Rotorua: The town that smells of farts.

Why does it smell of farts?
Because its built over a huge geothermal area which means hot thermals and geysers which means sulphur which means the whole town smells of rotten eggs.

we went off in search of promised geothermal wonders,
Cailín found this!!!
I know,

close-up for those of you short sighted enough to deny there is anything besides that rock,

Yes, Yes that is bubbling water.
Amazing!

Then....
We found this brown lake.
Will the wonders ever cease?

Then all of a sudden we found this,
A lake that was both brown and steamy!

More searching over the next few days yielded more impressive results.

A very steamy hole, can't tell you what was under the steam, it was very steamy.


Check this out,
a real life geyser, shoots twenty meters up and everything.


Then there was the bubbling mud which made a "plop plop" sound just like you think it should.



Cailín said this steamy pit looked romantic, pity it would probably melt your skin and boil your bones.


Worrying signage at the highly active volcanic area obviously holds no fear for this couple.


Went all cultural and visited some Mauri meeting house where Mauri's dance a 10am, 12am, 2pm with an evening "Mauri Experience" every weekday at 8pm.

Cynicism aside it was quite good,
Saw the Haka, which is terrifying.


This was Cailín's favourite bit (maybe of the whole of New Zealand judging by the amount of times she has tried to impersonate it) was when in the back of Haka dancing this guy keeps making an unusual face which is apparently a traditional challenge stance, it certainly beats "Are you starting bud! ARE U!?"

In the craft workshop this statue was embarrassed by his small erection (Cailín insisted on taking the photo)

In other news tried to settle into Tinker livin'.

I tried my best by eating digestives at every opportunity but got it wrong but mistakenly buying richo "Hobnobs", how could I have been so foolish.



Cailín's attempts were far better that mine, tucking into a hearty tin of refried beans without any prompting from me.

Due to a recent viewing of the film "District 10" and the refried beans remarkable similarity in both sight and smell to cat food I took to calling Cailín a "bloody prawn!" in a South African accent.


Another not so brilliant aspect of life on the road is beautifully illustrated by this hastily taken drive by shot of another camper van.
Although the van may seem only to differ from our van in slight visual areas there is one Huge difference....
This one has a nutjob living in it.
the kind of nut job who comes into a kitchen where you are boiling a kettle and calmly shuffles over to the kettle takes off its lid, then pulls up a high stool and watches the water boil leaving seconds after the "climax"........

This situation brings up a a question that has probably (hopefully) never been faced before,
Do you drink the freshly boiled water?
You saw him, he didn't touch the water or add anything, he just "watched" it.
For us the water was forever soiled as was the kettle, still gives me shivers.

This photo was taken when we went back to the campsite, we'd left something behind.
He wasn't actually in the van staring out at us as he had been all day inbetween episodes of slowly walking by the van and kitchen, oh no! No such luck, he had decided to save his biggest freak-out till our return which he had obviously been awaiting.
It happened as Cailín had just retrieved what we had returned for from the fridge and was back in the van (I had stayed in the van to keep the engine running expecting him to make a move, plus I was scared). She had just put on her seat belt when she looked up and said "Quick drive he's looking at us!"............now I've seen a few horror movies, i know what happens here, if you stop and say "what?, whose looking?, what are you talking about?, from where?, what colour jacket is he wearing?, I'll get out of the van to investigate or go for a swim by myself in a bikini" your as good as meat-hooked and stuffed, this was also why I kept the car running, as many teenagers have had their sequel hopes finished by faulty starter motor as saved by the last minute bursting to life of an engine.

So off we sped in a spray of mud and grass. It was halfway down the driveway that Cailín told me " As I walked passed the toilets back to the van, a cubicle door opened and he was standing there fully clothed, then watched us for a second until he saw I was looking him, then he closed the door again, but I could see by his feet he was just standing there at the toilet!"

At the gates we decided to head back to take this photo of his van just in case a serial murder was reported and the police could use it.



One thing that really worried me about New Zealand was their childrens "playgrounds"
Like this, what the feck is it.

The wiggly pole on the left looks like a firemans pole that is designed to throw you off, and how are you meant to get to the top of it anyway? Shimmy across the pole at the top, I beg of you please click on this photo for the blow-up and try to explain how you could possibly play with any of it. give me the gravel and empty sewer pipes of Marley park any day

And what's this, its a hard plastic, slippy when wet, spinning ring of death, even if it was dry how are you meant to play with this, you could sit on it while the whole ring spins on bearings but with nothing to hold onto, centripetal force is going to throw you off before your at walking pace. And even if you make it a full revolution the way its slanted leaves it only four inches from the ground at its lowest point meaning your feet are going to drag along the ground grinding your fun to a premature halt. The only option I can see is duct taping a wild animal or weaker playmate to it and spinning it until a state of vomiting is induced and admitting you've designed a toy for that is admitting you've designed a toy to create an abundance of serial killers. Maybe our campsite friend had one when he was a wee nipper.

Beside it was this.....a twenty foot high web of 3/4 inch slippy plastic ropes.
now imagine any 5year old in the whole world, he is going to murder himself on this thing, I pointed this out to Cailín but she said "What are you giving out about?, its perfectly safe, look there are wood chippings on the ground" I tried to point out that wood chippings aren't going to help much if your falling 20feet onto your face.

Seriously I only climbed the thing so you could see how big it was, I was terrified, my hands were shaking.