A way to keep in touch: The long awaited part II

Dear friends, I hope you are all healthy, wealthy, and the rest.

This weekend I am finally spending a long-anticipated weekend in Palmy. I have worked my 12 days in a row and I am having a break. I am doing nothing.

Or rather, I am immersing myself into frippery.

FRIPPERY!

I have done internet shopping (all those years of observing Tori on asos have finally paid off! I am now the proud owner of a ridiculous number of tiny skirts all of which I told myself I would just try on and then return the superfluous ones. Oh, Tori. You knew that pitfall well.) I have made panna cotta. I have baked a cake and iced it (with a crumb layer of icing and a second layer. A real iced cake! I laugh in the face of those who would tell me that a revolving cake stand is a necessity for icing. Tim was my revolving cake stand, and he did a reasonably good job, when he wasn't distracted by trying to pick icing off and eat it when he thought I wasn't looking. Also, surely if you find yourself saying things like, "I find a revolving cake stand a real necessity" you should really just take a break from your life and go and live in the Congo for a few years.)

I would show you how pretty the cake is but I have used up the number of photos I'm allowed to upload at once. Sad but true. You'll just have to imagine it. Or maybe I'll post it later.

I have spent a very gratifying morning looking up recipes on Felicity's Cloake's blog series and decided I'm going to make cheese souffle and tom yum soup. I have done the laundry. I have made a grocery list. I have emptied the bins. I have tidied the house. I have spent a long time on facebook. I have been to a birthday party. I have done my hair. I have read an Agatha Christie murder mystery. I have watched Masterchef - USA. I am planning on - when we have a car, which will be soon (we are buying one from a friend - the car's nickname is 'Sticky Gerald' or 'Stinky Gerald', which I'm going to assume for the time-being is ironic) - on going to the British store and buying more Robinson's fruit squash than I know what to easily do with. I have read an interview with Mumford and Sons, and another one with Peter Jackson. I am, in short, having a very, very, very lazy weekend.

I am gratified beyond belief.

And now it is time to fill you in on the rest of our North Island adventure.

***

Stingrays. Did you know that they are cute and cuddly?

I didn't.

To feed stingrays, you must put on sexy waders.

I mean it. They are sexy.

Disappointingly, New Zealand is far out of the way for Vogue scouts, but if they had been on the beach that day, well, let's just say a frenzy of smartphone activity later and the face of modelling would have been changed forever.

The face of both male and female modelling.

We were given a tutorial on what stingrays look like by Henrick, our friendly German guide. He drew some in the sand and showed us where we should pet them (on their face) and where we shouldn't pet them (on their fins, and on their tail, duh.) He explained that now it was spring they would be hungry and keen to eat some fish and that when they go out in winter often the stingrays are sluggish and grumpy and not up for eating. And then he made a sad stingray face which looked exactly like this :-(

We waded out with our sticks. The water was superclear and it was very beautiful, though quite slippery on the reef.

Henrick caught a crayfish, which to me looked huge, but he told me it was too small to eat. Too small!

Try telling that to a Chinese person (me).

And we met Pete the eel ("Dopey Pete" said Henrick. ":-O" said Dopey Pete (see illustration above).)

And then the stingrays came.

Henrick had a bucket full of fish which he rattled in the water and all the stingrays came up into the shallow water, keen for fishy goodness. They flapped around in a friendly fashion and hopefully nibbled at our sticks. Stingrays have no teeth. They are also, strangely, hugely inept at eating fish because their faces are so silly; their mouth so far underneath and their eyes on top and to the sides, so I ended up having to put my hand literally in their mouth to give them to fish, otherwise they would drop it and then flap around sadly looking for it, which they couldn't do because of, as mentioned before, the extreme silliness of their faces.

When I put my hand in their mouths, they gummed me hopefully, in the anticipation that I too was a fish. I rubbed their faces and they flapped their wings in what I took to be an affectionate and gentle manner, but it may have simply been disgruntlement. Stingray emotions are hard to read.

