It was an early departure from Nelson.
Like, 7am or something similar?
Naturally, I woke up super-early, so I had time to kill, as I walked through rain which wasn’t quite bad enough to warrant pausing under a tree to get my raincoat out.

That rain did cause some trouble later on, when the wipers on one side of the bus stopped working. Naturally, it was the driver’s side.
I didn’t much like the look of the weather when we got to a stop at Punakaiki/Pancake Rocks, so elected not to take a wander down the path in order to look at said rocks.
This turned out to be a good plan, as it absolutely pissed down a few minutes after we got there, at the level where you had to raise your voice to be heard, and even the folks running the cafe were making the “Fuuuuuck” expression as they closed the doors into the more exposed ‘terrace’ section.

Tried to get a picture or two of the rain, but they were a bit crap, so here’s some mist being all portentous. Or something.

The hostel had offered a pickup from the train station, which is also the bus station, and it made the whole process much … What’s the word? … Drier.

Lunch happened at the Monteith’s Brewery down the road, on the grounds that it was close, warm, and … no, that’s it.

The hostel room, of which this is the only picture I took, was very nice.
Had a ranchslider onto a wee deck, so that I could look at the rain, an actual radiator heater (I’m told that the dorm-style rooms, or at least one of them, didn’t have those. Then again, my room was at the far end of the building, and one of the walls looked to be the outside cinderblock wall of the building, so maybe it needed it?), and a big warm blanket, which came in handy on the colder days.

Met the first actual New Zealanders of the trip; Adrian, who was just generally traveling, and Dora, who was doing nurse intern things in Greymouth.

There’s not too much to say about Greymouth, or at least my Greymouth experience.
It rained a lot, there are some walking/cycling paths that are nice if you like ambling along the top of flood defense structures, though you’d want to be confident about the weather, there’s a lot of remnants of the city’s time as a coal exporting port, and the beach here doesn’t look like one of those forgiving ones.

A couple showed up on Saturday who’d come for the surf, then taken a look at things and thought “Bugger That”.

So, what did I do?
Hung out in a pretty sociable hostel, with interesting folks from all over the place;

• Dimitri from Switzerland
• Adrian from Tauranga
• Fran from Yorkshire
• Claus from Bavaria, who wasn’t actually staying there, but came by in the evenings to use the internet, and maybe shower?

Went to see X-Men: Apocalypse with Dimitri & Adrian. Film was good, walk back was bloody cold, with creepy mist-drifts, and still, nobody can make Cyclops into an interesting character.

On the last night, went to a nearby pub to use up some free drink vouchers & completely fail to see a motorbike race I’ve forgotten the name of that Dimitri wanted to see, because it was on a different Sky TV channel the bar didn’t have. Or something.
Also in the group, along with Dimitri & Adrian & Fran, was Harry from a slightly different part of Yorkshire, who was in the process of seeing all of NZ. In a couple of weeks. Before selling his car and leaving.
There was not a lot of wiggle room in his schedule, but he did have some extra beer which had been sloshing around in his car, which lead to a somewhat late night, but a good one.

Somewhere during the stay here I’d booked the train trip to Christchurch, with a couple of nights in Arthur’s Pass, and fortunately noticed the “There Are No Shops Here” warning from the YHA, so I planned accordingly, with food from the canned and probably won’t squish, and is still edible if it does departments.
On a related note, my pack feels like it’s getting heavier and bigger.

The hostel-provided list to the train station was useful, and the train was, of course, late.
No big deal; It’s not like I had any tight travel connections to make.

I was trying to get a picture of the clouds streaming back off the hills, and I’m pretty happy with this one.

Various pieces of Greymouth’s port heritage.

Bloody Great Breakwater, intended to keep the river clear and navigable. Apparently it still works.

Also, there was a seal.
Or maybe a sea lion?
In any case, it had climbed ab impressive way up from the water for a critter with no legs.

