Day 3 - Streams and Showers

Sorry for the short delay, believe it or not I was at school, enjoy…

Day 3

You know all those wacky bells and whistles you hear on radio shows? Imagine if someone had pressed about forty of those buttons at once and kept pressing different ones over and over again… at 6:45am. That is what I woke up to on the morning of day three. Trapped in my sleeping bag cocoon, the noise poked and prodded at me, whistled and whirled by me, what on earth was making those sounds? I finally managed to peel myself out of the bag and stumbled ass over end to the tent door, slightly ticked off but curious more than anything.

When I finally got out of the tent I looked around for the source of the noise. It turns out the radio show was being run by a countless number of different New Zealand birds that were in trees, on the lake and walking around our campsite. Some were big and blue, others small and yellow but more amazing than their colours, shapes and sizes were the sounds these birds were making. I kept looking around for the five different rusty doors that were creaking open or the person playing the triangle, hell I could have sworn that someone was beat boxing behind a bush. It was so strange to be out in the middle of nowhere hearing that old familiar tone for dial up internet coming from a branch just above me.

Thanks to the birds I was up early enough to witness the warmth of the early morning light spread itself like soft butter across the lake. The flooding that had occurred along the shore of the lake was now quite marshy and home to different species of ducks and other wetland birds. In all of my excitement to solve the mystery of the rogue radio sound panel I had not taken notice of the outfit I was prancing around in. If any of you recall the caving blog about my new striped thermals, I was now donning a wonderful purple striped suit of sorts and of course my red bandana, simply charming.

After my brief photoshoot, where I was literally shot at by cameras as I ran for cover to hide my striped ass, we packed up the tents and made a quick breakfast so we could be on our way. Our first destination was just down the road from where we were camping; it was called Kerosene Creek. As we drove down the gravel road towards the trailhead, small pools of water sat on either side, fuming, perhaps out of jealousy of said creek, perhaps because they were geothermal pools, nobody really knows… The song Smoke On Water by Deep Purple came on and it took everyone a minute or so to get the irony, but I didn’t blame them because they were likely more focused on not breathing in the nauseating thickness of sulphuric eggs that now hung in the air. When we arrived at the trail it was a short five minute walk alongside Kerosene Creek and a dead possum stuck holding onto a tree branch by its teeth until we arrived at a small waterfall. At last after two days of jumping into freezing cold water I was being rewarded with a natural hot water tub and waterfall, who cares if we all smell like rotten egg shit, right?

The swim in the geo thermal pool was very nice but it looked really funny because before we all got in there was talk of this bacteria present in the water that could eat your brain and kill you or at least something similar to that, there were documented cases of people dying after getting water in their ears (insert suspenseful music here). So there we all were laughing, haha… but at the same time cautiously monitoring the level of our ears as we floated and crawled around the pool. This was quite entertaining because despite everyone’s best efforts to keep their ears dry, the mist from the waterfall had breached the seemingly impenetrable fortress walls of fingers and hair in an attempt to eat our brains.

After we got out and dried ourselves off… twice, we packed into the cars and headed around the corner again to the mud pools that bubbled and popped like sauce in a microwave, but without the cleanup. It was pretty cool to see these little explosions of mud gurgle and reach up with amorphous fingers trying to rid themselves of their boiling body. This didn’t last long because you can only watch mud for so long, especially when its so damn hard to take pictures of it in action, sneaky mud.

It was about noon and so the cars split up with ours heading into Rotorua and the other two heading on a hike to Rainbow Lake, another geothermal pool. We had to pick up yet another member of Team Jackie Chan, Benen from Ireland, one of Graeme’s good friends. This brought the total in our van to seven and so I patted myself on the back again for my prudent acquisition of the passenger seat early on in the trip. After picking up camping supplies for Benen we met up with the rest of the crew and suddenly the power of the passenger seat was overloaded; the responsibility of deciding what we were going to do and where we were going to stay in order to satisfy the needs of our now thirteen person party was draped over me like a wet blanket. Feeling overwhelmed and claustrophobic at the thought of attending to each persons requests I directed us to a redwood forest that a number of people had been talking about and separated myself from the group to regain my bearings.

