Rotovegas

In the very middle of the North Island, on the huge crater of en extinct volcano, lies Rotorua; famous for Maori culture, Polynesian spas, the distinctive smell of rotten eggs (due to volcanic and geothermal activity) and for being a town full of crazy activities, hence the controversial nickname: Rotovegas.

The smell wasn't actually as bad as expected, you would notice it only in few areas. The landscape though is really amazing; walking around town you see steam and smoke coming up in between bushes and trees. Even in the public park, in the heart of town, you have bubbling mud pools and fumaroles.

We had to go out of town however to see the Lady Knox Geyser and what they call the Geotermal Wonderland: Wai-O-Tapu.
While Lady Knox failed to impress as the geyser starts only as they throw a bar of soap in it (it sounded strange that it goes off every day at 10 am sharp!), the Wai-O-Tapu instead was really a great place to see: lakes and pools with strange colours due to carbon dioxide, sulfides, sulfur, arsenic (and as we liked to joke: some paint that they've thrown in as well); fumaroles, craters, and a quite eerie atmosphere.

Back in Rotorua, being this town also the capital of Maori culture, we went to see a show in Mitai Maori Village, where Maori folks will arrive in a war canoe, welcome you to the village, dance and sing typical songs, including the famous Haka, once used to scare enemies, today simply used to scare opposing rugby teams. After the performance it's Hangi (food traditionally cooked buried in the ground with heated stones) for everybody.

When it comes to the Rotovegas bit, the first crazy activity we did was The Zorb. Imagine 3 people and a couple of buckets of water in a huge inflatable ball rolling and bouncing down a hill. Great craic!


Finbarr & Sharon went extreme to the max doing skydiving as well, while my extreme bit was Waitomo caves. You can choose between various activities like black water rafting (exploring caves through small rivers floating on an inflated rubber inner tube of a truck tyre) or climbing. My choice was abseiling; that is descending down 100 meters in a cave using some rope contractions. A bit scary, but great great views. The pic here on the right might give you an idea.. can you see the people there? Once down there you explore the caves around, squeezing in through some very narrow points, crawling and having often as only light the tiny torch on your helmet. The highlight of the trip is seeing the glowworms, hundreds of tiny little worms that glow in the dark to attract insects, creating a fantastic effect: an underground starred sky!

A visit to Rotorua would be incomplete without some spa treatment, so I went to another of those volcanic place, even eerier than the first one, and aptly named: Hell's Gate. Again great views of craters, geysers and bubbling mud, and while I was there I treated myself to a volcanic mud followed by hot mineral pool. After all I had to cheer me up for the fact that Finn & Sharon had left. They went in fact down to the South Island to catch their flight to Rarotonga, while I went back up to Auckland to catch my flight to the next destination (and blog post): Vanuatu.

Back in North Island (NZ)

Taking advantage of a rainy day in Vanuatu (there's a hint of what my next posts are going to be about) I take the chance to refresh a bit the look of the blog, and add to it new pics, a poll and some links (all on the right nav bar for your convenience). A mid-year resolution for me is also to update the blog more frequently.. I'm unemployed after all, should have loads of free time (you can make your voice heard on the frequency topic on the forementioned poll on the right).

But of course I take advantage of the rain to tell you about my return to the North Island of New Zealand. Two main chapters can be identified, relating to two periods of time and two different locations, Auckland and Rotorua. This might take two posts, so here's the first one; the Rotorua one coming soon.

Back in Auckland with Finbarr & Sharon.


More or less same crazy nights out till morning (the fact we never made it to the Auckland museum is a good proof) like my first stop here. The Globe, a dark scruffy club was the main venue for most nights, quite regularly followed by late drinks in The Fiddlers Irish pub, another scruffy place where on a very intense TGIM session we also bumped into the Stereophonics singer having a pint there. Some main differences from the first stop in Auckland were the fact that we got to observe the young backpackers life in NZ (especially Irish ones), and me winning a Foosball tournament.

Regarding the first point the lesson learnt there is avoid at all cost the Kiwi Experience tours, unless your in your 20s and the country you're visiting is not too important compared to booze and shagging. I dont mind those last activities myself, but I wouldn't like to be put on a bus and carried around with these guys deciding what I see, where I sleep and what i eat. You can find so many travel blogs on the internet regarding NZ, and they all mention the same places, same attractions, same hostels and same wild nights in the same hostels. As at the beginning without knowing all this I was tempted to hop on one of those green buses myself, I was very grateful indeed to my instinct (and some internet reviews) that made me avoid that choice everytime I was in a town and the green buses arrived, creating a sort of “cruise ship” effect.

But let's move on to the Foosball tournament. Location: O'Carrolls Irish pub in city center. Technical standard: quite low, some people even spinning. 8 rounds in 8 weeks (sorry guys, gonna iss the final!)
You would play one vs one on a weirdly assembled but decent table. But hey, spirit of adaptation (and a few afternoon pints practicing with Finbarr before the tournament started) did it. The only big surprise was the old professional foosballer Finbarr, being unreasonably kicked out at the 3rd round. You might understand how personal and close to my heart it got when I met this guy at the final. No surprise instead that the prize of 50$ bar tab disappeared very very quickly in the heat of the celebrations. A great night alltogheter.

