Rotorua

Rotorua looks a lot nicer in the daytime than at 2am after an
"exciting" flight and trip from the Auckland airport. You don't really
smell the sulphur springs unless the wind is blowing in the right
direction.

It's a curious place. Geysers and hotsprings just erupt where ever they
darned well feel like it. So, you can ride by someone's house, or a
storm drain, and out of it streams a plume of white smoke. I was walking
around on a Sunday, which is quiet in smallish towns like this one.
However, from the local high school I could hear a group of people
singing in Maori. Not part of the tourist circuit, where you can buy a
hangi (dinner) and dance show, complete with haka (the ferocious maori
chant known to most from any viewing of an All-Blacks game), grass
skirts and tourist trinkets.

Rotorua is a big Maori town, and all the signage is bilingual. Down on the lake is a Maori village, that
boasts very interesting looking buildings, including a meeting house
and a church. The architecture of the church is a hybrid of Maori
carving and C19th England. Surprisingly, it works. I didn't go into
the settlement as it's private, so you need to be invited.

I took the Intercity bus at 1:15pm today to Lake Taupo, then changed
to another bus to go to Turangi. I have a 5:30am shuttle booked to do
the Tongariro Alpine Crossing tomorrow. Weather is supposed to be
fine, and snow level is 3,000m.

I'm finding the Intercity bus drivers very cooperative when I want to
load William the Conqueror in a specific way: upright, stuck between
my backpack and a large carryall. No doubt the kiwi bus drivers have literally "seen it all" and are used to crazy backpackers hauling all sorts of odd shaped things. So I fit right in. I'm trying to prevent damage to the
bike. So far, there's lots of luggage in all the busses i've ridden,
so it's not falling over and sliding around like a ping pong ball.

I still have too much stuff, even though I am managing to pack
tighter. Not sure what I will throw out, but something has to go. It's
too unwieldy to ride fully loaded on my "circus" bike.

Monday and Tuesday I'm staying at Riverstone Backpackers in Turangi, one of the
hostels that gets a 90%+ approval rating from the BBH group. BBH is a competitor to the YHA system. I bought for $45 NZD a BBH card, which gives me $3 off future bookings, and $20 of domestic calling card. Riverstone deserves its high ranking. Kiwipaka for the last 2 nights was a bit scuzzy. This
place is palatial by comparison, and I'm paying $25 NZD for a dorm bed
(6 in the room but only 2 others occupied tonight). The private room
at Kiwipaka cost me $52 NZD. The dorms there would have been a bit
rough.

Photos to come once I have wireless. I don't trust public internet terminals with my flash drive just yet.