The stingrays there are all basically tame, though they live in the wild, because they have been feeding them there for 20 years or so. Henrick told us that even wild ones are very gentle and do not sting except when very frightened. Or, presumably, being harassed by someone very, very annoying.

It was a good day.

The next morning, we went surfing.

Surfing is incredible fun.

Liz, our instructor, first drew sand boards in the beach and we practised all the things we should do on them - getting up, balancing, paddling, falling off etc ("like a starfish! Fall like a starfish!") and then it was our turn in the waves. We had huge, huge longboards, very soft and comfortable to fall onto. I stood up 4 times, and Liz told me that 95% of the time, men catch on faster than women, and she was very gratified to see me trounce my partner in crime. Tim stood up once as well, at the very end. His only statement was, "I knew you would be good at it, damn it." YEAH.

Out amongst the waves there were many many tens of surfers, even though it was so early - 8am on a chilly Sunday - bobbing and surfing amongst the green waves. I've never experienced so much physical exhilaration as during this stay in New Zealand. Learning to do something new, in a beautiful new environment, making your body perform actions it never has before, has all been very exciting and wonderful. I now have a whole new set of ambitions and skills to improve on before I leave.

Then we went to Feast.

Feast was a day long food and wine festival (there's another one this weekend in Martinborough as well, btw. Every weekend is a food and wine festival in New Zealand!) and Tim and I walked around, napped, stuffed ourselves, listened to music, drank cider, and all the rest. Over and over for 4 hours. It was the sunniest day you could imagine and I was the happiest you could ever be. We had our own little wine cups to hang on a string around our necks, and a little map of the stalls. And as we walked in, we heard someone say behind us, "well, hello there, boogie boarders." And there was the family from the Rere rockslide! We told them we had been surfing that morning and stingray feeding the day before and they told us again that we were crazy and hoped we would eat plenty of food today, and we agreed with them wholeheartedly. Then Tim had a crisis of identity.

Tim: "Boogie boarders! Is that what I am? A boogie boarder?"

Me: "No no Tim, you're so much more than that. Here, have some cider."

Tim: "I....I just never thought I'd be called that."

****

Later that night, we started our long drive through Te Urewera National Park, broken by a stay in Lake Whakemarino, in the most dated little lodging house I've ever seen. Our bedroom had fluorescent lighting and no working lock, and curtains that looked like they'd last been changed in the 1920s. But we hadn't come there for curtains.

We came for the view, and the silence.

Te Urewera is 80km of winding, unsealed mountain road that winds around a number of lakes, the biggest being Lake Whakiremoana, Lake of Rippling Waters, a huge volcanic lake. And it deserved its name - its surface is constantly swept by tiny white waves, incredibly beautiful and immediately recognisable from a distance.

Imagine living here...

....................

....................................................................................................this would be your view every morning............................................................................

If you lived here, you would need a boat.

What about this one, for a Robson?

Tim particularly liked this one. He could use it to go to choir rehearsal and evensong.

We spent a beautiful morning just driving around the National Park, bumping along, eating crackers and crisps and tinned tuna because we didn't have any food (classic). And on the way down into Taupo, we stopped at one of the many geothermal sites that is littered around the area between Rotoroa and Taupo (no time for Rotoroa this journey - another time.)

This park, Waimangu, was the site of the previously famous pink and white terraces, which were silica terraces containing clear turquoise water exactly the right temperature to swim in, apparently, destroyed in the 1886 Tarawera eruption (though they are probably still there, just under the water- a real interesting video). The eruption also created Frying Pan Lake - as you can see below - and a number of beautiful bubbling hot acid pools.

What I find incredible is that vegetation can grow so close to the edge of the lake. The pH is 2 or 3, and just 1m below the soil, the soil temperature can be 100 degrees centigrade in parts. The lake is constantly bubbling, not because it's boiling, but because it is acidic, and little bubbles of hydrogen are coming to the surface.

But though it's not boiling, that doesn't mean it's not hot. Just look at that steam!