And the sheltered bit of the river, as it flows through town.
It should probably be mentioned that the flood defense wall fairly looms over the street below. I had breakfast in what I was told was the best cafe in Greymouth (By a Japanese chap from Tokyo who also worked at the hostel, and whose name started with a Y-sound. I am not good at names), and all you could see out the front of said cafe was the road & the river-wall.
Said cafe was named “DP1”, and seemed to be an all-dreadlocked establishment.
No idea why it’s called DP1, though I’m wondering whether it’s a reference to cadastral boundaries.

Out of cleverness, I put various TV shows on my phone, so that I could watch them if the scenery got dull.
It didn’t, and indeed the road was sufficiently winding that looking out the windows was the only option; Nausea kicked in when I started reading something on my phone.

The Picton to Nelson road passes through various tiny little places, including the entertainingly-named Canvastown, a former pop-up tent town of gold miners & those who sell to them. They’ve discovered lumber now, from the look of it.

When I booked at Honeysuckle House (by phone; I was getting a bit desperate, as I’d found a few ‘no room at the inn’ hostels, and I only booked it yesterday) the proprietor had offered to get her husband to give me a lift if it was raining. Fortunately, it wasn’t and it was a pretty easy walk; Nelson’s not that big.
It’s another town surrounded by hills, but I didn’t bother trying to capture it on-camera; The phone really isn’t up to the task.

I did cut through some gardens on my way to the hostel, …

… and spotted an anachronistic-looking bridge†, which I checked out later, when I didn’t have a pack on.

Honeysuckle House is quite a nice hostel, run on a gleefully ad-hoc honour system from what I can tell; I extended my stay after the first night, when I decided that I didn’t really want to lug all of my stuff to Motueka & find a place there, and then extended it again by a night so as to not have two wildly early nights in a row.‡
Through all of that there was no thought of a deposit, or payment, and when I eventually tracked them down on my last day to settle up, they gave me a bit of a discount for having stayed so long.
It’s your classic high-ceiling two-story place, where the downstairs is the hostel, and the upstairs is the owners. Maximum capacity of 8 people, with one double room, one twin, and one 4-bed dorm. For most of my stay there was Me & a young woman from Nanjing staying there, with a German woman one night, and a French one another night. Comfy place, well-heated, had a lounge that nobody but me used, fairly standard kitchen, and free ice-cream.

Dinner involved a trip back into town to find an Iskender Kebab; This is all the fault of Cenk Gökçe, for having mentioned them in a Facebook post a few days earlier, and putting the idea in my head while I was in Picton, a town devoid of Kebab shops.
Really, I’m the victim here.
Also, it was a really good dinner.

Laundry happened, thanks to actual sunlight, and was the first official hostel laundry of the trip.
I’d hoped for fanfare, but what I got was clean dry clothes, so I’m OK with that.

Wanderings through town demonstrated that Nelson has a huge marina, through which I walked until I ran out of public access, and it was still going strong at that point,

riverside cycle & walking paths with various art items,

and the mural I’ve been using as my login image for the past few months.

Remember that bridge† I mentioned?

It turns out to lead to, and is part of, the Huangshi Chinese Garden, which sits inside Queens Gardens, and is part of a Friendly City relationship.

I’m not sure whether it’s my favourite bit of Nelson, but it’s pretty close, and it was certainly a very nice place to pass through on my way to & from things.
Also, the paving was interesting.

Part of The Nelson Experience involved a day trip to Motueka, to visit Cap’n Ghastly John, who I worked with back at Whitcoulls.
Getting there involved a fairly early bus, with an equally early arrival into a mostly-deserted town, which, while devoid of traffic and pedestrians, was not devoid of class, as the Bacon & Eggs I had for breakfast came with broadleaf parsley & an artistic smear of pesto.

I had time to kill before I felt comfortable taking the risk that people might be asleep, so I took a walk to the waterfront, to find … well, water. And a beach made mostly of rounded rocks. And quite a lot of view.

There was also the remains of a wharf, beside which were the remains of a ship.
I’m not sure whether they just parked it & walked away, letting nature take its course.

