3. Rotorua

More ready than ever to leave Auckland, I boarded the coach with the driver making some passing remark about my choice of snacks smelling out the cabin. To hell with it! I’d paid for this bus and if the other passengers were blessed with the fragrance of Thai Sweet Chilli then I would happily receive their letter of thanks later. The journey was an immediate eye-opener. The Auckland landscape does not come close to the images of New Zealand you see on any article ever published about the place, ever. Less than ten minutes on the road and the cityscape had given way entirely to the rolling volcanic hills and wonderful plantation that make up the majority of this country, filling me with a dumb-stricken awe for the whole four hours. Even the driver’s lazy, monotonous detailing of every minor detail about the mechanics of privatised coach driving was easy enough to filter out with these views, though I was tempted to do everyone the favour of offering him some crisps in return for shutting up for the rest of the trip.

We pulled into Rotorua mid-evening, as the sun was starting to paint the town with the golden summer haze that sits in the distance of all of your best memories. The billows of steam we had seen increasing in abundance through the trip should have had us more prepared, but what hit square in the face hardest when first stepping foot outside the stalely air-conditioned coach was the brutal smell of sulphur. There is no escaping it and I fear that, unless a permanent residence in Rotorua is your bag, there is no growing used to it. It did a good job of making me want to jump straight back on the coach for anywhere else, but the combination of the hatred I had instilled in the driver and my desire to give places half a chance at impressing me before condemnation kept me on the concrete. Exposing myself to the worst of it from the geothermal pools in Kuirau park still did not offer any kind of adjustment, and after four days of continuously inhaling the dreadful aroma it still caressed the nostrils with a sharp slap.

Rotorua is the namesake town of Lake Rotorua, on which it resides. It is perhaps the principal feature of the town, and for that reason I though of it as a place worth hiking to immediately from my incredibly humble lodgings. Though, hiking is a strong word to use there. Rotorua is small enough that anywhere worth being in the town is never more than a five minute walk from some faction of the lake. Though the walk was disappointingly short, it set in stone my impression of the place. There was only one building I could see higher than three stories, the roads were wide enough for a Cadillac Eldorado to comfortably swing an about turn in if needed, and the pace of everything was about as slow as the changes in weather. I liked it. Barring the smell I liked it a lot. The lake too was a sight to behold, a vast expanse of deep blue held firmly in place by great peaks; a scene that could be sculpted only by mother nature. New Zealand had finally gone all New-Zealand on me and it was as welcome as the cool lake breeze.

The place I was staying was a hark back to the budget travel accommodation of long ago, with as many structurally unsound bunk-beds thrown into one room as can fit, with the inhabitants left to fight it out over the only power outlet available and the small crack in the window barely offering enough oxygen for one person. But it was cheap as hell and for that reason, as long as I don’t contract hepatitis, even I won’t complain too much. The interesting thing with the cheapest rooms is that you often find the most interesting people in there with you. Take my good friend Keeto for example. Keeto was an apparently very well-off, retired businessman, trying his hardest but failing spectacularly to dress like his fellow half-his-age-and-then-some travellers, choosing to stay in the lowest of the low for some perversion I could never quite ascertain. After taking a liking to me for solving almost all of his technological woes, Keeto proceeded to steer the conversation into an interrogation on Non-Government-Organisations, Automated Payments, and Random Acts of Kindness that felt more like a personal attack on me in front of anyone crazy enough to still be listening than anything else. The final straw came as he reeled of organisation after organisation on his latest banking statement and how many thousands of dollars was automatically going out of his account every month to them. It was at this point I decided Keeto was a twat. Be charitable, absolutely, but do not flaunt it sir. That, sir, is what twats do.

Eventually managing to lose the affectionate company of Keeto I was enrolled into a game I only knew as 1-100 with a few of the other guests who had taken pity on me for humouring him so long. A game of silently placing down a randomly assigned collection of numbers between you in ascending order could really be quite easy, were it not for your teammates’ inability to count steadily. Though in hindsight, my drunken confidence in perfect Mississippi-counting perhaps was unjustified. Nonetheless, it was a welcome refrain from the spirit-pummelling words of Keeto.

