TASHY TRAVELS

Every Sunday, I am going to upload a post about the different countries I have visited and/or lived in since 2002.

I can assure you of some interesting stories.

NEW ZEALAND 5

We spent the night, after our chat with Josephine, see last week, in our campervan. The storm conditions had slightly abated, we were far enough, and high enough, away from the river to mean we would not float away in the night but it had turned rather cold. The best way to keep warm in such conditions, well the second best way, is to shrivel up into a small ball. Actually this shrivelling up in cold weather is why the best way isn’t always possible, We duly did this, you decide, and left Pipiriki, with part of a wild boar, in the early morning. We continued on these narrow, winding roads, still showing signs of storm damage, until we reached the main highway. Then it snowed. Some drivers pulled over, lorries drivers fell over, but I had once been in the same car showroom as Timo Makinen, so I drove on.

We had actually been through this area before as, shortly after arriving in New Zealand, we had driven down to Wellington from Auckland for a meeting with the NZ government about our work. I shall intersperse, that’s fine, it’s a bit like inter-marriage but doesn’t result in insanity, that journey with my around-New-Zealand one. I think I may have met more NZ MP’s than I have MP’s from my own country. The current count is around 20 and that includes Winston Peters twice and Hone Harewira, twice, and a two hour interview with Dr Pita Sharples, Maori party leader. However, leaving them aside, probably in the Beehive, our first trip took us around the Lake Taupo area. Here we came across beautiful rivers and some people trout fishing.

And hereby there is a story which, because I am telling you from my notes and not checking anything out as I want these pieces to be just my thoughts and experiences, may not be totally accurate. First the accurate bits. Somewhere around Lake Taupo we found and visited a trout farm, maybe the New Zealand National Trout Farm. The word Turangi appears in my notes and this could be where it was. It was certainly more of a a museum/information centre than just any old fish farm. I seem to remember we could walk around quite a bit and see trout at different stages of their development.

Now the bit I am not so sure of and, indeed, may have made up. You can’t sell trout in New Zealand. No fishmonger is allowed to sell that type of fish. You can fish for it, you can catch it but only for your personal consumption. I would have thought that this might lead to a bit of trout rustling. In other words people catch more than they can consume and then, secretly, sell the rest. I assume that there are people who keep a check on this. Certainly, from the number of fish we saw, and photographed, there will be no shortage of trout for many years to come. The question I still need an answer to, though, is why can’t they be sold and, sadly for me, there is no answer in my notes.

This reminds me of another fish story which occurred when we up in Northland, spending time near 90 mile beach. We had been visiting somewhere and were taking a picnic lunch at the side of the beach. We were sitting around, drinking a small glass of wine when two police-like people arrived. Always wishing to be on the right side of the law, I asked whether we were in the wrong place. The officer, if such he was, replied that we weren’t and, in any case, they were the fish police. For a brief moment I considered asking whether they were trying to enforce some sort of speed limit on any fish swimming by and did the radar gun work under water, but I decided against this. It turns out that New Zealand is very strict on how many shellfish, mussels, oysters etc, that you can collect per person per day. These men were merely checking along the beach for suspicious fishermen or mollusc collectors to be precise.

Leaving fish to one side, we also visited, on this first trip, Lake Taupo. The lake is almost exactly in the middle of the North Island and was created by a volcanic explosion a long time ago, like 25,000 years or so. I think the last time the volcano erupted was about 2,000 years ago but, interestingly, it is officially known as dormant not extinct. The last major eruption of a volcano in New Zealand was Mount Ruapehu, just up the road, in 1995/96. The thing I found interesting about Lake Taupo, though, was, and you can see this in the photo, it appeared tidal. It may well be tidal but I have no idea if lakes can be. The rollers, in this case, were mainly caused by an incredibly strong wind that was blowing across the lake and, when you have a lake that is about 200 kilometres in perimeter, the wind has a fair area across which to blow. At it deepest, the lake is 200 metres deep.

The lake obviously feeds several rivers, including New Zealand’s longest river, the Waikato. When I made my first journey around the UK coastline back in 1984, one of my lasting impressions was of the rivers in Scotland. They were, in most cases, so clean, you could see into the water and they had a brownish tinge to them. For those that don’t know, I have, subsequently, made another two such journeys and I feel know the UK coastline as well as anyone can. The rivers we came across in New Zealand were similarly clear and I was reminded of that first journey all those years ago. I don’t, however, remember that many waterfalls in Scottish rivers although I do recall there were many coming down the sides of the hills as we drove by.

I thought you might have forgotten who was writing these little scripts and so, in pensive mood, I chose to include this photo not, you understand, to show off in any way, but merely to emphasise the continued beauty you could see all over New Zealand, back in 2006. Shame on you, I refer, of course, to the river. I am just adding a dash of colour to an otherwise slightly drab photo. Grey is a colour isn’t it?

If you needed any proof of the wonderful countryside that is all over New Zealand, without me, this photo is another example. To those who have lived all their life in a country such as England, could this be me, you assume that the fires you see burning are small cottages keeping warm in winter, the beginnings of a major bush fire (actually we don’t have too many of these in England) or, we have regressed, and the old charcoal burners in, say, the New Forest, are back at work. But it is none of these. This is nature. It isn’t smoke from a fire, it is steam escaping from underground. This volcanic area means that not far below the surface it is extremely hot and any rain or water which seeps through is soon heated and returns through small gaps in the soil as steam.

