I wake early and catch an inspirational sunrise as I walk around the wood and the scrub by the bank of the lake.
In the morning we drive to Rotorua to visit Kuirau Thermal Park, and possibly to try out one of the hot spring spas. In the town, the free parking spaces are either permit only or are limited to fifteen minutes, so we just pull into the park where the thermal pools are. There are lots of empty parking spaces here, but we assume this is because we are not allowed to park here. As we get out of the van, I try to avoid the parking warden emerging from a hut near us, but the girls wait to ask him if we are allowed to stay here or if we need to pay for parking. To my astonishment, he has only come out to greet us and to answer any questions that we have about the thermal park. We are allowed to park here for as long as we want. I realise that he must be a park warden rather than a parking warden, but I am really warming to this country.
To find a cornucopia of steaming sulphurous pools in the middle of what otherwise looks like a normal municipal park does seem a bit surreal. Imagine going to play football on a Sunday at your local park to find that the pitch is neighboured by a large ditch of bubbling mud. Some of the pools are of clear steaming water and quite beautiful and even mirage like, with little forests growing around them. They look like very tempting natural hot baths, though I suspect you would be dinner if you tried to get in. There are fences surrounding each of the pools, but apparently a boy died a year or so ago after climbing over one of the fences and jumping into one of the pools, which has led to calls by some, including the parents, for the fences to be heightened. It would either mean that the fences would block visibility or that they would have to be changed from wood to cage style fences. Either of these solutions would diminish the beauty of this little area. As the park warden told us though, you can’t legislate for stupidity. Well, you shouldn’t....
There is a commercial hot springs spa near the Kuirau Thermal Park, but we decide that instead of paying NZ $65 or whatever it is to do this, we would rather visit the Whakarewarena Thermal Village nearby.
This is a Maori village, though not without its colonial influences in the architecture. What makes it remarkable though are the ditches and cracks that are hungry thermal pools that appear all around the village. Many of these look to be making the future of a number of the homes in this village extremely perilous. One of the large pools in the middle of the village has been turned into the oven for a food stall. Cooking Instructions:
1. Take one buttered corncob or pre-prepared dumpling and wrap tightly in foil
2. Wrap foiled food up in clean sack cloth
3. Attach to heat resistant string
4. Dig a well by a thermal pool to make access easier and safer
5. Drop filled sackcloth into the well for a couple of minutes and serve
Though the village is now a tourist attraction, with arts and crafts shops and Maori dancing and music shows in the village hall, the village was here a long time before it was turned into a paying attraction in 1998, and the local Maori tribe has been here for around 200 years. In some way it reminds me of Yogyakarta in Indonesia, another place where tourism seems to be the key industry but is still also a very real community and not some sort of Disney-lite re-enaction of tradition. Under the footbridge into the village, local children swim in the river that curls around the edge of the village, though I don’t know if I would like to expose myself too regularly to the levels of sulphur that must be in the water.
It is on the paths around the village where the thermal pools become lakes, including the extremely steamy one that overlooks the village and from which jumps a regularly gushing geyser creating rainbows from the hot mist.
Back in the village, there are remnants of missionaries in the form of a couple of churches. The graves around the churches portray a potted history of the village, with the gravestones telling stories about some of the key figures of the village’s past.
We go to see one of the shows in the village hall, which is a light hearted stream of traditional dances and music, though the latter is given a modern poppy edge. When the men do a little Haka, the leader does the sticking out tongue and opening eyes wide thing as a kind of party piece, i.e. without some false sense of over-reverence for the tradition that the NZ All-Blacks seem to suggest. It’s fun. With the Maori there is little or no suggestion of victimhood that there is with Aboriginals in Australia, though historically they were decimated by the colonisation of these isles.
We set off after the visit to find accommodation for the night. We end up at one called ‘Cosy Cottage’ campsite where there are also rooms available (or ‘cottages’ if you like). This is set near an edge of Lake Rotorua and advertises access to a ‘warm water beach’, heated by geothermal activity. In reality this is a small bit of sanded lakeshore no more than a few metres in depth.
At reception we were greeted by a not particularly friendly lady with an overly instructive manner. When we park the van at our pitch, we are greeted much more warmly by a caretaker who lives in a cottage in the grounds. He offers us a shovel to dig in the sand on the bank so we can see if the water under the surface bubbles up, but he tells us not to let the owner – the woman at reception – see us with the shovel as these are officially for hire. In the event there is no bubbling, but next to our camping pitch there is a small crater of bubbling and steaming mud which I only noticed because of the sulphurous whiff as I got out of the van when we pulled in. It will be a smelly night then, but maybe it will help us keep warm.
On arrival at the campsite, we were greeted by one of the other guests who wanted to compliment our van. We had gotten use to this, but this man’s exuberance took me aback. I have to say that it is immediately obvious that this man is a screaming queen and proud of it. Later, and it is impossible to avoid him for the rest of our stay here, it is clear that even his boyfriend, who is travelling with him, is somewhat embarrassed by Orlando (well, he had to have a name like that didn’t he?). It’s not his over Everest campness in itself that is overwhelming, but rather his in your face over-familiarity. That night, while in conversation with me, he mentions he has a ‘PA’. You have a secretary? What, that helped you organise your holiday? I didn’t actually ask these questions, it is just what I was thinking. ‘A Prince Albert’, he says after he notes my moment of perplexity. Ah. For those unfamiliar with cockney rhyming slang or piercing terminology, this means he has a stud or little ring in his um, first four letters of the word before rhyming above. He then goes on to detail his sexual liaisons with his straight friends and tells me that if I ever feel like experimenting, then ‘you know where to find me’. Except that I don’t. Not after tonight anyway. Which I am ok with, actually.
I spend the evening drinking too much wine and wondering around between the hot tubs that utilise the natural heating source, the kitchen and communal area to eat and then washing and hanging up my laundry, though not necessarily in that order. At one point I remember walking around in my wet boxer shorts, though I hope that was only when I was hanging up my laundry by the hot tubs and not when I was in the kitchen.
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| fellow occupants at Cosy Cottage |
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