April 22.
I'll probably spend a few days in Rotorua, it seems there's a lot to do here: cultural stuff, geothermal stuff, extreme adventure stuff. Oh yes, it does smell kind of like rotten eggs here, but you get used to it and it's kind of pleasant. Apparently the smell is mostly due to hydrogen sulfide -- key word, of course, being sulfide. I go down to the isite and make my first real splurge: I book the Tamaki Maori Village and Kaitiaki Adventure Rafting on the Kaituna river combo deal. It saves me $20 or so off of what these things would cost normally. I'm skeptical about Tamaki -- actually I'm skeptical about all of these Maori villages. A friend of mine back at New College did her thesis on Heritage Tourism and the Holy Land experience, maybe it's from that, who knows. Nevertheless, despite the fact that I had a few Maori mates back in Wellington, read a book on Maori myths and learned a few phrases here and there, I know less about it all than I'd like. Besides, I figure if you're a tourist in New Zealand (and granted, up till now I haven't been) this is just one of those things you've got to do. And despite working with a Maori chef for a few months, I've never had a Hangi. A Hangi's where they dump lots of meat into a big pit in the ground and slow cook it for hours over hot rocks. I was originally going to go with Te Puia, as they seemd more authentic then Tamaki, supposedly their organization was created by an act of parliament. But I looked at a review site and the consensus seems to be Tamaki.
First though, I've got to run over to the grocery store and make myself some sandwiches before the rafting company's shuttle comes to pick me up at the campground-- I'm starving. I actually don't wind up having the time, so I stuff a banana in my mouth and some meusli (soft granola) bars in my bag and hop in the van,
Ian and Steven, from Manchester and Patrick, from Kent, are fun blokes. Ian and Steven are doing the Kiwi Experience, Patrick's doing his own little round the world trip.
Over at the rafting HQ, we put on our wetsuits, life jackets and helmets, and hop back in the shuttle with with Gopher and Chunky, who drove us here. Gopher and Chunky are exactly the kind of crazy mofos you'd expect to be working at a whitewater rafting company that takes people down the highest commercially rafted waterfall in the world. Both unshaven, with a wild gleam in their eyes, they have a backcountry mercenary air about them. We are also joined by Corey, another professional rafter , and Amy, another Kaituna employee.
We carry the raft over to the river and Corey gives us a bit of history of the river and says a Maori prayer. I'm a bit skeptical of this, Corey has blue eyes, but I later find out he identifies as Maori. I get in the front of the raft with Steven, and we're down the river! Whoo boy.
Man, it was a blast, I gotta tell you. Steven was the first to fall out, which might have been my fault, the guys in the front are supposed to paddle in time and I was a bit busy snapping this picture:
So after that I concentrate a bit more on paddlin'. Still, the professionals do most of the work, really. Ian fell out at one point too, and I think Patrick did as well. Chunky finds some leaf or something and just before we go down the "highest commercially rafted waterall in the world" (really it's only a 5 meter drop, although still hella fun) he flips it to find out whether the boat will capsize or not. It comes up backwards, but we stay rightside up anyway. There are quite a few little drops as well. We pause so Corey can point out some Maori burial caves. Towards the end, we all jump out and swim just for the hell of it:
Patrick gasping for air in the Kaituna river.Afterwards I go over to the Pig & Whistle with Patrick and have a few pints. Patrick's going to Hawaii as well, around the same time I am. It would be cool to meet up with him in Colorado as well to do some more rafting, but we'll see.
I switch my pickup point for the Tamaki thing to a nearby backpackers, because it's closer. I'm a bit more optimistic about it since Corey said he saw it and he thought it was "a good representation of our culture." The bus driver explains that the bus is our waka, which literally means canoe but can be any kind of transport. Rob explained the same thing to me back at Cornerstore, and I was bit incredulous -- so suppose you want to trade a motorcycle for a skateboard, how do the parties not get confused as to what they're acquiring? Some south african guy appoints himself our "chief," and he's pretty entertaining.
Over at the village, I really wish I hadn't had those pints because I've got to pee really bad. I try and hold it as we all wait in a courtyard and some women perched up above the gate sing a haunting melody and maori guys dressed in grass skirts run out really fast and try to intimidate the "chiefs" from all the tourist buses with their spears. I try to snap some pictures but I can't get a decent shot in the lighting:
which is just as well because even though there are tons of flashes going off, I feel weird about taking pictures.
Inside, the village is really well done, although it does have a slightly plastic look to it. The idea is you can just wander around and ask people questions and stuff. Some women explain how maori would forage for roots and make them into cake. yum. I ask one of the guys who's explaining all the ways to kill someone with a blade whether his facial tatoos are real. "Of course they are! How dare you insult me! ...just kidding." At some point he mentions rodents and looks over in my direction.
Afterwards there's a stage performance of various kinds of Haka, including some storytelling. The Chief's "tatoos" are messy in a really cool way.
And then the moment I've been waiting for....Hangi! I have four helpings of this stuff, plus dessert. There's chicken, lamb, fish, mussels (by the end I had a huge plate full of empty shells) carrots, potato, and kumara. You can really notice the smoky earth flavor in the kumara. Dessert is pavlova, I lick some from a bowl while I go outside and listen to a woman explain how the Hangi is done. Pretty much how you'd think.
