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Published: December 12th 2006
Cactus Jacks
Yeeha Cowboy!Today we embarked on the second leg of our grand tour of New Zealand, leaving Auckland behind us and heading for the tourism capital of the country, Rotorua. We caught an Intercity bus from Sky City at 1.15pm and at 5pm we pulled in bang on time by the Rotorua Tourism Office. It was only a short walk to our new digs, a wild west themed hostel by the name of Cactus Jacks. On arrival we received possibly the warmest welcome we've had anywhere with the friendly, laid-back owners bestowing a couple of bottles of cold beers upon us as well as a pile of free drink vouchers for the pub across the road. Excellent!
When we went to see our room, we were disappointed to see that the bed was just as soft as the one we'd left behind in Auckland. Then, as luck would have it, as we did our little orientation of the hostel's facilities I noticed an empty room with the door left open that appeared to have a firmer looking bed in it. I popped back to reception and asked whether we could swap rooms. 'No problem' they said and minutes later we were in
The Coach Office
Outside our excellent mini apartment. Not sure what Glynn's doing though... our new room....or should I say mini-apartment! The room we had seen had an attached lounge room that was hidden behind the front door, which had been open at the time and we hadn't even noticed. In the lounge was a sofa, fridge, tv, kettle, toaster and a further door led to a little private shower room. It was fantastic, particularly as the original room we had booked was pretty small with nothing more than a double bed and sideboard in it! Excellent!
At 6pm, we headed out front to meet up with an old friend from our travels in Thailand. When we were in Chiang Mai you may recall that we went on a dull day trip to Chiang Rai and the Golden Triangle but ended up couped up in a minibus for most of it. On that trip, we met a Kiwi called Roger who comes from Rotorua and he was one of our drinking posse on the night after the awful tour. He said to look him up when we got to Rotorua although he wasn't sure if he would be around. Cue: stroke of luck number 2. I dropped Roger a last minute email before
Free Beer
Gotta love those people at Cactus Jack's! leaving Auckland to see if he was back in Rotorua and if he was, did he fancy going for a drink. He called us almost straight back saying he hadn't long got back home and would be leaving again tomorrow but he was definitely up for seeing us again. So 6pm came and three months after we first met, we found ourselves enjoying a nice cold beer together again. Off we went to the Pig & Whistle to redeem our free beer vouchers (only one per person per day alas). Once again, excellent!
We had a great time catching up on our mutual travels before Roger piled us into his car and took us on a whistlestop tour of the city. I use the term city loosely here because by UK standards, Rotorua is a smallish place with only 65,000 inhabitants. It was a great way to get our bearings though, heading down to the waterfront and the Government Gardens amongst other places but best of all, it was fantastic to see Roger again - we honestly couldn't have asked for a better start to our stay. How much more excellent could it be?!
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Judy
non-member comment
I think someone needs to shave. ;P