DAY TRIPS AROUND NEW ZEALAND – OR CAPTIVE OF OUR DAD IN HIS CAR.

As we had done, on all of our previous travels, we spent almost all of our free time snooping around the places we lived in. Deysi was a keen explorer and the girls were resigned to the fact that each weekend they would be held captive in their family vehicle and have to put up with their dad showing them the sights. Most of these sights, they could care less about; unless there was a pool, room service and souvenir shop attached.

They looked forward to Mondays when their dad had to go back to work and they were free to lay around the pool, go biking, shopping or just to play with friends. Ron’s favorite reasoning was “dad can’t we just be normal and stay home like everyone else?” Ange would pitch in “Yeah Dad”. Luckily their mom was on my side, and we were the biggest, so prevailed in most of the debates. This post is just a series of short individual trips we made and things we encountered. Nothing more than putting these sidebars together and in print before they are lost into the vast unknown of my fading mind.

One place that I truly enjoyed and that impressed me more than any other was located very close to our home in Rotorua. This was the place of an inactive volcano, that had erupted 100 years earlier with devastating effect. It was called (in Moari) Tarawera.

The mountain Tarawera consisted of three peaks which erupted in succession and spewed lava and debris onto parts of ten local Maori villages. The explosions, dumped rock and debris in a layer 20 meters thick, over the effected zone. Not everyone was able to escape. A report at the time says 150 people were lost. The local Moari elders say it was many more, and a newer official count says it was more likely 120 persons having perished. No matter whose count is correct, it was a devastating event. To get to the site you board a passenger boat and are taken across a lake to the edge of one of the villages. from there you are free to walk around and study the history. It was indeed interesting and very clearly demonstrates the power of Mother Nature.

The one time the girls did not have to spend a day with me taking them somewhere, was a chance I had, to play golf with some colleagues from work. I can still see them jumping up and down and fist pumping, all the while saying YES! YES! YES! So we go to play the Rotorua Golf Club. This club was very close to our house and was beautiful. As part of the natural layout, the course had incorporated a number of hot mud pools, thermal pools and hot springs. I will always remember the sound of the mud pools, they went “gloop” every time a bubble came to the surface, which is the very sound I imagined it would make if I hit one of my golf balls in there.

This was one type of hazard where, if you hit a ball into, you did not need to enter. You were never going to retrieve anything out of them. Anyway, dressed in all of my sartorial splendour, I’m with some colleagues and playing my usual shit game, when we come to the number ten tee box. I’m desperately trying to hit one good ball before the day is over and the world hears what a crap golfer I am. Anyway I get up and take a mighty lash at the ball. For once I hit it right in the nut sack, well almost. It takes off on a clothesline, a veritable line drive, 5 feet off the ground but headed right, not a little right, but major 45 degree right, directly at the next fairway. I look over and see a golfer exactly in the middle of my ball’s flight path.

I yell “FOUR” AND DOWN HE GOES, every bit like he had been shot (or hit in the head by a golf ball at 150mph). My little heart misses the next few beats and I now feel faint. We jump in the cart and rush over to retrieve the body and dump it into a mud pool. Just as we get there this guy pops up and dusts himself off, looking shaken, but alive. I feel like planting a big smooch on him (not). I ask him if he is ok and if he heard me yell or not. He replies that he did not hear me, but heard my ball coming at him. His words were “it sounded like a bee”. He immediately hit the ground as the ball passed thru the place where his head had been a couple seconds before. And that my friends was the absolute truth!

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Another very interesting sight that we encountered during one of our day trips, were the Blue and Green Lakes. They were adjacent to each other, separated by only a short distance and absolutely spectacular. Our photos do not do service to the sharp contrast of these lakes. The Blue Lake is in a collapsed crater and the large deposits of pumice stone reflected from the sky above make the waters of this lake, a very distinctive deep blue. It’s partner lake is shallower and has a sandy bottom which accounts for the green color of the lake.

The Blue Lake is on public land and had many activities for the girls. The Green Lake was on private land, owned by a Maori group and controlled by a council. At the time we were there you could still hike around the Green Lake, however I understand it is now closed to the public due to environmental concerns. I write this post because of the distinct colouring of the lakes, but also because it was where we found the weirdest “eel” ever. I told you the Kiwis were strange!