Fat Dogs, Arsenic, and Art Deco

Today was another travel day…roughly 4 hours worth. We started our day back at the Fat Dog Café for breakfast where I (Greg) had spag, toast, and hashbrowns. What’s spag? Spaghetti…interesting. A lot like spaghetti-o’s.

After breakfast, we left the stinkiest city in the world (Rotorua) behind and headed south-east towards Wai-O-Tapu, the self proclaimed “thermal wonderland.” We arrived in time to witness the “Lady Knox” geyser spew off at 10:15 am. Pretty reliable? Sure…if you "help" Mother Nature by pouring 300 grams of “a biodegradable soap” down the neck of the geyser to set it off. It did spout water around 60 feet into the air, but the fact that it was induced by soap made it seem somewhat fake.

We then proceeded to do the 3 km walk through the park where we saw hot springs, sulfur deposits, steaming vents, collapsed volcanic craters and boiling mud. Everywhere you looked, there was something boiling or steaming. In Cheryl’s words, “this is probably what hell looks like.” One of the last things we saw was called the champagne pools. Of course, it’s another boiling hot spring, but the water is crystal clear. When you can see through all of the steam, the rim of rock at the edge is bright orange. Why? Apparently it’s caused by minerals: gold, silver, mercury, sulphur, arsenic, thallium, and antimony. Now…think about this. Of those, aren’t half of them poisonous? Isn’t this thing steaming? Haven’t we been breathing this stuff?! Great…time to go. I need the few brain cells I have left.

Back on the road, we stopped by the Prawn Park, where you can fish for prawns and play killer prawn golf. You might be asking yourself, what’s killer prawn golf? Basically, you tee off and if you can hit the golf ball into a target, you win cash! The problem – not even Tiger Woods could do this! The targets are at 50 100, and 200 meters and they’re the size of a life preserver. We couldn’t bring ourselves to spend $24 per person to get into the place, so we left.

We made a quick stop at Huka Falls, the Niagra Falls of of New Zealand. That was pretty impressive. The water was crystal clear, and Cheryl saw a fish trying to jump up the water fall. Honestly she did...or maybe it was the arsenic we inhaled at Wai-O-Tapu.

Once into Tuapo, we took a slight detour because of a bike race. Damn…wish we had our road bikes. Turns out the ride/race is a ride around Lake Tuapo. As we drove through Tuapo, we both commented that we'd need to come back and spend some time in this part of New Zealand. The lake was beautiful, and we're sure there was some good fun to be had here.

Two more hours on the road and we finally arrived in Hawke’s Bay where we checked into the Room@53 B&B. Awesome place! If you ever have the chance to visit this part of New Zealand and need a place to stay…go here. Chris and Kerrie are fantastic hosts. It’s like staying with friends.

After settling in, we headed into Napier, the Art Deco capital of New Zealand. It was a neat town with lots of buildings designed/built in the Art Deco style. Apparently the city was devastated by an earthquake in 1931, and the rebuilding efforts in the following years captured that era. In fact, the city has a huge Art Deco festival that happens once a year and the whole city gets dressed up in the styles of the 1930s and parties. It must be really interesting to be here for that event.