About twelve miles North-East of Rotorua is a little tourism village built around Okere Falls. The decision of how to get there was a fairly simple one. Having left the chauffeur and stretch-limousine back in Auckland and wanting to prove to myself that twelve miles is still an entirely accomplishable walk I decided that is what I would do. It was a glorious Summer’s day, not a cloud in the sky and the sun burning through the reduced Ozone layer like a hot machete through zero-fat milk. Pasting myself with the strongest, most disgustingly thick sun cream I could find and my bag packed with all manner of supermarket baked goods I set about the journey almost feeling prepared for once.

It was a long and dull walk, the only remotely interesting thing being the lake of to my left, but lakes aren’t the most volatile scenes and after a while I only felt it was taunting me. No matter how far I walked the lake was not shifting, like I had barely moved two metres rather than two miles. The milestones along the road didn’t offer much reprise either. Other than the small airport roughly halfway it was all piles of gravel, bends in the road to the left, and bends in the road to the right. Maybe there was a good reason for this road not being pedestrianised.

I stopped for lunch just past the airport, taking refuge under a nice big tree up a slight bank from the road. I could feel my skin starting to wail, having been in direct eyeline of the Sun’s burning gaze for two hours. The cream seemed to be having little effect, and it was damned expensive too. The bastards had swindled me again! At least the pizza roll I had to eat was doing its job properly. As I sat there questioning my decision to walk this the willingness of kiwi people to help anyone out anyway they can started to become apparent. On three separate occasions people stopped to ask if I needed a lift anywhere. Back home you’d more than likely be put on some sex offenders list for inviting a stranger into your vehicle, but on the other side of the world it is quite common, almost natural. In spite of my contempt for this walk, I refused the offers and headed off down the remainder of the road having topped up my sun cream to a filthy wax suit, unsure still whether it was actually working. The road did not grow any more interesting, only more treacherous as the available walking space reduced to barely three feet from the wagons speeding in the opposite direction, forcing me to dodge into all manner of painful bushes and trees to ensure this whole trip did not end so ungracefully. But I did eventually make it to Okere falls, unscathed.

I wouldn’t say they were worth the suffering I had endured to be there, but Okere Falls were pleasant enough. The park at least offered my skin some shaded pathways snaking around the river and some good views of the over-confident kayakers flying sideways down the rapids. It was very short lived though, a mission of a four hour walk for a twenty minute gentle stroll in nature made made it clear there was a reason I was the only idiot who had walked down State Highway 30.

After trying helplessly to make as much use of the offshoot paths as possible, it was clear that all options had been disappointedly explored and the only thing left to do was begin the deadly twelve mile journey back.

The midday heat was intense and the Sun’s rays from directly overhead had their least inhibited route through the atmosphere. No amount of sun cream could have begun to protect me against the onslaught that laid ahead, even if it was in fact working. This was clearly a suicide mission. With the options laid out in front of me, I swallowed my pride, smiled through gritted teeth, and stuck my thumb into the road.

I counted maybe ten cars that passed before a local by the name of Mike almost flipped his car running himself into the bush to pick me up. There is no window shopping in hitch-hiking. If the offer is going where you want to go you take the ride and hope and prey for an easy journey. Mike was a troubled fellow with a lot to get off his chest, working hard at a bad school a few miles back up the road with kids he was trying his hardest to help out of terrible situations whilst not getting too attached. It was clear he was already too attached to most of them, and they did sound like they needed all the help they could get. I wondered how deep to risk going into the topic given that I just wanted to make it back to Rotorua in one piece having not emotionally broken my driver. But the problem with hitching is that conversation is all you have to offer in return, and every slight pause is an anxious invitation to cut a little deeper into the previous sentiment.

I believe I did cut too deep into the issues with the kids he knew, but the conversation somehow thankfully steered onto Mike’s Mauri dance troop, and how him and a few friends are paid to travel the world and dance in grass skirts in front of faceless foreign men in suits. I thought it best not to delve too deep either into the perversions of that, though he did seem aware it was a fairly strange deal they had going on.