Caught up with John & nattered over cups of tea for 4 hours or so about, basically, what we’d be up to for the last decade.
(Incidentally, it seems to be a rare small town where the main drag isn’t “High Street”)

Took the bus back, getting in after dark, had a go at photographing the quite bright moon, …

… & watched a few episodes of Z Nation, which may not have been the wisest move.

Yes, it got funny; Episode 3 has the Liberty Bell in it, which they use to good & hilarious effect.
But Honeysuckle House is an old wooden building, and after watching three episodes, I was the last one awake, moving through a dark & mostly-empty house.

Like I said, not my smartest move.

Some early-morning phone-bingling led to a conversation with Steven & Monica about the planned Great Road Trip from Chicago to Indianapolis in August, which helped to firm up some plans for me.

Nelson is home to the Geographical Centre of New Zealand.

It’s the origin point for the District, which is in the centre of all of the districts – The Gravity-Model centre is sort of nearby, in an unremarkable patch of scrub.

It was a nice day, so I walked up there.
There was a lot of up involved.

Nice views though.

And because I wanted proof that I’d made it to the top of the bloody hill,

My other reason for extending my stay‡ was because Gen Con events registration happens at 4am NZ time, on a Monday, and I didn’t really want to be having to get up early to catch a bus the morning after having gotten up very early to hit the ‘Go’ button on my events wishlist.

I did some tweaking of that list the night before.
Tried & failed to remember how to make Excel do a sheet with Day & Hour time entries, incrementing by the hour, and had already drawn up a rough calendar when I realised that I could just do it in my diary in pencil, which is what I did.
Got through priorities 1-19 before I got sick of it, & just filled the back end of the list with sessions of Numenera & Dr. Who.

There’s a post in it’s own right about Gen Con Events Reg., so I’ll skip over that for now.

It absolutely pissed down in the afternoon; I did try to get a picture of the storm rolling in over the hills, but it’s … Not as ominous as it was in person.
 Fortunately, the ice-cream was topped up at mid-day, which made for a very pleasant day of doing very little.

My last day in Nelson, having checked the weather reports, I took the hostel folks in Greymouth (my next stop) up on their offer of a pick-up from the bus station, through the wonders of email.
Also booked a hotel for the arrival in the US; Hilton were doing a sale which happened to include something convenient, and it’s at a brand (Doubletree) which is known for it’s warm cookie at check-in policy, so that’s a plus.
I stayed at one in Dublin, back in 2014, which is why I’m a Hilton customer loyalty scheme member, not that I have any usefully accumulated points. The cookie there was pretty good, and very unexpected; Shall have to see whether I can get a jar of them for the road trip.

My bus out of Nelson was at 0715h, so I packed up all of my stuff the night before, and even forewent a morning shower (is ‘forewent’ a real word?) to allow myself more sleeping time.
Naturally, I woke up before my alarm.

It seems worth mentioning, to me at least, that I’m post-dating these … posts. Rather than doing a day-by-day, like I’ve done for past trips, I’m trying a thing where I do a post for each place, and set it to publish on the day I left the place.
That said, I’m also kind of behind.

Finding the Tombstone Backpackers was ridiculously easy, as it’s on the hill right above the Bluebridge Ferries depot. (having walked off the ferry, they then had us board a bus for the 2-300m trip to the depot, where I was, eventually, reunited with my bag.

I didn’t think it was that heavy, but there being only one handle, and that a one-handed lift, maybe didn’t help? It’s kind of cumbersome in ‘bag’ mode.

Also, this is why it’s the Tombstone on Gravesend Place; The cemetery.

As you can see, I bravely let another backpacker (Is it backpacking if you also have a wheely suitcase?) go first, partially because she got her bags before me, partially so that I wouldn’t be the creepy guy walking right behind her at dusk, and partially to see whether there was going to be A Zombie Attack From The Graveyard!!

The Tombstone has an older & more eclectic bit, where the lounge and kitchen and so on are, and a newer accommodation bit, which … reminded me a bit of an office building. There’s nothing wrong with it, or with my room, it just lacked character.
I mean, someone tried their best with the decorations, in what I’m assuming is a homage to Demolition Man.

