The Road Trip North
Zepher
Chris & Lyn Darch
Thu 21 Jan 2010 00:51
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Hi Folks,
Well its been a few weeks since my last rambling,
all go on the tourisum front though, we left Wellington on the 29th of Dec and
drove North aiming for Taupo, it rained for a good part of the journey , at
Levin the roads were flooded, as it turns out Levin is famous for producing
Liquarish sticks ! anyway the flood waters were at our axels and we wernt going
to hang about to have a tasting, onward we went till the rain stopped somwere
before the high destert road, we took a detour at this point up mount Ruapahue,
the volcano we had skied on some six months ago, what a change it looked like a
building site with rock strewn areas abd masive boulders all over the place it
was hard to imagine that this pristine ski slope was like this underneath
!
We arrived late afternoon at the Beach tree motel
and donned our swiming cossies and went of to De Bretts hot spring pools for a
bit of a soak ... wonderful then on to the bistro for a slap up evening meal,
well everbody elses was except mine, I ordered the venison, having viewed it
going to other tables I was salavating at the thought , but it was not to be as
the chef coudnt count and I ended up with a pitza .. ba humbug .
Anyway the next day we went and did the Hukka jet ,
this is a very fast jet boat which carries about ten people, you are strapped in
and off it goes to the base of the falls that spew out from the vast lake Taupo,
on the way there the boat spins 360 deg a number of times, its a bit like an
Alton Towers ride with spectacular sceanary at 90 mph !
After regaining our stomouchs we had lunch and then
set off to a volcano field we had not visited before , another great one to put
on our tourist list, it was a bit out in the wilds but had some great sights to
see along the one hr treck through the bubbling mud and gushing sulphorus
smells, hot water here is just oozing from the ground every where, I guess
that heating in the winter is no prob, and as an old fella was telling me up and
til recently thats what they used to do untill it became a prohibited practice
some 15 years ago, all you did was bang a 2 inch pipe into the ground some 30 ft
put a valve on it, concrete around the base, conected it to your heating and hot
water system and hay presto free hot water and heat, not bad eh
!
Another night of Robs famous cocktails this time
the cellery special... large volume of vodka, V8 juice, some "Colon Cleaner" one
of Robs hot mixes, a dash of horsradish and bobs your uncle, its a nasal and bum
blaster all in the same drink and if it dosnt clean out your sinas it will
certainly clean you colon through , just as if you had a laxative but it
dosnt taste nearly as bad, the girls had to have it toned down and they visibly
wilted under Robs tonic .... myself and Rob percivered through the whole bottle,
by midday the next day we had thecleanes bowels and sinuses this side of the
Nagasaki foot hills, did here they had a similar experiance there, but with
external burns not internal ones !
Time to move on had arrived and we packed our bags,
cramed them ito the back of the Honda, I did mention this before but we had
everything including the kitchen sin cramed its Gails little 4 x 4, three large
soft bags,two medium ones, two gas bottles, two cool boxes, a assort number of
boat boxes, two girls and Sharons nuts, we were starting to wonder how we were
going to get two weeks of groceries in when we got to Auckland !
Anyway we proceed off to Rotavegus for the new year
fests, stopping at the thermal wonderland for a two hr hike over some realy
spectacular volcanic sights, then on to the Tuscany villas, not a patch on the
last one as we had no veranda to swharay on, anyway this didnt deter Rob from
another night to remember from the Buba keg , its four litre, three of fruit
juice and one of spirit , and that was the end of that night, we watched Bruno ,
much funnier the second time around and with a few drinks than cold stone sober
.
More tails from the new year to come ... whatch
this space..
The sardines in a CRV
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