Te moko

So we are back "up north" albeit a very different kind of "up north" than we are used to back home. Our ferry crossing to Wellington was pretty uneventful but seemed to take forever. No pod of 300 dolphins this time though. We bypassed Wellington deciding to stay in Upper Hutt, which is a town just north of the NZ capital. It was purely a place to break up the drive so first thing in the morning we got back on the road and headed up to Napier. Napier is famous for a few things. It was destroyed by an earthquake in the 1930s and rebuilt in the art deco styling of that era. In fact it is the one of the biggest collections of art deco buildings in the world. I was expecting South beach in Miami but it was thoroughly disappointing. Near enough every town we have visited in NZ conforms to the same dull architecture. Square shops with a huge awning style porch that protrudes out over the sidewalk. Napier was no different except the art deco stores had fancy window frames and a few elaborate coving style features. Not exactly south beach in any respect of the word. It was however an extremely beautiful drive in. The main tree lined parade runs along the sea front and in the hot summer sun it looked so refreshing and welcoming. We only really stopped in Napier to stock up on supplies and figure out our next route though.

We decided to head further along the coast to Gisborne. Gisborne is a place that is rarely visited by tourists as it’s only famous for the spot where Captain Cook and his crew first landed in NZ. They met with a local Maori tribe and misinterpreted the tribes welcome ritual and ended up killing most of them! Maori welcome greetings are pretty scary though. We saw one at the official opening to the NZ winter games back in Qtown. On the drive up we stopped at the Morere hot springs for a quick dip to soothe our aching arses (long road trips aren’t great for the gluteus maximus). A coach load of seniors had arrived literally minutes before us and we feared we’d have to share the springs with lots of wrinkly oldies. They were actually really nice. Their cruise ship had been quarantined in Gisborne so they had a free day. When I asked where they were cruising to they told me they were on a natural history cruise to the Antarctic! Kate preceded to give them all the stink eye from then on as it has long been a dream of hers to go there.

We also drove past the Tui brewery. Tui is one of my favourite beers here. It’s a dark ale that, at 4% leaves you feeling pretty fresh in the morning. I jokingly texted Dicks and told him that we had driven past the brewery and that they had a huge banner on the outside that read "Thank you Darrell and Dickon for a record breaking winter." Me and Dicks nearly drunk Qtown dry after all.

As we neared Gisborne though all the electrics in Biff decided to cut out. The radio cut off and the window wipers stopped working. Luckily it was 25 degrees and sunny but we were obviously concerned. We made it to our campsite right on the beach where I stupidly turned the engine off. That was it, Biff died on us. He wouldn’t start. It felt like a flat battery but we had just driven for 4 hours so it should’ve been well charged. We called the AA who sent a little dude to save us. He charged the battery but said it looked like our alternator was fucked. I followed him to his workshop and he had a proper look. He said we’d need to leave Biff with him overnight and he’d get it fixed in the morning. Only problem with that was that we had no where to sleep and had already paid for the campsite for the night. The little dude came up with a solution. He changed the battery in Biff for free so we could use him overnight and then bring him back in the morning. This was a life saver. We took Biff in the next morning and by lunchtime he was ready to go again. He didn’t need a new alternator after all, just the brushes changed?! It worked out as pretty cheap too which was a result.

While Biff was in repair we took it upon ourselves to explore the town and to be honest it was lovely. Yes, there wasn’t a lot to do from a tourists point of view but it was very chilled out and we spent time wandering the town and sea front. On our little jaunt along the coast we noticed a dolphin just in the surf, not more than 75 metres out to sea. It was frolicking and playing with surfers. We watched it for a while before going to pick up Biff. When we got back to the campsite we could see the dolphin still playing with people in the surf. The local paper ran a story about it and the potential dangers of dolphins. They get quite frisky with the ladies apparently. We decided to stay another day just to enjoy a relaxed day on the beach so this morning I woke up and talked Kate into coming for a paddle with me. It helped that the dolphin was still hanging around.

So we waded out to waist deep water and watched in awe as the dolphin (called Moko – which is a Maori tattoo) brought us little sticks for us to threw. It was an enormous bottlenose and you felt it’s strength as it brushed past you and clipped you with it’s tail. We threw the stick for ages and it retrieved it every time. After a while a few more people headed over and Moko let us stroke him. He did freak out though at one guy and chased him out of the water! Apparently he had done the same thing the previous day and the guy wondered if it had anything to do with his false knee. Maybe, dolphins do have a sixth sense. Maybe it messed with it’s finely tuned magnetic field, or maybe that’s sharks. LOL. I reckon the dolphin sensed that the guy had a dodgy leg and didn’t want him to get hurt. Either way I found it quite amusing to see a dude getting chased by a 2.5 metre long dolphin.

It was the perfect way to start the day in my eyes and the drive from Gisborne to Rotorua went past in a smile induced haze. So that’s where we are now. Rotorua is the thermo geological centre of NZ. It is on a huge lake but has lots of bubbling mud pools and geysers and the air is tinged with the smell of eggy trumps. Luckily I’m used to it with Kates ability to make every digested food smell like eggs and the fact that my family patented the eggy whipton fart back in the 60’s.

We are gonna stay here for a few days as there is a shed load of stuff to do. It is a popular tourist destination for many reasons but the geothermal parks and spas are the main reason we are here.

So a few other things of note. Christmas in the middle of a god damn heat wave is just wrong! The day we left Picton they had their Christmas parade. It was a gorgeous day but I felt so sorry for the dude in the santa costume. I have mentioned before that it seems weird having Christmas in the middle of summer but I am really having a problem with it. Yes, I quite like the bikini clad beauties in the santa hats but I crave the cold and the potential of a near impossible white Christmas. A Christmas tree with tinsel and lights doesn’t quite look right next to palm tree either.

I have seen quite a few of my old work mates too. In Nelson I saw one of the lifties and in Picton I saw another lifty and a girl who used to work in F&B. I know NZ is small but it was nice to see some familiar faces. Unfortunately they were all doosh bags at Coronet so I never spoke to them. I just hid under my cap. I was a fairly recognisable guy at Coronet, what with the huge bright orange beanie, but luckily I have my anonymity back just by wearing a boring cap.

Something that made me near wet myself the other day was something I misheard Kate say. JC and Laura very kindly gave us the rest of a bottle of captain morgans spiced rum when they left for the bush and their jobs on the Milford track. I’m not really a rum fan but Kate has been dipping into it on occasion. We keep the rum stowed away in a box at the back of Biff with some of our wash stuff. Kate picked up the bottle the other day and thought it had leaked as it had liquid on the outside. She licked it off to find it was in fact shower gel! I laughed at that but then asked her what it tasted it like. She replied that it tasted like "semen rules." I double took and looked at her with quite a shocked look on my face. She stopped and asked me "what?" I asked her again what it tasted like and she then pointed out that the shower gel that had leaked on the bottle was actually "sea minerals" I was in bits for ages and hadn’t laughed that hard since I saw a toddler fall head first down a sand dune at the beach the other day.

So that is all for this week folks. We are still slowly meandering our way north and the imminent departure date is now only 6 weeks away. Sigh. Mustn’t dwell on that though as still have tons to look forward to. Including our epic trip home, which I will mention more about in a later blog I think.

So I strongly recommend a morning swim with a dolphin to put in a good mood and set you up for an awesome day. Hopefully Biff won’t get jealous and misbehave again, especially since he is due his MOT next week. Gulp.

Peace

D

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