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Published: June 28th 2006
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Hello from Welly, this is part two of our travel adventure driving down from Auckland to Wellington - sorry I’ve been a bit slow writing this one. Keeping up with World Cup news is more of a priority at the moment. Anyway I restart last month’s adventure from Lake Taupo, the largest freshwater lake in NZ and located bang smack in the middle of the North Island. As with much of the New Zealand countryside it's very beautiful and owes its existence to plate tectonics. Until a couple of thousand years ago it was a blocked up volcano. A subsequent eruption ripped apart the whole mountain, created an enormous crater and covered most of New Zealand in ash. The largest ever recorded eruption, the noise could be heard as far away as China! Anyways this crater is now full of fresh water, boats and the largest trout in the world. Wahoooo!
The weather was a bit murky so there was no chance of us walking the Tongariro Crossing or skydiving (another time perhaps?) and instead we filled the time with a couple of sightseeing trips. The Huka Falls were impressive, the Waikato River was in full turbulent flow due to
all the rain we had; the girls got a little scared I think. A visit to nearby Craters of the Moon makes you realise that the Earth is not as solid and dependable as you think. The Earth’s crust around Taupo and Rotorua is extremely thin, and at Craters of the Moon underground rivers flowing near the surface are bubbling and boiling. As soon as the pressure builds up too much underground, the hot water explodes to the surface as a geyser, or at Craters of the Moon, erodes the soft rock, exploits the cracks, collapses whole cliffs and generally escapes to the surface as steam. So us three spent an hour or so walking in a wide open valley, along these footpaths peering into ‘rabbit’ holes that boiled and spluttered like angry kettles and expecting the ground beneath our feat to explode at any moment.
A trip to Taupo, world capital of trout fishing is not complete without a visit to the Tongariro National Trout Centre (…yeah we’d run out of free places to go!). Pretty cool place though, the centre rears trout and helps keep their numbers up so there’s plenty of fish to fish. It’s a
beautiful woodland setting along the Tongariro River, and a large section of the river bed can be seen from an underwater viewing chamber. That night I could have murdered a large steamed trout with little tatties and veggies but there was none on sale. Boooo!
Next day it was east onto Napier. Great fun drive, in over fours hours we only passed a handful of hamlets/houses - made me smile to think that Kiwis view the North Island as overpopulated; can’t wait for next week, the South Island is going to be even more quiet and spacious! Anyways Napier is the best looking and planned town in NZ by a country mile. The severe earthquake of 1931 killed/injured many, pushed the landmass up above the sea several metres turning its harbour to land and in doing so destroyed much of the town. The town was quickly rebuilt with the idea that it should be brash, new and high quality, a monument to all those lost. Today Napier is a cohesively planned town with the largest collection of art deco buildings in the world. Great and garish concrete buildings, all looking like something out of a 1930’s Hollywood Oscar ceremony.
Each building seemed to outdo the next, clashing colours and camp columns. This was complemented by loads of sunshine and blue sky - yes!
…enough of the architecture and on it was to wine tasting. The Hawkes Bay region around Napier and Hastings is full of vineyards. We dropped into three places in the end, got acquainted with some pretty good merlot mixtures and now can pretend to know something about wine. Mission Estate, the oldest winery in NZ, was a tasty place to sample wine with great views across the whole area.
A night in Palmerston North after some heroic driving by Merridith in the dark, wind and rain (not bad for a yank who had before this week never driven on the ‘correct side’ of the road), and we arrive Monday morning in Wellington for our job interviews with the Ministry of Education.
…hope all is well on the other side of the world. The boys in white play Portugal next. It’d better be entertaining this time round. I’m literally getting tired of rolling out of bed at stupid o’clock to watch an unconvincing, drab team who look like there’re going to concede a goal
and lose the game at every set piece. Hopefully I’ll eat my words when I’m watching the final on a July Monday morning, late for work and singing God Save the Queen…Cheers Caz and Mark for the Engeerlund stuff. The world cup is sitting by the telly and the flag is draped over the mantle piece.
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paula alisdair julie and helen
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wrestling with the lambs
Here in Masterton, wrestling with the lambs. Yes that's right. What was four sheep is now eight. Bonnie is still urinating without license. As is Roger. Julie would like to offer you cut price dancing lessons, visit www.danceswithlambsdressedashelen.com (website currently under construction). In case you're concerned, a few wines are combined with the altitude we are currently experiencing and have resulted in this blog repsonse. Your next mission, should you choose to accept it (and you fucken better) is to include in your next blog, a photo of you wrestling a creature closely resembling the mighty G (AKA Gomez). PS we'd prefer a llama or a badger. Oh and we were at the quiz night with James, Erica, Reece, Andrew (?) and blonde chick with lots of blue eyeshadow. Performed appallingly, far too many questions on Wales and we did not have our expert.