Day 3: Rotorua to Wellington

Sha looked so hungry the next morning that the hotel staff provided us with a free cooked breakfast each. Sha is currently creating her first halloween pumpkin. It seems to be a very serious undertaking.

After ambling around the Rotorua market for a while we drove off towards the airport. Rotorua airport is not very large. We got rid of our car, checked in and sat around until our small plane arrived.

The views were spectacular. We flew over Lake Taupo and then past the huge volcanoes. It was perfectly clear. The landing in Wellington was also amazing. Unfortunately there was another rugby match on. We hadn't known about this and the taxi driver was a little aghast that we hadn't booked a hotel. Anyway, he dropped us in a seedy area of the town thinking that we may be able to find a room. We didn't, but one the people in one hotel knew of another hotel on the other side of the town that did have a room. We then pulled our case across the town (which luckily is not very large) and got checked in.

After lunch we headed to the cable car and up the hill. We visited a reserve where there were kiwis (but we didn't see any) and then we walked across to the Carter observatory and watched a planetarium show. In the evening, Sha went with me to a pub to watch the New Zealand/England game, but England was losing so badly that it wasn't so much fun!

This isn't the World's greatest blog entry, but I'm being stared at by a huge, grinning pumpkin. It's a bit distracting.

Second part of day 2: lots of animals

We drove into Rotorua, found another Japanese restaurant for lunch and then discovered the Paradise Valley Springs Wildlife Park (which sounded rather promising after seeing the devil's bath etc.). It was great! We got to stroke the baby lion (but not her brother who was apparently now a little large to pat). We saw the huge trout and eels. Went on the "tree-tops walkway" and found a very huge pig. It was great. err ... hmmm ... Sha discovered that the lion had sharp teeth and claws!! We also got to watch the large lions being fed bits of horse. We had to stand back so that we didn't get splattered with blood.

Finally we went back into the city, found a hotel, had dinner in the "Pig and Whistle" and then went for a walk around part of the lake while the moon came up. It was beautiful!!

First part of Day 2: Wai-O -Tapu

Arghh. I'm sleepy. I've been trying to find out where the Earth is for the last two days and have almost succeeded. Sha has got her Australian PR!! Well done Sha. I've been trying to work out whether she now needs a visa to go to New Zealand. According to the official website you don't need a visa if you are a permanent resident of Australia or .... personnel at the "Black Birch Astrometric Observatory" or .... a member of "Operation Deep Freeze". This was rather intriguing. The only websites that I can find about the observatory says that it closed ages ago. However, there is a pdf that I found that says that the observatory is operated by the US Naval Observatory for US stategic and nuclear weapon systems. However, the head of the US apparently says that it is an innocent scientific endeavour!! However even that pdf says that it closed in 1991.

"Operation deep freeze" is easier to find. It even has a wikipedia page. Apparently it's the code name for a series of US operations in Antarctica.

Anyway, Sha can come into New Zealand without getting another visa!! At the start of day 2 in New Zealand, we woke early and drove North toward Rotorua. We stopped at Wai-O-Tapu which is a place that I've been wanted to visit for ages. It's so beautiful. We arrived just before the geyser erupted. It erupts every day at 10:30am and I had spent most of the car ride trying to work out how it knew about the clocks changing to summer time. The answer is that a chap turns up and throws a bar of soap into the funnel. Then it erupts. Actually he was very insistent that it wasn't soap, but something much more eco-friendly. It was very impressive and we got covered in hot, steamy, soapy water. The water went up 20m or so and lasted an hour.

Then we went to find the bubbling mud pools. Wow!! That was my favourite bit, but Sha made rude comments about the view and the smell and didn't take many photos. It was dramatic! Finally we went around the park on a stunning walk (that lasted an hour or so). The views were incredible. There were different colours in the rocks, water, steam everywhere you looked. Amazingly there was some wading birds that lived in the steaming water. I stuck my finger into a pool and I can confirm that the water is very close to 100C.

