Our original plan was to travel a bit further towards Wellington today but the site we’d targeted was coastal and advertised itself with photographs of smiling children. Weekend, child friendly … no, maybe not. It’s about 300kms to Wellington so reasonable in one hit down main roads. The fact that there is some interest here in Ohakune made us decide to have a day off and book in for a second night.

It’s decidedly cool [11°C] and blowing a bit of a hoolie, so maybe we should’ve gone on. No matter, we’re here and exploring.

First stop, an overlook to a so-called railway spiral that rises 200m. Off we drove. When we got there and climbed the observation tower, what we were looking at was a model representation of the spiral, complete with two tunnels, on a tall pole. I was both bemused and amused. Was this a joke? It seemed not. In the distance on a hillside there was just about visible some evidence of a rail line, a cutting through some trees, but one certainly could not see any vestige of a railway line itself, far less a spiral. Another coup for the NZ Travel Board.

The railway spiral (not) was a lucky stop, however. There was a stream tumbling near the bus (which seems to have been tagged Busby). Our timing was fortuitous because the sun put in a rare appearance. At first I saw nothing and had just finished saying, “nobody home”, when I spotted a single instance of my fourth New Zealand odo, Austrolestes colensonis. I’d actually seen a tandem pair at the manmade rapids a day or so ago but I’d failed on the picture front. Now getting a decent picture of it made my day and certainly made up for the disappointment of the railway spiral.

I learned something else. At one point yesterday, Kiwi Satnav had instructed me to “turn towards national park”. I’d assumed there was a national park along said road. Not so; I now see that there was a village called National Park along said road. We had now driven through the oddly named National Park. Blink and you’d miss it. We turned towards Whakapapa – you have to write it, you can’t say it – to look for a walk that didn’t actually exist. Whakapapa sits beneath the tallest of the snow-covered volcanoes. The volcano seems to generate its own weather, as mountains tend to do, and its weather today was cool and very windy.

We beat a hasty retreat back to Ohakune where there was a forest walk that did exist. With a side excursion, the walk was about 1½ hours and the track through what often felt like primordial forest was very well done indeed. New Zealand could well have been named Fernland, given the amount and rich variety of ferns here. We’d seen a thick book detailing just ferns. Towards the end of the walk we came across another example of a Greenhood Orchid, so we were both happy campers.

Happy campers but cool campers. Time to try the heating in Busby. Brrr!

[Blast, that title’s given me the most dreadful John Bloody Denver earworm.]

Continuing our journey south towards Wellington and a ferry to South Island, today we were heading for the so-called Desert Road. The Desert Road is section of State Highway 1 (SH1) that crosses a high plateau beneath three volcanoes. The scenery sounded fascinating.

Before we got there, however, Francine organized a little side trip to the beginning of an Alpine crossing walk over Mount Tangariro, billed as one of the great walks of New Zealand. We weren’t here to attempt the walk – it’s a whole day affair – but fancied a squint.

We arrived at the walk’s start to see a “car park closed” sign. Overflow vehicles were abandoned by the roadside but there was a secure car park which was NZ$15 per day. With a smile from Francine telling him we wanted only 30 minutes to point cameras, the man providing security let us stay for free. Walking up the 1km gravel track to the start of the walk was quite dull until Francine found a suspected orchid on the shady side. She’d heard of Greenhood Orchids and this looked as if it would fit that description. In fact, Francine thinks she has two species – there are many – but don’t bank on it. The car park wasn’t so much closed as full. I suppose this would be classic burglar territory – at the foot of an all day walk, you could be fairly confident that the vehicle owners are away for a long time. We returned and thanked Mr. Security.

The Desert Road does not run through an actual desert, there being too much rainfall for that. However, vegetation is suppressed by the layer upon layer of volcanic ash that’s built up over the millennia. It’s more of a notional desert. We were hoping for some good views of the volcanoes. In bright conditions, there would be. Today was mostly overcast, however, and the highest of the volcanoes had its head in the clouds. The most impressively shaped was visible, though, and, with the darkling clouds above, looked decidedly like Mount Doom, a part which Francine thought it might actually have played in the rather-too-epic Bored of the Rings. [Subsequently, of course, there has been the even-more-rather-too-epic Hobbit trilogy which took boredom and extreme capitalization to new levels. But I digress …]

Here we were with oceans of space beside the road driving along beneath two of the three volcanoes. Were there any observation points to stop in? No. Well, eventually there was a single viewpoint, cunningly situated at the one point along the road where a huge mound actually obscures the view of the larger of the two giants. Brilliant! Well done, NZ Tourist Board. There was a clear view of Mount Doom, though. [It’s actually called Mount Ngauruhoe. Mount Doom is easier.]

