Thursday, March 24, 2005 (Te Kuiti – New Zealand NI)
Add this hostel to the
bad
list. All the backpackers and half the population of New Zealand are also in
search of accommodation this Easter so what chance do
we
have of getting a place to stay? Driving through Lord of the Rings country.
Looking forward to exposing ourselves to Maori culture. Don't tell the Israelis
that it's pork for dinner!
Day 381 (191). We’ve stayed at a very
wide range of accommodations over the course of the year or so that we’ve
so far travelled and we’ve seen the whole gamut of both good and bad
hostels alike. After due consideration, we’ve both unanimously concluded
that the place we just spent the past couple of nights at in Wellington is one
that most definitely falls into the worst category. Cramped conditions,
difficult to park, perched on a steep hill, dodgy security on the windows, damp,
slow and expensive Internet, filthy conditions in the kitchen, uncomfortable
chairs in the dining room, only one phone for dozens of people to use and very
unfriendly and unhelpful staff are just some of the things that have conspired
against us. To top it all off, we’ve now both got a load more sand fly
bites between us. This is probably due to the fact that we’ve had to keep
the window open to try to get rid of the smell of damp and musky air in the
room. Yes, I think it fair to say that we were happy to say goodbye to
Rowena’s Lodge in Wellington this
morning.
Although our accommodation
for tonight was already arranged, we both ran out of phone credit with which to
continue our search for a place to stay for Friday and through the weekend.
Accordingly, the first thing we did after pulling away this morning was to stop
in at a nearby convenience store to buy another NZ$20 (€11,60) of phone
credit for my phone. I would have continued to call around the hostels last
night using my phone card but there was already a line of people at the one and
only pay phone in the building, so I had to pick up this morning where I left
off last night. The problem is that it is Easter and we have to contend with the
local population in addition to the backpacking crowd all competing for a finite
number of beds. We’ve had difficulty getting a place to stay before but
there has always been one place willing to take us in. Not so this time, it
seemed. Every last place I called was completely booked solid. Many even
chuckled when we asked if they had a room available this weekend. Rapidly
running out of options, we turned reluctantly to the mid-range accommodation
places listed in our guidebook but even those were all fully booked too. Oh
dear! What on earth are we going to do now? We desperately want to see Rotorua
but with no place to stay, we are completely stumped. There weren’t even
any doom rooms available anywhere in town. In an act of near desperation, we
called the information office in Rotorua itself to see if they might be able to
help. We gave them our details and budget range and they kindly set to work
trying to find us something. An agonising hour went by before they called us
back. The good news was that they had found us a place to stay in town. The bad
news was that it was a bed and breakfast at a whopping NZ$130 (€75,40) per
night – nearly three times what we would typically pay. We had hoped to
stay in Rotorua for three nights but at that rate, we decided to stay there for
just two instead. Even if we do find something else cheaper, we’re stuck
with this one now since it was on the condition that we make immediate payment
for the two nights over the phone with our credit card that they made the
reservation for us. Still, at least we now have a place to stay. I keep telling
myself that it could have been
worse.
We spent the better part of
five hours of uneventful driving up to Waitamo today; rivalling the time it took
us to drive through the desert to Wave Rock from Perth in Australia. For the
most part, however, the surrounding scenery was a lot more interesting than the
Western Australia desert and it kept changing. As we navigated our way around
the Tongariro National Park, we toyed with the idea of getting much closer to
the volcano there that was featured in the Lord of the Rings. Time was still
ticking, however, and to do so may very well have meant missing out on visiting
the glow-worm caves today so we pushed on ahead instead. We also failed to
locate the information office in Ohakune to get directions and advice on how to
get to the rim of the volcano. It will simply have to remain a casualty of our
lack of time. New Zealand’s physical features and landscapes have featured
very heavily in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. During the later part of our
journey, it felt very much like we were driving through The Shire. There’s
a good chunk of tourism here in New Zealand that is hitching a ride off the fact
that the movie trilogy was filmed on location entirely
here.