I still have no idea how they work, though they were a fair way from the bathroom, so maybe I missed it.

The view from the balcony outside was pretty good, if you like bush-clad hills, port infrastructure, and looking right up a ferry’s freckle.

So, Picton?
It’s small. You can see, and hear, the ferry terminal(s) from pretty much the whole town.
It’s ringed by hills, which is quite pretty, though difficult to capture with a cellphone camera.

I spent the first morning sleeping in, because I wanted to and nobody could stop me.
My diary notes say “Slept In A Lot” – Make of that what you will. I do recall finding breakfast at around lunchtime.
Part of that sleeping in may have been because I woke up at 4am, downloaded the most recent episode of Game of Thrones on my phone, working on the theory that a 4am hit on the hostel internet connection was unlikely to inconvenience too many people, then watched said episode.

Come to think of it, that may be closer to “Went back to sleep at dawn” than “Slept in”.

There’s not a huge amount to note about day one, other than that I was chosen by the hostel cat.

It was made clear that moving outside onto the balcony to read was unacceptable, even if the cat had moved from my lap of their own free will, because I could have been providing petting-on-demand while I was indoors, but outdoors I would be too far away. Steps were taken to rectify the situation.

Day two was bit dark and foreboding, which did make the hills look all misty & interesting.

I’d seen most of Picton by this point, or at least all of the bits which didn’t require tramping, which seemed … risky, given the weather, so I went to the movies & saw Captain America: Civil War.

1. The movie theatre in Picton is part of the Aquarium.
   You buy your ticket from the same desk as you’d get an aquarium ticket.
2. To get to the theatre, they take you through a side door, past the tanks-o-fish, and into a room which holds maybe 30 people?
   It’s got tiered seating, and beanbags, which is a nice option.
3. There was nobody else there, and they showed me in & just left me to it, so I rearranged the beanbags to my own specifications.
4. At the end of the film (which I enjoyed, though it’s more of an Avengers-lite film than a Captain America film, I think), I have a moment of wondering “What happens now?”.
   There’d been no mention of coming to escort me out, but also no mention of where the exit was, so I stuck my head out of the door & followed some signs which led me to an (unlocked) side door.
   I suspect I could just as easily have wandered the other way, back through & around the Aquarium, and looked at the fishies.

Rain eventually started, and heralded the return of the hostel cat, who was wandering across the roof, saw me, came over, and demanded to be let in.
And dried.
And to be provided with a warm lap for a few hours, while a storm came straight up Queen Charlotte Sound & into the windows of my room.

The cat was eventually ejected, or at least encouraged to go find dinner, after dark, due to suspiciously proto-chundering noises.
They could have been sneezes, I suppose, but I was not prepared to take the risk of having to launder the blanket. Or my computer.

And it rained all night, as the song goes, or at least until I fell asleep. Was quite glad of the covered area between the block where my room was, and the block where the kitchen, and more importantly the kettle, lived.
The cat was also there, and spurned me, as is only fitting.

Trying my hand at one of those arty ‘light smeared by rain on a window’ shots.

Next day, I was able to stash my pack at the i-Site, where they had huge lockers for itty-bitty prices, and took a wander around a suddenly bright & blue-skied town for a few hours, until my bus to Nelson arrived.

This one’s mostly pictures.

There’s not a huge amount to say about the trip.
The passenger areas of the ferry are quite nice, a lot of folks seem to stake out seats by a window and then immediately fall asleep, which seems like a waste of a nice view, and they really do pack the cars in on those decks.

Turns out there’s a ramp from the lower deck, where you get on the ship, to the upper deck; Said ramp lifts up when they’re sailing, possibly to limit the amount of weather & salt spray making it to the lower deck?

And, of course, there’s the scenery.

All of which eventually gets us to Picton.
We were all herded downstairs, to vehicles or to a rabble on the lower deck, so I didn’t get to watch the docking. Basically, we stood in a clump until the big doors opened.