We arrived at Ohakune on another Top 10 site. This one seems more switched on than last night’s. At least, the receptionist is.

An afternoon walk along the local river netted me another Common Redcoat damselfly even though conditions really weren’t sunny enough.

A better morning. After yesterday’s cheapskate thermal experience around Rotorua itself, this morning we – well, Francine, planned to visit Waiotapu (or Wai-o-tapu) “Thermal Wonderland”. Hello tourism!

The main attraction at Waiotapu is the Lady Knox Geyser which “goes off” at 10:15 daily, just like clockwork. It is just like clockwork because its going off is controlled by the addition of “a soapy surfactant” into the vent just like clockwork. It is thus a man-made event and unworthy of our attention. The value of this, however, is that it attracts all the less discerning members of Joe Public who swarm away from the other photogenic attractions in this “Thermal Wonderland”. [Oversold but what the hell.]

To avoid too many Joe Publics anyway, we left early and drove the 25kms or so south of Rotorua.

We arrived soon after 09:00 with the car parks blissfully clear. We shelled out our NZ$58.50 [2 of us less a Top 10 discount] and started the walking circuit looking at more fuming holes in the ground. They were fuming more than in Rotorua, BTW. Still, regardless of giving the various fuming holes graphic names such as “bird’s nest crater”, “thunder crater” and “ink pots”, they remain fuming holes in the ground. Some may have a yellow stain around their rim from the exuded sulphur but they are still fuming holes in the ground. There are only so many fuming holes in the ground that it are worth looking at.

The two features on this tourist route that are worth looking at are “Champagne Pool” and “Devil’s Bath”. Champagne Pool is probably the most photographed feature, its images being used on most publicity literature. The reason is that one edge is rimmed with a reasonably bright orange band, usually over-punched in Lightroom or Photoshop to look even brighter. A polarizing filter helps tremendously, too.

Devil’s Bath, which, incidentally, doesn’t seem to fume, is an impressive pool of decidedly green water, again, usually over-produced for effect. Nonetheless, in reality, both are, indeed, impressive. Neither can you see anything of the sort around Rotorua for free.

Amazingly, in this apparently inhospitable environment, we did see some wildlife. On a side loop, which we decided to walk around, we came across what I believe are Stilts of one sort or another. They were wandering about over the ground searching for food and females appeared to be sitting on nests on the ground. Nothing surprising, you might think. Nothing surprising until you understand that the water here is close to 100°C. The ground is warm – maybe that makes the ideal incubation site?

As we left at getting on for midday, the transformation was amazing – the parking areas were now heaving and so, too, must’ve been the walking tracks. We had to make one final stop on the way out to see an actively glooping mud pool. Timing photos for this is imperative and tricky, the gloops not being orchestrated by the addition of a soapy surfactant.

Our target for the evening was a campsite beside Lake Taupo, which is supposedly the size of Singapore. [Makes a change from Wales.] En route we headed off sideways to Aratiatia Rapids. The rapids are another example of man-made spectacles and, therefore, not worthy of our attention … but Francine said. I’m very glad she did because, as I walked out onto a boat dock, we saw dragonflies doing what dragonflies do. Common Redcoat Damselflies were mating and, most exciting, a Yellow-spotted Dragonfly (Procordulia grayi) was hunting tirelessly over the water – my first NZ dragonfly as opposed to a damselfly. If only it’d stop for a picture.

My dragon didn’t stop for a picture. However, I did find somewhere that I could look down on it from and eventually managed a manual shot of it in-flight. Time to pray to the gods you don’t believe in, Franco. Yikes, it was in focus. Miracles!

We had time for lunch before the controlled 14:00 sluice opening to create the rapids. Oh what the hell, let’s have lunch and watch it. Spectacular it wasn’t but then I wasn’t expecting it to be. A couple of dozen folks turned up to watch it, though. I think this happens every two hours. [Sigh]

We tried another tourist spot at Huka Falls. This was more raging water but this time in a proper cataract. I was tiring of it, though, and looking forward to a beer on a campsite.

Our campsite was the weakest we’ve yet been on. It boasts 260 pitches but the vast majority were taken up by static units. Only 30 or so were for touring units. These are classically the sites we’d steer well clear of in France. However, at second attempt we got a reasonably pleasant grass pitch with a view of the Singapore-sized Lake Taupo. Francine tried her camera but lakes of such scale typically have no foreground and a very distant background so don’t show well on photographs.