Expressing my plans of the night lanterns in the Redwood Forest that evening, Mike pointed out the exact spot in the wood from the road we were on that I should cut straight through to get where I needed to be. It all sounded so easy, and the wood looked friendly enough during the day. However, the fall of night brought a completely different story.

I headed out around 9PM, just as the last warm glows of the day were fading. The route was a carbon copy of the first mile I had already done that day to the falls, but swinging off just before Ngapuna to cut through the woods as Mike had instructed. On the brink of the wood, staring in to its dense, dark depths I began to think this might not be the best idea. Still, it was fairly well lit from the highway, and the path was clear enough. Following that path away from the safety of the street lights the darkness of the wood folded in all around, and in a very little amount of time, there was nothing to be seen. It was really not looking like the best idea. Deeper into the wood, although still really not that far from the road, the animals were coming out to play. In a familiar country, the noises of the animals of the night are entirely recognisable; back home the hooting of the occasional owl, the quacks of the local ducks and the gentle chirping of whatever friendly birds are still awake working their taxes would not stir the remotest of suspicions. But here the noises were entirely alien, I could not place what a single one might have been and some of them sounded concerningly human. Not being able to see, surrounded by foreign creatures and growing more sure of not being the only questionable person present, there was only one thought in my head – get the fuck back out of that wood you idiot, and quick sharp!

Taking the long way around the woods instead, I made it to the site of the lanterns. Swinging between the biggest of the redwood trees, long, unstable bridges stretch high above the undergrowth, all of which are vantage points for the huge and varied lanterns hanging even higher from the thickest branches. Barring the gaggles of children that did slowly disperse through the evening, the whole activity was an incredibly peaceful affair. Taking time to dawdle from tree to tree, passing through various themes of lantern groups and laser shows really instilled a deep calmness. The atmosphere was dense and the only sounds present were that of the gently creaking bridges and the nocturnal wildlife. With the other-wordly lanterns and light shows dancing around the place, there was nothing familiar about the scene and the Southern stars and birdsong really began to set into the imagination that this was not a place you could ever have known. But it was deeply calming, and it came quite close to being enough to offset the following frustration of heading back in the complete wrong direction and adding an extra hour to the walk home.

The woods were dense, the streets were dark, and my attempt at recollecting the reverse of the route here was never going to end well whilst being driven hard by the paranoia of the drunk heading the same way, keeping in too close proximity. At around 1:30AM I finally made it back, my feet screaming for relief from the shoes that had cut them apart, my back aching for a place to lay down, and my head pounding with anger at my growing inability to follow a map. It was not a pretty sight, but luckily it had taken me so long to get back that no-one was around to see it anyway.

Spending most of my last day in Rotorua fairly idle in an attempt to recover from the previous night’s struggle, I headed out again come sunset to get some shots of the lake. I’d found a small bay a couple of nights before with some vaguely interesting rock formations and a good view of Rotorua. I knew it was the perfect spot to get the shots I wanted and have some absolute solitude, accompanied only by the passing birds and the rolling of the lake washing gently against the shore. It was almost a kind of therapy. The light was stable, the setting was stable, the only unstable thing present seemed to be myself. I could be as quick or as slow as I wanted and still have time to soak in the scene. I’m not sure how long I sat there, but the moon was a perfect, bright white disk in a deep black-blue sky and most of the stars had come out so I did not feel like leaving for a while. Even the nearby swans seemed to grow comfortable with my presence, only really being stirred when I could no longer hold in one of my particularly loud sneezes.

Some amount of time passed and it grew cold. The days in the New Zealand summer are mighty hot but the nights are filled with a bitter chill that can catch you entirely with your pants around your ankles, ankles that by that point in the day have been well feasted on by the local population of sand files. The walk back was once more inhibited by the complete lack of daylight and the root-ridden floor of the forest walk did not make for an easy stumbling back. But I did emerge again unscathed, questioning how many more of these midnight walks through the wilderness I could really get away with.

The common room was empty of friends. A few late-night stragglers I shared no history with pottered about, so I took that as my cue to retire for the night in preparation for struggling to pack in the tiny room, ready for the journey to Taupo the next day.