Though I did manage to get a shot just before I went to the lower deck, when we were almost there.

I did a lot of pretty close to nothing in Wellington.
just wanted to put that out there, in case anyone thought I’d have huge and portentous things to talk about

Getting from the bus station, which is also the train station, into the Cuba Street area was made so much easier by having a pack on my back. And another smaller day bag on the front, but that’s not important right now.

Found a café which would make me a food, then hopped a bus over to The Great Hall.
Plans for the day involved ‘not much’, though I did get a new pair of boots, the soles on my old ones having hit the non-waterproof point. Fell asleep on the couch for a while, as the night bus wasn’t that comfortable.

In deference to back issues, my bed for the night was the lounge floor, with a duvet for padding and another one for warmth, and it was pretty comfy. In days of yore, perhaps this would have been the prize spot, the best place in the hall, right in front of the fire.
Seeing as how this is a flat, it’s the spot in between the sofa and the TV, and lacks some of the crackling-fire ambiance, though I’m sure there’s a fireplace DVD or ’10 hours of log fire’ video out there somewhere, if I’d gone looking.

Rather than list all of things I didn’t do, I’ll go with all the stuff I did.

• Watched a bunch of Killjoys – I’d started watching this at House Needs-A-Name, but didn’t finish it.
  So we finished it, and it was worth doing. Looking forward to the next season.
• Was introduced to the show Assassination Classroom, and have watched the whole first season.
  Am also looking forward to season two.
  
  
• Bought a new pair of jeans.
  The old ones started to give up the ghost somewhere in Taupo, or maybe Rotorua, but Wellington seemed the best place to replace them.
• Recorded a Big Red Couch episode from the front room of The Great Hall.
  Seemed to go well, though, based on editing, I need to find a better microphone solution.

There was also a visit to Zealandia, to see birds. And critters.

Janjo & the Miscellaneous Children (opening for Edwin Fracas & the Shower of Bastards at the Tropicana Lounge this Saturday) dropped me off at the bus stop for stage one of my trip to Wellington, the trip to Hamilton.
Sadly, I was not able to find a Hamilton postcard; Most places were shut by the time I got there, though I was able to find a net cafe to print my ticket for the night bus. Normally the InterCity bus folks don’t care, they just look for your name on the list, but for the night bus to Wellington, and presumably for other night buses, they wanted me to have a printout.
Maybe it makes it easier on the driver?

The desire for a Hamilton Tourist-Type postcard was so that I could send it to the GIS Team at my former job, as we’d had … How to put this? … issues with jobs concerning the city.
Issues involving 200%+ utilisation weeks because someone promised something without checking with the folks who actually had to do the work.
Issues involving taking fit-for-task data and making it objectively & demonstrably worse, at the client’s request.
I could go on, but I won’t.

So, without a postcard, I tried something new in the selfie line; What do you think?

I prefer the first one my own self.

I had a 4½ hour wait in Hamilton, so I checked the movie theatre across the road from the transport station (which closed at 6pm, thank you very much Hamiltron) and found a conveniently-timed session of Hunt for the Wilderpeople, so ate up some time that way. The theatre even stored my pack for me; It seems that they get a lot of backpackers.

The bus eventually arrived, pretty much on time.
I’d opted for the Gold Class option, only available on a few buses, with wider & more reclining seats, in the downstairs portion of the bus. The steerage passengers went upstairs, but more on that later.
The whole reason I traveled from Tauranga to Hamilton was to intercept the night bus with the comfy seats; The train is inconveniently timed, and the bus options due south from Tauranga, while they would have done the job, did not offer as much of a chance of sleeping.

I think I fell asleep somewhere in Taupo; I do remember the approach to, and main street of, the town, but I don’t remember leaving. I recall bits of Turangi, a bit of the Desert Road (one of the nasty corners) and Waiouru, Palmerston North, and Bulls, where my seatmate got out and I was able to claim the window seat for the last snooze leg of the trip.
Took me a while to work out how to deploy the leg rest, and how to lie so that the lights of the oncoming vehicles didn’t hit me right in the eyes, but I slept pretty well, and got into Wellington in the cold grey light of pre-dawn.