On the way back the bus driver honks her horn excessively and goes around 6 times at the same roundabout, she explains that all the cops are relatives.
April 23
Something of a lazy day today. The weather's supposed to be getting worse so I've checked into YHA Rotorua, and I bought a membership because this is now the third backpackers I've stayed in, and at least one of those was a YHA. I meet Patrick at the pub again and we walk over to the Kuirau Park to look at some of the thermal activity. By this point I've realized that taking my "waterproof" camera in the river yesterday was not the best idea, some water has gotten under the lens and the picture is way too foggy to make anything out. Bummer. There are some cool bubbling mudpools and stuff like that, although nothing quite as expansive as I saw next to Wai-o-Tapu. I bid farewell to rick and wander around the park until I'm a bit lost. I watch a middle aged asian guy with a really expensive looking camera take photos of a big steaming pile of rocks. I've seen a lot of them around Rotorua, and I don't just mean asians with cameras. I mean middle aged asian men with cameras equipped with a telescoping lens, photographing trees in parking lots and all sorts of bizarre stuff.
In the evening I go down by the lake (I'm guessing it's lake Rotorua) and sit and watch some black swans and enjoy being in Rotorua, and once again thing about how I've gotten here under my own leg-power. I consider heading out in the morning to Whakatane to see White Island, although I'm still unsure if I want to blow the cash. It'd be a shame to head out this early thoug. I've just gotten to Rotorua and there's a lot more to do here, a lot of it free. I decide to go to some mountain biking tracks tomorrow. I'v been passing mountain biking tracks here and there on my travels, but I've been reticent to do them up till now because i've generally just been to exhausted by the time I get somewhere, and I usually want to do something that doesn't invovle cycling. Also, I've been a bit reluctant to jeopardize my ride -- what if something happens to the bike? But Rotorua seems like the place to go MTB'ing if I'm going to do it -- there are 8 cycle shops here and I've been seeing brochures all around for mountain biking. I've had a bit of a rest, and I'm enjoying the sporting binge I've been on, so tomorrow I'm going to the redwoods!
April 24
Weather's getting gradually worse, but it's not too bad yet. They say It'll clear up around Wednesday. By the time I pedal out to the Whakarawera forest though, I realize the drizzle won't make much difference once I'm inside. I buy a mountain biking map and decide to go on the Dipper first. The tracks are all graded, from 1-7, with 6 & 7 being pretty much suicidal. 3 & 4 seem to be mid grade. Genesis, the track which got mountain biking started in Rotorua, is a grade 3. Dipper's a grade 2.
They don't call it the Dipper for nothing! Oh man, that was amazing. I can't believe I've never done mountain biking before -- I mean every bike I've ever had was a mountain bike, but I only ever used cycles for transportation before. I don't know if all mountain bike tracks are like this, but it reminded me of the speederbike scene in Return of the Jedi. I was just zooming down these narrow dirt paths trying to take the sharp curves so that I don't go smack into the trees. The track is built so that most of the time, if you're quick enough you can just pull out the stops and not bother braking, just using your downward momentum to carry you up the next hill. Some of these bends you're actually riding on the trench wall! Half the time I'm hanging on for dear life because the bike is bouncing up and down so hard I'm almost getting thrown off of it. Good things I left everything but my backpack and water "pannier" at the hostel.
I try and find Genesis and someone tells me there's a little MTB track that leads into it. I should have asked him what grade it was, because it was rocky as hell with really steep falls. I took a little spill, but everything was sweet as. Genesis is only a grade 3, but I think it's a bit out of my league -- there was a huge hill to climb at the start, and there's a lot of lesser hills as well. I can't just zoom around the track like I did with the dipper. It's still fun though, and I'm determined to carry on even after 3 spills. Unfortunately by the 3rd spill my brakes have worked their way into the rear rim somehow -- I stop to adjust them, but I'm having trouble. I finally realize to my dismay that the rear wheel is buckled!
When Hayden gave me the bike he told me the wheel needed some work. Arthur over Mechanical Tempest Bike @ 128 Abel Smith St, an anarchist house, helped me true the wheel. Arthur told me the thing might go out of whack again, but after a week or so riding around town it seemed to be fine. I took a spoke key along just in case. Still, now's not the time and place to try tuning it up. I'm forced to carry the bike off the track and out of the park, I soon realize it's easier to put the thing on my back. On the way out I manage to hitch a ride from another MTBer into town, which is fortunate because it's probably around 5km or so into town.
I run into Rotorua cycles and they tell me they do wheel truing, but they won't get to it until monday -- there's a single speed race in town, so I guess they're busy preparing people for that, and ANZAC day is Saturday, so all the shops are closed until 1:00 an some of them won't open at all. Looks like I might be stranded here awhile.
My roommates in the dorm are three asian guys, two of them in their fourties or fifties, one of them a younger guy. One of the older ones snores so loudly and obnoxiously that I have trouble sleeping, and I can hear the younger asian guy toss and turn fitfully as well. Somehow, I drift off.