We awoke to rain; sporadically heavy rain. Up ‘til now our weather has been beautiful. Well, it is green here and it is spring.

There’s a huge open cast gold mine in the area that Francine fancied a look at but she wouldn’t have seen anything ‘cos the heads of the hills are shrouded by the dense cloud base. We began driving in that direction but swiftly thought better of it and spun around.

Our target is probably the biggest tourist destination on North Island, Rotorua, with it’s renowned “thermal activity”. We had to be careful on the journey, though. There are few toll roads in NZ but we had been warned of one that we needed to avoid on today’s journey, a road around Tauranga. It’s not expensive but you have to pay online, which is too much hassle for travel with flaky technology – reliability would be terrific – so we bought a proper road map and primary navigator Francine skipped us around it, despite Kiwi Satnav’s best efforts to put us back on it.

Toll road successfully avoided, approaching Rotorua Kiwi’s screen went dim. Now I realized why she hadn’t turned on automatically this morning – no power connection; she’d been running on battery for this journey and was now dangerously low. Approaching the campsite in a town is when we really needed it. Bugger! Fiddling seemed to restore power but all was not as it should be, clearly.

We checked in to the Top 10 site at Rotorua shortly after midday and went for a reviving walk. Legs get fed up with sitting and driving. There are thermal parks around Rotorua which you pay to enter. However, Francine had read reports of being able to see everything relevant in Rotorua itself for free. We were both sceptical; why would folks pay for something that was freely available? We’d take a look, though. 

There’s a municipal park right beside the campsite. There are certainly pools with bubbles rising and occasionally small plumes of steam – some pools are cold, some are warm. The most notable thing, though, was the smell of the gases. Dotted around the town itself you find other walled, fuming holes. OK, a rocky hole in the ground with smelly steam rising from it. Got it.

What looked more interesting was a nature reserve at Sulphur Point on Lake Rotorua, which reportedly has a boardwalk. Actually most of the route was a gravel walk with the views of Lake Rotorua generally cunningly concealed by vegetation. We did ultimately get to the boardwalk, though, which was much more open and it’s certainly worth seeing that quite different landscape.

If you remember nothing else, remember that Rotorua stinks. Our entire walk, about 5kms, gave us lungfuls of smelly fumes. The locals say you get to ignore it, eventually. [Probably because the olfactory organs have been destroyed.] The town itself felt a bit tired, too – in need of a lick of paint and some love and attention. The most impressive, picturesque building was Government House, except that it was surrounded by fences. Well, it makes a change from churches covered in scaffolding which is what tourists usually suffer. Pictures from a distance minimize the visual disruption a little.

The thermal activity on display in Rotorua gives a flavour [stuck in your throat] of what’s around but we can’t imagine that it’s the best. If you don’t want to shell out a few tourist NZ$ though, it’d work though.

We’ll be trying one of the commercial parks tomorrow, I suspect.

We’d survived our first ever night in a camper van. Getting up in the  morning felt considerably better than had going to bed last night. It’s wonderful what a night’s rest can do. Things may be better than we at first thought but so far, Guillaume has absolutely nothing to fear from campervans.

Francine managed to escape the bus to the beach, literally just outside the campsite, for some early morning photography, leaving me to fight with my bruised head and struggling with the bed. Putting the bed away is a real back-killer, given the contortions required to avoid too many [Bump] “bugger” exclamations and further damage to an already battered head. Francine returned victorious.

Nearly ready too hit the road. Remember to turn the gas off and disconnect the electricity. Right. Our road out was the road we’d come in on, through Coromandel. We needed some supplies, such as toilet chemicals, which I’d have expected to be able to purchase from any campsite but no, this one had none, though they were “thinking about stocking it”. Stop thinking, do it for Darwin’s sake! We were told that the hardware store in Coromandel would have some. We stopped. Sure enough, our overnight comfort was assured for a few weeks.

Exploring the main drag – well, as main as a drag gets in Coromandel – we passed a butcher. I glanced in the window. As is usual with a proper butcher, an array of sausages was on display. The display included mussel sausages. Mussel sausages? I’ve encountered several avant garde ingredients in sausages but mussels have never been amongst them. What gastronaut could possibly resist mussel sausages? Not I. We bought four to supplement tonight’s more conventional sausages.

Round the corner we found Coromandel smokehouse. A few more NZ$ secured us some smoked fish paté and a handful of smoked scallops for lunch.