Oh, remember those steerage passengers upstairs?
I’m pretty confident that an elderly couple sat in the Gold Class area without tickets, and possibly without realising it.
One of them sat downstairs, and the other upstairs, but came down at regular intervals; Basically, at every stop.
When a seat opened up, he took it.
The driver, he did not seem to care, or even notice.

I only took one photo in Tauranga, so, uhhh, here it is;

yes the one picture I took in Tauranga was of two cats staring at each other on a roof why are you making such a big deal of this

For the most part, Tauranga was about hanging out with Janjo & Gareth, and their mobile noisemakers beasts children.
Laundry was also involved, and the weather mercifully allowed this to happen.

Watched a couple of movies with them, Mental and Ten Inch Hero, both of which were pretty damn good.
For the Supernatural fans, Ten Inch Hero has Jensen Ackles in it, and it’s worth reading his dreadful shirts.

We also went to a … Mitre 10? Bunnings? … not sure … A big damn hardware store with a garden centre attached, plus playground and cafe.
The playground was very much the focus of small human attention, right up to the point that we got there, at which point it became the forbidden zone, and he refused to go anywhere near it, or to allow the notion that other people might go near it. Said small mammal eventually changed his mind, grudgingly, when chips became a possibility, or maybe when abandonment in the store to fend for himself became a possibility.

There was also the assembly of a sauna; One of the two-person if they’re close indoor types.
That was quite fun, though small children have an unerring ability to get in the way when you’re moving or carrying or assembling things; Like cats, but much louder.
And maybe more sticky? Not sure.
In any case, the sauna panels slot together, and the wiring system had clip-together plugs which seemed fairly simple, though a certain amount of percussive persuading was needed for some parts, and it was only a two person assembly job if one of those people is an octopus.

It was a good weekend.

I took a look through my diary/day planner thing, after actually writing a post of course, because I’m clever, and came up with a few other thoughts.

I witnessed the greatest hitchhiking technique I’ve ever seen, demonstrated by Eben, who was probably from Israel.

I had a conversation with Eben about his travel plans (pretty vague) and mine; Happily, he agreed with my notion of trying out the hostel thing before I went overseas, and shared a pet peeve about hostel dorms, being that one guy who leaves stupidly early, and spends seventy billion hours making noise at 5am because he didn’t get organised the night before.
Eben’s thoughts boiled down to “get your stuff together the night before, and if you have to make noise, do it in the hallway”.

Of the other folk in the hostel I met, and there were many, there was the aforementioned Eben,

• a lady from Kyoto who was doing the working holiday thing,
• another lady from Estonia who’d worked the distribution & marketing side of the alcohol business, and now wanted to learn about the production side, so was WWOOFing to make that happen,
• a guy from Hiroshima who was also doing the working holiday thing, working at both the hostel and a local restaurant.
  He had … extensive travel plans. Back to Japan to check in with family, then Canada on a working holiday visa, then Europe as a tourist, then Australia as a working holidayer, then Central & South America, with an eye to not settling in Japan.
• The probably German hostel manager, or maybe evening manager, and the probably English but sounds German when she speaks the language day manager, who both extolled the virtues of Rotorua as a place to live.
  Given that they’d been here for years, if not decades, that’s kind of understandable.

The day manager also gave me some advice on the BBH Hostel listings, which was ‘stay above an 80% rating’.
Have taken this to heart.

I also bravely evicted a cockroach from the solarium/sunroom thingy one night, through the expert use of my coffee cup and a brochure.
It was a big-ass bush roach, and thus fairly friendly – It had wandered out from under the couch and was watching a German family play cards.

Leaving Taupo, I was able to stash my bag at the motel, so I wandered around the town for a while before taking the bus to Rotorua.

Ended up capturing this picture, which I’m pretty happy with;

Photographing a photographer photographing a photographer

… And this one, which just looks nice.

Then, on to Rotorua.