I'd better stop. I have to give a 45 minute talk at Sydney Uni tomorrow and I haven't started it yet.

Day 1 in New Zealand: to Taupo on the old road

Life's motto according to the restaurant that we found in Taupo: "Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely ..., but rather to skid in sideways, no money left, cigar in one hand, favourite beer in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out ...." This was in a Japanese restaurant serving sushi and diet coke.

We had two choices for getting to Taupo. We could follow the main motorway which would have taken an hour or two, or we could follow our GPS. Our GPS was set to "annoying Australian female" with country accent set to max and so we followed her advice. Unfortunately, the roads on the ground and the roads on the map didn't totally agree, but we had fun trying to work out where we were. Sha fell in love with the pink trees. We saw lots of cows and sheep. Our little car needed some help getting up a few of the hills. We drove through Whakamaru. I know this because I asked Sha to take a photo of the road sign so we could try and work out where we were from a normal map. The road sign has a big fish on it. It rained and then was sunny and then rained heavily and then was windy and then was sunny. The mountains got bigger. Sha started to sing Chinese folk songs. There was no restaurant for lunch. Finally we pulled into Taupo and found our Japanese restaurant.

Taupo is on Lake Taupo which is the largest lake in New Zealand. It's huge! It lies in a caldera which formed from the eruption of the volcano that's at the other end of the lake and covered in snow. Apparently the volcano erupts every 1000 years or so.

After lunch and the discovery of New Zealand raspberries we headed off toward the Craters of the Moon. This is an impressive geothermal area full of steam coming through the rocks, bubbling mud and strange vegetation including "Prostrate Kanuka". Apparently the fumes were poisonous and ground temperatures can reach "dangerous levels".

We headed back past the Huka falls and found a little motel on the edge of the Taupo lake.

To hell on Pacific Blue

We've seen the devil's ink pots, his cave, his bath. We've seen bubbling mud pits, fuming fumaroles, steam rising from the ground. We've smelt the sulphur. We've peered down into volcanic craters and crossed raging torrents. Sha got attacked by wild beasts. We've seen the ghouls get on the train, seen a life-size heart that you could crawl into and stared at monsters of the deep.

What better way to go to hell than on Pacific Blue. Sha and I met at the airport two and a half hours before our departure with the aim to check-in, have some dinner and then amble around the airport for a while. The check-in queue already had about 20 people in it, but that didn't seem too long. We discounted the Pacific Blue check-in efficiency. Two hours later we got served. There was no time for food, we ran across the airport, got stuck in another stupidly long line at customs, found that the gate was at the other end of the airport and kept running. Announcements were being made warning that all of us late customers would be offloaded from the flight. We rushed onto the plane where they made us wait for about 30 minutes whilst blasting us with the most annoying pop music. Then we had to buy our food (a beer + nuts for 20 dollars!). Then they played more annoying music whilst we circled around Auckland (which would have been a spectacular view if they'd turned the awful music off) with Sha commenting on the personal hygiene of the person sitting next to her (not me, I hasten to add). Then we landed and it got worse. Oh, my credit card had been cancelled for 24 hours as I'd forgotten my PIN and as we rushed across the Australian airport we had had no time to change any money.

I'll try and be nice about Auckland airport. Perhaps, everyone was off sick apart from the two people who were manning the desks. Also, it's possible that every flight for the last week had been delayed and they all arrived at the same time as us. It took from midnight to 2am to get out the airport!

Then we rented a car and luckily didn't use our GPS to find the hotel. We discovered the next day that our GPS didn't really know the roads in New Zealand. It thought it did. We paid extra for the New Zealand maps, but it only seemed to know roads built in around 1940 or earlier (roads with names like "Old Taupo Road").

Anyway, we found our hotel and fell fast asleep. The next day saw the start of a really amazing and wonderful holiday! ....