Hmmmm, can you smell something?

Been a bit of a break since my last blog, and I’ve covered a fair bit of ground since then. Since leaving Wellington I’ve passed through Napier, Taupo, Rotorua, Mt Maunganui on my way to Auckland. I didn’t stay anywhere for too long but I’ll be passing through a few on the way back south so can see anything I missed then. Not much was happening in Napier (it was Sunday and nearly everything was closed). I didn’t find the Art Deco buildings there to be particularly exciting really, because there’s barely any nice modern buildings and some really dubious colour schemes it feels a lot older than is.

Taupo was okay, there I visited Huka Falls and the Craters of the Moon, a geothermal spot here with lots of craters (obviously) and fumaroles all venting steam and gas. It makes for quite a surreal landscape, even more so because it’s such an isolated pocket amongst normal forest. They have nice forests up here by the way, and lots of native birds. My favourite’s the Tui because it sounds like R2-D2. The lake, as people regularly point out, is big enough to contain Singapore, but it’s just a whole bunch of water really so it’s all flat and didn’t get me all that excited. Mind you the lake itself is also one massive volcanic crater so any excitement it might cause would probably be of the hot, explosive kind so perhaps it’s for the best.

There were more geothermal shenanigans in Rotorua, where you don’t have to go too far to find something interesting with gas of some kind. And of course there’s the smell, which I didn’t find all that bad although I don’t think I would ever eat eggs again if I had to live there. Visited the museum there too which is in a fantastic old Tudor-style building which used to be a bath house back in the day.



Mt Maunganui was really nice, and felt exactly like the beaches at Caloundra or Coolangatta back home. But with sheep. Yep they’re even at the beach over here, but I suppose they need a holiday too.



Anyway, I had to make it up to Auckland a bit ahead of schedule to meet my sister Karen, who decided to pop over for a surprise visit. Auckland’s a much nicer town when you’re visiting it on purpose by the way – I didn’t have fond memories of it at all but that’s because last time I was stuck here when I should have been in Vancouver. While Karen was here we went to the Coromandel Pensinsula, where we visited Cathedral Cove (my favourite place on the north island so far) and did some bone carving, and also headed up to the Bay of Islands, which is a really nice spot. We did the Hole in the Rock cruise (didn’t get to go through though, bummer) and visited Urupukapuka Island, which I try and mention whenever I can just cause it’s fun to say. It’s pronounced Uru-puka-puka, where the u is as in ‘put’. Try it, you’ll enjoy yourself. Karen also went dolphin watching while I visited the Waitangi Treaty Grounds and Hururu Falls, and we also did a day trip to Russell and went to a Maori cutural performance one night on the history of the area. Oh and we visited the Auckalnd Zoo as well, in case you were wondering what all the exotic animals on my Flickr site were all about.

Here's Karen in action.



So it was a nice change to have a travelling companion for a while, although I did have to make a few adjustments. I was at a bit of a loss at what to say at first, without the usual routine of finding out where people are from, where they’ve been and where they’re heading (and eventually their name, if it looks like they’ll be around long enough that you might need to use it. I also had to drop my usual walking pace a little bit (and then quite a lot) so Karen could keep up, or at least, not collapse. So she flew back home this morning to get some rest before going back to work, and I’m starting back down south again tomorrow to Waitomo and the caves there.