To be honest, I didn’t much see the point of photographing a lot of the scenic stuff in Rotorua. I’m using a cellphone camera, and it can’t capture as much as my eyes can, so the photos end up looking a bit crap.

My hostel was the Funky Green Voyager, which was a fantastic first hostel for the trip.
It’s set a very high bar, not in the least because of the profusion of comfy spaces to sprawl in while reading a book, or doing computer things. Using the kitchen was exactly as chaotic as I’d assumed it was going to be; Just making a cup of coffee required tricky timing to get through the crowd to the jug, then out again while it boiled, then back in.

Did some Big Red Couch stuff, had actual conversations with five different people, looked at the scenic wonders of Rotorua without actually spending any money on them, …, nothing spectacular, but it was kind of relaxing.
I did wander around the shoreline of the lake, where many thousands of midges wanted to be friends with my nostrils.
I also went to the Night Market, which was pretty fun; They’d closed off a couple of streets, put up those expanding stall things, had some live music. (One of whom was pretty good when he did his own stuff, but then he switched to acoustic covers of Creed songs, which … were not as good)

My one obnoxiously tourist thing was to go and ride the luge; Did this on my last day in town, between check out (where they gave me a guide to BBH Hostels & told me what percentage rating to try to stay above) and taking the bus to Tauranga.
I was able to stash my pack at the i-Site/Bus Terminal, and my backpack in a locker at the top of the luge, so there was no risk of loss or damage.

I’d forgotten how nice the view is from up a mountain – My attention was more focused on riding the little carts down said mountain.
That said; Look how pretty it is!

So I spent some time riding little gravity carts down a hill, on a variety of tracks which wind through forest, then riding a chairlift back up. Didn’t crash into anyone or injure myself, which is an improvement on last time, when I hit the side of the track hard enough to come out of the cart and slide to a stop on the dirt.
Best Day Ever!

And there’s the view.

They’ve got a lot of mountain bike … paraphenalia? … there too. Tracks I’d be hesitant about doing on foot were visible from the gondola which takes you up the mountain, and from the chairlifts which take you back to the top of the luge runs.
Saw the occasional mountain biker on the trails, and many more riding the gondola back up, so I’m not sure where they all went. According to a couple of staff members I talked to on the ride down, there aren’t as many stretcher/airlift rescues as you’d expect.

The staff members also mentioned a very professional luge-cart rustling operation which had been going on, now broken up by Police. None of us could work out why anyone would steal the things; The only work on very smooth concrete and significant slopes, so they’d be bugger-all use to anyone other than a luge operation.

I’d taken a municipal bus out there, but walked back, pausing to take a picture of course;

Quite by accident, I found the end of the line in Rotorua.

There is an operation running little two-person railcars on what used to be the rail line into Rotorua.
Not sure why there’s no train running to a major tourist centre, but there isn’t.

And that was Rotorua.

The bus arrived late, which wouldn’t have been an issue if there hadn’t been a plan for folks to come & pick me up from the drop-off in Tauranga. It all worked out OK, thanks to the wonder of cellphones, a Dutch chap whose daughter was on the bus & giving estimates of lateness, and some guesswork on my part as to when “about fifteen minutes out” was in a town I’d not been to in decades.

This is somewhere between a placeholder and a memory-jogger.
Funny comments, pictures, and witticisms will be added later.
ok, so I lied about the funny. and the witty.

This really starts with the getting there, which was not half the fun.
I mean, it wasn’t bad, though the bus did end up arriving late; It’s just that the ratio seems off in this case. I’d put it at no more than a twentieth of the fun, and most of that is down to a seatmate’s increasingly-frantic parents blowing up his phone.

I took ManaBus from Auckland to Taupo, because … Well, they’re cheap, and the last time I used them they gave me an Easter Egg.