By the time we got to
Taumarunui, we were once again in need of a leg stretch break. We stopped in at
the information office there and spoke to a couple of very friendly older women
behind the counter about our lack of time dilemma and they did their level best
to help us string together a plan for how to spend the next week. After talking
things over with them, we now have a much better idea of what we are going to be
doing and where we are going to be going. We also had them book us into the
Maori dinner and cultural performance tomorrow evening in Rotorua. I
wasn’t too phased by the NZ$80 (€46,40) per person price tag for
that, given that we would be fed a banquet as well as a heap of Maori culture
for the evening.
With one, last,
final push, we made it finally all the way up to Waitamo and duly put our
discount tickets to good use in buying two tickets to see the caves and their
resident glow-worms. After the fifteen percent discounts were applied, I ended
up having to pay NZ$47 (€27,26) for the pair of us. Tour groups depart
every thirty-minutes or so and we tagged onto one of the last tours of the day
that was just departing. We’ve had the chance to see glow-worms previously
here in New Zealand but we’ve always been reluctant to pay the hefty price
tags given that there is strictly no photography permitted, although I do
understand the reasons behind this, as the glow-worms are disturbed by both
light and noise. This time, however, we decided to go ahead anyway – after
all, we didn’t just drive five hours to get here for nothing. The thing is
that glow-worms are only found in New Zealand and some parts of Southern
Australia so it really is a one in a lifetime experience to get to see them.
Although quintessentially touristy, the guided tour of the caves was very
informative. We were taken through part of the cave system itself first to see
the stalagmites and stalactites but we’ve seen much better cave formations
in other countries and this one was not particularly special or interesting. We
were both bowled over, on the other hand, when we were finally introduced to the
sections of the cave where the glow-worms reside. They are curious creatures
indeed. Small, mosquito larvae type animals that hang on the ceiling of the cave
above a river of quietly flowing fresh water. They live there in colonies and
each individual glow-worm dangles a spider’s web-like thread beneath it.
These threads vary from anything up to half a metre in length and are coated
with small globules of a sticky substance that traps other insects. Once the
glow-worm has detected a captured insect, it reels in its thread and sucks all
the juice from its prey – essentially eating it alive. What makes the
glow-worm so impressive, however, is the little beam of glowing light that it
emits from its abdomen, from whence it gets its name. It’s this light that
attracts the insects on which it preys to begin with. The light is generated by
a chemical reaction with bacteria that live inside the glow-worm. The hungrier
the glow-worm, the brighter the light it emits. With thousands upon thousands of
the little beast all crammed into the roof spaces of the cave, it looks like a
fantastic chandelier suspended from the ceiling. There really is nothing else
quite like it in the natural world and I’m glad we got to see it in the
end.
Having basked in the glow of the
glow-worms, we made our way to our hostel via the local supermarket in Te Kuiti
to pick up some food for a roast dinner tonight. The hostel is a few Kilometres
out of town and sits up on a hill that overlooks it. It’s a very
picturesque setting and at just NZ$45 (€26,10) per night, I wish we could
stay here longer. The cabins are self-contained and very modern and well
appointed. We have a comfortable double bed in a cabin that looks out down the
hill to the town. Rumour has it that the weather tomorrow is going to be very
rainy so we are enjoying the view whilst it
lasts.
Despite all the Israelis here
in the hostel, we enjoyed a lovely roast pork dinner and spent some time
socialising and watching a movie with some of the other travellers. The
extremely friendly and helpful owners and proprietors have told us there is no
need to worry about checking out by a specific time tomorrow morning but we will
get up relatively on time anyway so that we can call Dad in England to wish him
a happy birthday. It will still be the evening of the twenty-forth then so we
won’t have missed the boat. We did the same for Mum on her birthday a few
days ago.
Posted: Thu - March 24, 2005 at 11:08 PM