Our route out of Coromandel took us up a winding road culminating at a summit with impressive views back over the coast. Just as well – the driver could do with a break after tussling with the twisting climb.

After the summit we were heading for Cathedral Cove where Francine had learned of a walk that sounded worthwhile. Kiwi Satnav got us on the approach road to the town of Hahei with no trouble, then we began following signs. The sign we didn’t want to see was “car park full” at the beginning of the walk. We’d suspected that it could be heaving and we were right. This is not why we came to New Zealand. We spun around and returned to Hahei where the first coastal car park was also full. Just a short distance down a side road, though, was an entrance to another area with just sea kayak dudes parked in it. Nothing said we couldn’t, so we did. Out came the fish pate and smoked scallops and we enjoyed lunch looking over the beach and colourful kayaks.

Our goal for the evening was Waihi Beach and another Top Ten campsite. Francine had learned of it in a New Zealand campervan travelogue and was hoping for some interesting coastal scenery. As we were approaching, Kiwi Satnav took us down a street on the edge of town that looked like cutting a corner. I’m glad she did (female voice). We passed Gilmour Reserve with water, reeds and lily pads. I spun the bus around and found a layby big enough to accommodate us. I started wandering the path beside some of the lily pads and lo, a damselfly. Back for the camera. We’d found my first New Zealand odo. Happy camper. Identification could be tricky. It is either a Common Redcoat or the scarcer Kauri Redcoat, whose range we are just about it. Consultations required.

This campsite was exceedingly well equipped. Most travelling folks, it appears, do very little in their campervan but rather use campsite cooking facilities. This one was equipped with five or six double ring gas burners, with gas supplied, and there were even fridge/freezer units supplied to store food. [Label and date everything, fridges are cleared out on Mondays.] There were two gas-heated stainless steel griddle plates, too. Most surprising was a proper wood-fired pizza oven, complete with a booklet of pizza recipes. This was not for firing up by Joe Public but a timetable of its availability was provided. Staggering.

I used these facilities to cook our mussel sausages with a couple of more conventional pork sausages. The butcher had advised that we cook them slowly, not too quickly. I complied. I must say they were absolutely excellent.

We awoke after half a night’s sleep, having arrived at 01:30. It also took me ages to get to sleep. The room and bed were perfectly comfortable but I just seemed to wake up. The coffee at breakfast couldn’t have woken anything up; it was quite simply the weakest coffee I have ever tasted. At least it wasn’t bitter. The hotel, a Holiday Inn BTW, let us leave our bags while we walked a block away to collect our campervan.

Monday morning 10:00 AM and the Maui/Britz/something-else rental business was absolutely heaving. We logged in and were told we’d be called for the next stage. An hour later we still hadn’t been called. The company seemed rushed off its feet but surely this can’t be unusual, nor as bad as it gets. Eventually, Francine went and rattled a cage and a lady came to help us, saying she’d been looking for us. Not very hard, I’d say. She pointed us at a Mercedes 7m unit outside and sent a nice man [well, sweet, truth be known] to get us going, or so she said. He thought he was doing a damage check, which wasn’t technically necessary since we had zero liability. What he didn’t do much of was teaching us to use the campervan. I asked a few questions but left more unsaid. It’s a good job we know how to deal with a caravan, otherwise I think we’d’ve been mostly lost.

Finally we drove away to the local-ish supermarket to stock up. Other than wallowing quite a bit, it seemed quite easy to drive – automatic fortunately. Every curve and every turning manoeuvre was accompanied by a rattle, rattle, rattle. I’ve used shake, rattle and roll before, so that’s out. 😉

We headed out of Auckland using the Kiwi Satnav provided. It comes with a bunch of other features that we can’t possibly get to grips with, yet – everything is so strange. We struck out east across country and into the Coromandel peninsular. Crossing an estuary we spotted Thames with a suitable parking place so stopped for a rest and some refreshment. I breathed something of a sigh of relief, never having driven a bus like this before. Slightly chuffed. Refreshment took the form of a pie-thing and some coffee in a Cambodian-run “bakery”.

It is now worth pointing out that the cousin countries of Australia and New Zealand are the pie capitals of the world – they are both absolutely besotted with pies. Bakeries, i.e. pie shops, are absolutely everywhere. Curious. My pie was OK but nothing stunning. It filled a gap. Sparrows enjoyed flying into the bakery and helping themselves to pecks from the bread rolls. Don’t buy bread from this bakery in Thames.

We wandered around the one street town and found a slightly more up-market end. Typical – if only we’d known. A stunning orange Ford Anglia 105E turned onto the street and drove by. Brilliant! The church is pretty neat, too.

