I think of Rotorua as Rotorooter due to the sulpher smell, but it's still a nice little place. Again, I was soooo bad about pictures. I'm planning on coming back here, so maybe some pics then. There are some nice hotsprings, some mud-baths that turn out to be not so muddy -- mostly just cloudy water. Oh, and I'll just mention some real butt-heads that run internet shops. I'm surprised to say that it was a lot easier getting my laptop on line in the uncharted backwaters of the Himalayas than it is in one of the more touristy and populated towns of New Zealand. If you're in New Zealand and someone in an internet place wants to quadruple-charge you to hook their laptop up to their network because "They're the only one in town that will do it," they're probably lying. It's happended twice so far.

Geothermal Stuff

above: Kerosene Creek -- almost too hot to sit in [davetracker.com file photo]

I love sitting in hot springs, but once you've seen a few geothermal steam vents and mud pools, you've kind of seen them all and it's rare when it's actually pretty or scenic. With that said, we went to a touristy little place called (in that raceway-commerical-announcer's most wrathful voice:) Hell's Gate. Ooooohhhh. Yesserrie... the actual gate to hell, for a little geothermal tourist walk followed up by some mud baths.

This place was actually rather pretty as geothermal areas go. A stream came through the area, turning the steam vents into boiling pools. As far as the mud baths go ... well, I was expecting to strip down to the buff and sit in a pool of mud -- or have it shoveled on to me or something. Again, clothing was required and the "mud bathes" turned out to be more like muddy water w/ some mud on the bottom that you could slather on to yourself. It was still a nice relaxing hot tub, but I'll recommend to others that you skip the mud bath -- just walk though the geothermal area and then go to Kerosene Creek, which is free but watch out for meningitis-causing amoebas. (Just don't dunk your head in the water and you're ok). We didn't make it to Kerosene Creek, but here's a photo from a previous trip...

Rafting



We signed up for a rafting trip -- it's a short little trip down a warm river spilling out of the lake. The trip goes through a beautiful canyon, over several small (1-3M) waterfalls and at one point over a 7M (21') water fall. It doesn't seem that big until you remember that the raft is 4M long. I actually did this same trip a year ago, but it was still a lot of fun. Good job, Elaine, for being so brave and never getting so much as a worried look on her face at the top of the big fall. If only Brandy and I could have been so brave...

A 12' boat goes over a 21' waterfall

photo credit: of course we bought these from the rafting company photographer

The Maori people are the indiginous people of New Zealand. It's pronounced MO-REE, but you roll the R in a funny way that you almost get a D out of it, but not quite and the O is actually more of an O than a AU, but not all the way an O. I won't go too far into it, but the Kiwi's and the Maori probably have one of the better indiginous/European relationships of any country. And you can really sense it. Enough to make Hawaii feel like a battle zone. So we went to a touristy Maori "dinner" where they do a show in a re-constructed village and talk about various aspects of their culture in a pretty intelligent, but fun way. And you end up eating a semi-traditional meal, which was not bad (I've heard really bad reports about some).

Damn -- I forgot my camera for this. The real highlight that will stick with me for some time to come was the "sacred spring" on the walk at the end of the evening. We went down a trail, past about a dozen glow-worms [a dozen or so glow-worms is not especially scenic] to their sacred spring. It was an unbelivably crystal-clear pool of water, about 5M across, nestled into a hill side with a little boardwalk going around the edge. In the pool were several large black freshwater eels (maybe 2' long) and a couple of California trout. The spring was coming up from the bottom through some coarse sand which you could see "bubbling" with the current, but it was course enough to not cloud the water at all. It was just one of those amazing sights that you'll never forget. No camera.

Again pics are hard as my camera isn't water proof. This was a *lot* more fun than I thought it would be. Basically, you pay these people NZ$80ish and they gear you up in wetsuits, speelunker's helmets, boots and ... and innertube to fit your back-side and you walk/float/stumble (mostly floating) through a glow-worm filled cave.

This was definitley a new experience. So surreal to see a dozen people floating in black water, all wearing helmets w/ little led-lights (which lit the way, but weren't too bright), floating along w/ their bums in the water. All with quite the spectacle of glow worms -- thousands -- along the ceiling of the cave, which ranged from 2 - 10M high. The water wasn't quit what I'd call rapids, but there usually was a current and was surprisingly cold. At one point we formed a long chain w/ our feet under the arms of the person in front of us -- very nice to just lay back, relax and look at the blue-gree glow-worm constellations on the ceiling.

Ok -- here's the straight dope on the glow-worms: They're maggots, not worms, but worms is much more conducive to tourism. Arachnocampa Luminesca. They're the larval stage of fungus gnats. The glow comes from a bioluminescent chemical reaction that gets going at the end of their digestive tract. Ok -- their poop brightly glows. They secrete a thin, clear, hollow tube of mucuous which they live in and from which they suspend several if not dozens of long sticky beaded chains. They can actually move about within the tube, turining around to face the other way when needed. The chains that hangd down are web-like (thus the Arachno) and insects that hatch out of the water inside the cave, fly up to the light and get caught in the threads. The threads are basically hollow and the larva, when it senses something is caught, moves down the inside of the web-like thread, with the thread stretching around it's body, to grab supper.

We'll see if I can get the Macro feature of my camera to capture any of this as opposed to the Brownian motion of my beer foam.


Thanks, Kelly, (um, I think) for sending me the following:

What makes a glow worm glow ?

The blue/green glow of the larvae is the result of a reaction between body products and oxygen in the enlarged tips of the lavae's excretory tubes. The light is the result of a chemical reaction involving several components:
luciferin ( a waste product )
luciferase ( the enzyme that acts upon luciferin )
adenosine triphosphate ( the energy molecule )
and oxygen.

All these combined make an electronically excited product capable of emitting a blue-green light. To the average person's sight, up close the light appears more blue than green. Spectrometer readings show the colour is actually in the green colour spectrum.

Also, thanks Kelly for sending the link to the straight dope on glow-maggots

Few people who come to visit New Zealand actually manage to see a real, honest-to-god Kiwi. As in the bird. Well, one night, stumbling around drunk in the dark, looking for a lost set of keys, we were in luck:

a living, breathing Kiwi

Luckily, I had my camera with me. I'm still learing how to use serveral of it's features, which never cease to surprise me. Like the handy X-Ray function:


Way to go, Nikon! Kiwi's are about the size of a foot ball. This Kiwi was pregnant. It's truely amazing how big their eggs are. Wonder what they managed to do in the Garden of Eden to piss off the management.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, came the fabled ... . ... Giant Kiwi, even more rarely seen by tourists. I was hungry, so I decided to attack it...



Seriously, this place was actually pretty cool for someone not completely into birds or zoos. They have 3 of the 4 Kiwis in captivity and most of their other birds are injured and are being rehabilitated.