They were not what you’d call organised at the bus stop. A chaotic shambles would be closer to the mark.
One increasingly-annoyed driver trying to check people on, and deal with baggage, and explain where this bus was going, and that that bus was taking the same route because there were a lot of passengers, … What they needed was more people, or maybe a sign.
Eventually bags and people got loaded, though there was a lot of confusion and concern in the crowd; Some people heard bits of the information, there was no-one to ask other than the driver, and he’d hit “I’ve already announced that” mode and was being passive-aggressive about it.
Apart from the bit where he decided that a camo-covered thing which was probably a tent, and was handed to him by someone of West Asian or Middle-Eastern appearance, was the perfect opportunity to make ‘jokes’ about the person being a terrorist. Really, a class act all around.

When I got to Taupo, I wrote this;

There may come a day when I will consider the calendar in a broader context when making travel plans, and make note of public holidays.
And there may come a day when travel through Auckland on a Friday before a long weekend by way of the roading network runs free and clear, unhindered by construction works, accidents, or thousands of people leaving work early in a futile attempt to avoid the crowds.

And the day may come that the City, and indeed the Country, possesses a public transport system worthy of the name, and people eschew their cars, traveling by train or light rail to their well-deserved vacations.

But it was not this day.

Yeah, there was traffic, and we got in a bit late, and the guy next to me made the mistake of telling the parent who was collecting him, and the parent back in Auckland, that this was happening.
They then constantly texted and called him for the next hour, asking for updates, and ‘are you there yet’, and so on.

Given that this is stop one of <<insert number here>>, I went with the easy option and stayed at the Great Lake Motel, where I’d stayed once before, back in 2009, before Trailwalker.

I’m going to work my way up to a bed in a dorm in a backpacker’s hostel, because I don’t really know whether I can do that sort of travel.

I didn’t have much of an agenda for Taupo, and this is borne out, I think, in what I did.
Not much.

I mooched about.
I looked at the pretty scenery.

Cloud-Wrapped Hills Above Taupo

View across Lake Taupo, hopefully towards Ruapehu/Tongariro/Ngaruhoe

I had a go at doing laundry, and went for a wander to find a laudromat.
Sadly, I forgot to get anything in the laundry liquid department on my way there, and I’d missed the line on the flyer which said “Self-Service On Weekends”, so getting some there was right out.
Going to chalk that one up to a Learning Experience, but it was still a nice enough walk, and I did acquire some emergency travel laundry supplies on the way back.

Traveling, Hopefully Non-Leaking, Laundry Supplies

I saw Kung Fu Panda 3 and Zootopia.
(as it happens, at the same movie theatre at which I’d seen the original Kung Fu Panda – we’d been snowboarding in Ohakune, and the weather was crap, so we came to Taupo & went to the movies. also saw Get Smart that day)

Monday was ANZAC Day, and I woke up early enough to attend the Dawn Service, so I did.

Dawn on ANZAC Day in Taupo

The weather cleared up for the occasion, so things were both Scenic & Bloody Cold.
I am not regretting that Merino Base Layer long-sleeved thing.

Taupo Cenotaph, Decorated For ANZAC Day

View Across Lake Taupo on a cold, clear day

It doesn’t show up in this picture, or any of the others I took, but I think I could see a vent on what I’m assuming is Tongariro.
I think.
Could have been an oddly-vertical cloud.

I also wandered along the riverside for a bit while the sun was shining, which, again, was full of scenic prettiness.

Things I Learned
I went with the advice of a friend, and got packing cubes to make the whole clothes thing more manageable.
On various US trips, there were enough clothing items of each sort that they formed their own City-States in my suitcase, jealously guarding their own territory from interloping socks and marauding shirts, and only rarely fraternising. This wasn’t going to work in a backpack with an 8-day supply of everything.

Version One of the scheme was, I think, a good try; The mesh bag which came with the bag for shirts, a couple of small mesh-top packing ‘cubes’ for socks & underwears.†
It worked OK, but involves more faffing about than I’d like.

Version Two involves a dry-bag of the same size as my designated laundry bag, though a different colour (green for dirty laundry, orange for clean clothing, and I’m not sure what the sectarian implications of that are), with all of the shirts, socks, & underwears‡ in the one bag.

† Not a typo.
‡ Totally deliberate.