it, but Tim claimed it turned his stomach. If you’ve never come across sulphur before, it reeks of eggs gone bad.

After a quick saunter around the town, we went over to a small park where there was a “public thermal area”, i.e. you can enjoy the tiny eruptions from underground without having to pay for the privilege. At this point it was time for our regular third shower of the day and it was quite a strange experience to feel heat and smoke coming up from the ground and cold water hitting me from above. I’m enjoying the changing landscape of this country – the green, rolling hills and valleys of the far north were great, but now it’s good to have a change with this new volcano zone. And we saw in the newspaper that there’d been a large eruption in the south west, but plenty far away not to trouble us. The south west, however, is where we’re heading next.

When Tim could stand the sulphurous fumes no longer, we jumped in The Chariot (can’t do Dukes Of Hazard-style hood slides (coz there ain’t no hood)) and went to look at a couple of lakes – The Blue Lake and The Green Lake. There was a viewing point between the two and it was possible to see the different hues of the waters. Both were formed around 13,500 years ago and the Blue Lake gets its Maori name from a princess who supposedly lost her favourite gemstone in it. Should have kept it in her money belt. The Green Lake is privately owned by Maoris and it sacred to their people, so no swimming, boating, waterskiing, etc. was allowed. Spoilsports.

[Blue Lake - gemstone not pictured.]

[Green Lake - watersports not pictured.]

The campsite for the evening was on the edge of town, name of The Cosy Cottage Campsite. Sure, there was a cosy cottage there, but we wouldn’t be staying in it! Also staying on the site are the wading birds pictured below. They are all over the place and I’m bound to end up crashing into one in the dark passageway that leads to the shower block. We’ve seen them constantly during our time in NZ, but we don’t know what the correct name for them is – answers on a postcard if you do.

The main feature of this campsite is that it’s built on hot springs, as is the fashion in Rotorua. That means there are hot spa pools for guests to loll in and forget their cares of the world. And we did the same.

WARNING – THE FOLLOWING PHOTO CONTAINS PARTIAL NUDITY

[What you can't see here is...the steam.]

Feeling totally refreshed after that little dip (I say little, but we easily exceeded the pool rule of a maximum of 20 minutes), we retired to The Chariot for tea, where I knocked up my signature dish of noodles, bacon and egg – the taste of home!

Full tum = satisfied Grayboy #1.