We continued along a very twisting and very picturesque coast road, finally passing through Coromandel itself and going on a few more kilometres to Shelley Beach campsite, where we were about to lose our twin cherries spending our first ever night in a campervan. Scary spiders. We checked in, collected Francine’s Top Ten camping membership card and were directed to an already occupied pitch. Someone’s knickers were twisted. We moved to the neighbouring pitch.

First job – unpack and store our gear. Tricky. This beast has about half the storage space of our beloved caravan, Guillaume. Guillaume  has oceans of space compared to this. These cupboards are narrower, as is the van, and shorter but eventually we worked something out. The “wardrobe” is only a about 3ft high – Guillaume’s is full height – and nothing of mine would hang. Francine’s got it.

[Bump] “Bugger!”, became frequently heard. Stand in the driving cab – [Bump] “bugger!”. Straighten up after rummaging beneath the seats – [Bump] “bugger!”. Walk into the toilet compartment, whose door is considerably lower than any others – [Bump] “bugger!”. My head was rapidly turning black and blue. More care is needed. Maybe we’ll get used to it. Oh, and which genius decided that beneath one the bench seats would be a suitable place for a waste bin? Absolutely bloody barking!

The bed is almost long enough. I can sleep at a slight angle and let my feet overhang in the middle of the van. I’ll probably get used to making it, too. Our friendly Aussie neighbour has a slightly smaller Britz van and has already resorted to leaving the bed down. It’s his third night away so has two nights more experience.

The site has a great view onto Shelley Beach itself; very pleasant and restful.

Everything was restful, apart from the head bumping, until I witnessed a man running away from a rampaging possum which was in hot pursuit. I kid you not. The guy ran across the campsite, even round in a circle, and the scampering possum stuck doggedly to his trail. Amazing. I don’t know how he gave it the slip but somehow he did. It went to the base of a tree before setting its sights on a young family in a tiny campervan. The kids screamed and the parents slammed the door. Bizarre.

Right, possum gone, night falling, feet over the end of the bed – zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Our flight to New Zealand would be at 19:00 this evening. The rental car, complete with Strine Satnav, was due back at around 15:00. Given the 30-minute drive to the airport (theoretically), filling up with fuel then searching for the rental car returns area, we had time to swiftly investigate Francine’s colleague’s local area.

Angela led us around some of her surrounding woodland. Being accompanied by three boisterous, screaming children is not conducive to spotting big game but maybe there’s be small game. Almost immediately, we came across a small pile of writhing grubs huddling together. We had absolutely no idea what they were and nor did our guides, who are not quite as keyed into wildlife, unsurprisingly. Whatever they were, they were about 4cms long each and grey-ish. The grubs were not equipped to run from children.

A short distance further on, Francine’s orchid tally increased by one when she spotted a Yellow Donkey Orchid beside the track. Orchids can’t run away, which is a distinct advantage for photography. The Donkey Orchids come in two colours so now she had the set, along with her initial Purple Donkey Orchid. It was a lucky find ‘cos there was only a single stem and we never saw another.

Mount Macedon seems to be a notable peak close by so our final social engagement was a car ride up to the top at 1000m. The views were expansive, of course, and showed scars from some of the logging activity that goes on here.

The journey to Melbourne airport took us to the back entrance on country roads and was blissfully smooth and hassle free. Refuelled, we handed the car back and had to wait before check-in opened. A bottle of white wine disappeared as we people watched to pass the time.

Finally, we got through the automated check-in process, with the help of a friendly Ear New Zealand lady.

[That’s not a typo – Kiwis pronounce Air as Ear. “Welcome aboard this Ear New Zealand flight to …”. NZ vowels are: A I  I O U. “Detective” becomes “ditictive”. We’ll get used to it.]

There was an “inbound earcraft delay” so we got away 30-minutes late. I must say the crew were great and the 3½-hour flight was good, too. We touched down at 00:30.

The International arrivals hall was still awake and operating. Several phone provider stalls were available and we got a vodafone 1-month travellers SIM (NZ$30) for an old phone, just in case we needed to call ahead to book campsites.

A chirpy, chatty taxi driver got us to our hotel at 01:30, where an equally chirpy, chatty receptionist checked us in.

“Room 1014, on the ground floor.”, said the receptionist. “Go round to the right then take a lift”.

“Why would I need a lift, I’m on the ground floor?”, I thought.

“No, after you’ve gone right, turn lift”.

“Ah, left!”

The shower was great.