Category: Escapades
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Rotorua
En route from Whitianga to Rotorua we stopped over for a walk around an old gold mining railway track. This involved gingerly making our way through dark tunnels with only my dingy torch between about ten people. Some of our number took a wrong turn before the tunnels and almost missed the bus. Rotorua is…
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Mercury Bay
The first “real” day of the Kiwi Experience tour took us east to Mercury Bay, for sea kayaking and to experience the springs at Hot Water Beach. The latter are unfortunately only available at low tide, and so were skipped. Sea kayaking is a lot of fun, and the location was idyllic. Those on the…
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Bay of Islands (Paihia and Russell)
How not to do it. Getting onto the Kiwi Experience bus was straightforward, and our driver guide had the right sort of mix of humour and information that makes the trip interesting. All the organisation (apart from the initial booking) is done en route, via clipboards that are passed around the bus. The driver guide…
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Auckland
I experienced Auckland over the course of three mornings, three evenings and miscellanous parts of the daytime. Nobody actually seems to like it terribly much. My impression is that the city is considered a necessary evil. The CBD is generally adequately endowed with eateries. On my first night, Hong Yul introduced me to a collection…
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Rangitoto
Dave has arrived in Auckland. Actually I arrived yesterday, but I didn’t bother taking any photos. I did meet up for dinner with Hong Yul, who I’d met at two ASWEC conferences, and we discussed life, the universe and everything. So today, having successfully negotiated a booking with Kiwi Experience for tomorrow (you buy the…
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Not quite so hairy anymore
It’s 2008 – just about time for my haircut, so I reasoned. Suffice it to say, I no longer look like Medusa, though it possibly hasn’t purged the inner evil. I had thought about getting my head shaved for charity, since not only would I be contributing to the general good, but it would also…
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House-lifting
“Thief!” yelped Professor Geoff West as I stampeded past him in the stairwell of the New Technologies building armed with a deck chair and a backpack stuffed with household cleaning equipment. “It’s mine!” I yelped back. Indeed, I had been carrying the chair since I left my new home in Manning half an hour beforehand,…