Journey to Middle Earth

We had a fun-packed delay at Santiago airport as we whiled away the hours by first tapping into the airports wireless lan on the iPaq to surf the net (well, Steve did to be fair. Beth wouldn't have a clue) and then enabling the infrared so we could change channels on the airport TV's. We left very confused staff running around like headless chickens switching TV's back to the right channels at the right volumes! We found it most amusing...probably had to be there though in hindsight. Taxi.

Arriving in Auckland we were both like kids at Christmas, desperate for our first glimpse of the legendary New Zealand. Beth, because she has grown up with images and stories from New Zealand, delivered by her Auntie Maureen who sailed for 6 weeks to join her husband (Rob) 36 years previously. Steve, because he's an adrenalin junkie and Tolkein fan. We actually got off to a very bad start when we realised that our cash card did not work. After a quick look at our online statement we realised that our cards were being used in Brazil....6 weeks after we had been there. 3 calls to Lloyds, 350GBP down and minor tantrums all round we finally got it sorted and the cloned card stopped. A big thanks to Maui campervans who were very calm in the face of a sobbing Beth; Alan, Steve's Dad, who fronted the deposit for the camper van; and Richard, Beth's Dad, who bailed us out with cash transfer to Beth's Auntie Maureen's. Aren't Dads brilliant? If we hadn't been so stressed then we would have been the proudest people ever as we drove our campervan, home for 3 months, complete with own toilet, shower (hooray, no smelly shared hostel bathrooms) and double bed off the forecourt. Instead of heading to Auckland as planned, we went south to Cambridge, 'Town of Trees & Champions' according to the brochures, and importantly home of Beth's Auntie Maureen and Uncle Rob. Their hospitality was amazing; they fed us, let us camp on their drive, did our washing (and Steve's dirty boxer shorts are not a pretty sight), gave us wine, took us to dinner, helped us plan our route, got us maps of New Zealand and were generally incredibly kind. We even picked oranges from their tree for fresh juice at breakfast - the most vitamin C we have had in months after an unhealthy time in South Amercia! As it was only the 4th time that Beth had seen them in her life, we wished we could have stayed longer but the rest of New Zealand called and we promised to return one day instead.

We drove on the first day to Rotarua, the hub of tourism in the North Island and famous for it's thermal reserves. Certainly the steam rising mysteriously from the forests was certainly testament to this. Waiotapu was first on our agenda and we weren't sure what to expect from the self-billed 'Thermal Wonderland'. Wow. Amazing. Incredible. Unbelievable. We walked round in wonder, taking in the bubbling mud pools, holes in the ground with steam pouring from them, and rocks stained with sulpher and mineral reserves making them vivid yellows, blues, greens, whites and reds. Truly an assault to the senses as you took in the colours, heard the deep rumblings and bubbling water below ground and smelt the revolting sulpher. You are lucky that the web does not yet have smell-o-vision is all we can say! The champagne pool was the highlight and we weren't even disappointed when we realised it wasn't named in the literal sense! 700 years old, formed after a volcanic eruption and with a bubbling hot surface tempreture of 74c, it was a steaming mass of colour as it overflowed into the aptly named 'Artist's palette' and eventually 'Devil's Bath' - an illuminous yellow colour (from ferrous salt and sulpher from anyone interested in chemistry) - a surreal sight against a backdrop of more sedate rocks and ferns.

Convinced that nothing would ever beat the sight of nature at it's most beautiful and temperamental, we stopped next at Waimangu Volcanic Valley. The setting itself looked like the jungle area of Lost Gardens of Heligan, Devon but on a gigantic scale. Forest lined the valley and cowered beneath Mount Tarawera, a still active volcano that exploded so violently in 181AD that historians as far as Rome and China both witnessed the eruption and documented it. Since the last eruption in 1886 that was responsible for totally obliterating the Pink and White silica terraces considered the 8th wonder of the world at the time, the valley has re-grown it's vegetation and welcomed new wildlife. It is also home to the largest hot spring in the world and up until last century, the highest geyser. It was a 6k walk around the valley and it's difficult to describe the sights you see; steaming rocks, boiling lakes, mineral crystals, violent geysers and terraces stained with every colour imaginable. Maybe the jewel in the Waimangu crown was the Inferno Crater Lake. The water is turquoise and resembles a secret lagoon of the like that you may stumble upon on in the Maldives, except for the tell-tale steam billowing lazily against the red rocks behind.

Snuggled against the cold back in the campervan, we agreed that even against tough competition like Machu Pichu, Iguassu Falls, the Amazon Jungle and wildlife in Puerto Madryn, Waiotapu and Waimangu are the most fabulous sights we have seen so far on our travels. They will certainly take some beating.