NZ South Island: an autumn recipe

I learnt a good few things while traveling around the south island of New Zealand, ingeniously called: the South Island. Amongst them:

- Unlike Europe, the more you travel south the colder it gets.

- In many small villages if you go at 8pm for dinner it can be too late.

- Various geology and biology notions, like it take 2 years to have some orange vegetation on rocks, 4 years more to have some green musk and few more years for the first micro plants.

- New Zealand landscape offers the same fantastic green hills and field that you might see in similar countries with abundance of rain, like Ireland or UK, but having 4 proper seasons here in addition to that you can see fantastic colours. In my case I discovered the amazing gold and fire colour tones of autumn.

- The royal albatross can have a wing-span of up to 3 meters; blue penguins are the smallest ones, yellow-eyed penguins are colorful and noisy; sea lions are huge and can be scary when seen from 2 meters, or when they charge you.

- Change the inclination level of the floor you're standing on and all perspectives can change.


The most shocking notions however has to be:

- A moderate amount of sporting activity can be good for your body and spirit, if of course followed by good wine and cigarettes in order to rebalance toxins in your body.

How did I discover all this? Here's the recipe: fly to Christchurch, where all Antarctic expeditions departs, spend a couple of days there, then take the Transalpine train, one of the top 10 most scenic train rides in the world. Arrive to Greymouth, discover it's a ghost city and move on swiftly. Go up to Fox Glacier, hike for few hours before having the rewarding experience to walk on a 500mt high glacier. Remember to put on crampons when on the glacier. Continue south to Wanaka. While there visit the Illusion World and take Michael Jackson's Smooth Criminal style pictures in the gravity room. Next day rent a mountain bike and go around the lake for the most picturesque off road trail ever. From there, cutting right in the middle of the mountains where they shot Lord of the Rings arrive to Queenstown. No need to go to the -5 Ice Bar there as it's already -5 outside. You can take a gondola to the top of the mountains for fantastic views and to have a ride downhill with the luge. With another of those top 10 most scenic trains you can get to Dunedin. Called the Edinburgh of the south hemisphere, you can here go on a tour through hidden, private and well protected areas to see royal albatross, penguins, sea lions and fur seals. In Dunedin go play with gravity and perspective again on Baldwin street, the steepest street in the world. To make it a full round go back to Christchurch and this time rent a mountain bike to go up and down steep, exhausting but regarding off road tracks. To make this recipe spicier visit at least one Indian restaurant in every place you stop. One last thing, dont bother with pastas (incredibly overcooked) or espressos (longer than an American one). But that applies only if you're Italian :)

Auckland and TGIM, like the good auld days

After few hours I arrived in New Zealand a couple of notions struck me: how skinny my good friend (and ex-colleague, and TGIM co-founder) Finbarr had become, and how similar NZ is to Ireland. While the first notion will be explained by pics, the second one needs some more elaboration. So here it is: 4 million people in each country, 1.5 live in the main city. Both islands, both living next to a big powerful country they hate (UK/Australia). Lots of green landscapes, cliffs, sheep, rain (although they have a summer in NZ, and in whatever season the sun comes out is always scorching). As a consequence same t-shirts with jokes about rain and sheep available is same touristic shops. Drinking is the national sport in both countries, followed by rugby. They both have a language which they're trying to keep alive. Drunken boys driving despite the booze and drunken girls in miniskirt despite the weather populates the roads of both countries, especially at weekends.

And so here I am, following the rule that says that if you travel too far you might end up at the starting point. Or maybe I was getting too used to tropical jungles, tropical cultures and tropical weathers (back to usual 20 to 15 C here, an Irish summer if you want). Still it's being a great experience. First of all is fantastic to catch up with old friends, exchange travel tips and have proper old-fashioned TGIMs. In fact not only i'm a guest in Finbarr's and Sharon's, I also had the chance to meet Libor and Jenny, and hear their travel adventures too. Inevitably we ended up talking about gossips at work and Google's products, with great boredom of Sharon, the only non googler.

And as we're in a country similar to Ireland we ended up having many Dublin-style nights out, characterized by a lot of drinking and days spent sleeping until late afternoon instead of sightseeing or visiting museums. Pics for your eyes only available. We managed however to squeeze in some cultural highlight: the Villa Maria Winery tour. Learnt about few differences between the way wine is produced here and in Europe, between cork, plastic cork and screws, and how to use fish bladder to filter wine.
While I'm here i might as well make the most of it, so next stop is the South Island. Like in Ireland with Dublin, they say the real NZ is the one outside Auckland, so let's go and have a look. Incredible scenic train routes, glaciers and landscapes (and more sav blanc now that I'm an expert after the “cultural tour”) are apparently waiting to be discovered there, so let's not keep them waiting too long. Laters...