One of the advantages of travelling alone is that you don't have to worry about anyone else's comfort. When it comes to deciding travel options or figuring out how you're getting anywhere, acting unilaterally can occasionally result in some pretty bad decisions being made, but the buck stops with you - one way or another you can cram as little, or, as in my case, as much into your day-to-day schedule as you could possibly want. When you have 17 days to get from one end of a country to the other, and all the way back again, without any decent public transport, without any proper motorways, and where travelling 70km as the crow flies can require a 750km return journey*; comfort and rest are pretty premium.
After getting a lift down to Rotorua with JC and Simon and having the afternoon to explore the town's array of bubbly and stinky mudpools (right), some contemplation of what I wanted to achieve in NZ given the time I had resulted in some sharp decision making. Without the overnight cross-country Greyhound-esque coaches that allowed me to fit oh so much into 11 days up Australia's east coast, and with tour buses taking waaay too long to get anywhere, the mathematics of the situation pointed in one direction: renting a car.Calls were made, details exchanged, and bright and early after a quite ridiculous night in Cactus Jack's hostel (which featured rum, wine, and free use of a thermal hot pool) I was all set in my 2001 1.5L Hyundai Accent. Old, yes; 200,000km on the clock, yes; but it is one fantastic bit of machinery. Acceleration, handling, transmission, all well above expectations.
All of a sudden the door was opened to this land of activities, with the multitude of ways to have fun/burn money here springing up in every direction. Taking the view of "When in Rome...", I disengaged care for plastic in what promises to be a spending spree fit for Manchester City FC in the summer transfer window (or, for those not interested in English football's latest nouveau-riche money-grabbers, a lot of spending).
The assault on my bank balance began at the Skyline centre - a gondola ride to the top of the hill takes you to the home of the original, biggest and best tobaggan-luge run in the world. Having done a copy of Rotorua's luge back on Sentosa Island in Singapore (at 2 months, seemingly an age ago) and reading God-knows-how-many info boards about the original, grand-daddy run in New Zealand, it was nothing short of compulsory. And it doesn't disappoint. Where Sentosa has just the one run, Rotorua has 3 - a 4km "Scenic Route", a 2km "intermediate", and the awesome gravity-challenging 1.5km "advanced" run.
The concept is pretty simple - build a winding track down a big hill, stick some wheels and a steering column on a lump of plastic, and let gravity do its thing. The result is some serious racing fun!
After a quick bite in town, it was time for some culture in the form of a visit to Whakarewarewa "Living Village" - a Maori community living in their traditional manner just outside the town. The village is built in and around a whole host of boiling hot pools and bubbling mud pools, and the ground emanates the geothermal heat in much the same way as the White Island crater's cauldron of smoke and gas. Here though, the steam, hot water and heat and is harnessed by the villagers to pressure cook their meat, boil their vegetables, and bathe their bodies. No electricity or gas supply needed.
By 3 o'clock, it was time to hit the road. A lunch date at my second cousin's place in New Plymouth required some inventive route planning, and my trip to the west coast was nicely broken up by Waitomo Caves. New Zealand's AA have created a definitive list of "101 Must-Do Things for Kiwis" (Milford Sound unsurprisingly securing the top spot), and the Caves feature at #14. If there was more time at my disposal, I had options of underground abseiling, black water rafting and all sorts of other crazy crap, but these all entail a morning start that just couldn't tally with my ramroaded schedule. The most celebrated of the caves, however, is the Glowworm Cave, and after getting spectacularly lost en route from Rotorua (useless road signs) it was with less than one minute to spare that I made it for the day's final tour at 5.30pm.
A trek through underground pathways past millennia-old stalactytes and stalagmites and cathedral-sized caverns eventually led us to a subterranean river, and boarding a boat you sit, neck craned in transfixed wonder, as thousands upon thousands of little blue dots magically light up the roof of the cave; the compulsory silence broken only by water droplets ending their long filtration through the limestone rock with a metronomic drip...drip...drip... Photos are prohibited, but I found the right through Google Images. Needless to say it was awe-inspiring.Another night, another bed (though with a free dinner thanks to the generosity of someone who massively underestimated the size of the pizzas when she ordered 3 of them), and come morning it will be time for a 250km drive down to the foothills of Mount Taranaki and the city of New Plymouth.
* Queenstown to Milford Sound
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