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| Tokaanu Thermal Springs |
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| Fearsome Predators at Waitomo Caves |
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| Clare and Tim in Waitomo Caves (Not)! But it looks a bit like Tim though.... |
The New Zealand Department of Conservation (DOC) manage the great outdoors and a jolly fine job they do.
Apart from chlorinating the oceans, trimming the jungles and sweeping up after the rock falls, they also run a more than passable chain of national camp sites that cost about 3 NZ dollars a night to stay in. When the commercial site next door costs 40 NZ dollars it is surprising that they are not more popular. The only explanation can be the sand flies. Miniature to the point of being invisible, they bite you and suck your blood and leave you itching for days on end.
Locking ourselves in the van, we routinely exterminated whole squadrons of 'the little biting bastards' as they affectionately came to be known, each night before we went to sleep and each morning before we donned seat belts and hit the road.
And seat belts are a bit of problem for the Kiwis.
A problem for the government as they keep trying to persuade their citizens to wear them.
A problem for Kiwis themselves, as their pioneer spirit prefers smashing head shaped holes in the windscreen to wearing an unobtrusive, life saving belt strap. But they have a similar attitude to speeding, crash helmets, drink driving and motor insurance.
Amazingly, car insurance is not compulsary and so, unsurprisingly, many drivers opt not to have it. The government attempted to implement a no fault insurance scheme some years ago but it nearly bankrupted the state and was watered down to the point of being totally ineffective. Kiwis are now free to drive their SUV's into ravines. They are also free to pick up the pieces afterwards, but you don't hear people complaining; probably because there are less people per square mile here, than on the Moon.
Leaving the DOC camp site at Dicky's Flat we drove through Paeroa, home of L&P, New Zealand's national drink. The town is littered with 30 foot brown bottles, like thirsty giants drained the last one before leaving. L&P banners hang from every lamp post. They are very proud of it. No one mentions that Coca Cola bought the label a few years ago, but as they and Pepsi Co own most food and drink brands in the southern hemisphere, there are a lot of people in the same boat.
After Paeroa we headed for the Waitomo Caves. Famed for its subteranean rock formations and a large colony of glow worms, I foolishly got very excited about great glow worm video footage. Someone has to!
There is an emotion between annoyance and disappointment which gripped me hard when curtly instructed by the the tour guide that photos were not permitted. This was 20 minutes after shelling out the 90 dollar entry fee, when they conveniently forget to mention this small detail.
So I ignored him and surreptisiously snapped away in the darkness - for about a nano second before he leapt on me, snatched the camera and stamped it to fragments on the cave floor. Almost.
The glow worms were great, like 10,000 bright blue LED's hanging above us in the blackness as we paddled in canoes beneath them. None of the pictures would have come out anyway. But it was worth any amount of money to feel like a rebel, at least for a minute or two. Like minded comrades of every nationality nodded approvingly in the darkness at my heroic efforts to throw off the tyrannical yoke of the tour guide.
On to Tokaanu thermal pools we pressed, deciding to forgo the more famous Rotaroa and its tourist hordes. Boiling water surged to the surface in pools and from cracks in the rocks. Steam vented into the sky both on the plain and from ominous cracks in the mountainside above us, strongly suggesting that it could go off at any minute.
We camped on the shores of Lake Taupo after swimming in a pool that bubbled to the surface at a steady 40 degrees.
Capitalist lackey running dogs at Waitomo Caves Exploitation Incorporated, eat your heart out.
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