A number of colourful algae and bacteria can grow in such difficult conditions.

And tiny and large geysers abound!

This incredible blue lake is made of suspended silica fragments, which give it its distinctive colour. It ebbs and flows over the course of months, reflecting the area's geothermal energy. Scientists keep track of its levels because it may help predict future eruptions. During this time, it turns from clear to white to blue again. We caught it during its blue time.

Look at that steam!

What appear to be rocks in the sides of the lake is actually just baked mud.

This whole place was unbelievably fascinating and beautiful, and Tim reacted to it by putting on his David Attenborough Voice, accompanied by his David Attenborough Face, at all times. (see below)

I just felt you deserved an explanation as to what exactly Tim's face was doing in that photograph.

***

Post Hot Springs, Tim and I wandered into Taupo. That evening, we went for a soak in some natural hot springs in a spa close by. The water was super super hot - 41 degrees, and I was dying of heat. We cooled ourselves down by going down a children's dragon slide quite a few times.

The sad thing about going to the spa was that after we came out, it was 9pm, and by then it was impossible to find anywhere to eat. Everything was closed, man! Taupo was dead. This, we would find, was a recurring theme in New Zealand, and something that I do miss about the UK. Nothing is open when you expect it might be open. Every place we rang up was like, "awww, man....I was thinking of closing up. I sent the staff home early cos there's no one here. I could probably do you some chips if you're desperate." No, thanks, we said, which in hindsight may have been a mistake. Our hotel receptionist suggested we might be able to go to KFC, "but hurry, because they close at 10pm, and then there really won't be anything." I declined. So I had an apple for dinner. Tim had the KFC (which he enjoyed a lot) but then wondered if there was anywhere to get a beer.

There wasn't.

We wandered the streets, feeling like disconsolate alcoholics ("Just one beer! Just one!") and finally went to bed, beerless, at 10:30pm. I suppose maybe it was wise, because after all, the next day was our skydive. We needed to get some rest.

****

The next day actually dawned wet and rainy and we couldn't skydive in the morning as we'd hoped (I'd picked 10:30am as a good time - long enough after breakfast so I wouldn't sick it up again, early enough in the day so I wouldn't be thinking about it all day). Instead, we decided to go to 'the most kitsch attraction in New Zealand' (and remember, this has Hobbiton to contend against) - the Huka Prawn Farm.

Huka Prawn Farm is the world's only geothermally heated prawn farm. We went on a little tour which told us all about the life cycle of the prawn (vicious, involving cannibalism), and got given little fishing rods to fish for prawns (which we could then eat). But best of all, for Tim, was the opportunity to play Killer Prawn Golf.

You don't actually kill any prawns in Killer Prawn Golf, you simply tee off over the prawn beds and hope to hit certain targets for cash.

Tim had an amazing time.

We didn't win any cash.

We also didn't catch any prawns when we went fishing for them. Our technique was clearly off. And the birds ate all my bait.

But we still had fun! We had fun on the nature walk -

Guide: "It's...it's really kind of for children. But I guess you could go on it if you like."

Oh yeah.

Tim had the time of his life.

The place was filled with dangerous obstacles....

This one tipped water on your head unexpectedly from various little buckets....

but Tim did it. Well done, Tim!

Intrepid!Tim.

Too old for this?

I don't know, I didn't want to say.

****

By this time, we felt we'd earned a lunch break.

"Best of all, you can have prawns all ways in their restaurant," said Lonely Planet.

Lonely Planet is always right.

Even though we hadn't caught any prawns, we got to buy some.

Money. So useful.

I had a huge mulled wine, which helped cheer me up from my dreary, wet, and prawnless state.

And we also shared the biggest cheesecake I've ever seen outside of the USA.
It came with cream AND ice cream.
That's the way I like it.

I look happy, but in reality, the cheesecake was a mistake, a heavy mistake I felt very strongly as I was being strapped into my jumpsuit for the skydiving. Very strongly.