The park was great and provided ample space for me to toss my thoughts around and try to figure out where to stay that night so it wouldn’t be too expensive, would have a shower, would maybe have a place for a campfire, wouldn’t be too far away, wouldn’t be too close to the city, would be better than last night etc… good grief. All I wanted was flat ground and a water source. After Graeme and I spoke with the lady at the park centre we had directions to a Top 10 Holiday Campsite… this should be interesting.  When we got there it was across the street from a small beach that bordered Blue Lake, which was just beautiful, surrounded by mountains and heavy foliage. I walked inside the office and asked if they had any tent spaces without utilities and showers available. At first she gave me the usual “yes, that’ll be twenty dollars a person please”, until I pitched my second offer,

“Uhh we have thirteen people and twenty dollars seems a little steep is there any way you can give us a group rate?”

“THIRTEEN PEOPLE! Well yeah we can give it to you for 15 a person and we have hot showers and bathroom facilities for free, a kitchen, barbeques, free kayaks to use on the lake, a complimentary spa, laundry facilities we can put you on sites right next to them if you like no problem” she replied in a single breath.

That’s what I’m talking about. I told the woman I would check with the group, hoping that maybe she’d offer the sites for a lower rate, which she didn’t but I still walked out of there with a shit grin on my face because I knew I had found the gold mine that would meet the needs and wants of the group. Even though fifteen dollars seemed like too much to those of us who didn’t care about showers, I mean come on, we were getting free kayaks to use on this picturesque lake surrounded by mountains, you’d be an idiot to pass that up.  Needless to say we paid our site fees and had the tents up within the first half hour of arriving.

            It was starting to get late in the afternoon so almost all of us rushed up to the office again to rent our free kayaks. The guys renting them to us explained that we should stay around the edges of the lake because of the water-skiers and jet boats but then laughed because it was the middle of winter and we were the only people brave or stupid enough be on the lake this time of year. I mean I was wearing a long sleeve shirt and some shorts as was everyone else... pretty crazy I guess. When we got out on the lake it was hard not to laugh at it all, I have to be the luckiest guy I know. I yelled out to the mountains to see if they would answer, it took them four seconds to get back to me, such a friendly country.

            Because we had barbeques and kitchen facilities for the night the group decided that we would have a proper meal and take a break from the sodium friendly instant noodle diet. For five bucks each person got to enjoy either a decent size steak, burgers, chicken breast or veggie burgers accompanied by sweet potato fries, topped with roasted green, red peppers and onions. Not bad eh! After dinner I hopped in the hot tub and followed it up with a warm shower, heavenly, I mean we were really roughing it. That night gave me a chance to charge up batteries and empty memory cards onto the computer. I also managed to empty a bottle of red wine as I stayed up with Graeme, Benen and the driver of Monstah, Ross. The four of us sat on the patio in front of the kitchen shooting the shit until about midnight which is terribly late when you’re getting up early but it was well worth it because it won’t soon be forgotten, at least not by me. It’s not very often you get different perspectives from New Zealand, Ireland, Scotland and Canada sitting around the same table.

            The temperature had dropped significantly by the time we wrapped things up and so I layered myself in not one but two pairs of striped thermals and mitts. I had to laugh on the way into my tent because Benen had his one-man/mouse tent set up just next to mine and we had asked him earlier what wing or floor he was planning on sleeping in. The red wine added another inch or two to my sleeping pad that night and put a few more feathers in my non-existent pillow. It didn’t take long to drop into a heavy sleep, comforted by the thought that I had found flat ground, a water source, and I guess a warm shower first thing in the morning wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Day 4 coming soon.

Cheers,

Brayden