The Tokaanu natural thermal pools were used for centuries by the local Maori for bathing and also for cooking. When the European settlers arrived they too began to use the pools. Apparently, Tokaanu was a major stopover on the stage coach journey from Whanganui to Taupo. If the drive was half as bad as ours had been, these pools must have been a welcome way to relax and get ready for the next stage (haha) of your journey. Nowadays, the pools have become a tourist attraction and, sure enough, we visited them.

On the basis you can never have too much of a good thing, this is how it looks relaxing in one of the individual private natural mineral pools. They do warn you not to put your head under water but, luckily for you, the rest of your anatomy may disappear from view. The temperature in the pools ranges from 39°C to 41° and that is warm. The public pools use fresh chlorinated water and are a little cooler. The nice thing is that the whole area also caters to school parties and kids can learn all about the history of this fascinating area.

Before we leave the central area of the north island, let's head to our final destination this week, Waitomo. I don’t do heights. This fact you may know. I also don’t do depths especially in a country with volcanic activity and earthquakes. I can’t think of anywhere more stupid to be during a volcanic eruption or an earthquake than underground. So, when we were offered the chance to go underground, even if only 100 or so metres and visit the glow-worms in the Waitomo Caves, I declined. My girlfriend, who lacks some of my in-built survival instincts, did go and she disappeared off into the bowels of the earth for nigh on five hours. Unfortunately, as she is now my ex-girlfriend and the parting was not as amicable as one would like, I have no idea what she saw nor any photos that she may have taken. But, I do have photos given me by Waitomo Adventures, the company who organised the tour, and a wealth of information I gained by sitting in their offices for five hours and talking to the wonderful staff.

The idea for using the caves as a commercial venture was first had by a guy called Nick Andreef, as he was sitting having his lunch, while caving back in 1991. The people who follow his example are taken by minibus to a farm, as the land where the caves are is private and the farmer rents it out to the tour operators. Then they walkdown a steep slope to the cave entrance. Safety is paramount and for much of this walk they are strapped to lines along the side. And to think, I walked, unstrapped, on a glacier. Once at the entrance, they are strapped up again and abseil down 100 metres and find themselves in the Lost World, although presumably, as they are by no means the first, it is no longer that lost.

The abseil down is just the beginning of the journey. The subterranean tourists will walk along the river bank, yes a river is flowing through the caves, and into the main cave. Here they can see all sorts of stalagmites and stalactites. For those of you who don’t know the difference, I will introduce you to a little mnemonic told me by my old geography teacher. Actually, this is a bit strange, because I didn’t do geography so I am not sure what he was teaching me. The only other subject he took was gym and I spent a happy year in the gym covered in sweat and close to tears, I was covered in sweat and my efforts brought him close to tears, I don’t think this fact came into those wonderful lessons.

Anyway, what he told us, at our boys only public school, was to remember that tights came down and so, Stalactities were the ones hanging down and Stalagmites were the ones growing upwards. Bet he wouldn’t get away with that today, and more is the pity. These natural decorations have formed as a result of water dripping from the roof of the cave or flowing over the exposed limestone walls. As the water flows down through the earth towards the cave roof and walls, it dissolves limestone in its path. This limestone is then left as a crystalline deposit within the cave. All this process took thousands of years and the formations are very fragile so, when walking, people have to be very careful not damage them.

Finally, I was told, the guides would take their followers to a place under a hanging rock, they would switch off their lamps and they would look up and see hundreds of tiny Christmas lights. But they wouldn’t be Christmas lights, they were glow-worms. In their larval stage the glow worm hangs on his hammock by the ceiling. The little guy lets a few sticky feeding lines down. As larva, he hasn’t developed a digestion system and all the waste is being burned and while it’s happening the insect glows. The light really does glow out of their bum, although it is caused by a natural biological function. It also has another purpose as the glow-worm feeds on other insects and the light attracts all insects who get into the cave. Any flying thing that can’t find their way out will fly to the light thinking it’s the way out but here in the cave he will often end up caught in the glow worm feeding lines.

The weird thing, at least weird from our perspective, is that he lives in the larval stage for 9 months. Then, after 12 days of the Pupa stage (it’s like the cocoon stage for butterflies) the glow-worm transforms into an adult glow-warm but, as an adult, the bioluminescence light of the female serves to attract the male. As an adult the glow-worm, who now doesn’t have a mouth, can’t eat. He meets a lady glow-worm and for next two days mates and makes many little glow worms with her. So far so good you think. But now everything is going downhill. Firstly, how long can you live on love alone? Secondly, exhausted after all this passion and no food, the glow worm often gets so confused that, after a few days, he tries to fly out to the light and instead, guess what, he flies to the little lights and gets eaten by his younger brothers or cousins. Many of his babies in the meantime are eaten by their brothers and sisters after they emerge from the egg and make they way up to the ceiling where they want to put their feeding lines down. I never found out what happened to the mother, the widow. Presumably, the same thing.

The final thing my friends in the office told me, after showing me innumerable photos and providing me with some lunch, we that the intrepid explorers would have to climb 120 rungs up a rope ladder to leave the cave. So what; I’ve done glaciers and, so it would appear, failed to eat out for a second week.

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