So after an uneventful flight, marred only slightly by discovering that some oik had stuck the pages of the safety briefing together with chewing gum, and then discovering that the in-flight entertainment didn’t work. I suspect Thing B led to Frustration which led to Thing A, but it was only a 4 hour flight so I whiled it away staring hard at everybody else’s screens and making them uncomfortable.
Customs and security was interesting, my partner thought he’d whizz through security faster than I on an NZ Passport, which he would have done, had I not offered to fill out his Landing Card for him and inadvertently ticked the “No” box to the question “Do you know what’s in your bag?” He didn’t let me do that again.
However, we got through it, and how we laughed! Well I did. And I was quite glad that we hadn’t succumbed to buying any coral or wood souvenirs at the airport duty free in Avarua, as Customs made you throw them away when you arrived in NZ. We got out to our hire car, in the dark, having narrowly escaped being upgraded to a 7 seater when really we only needed a slightly large boot, not a truck.
I think the agent got his own back on us though as we had a) keyless start b) automatic c) non-intuitive lights, d) indicators on the wrong side and e) parking buttons, not handbrakes, to contend with.
Most of these were OK, as we took it slowly at first, however there was one heart stopping moment when my partner decided to slam the brakes on (trying for the imaginary clutch) and we had a loud beep from behind us from a kiwi gentleman who, after that point, drove at a safe distance.
This was the only time we experienced this phenomenon. I don’t mean accidentally slamming on the brakes, we did that loads. I mean having a kiwi drive at a safe distance behind you.
We pulled into a motel in Hamilton, ragged in the way that international travelling leaves you, but I’ve decided that’s probably the best way to experience Hamilton. The motel was nice and I learned how to use NZ heat pumps at 3.00 in the morning, when it went on at full blast because some of the random button pressing I’d been engaged in earlier in the evening trying to switch it ON somehow activated a timer.
Then on, the next day, towards Rotorua. We passed through a small town, Tirau, which had some rather odd buildings made by someone who had a lot of corrugated iron and too much time on their hands.
Why? Just Why?
We saw signs to ‘The Blue Spring’ which seemed to be a tourist spot, and made a detour towards it.
It was quite a way off the beaten track but it proved to be well worth it. For a start my partner saw several Pukekos that remind him of home, not surprisingly, as we were, actually, ‘home’ but that always cheers him up.
It would appear that while you can have too many photos of ducks, you can’t have too many photos of Pukekos, and if he’d had his way, the 4,000 photos I took when I was overseas would have all been Pukekos.
Pukeko
Good eating on one of these…
And this is a Takahe. A Takahe is a larger, bluer bird. Quite rare. Which is a good job as partner already goes nuts over Pukekos. They run away from him, startled. Imagine what he’d be like if there were Takahes in the wild too…
Takahe
Larger, bluer, less good at evading predators
I should perhaps clarify at this point for the Department of Conservation, that there is NOT Good Eating On A Pukeko. At least I wouldn’t know.
So on we went to the Blue Spring. As we approached it we came upon a Cormorant drying its wings. I was so excited to encounter this at relatively close range, I took loads of photos with a 400mm telephoto lens, and a 1/50 of a second shutter speed, so the end result was quite impressionistic and could have been a cormorant drying its wings, or a whale breaching, so I’ve not included them here. However, I did catch some later of the same bird resting on top of a cabbage tree.
So herewith, photos of the Blue Spring - the stunning colour of the water is due to it’s optical clarity, having filtered through underground aquifers for between 50 - 100 years.
And that is enough for today, the next posts will be about the Thermal Wonderlands, Rotorua, and how I could never be a photo journalist, a decision I came to after realising I had wandered into the paths of two cars driving full pelt, and bristling with gang yoof waving guns and screaming foul oaths at each other, and I was too busy adjusting the settings on my camera to notice.
That for another day!