Helen: 2009 is just around the corner and we wanted to wish you all a Happy New Year. 2008 has been a bit crazy for us - not really sure what next year has in store - I hope you all get everything you wish for. As I type I'm waiting for the computer to load up train timetables for Bejing to Mongolia to Uzbekistan and Moscow...
C uploaded a whole bunch of photos this morning at www.flickr.com/charlieandhelen - I'll get round to naming them all at some point, but right now I'm going to get changed and go out to celebrate!
Lots of love
H&Cxx
Tuesday 30 December 2008
Thursday 25 December 2008
Happy Christmas!
Helen: This time last year we were about as miserable as it was possible to be - on Santana with an incompetent captain, big seas and a sea sick cat. What a difference 12 months makes! This year we had yummy food, great company and sunshine. Trifle, chocolate and cream cake, a huge ham (Eva had to beg for it at the butchers a couple of days ago - she hadn't ordered it and they didn't have any to sell...but they gave her their 'emergency ham' when she looked on the verge of tears, clutching a small baby with a toddler in tow!), asparagus, C's pizzas and my fairy cakes (the family we're house sitting for have 2 small children so their pantry was full of baking goodies - sprinkles, cocoa and lots of food dye - cue green, yellow and pink icing - I drew the line at blue).
Lots of Eva's friends came round to say hello throughout the day - a lively bunch (including a very lively 78 year old who wore his silk pyjamas all day and sang 'O come all ye faithful' several times clutching a champagne bottle). We had beer, wine, bubbles, ginger ale, apple whiskey and juice - all with the right glasses - Eva has more glasses than John Lewis!
After we stuffed ourselves silly we went for a walk along the coast and now we're watching a film on telly. Perfick. (Still doesn't feel very Christmassy though - no Slade or Bob Geldof on the radio and I didn't get woken up by C letting off one of those balloons that makes a horrid whiny noise and whizzes round the room (a regular occurance when we stay at his parents house for Xmas as he always gets one in his stocking)). This year Father C brought me a lovely brown merino top and C got a hand stitched advent calendar full of sweeties.
I should back up a few days though and tell you about our walk on Monday - after waiting for nearly a week we finally managed to do the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. The clouds lifted in the morning and we could see the 3 volcanoes perfectly all day - Ruapehu in particular is a spectacular lump with snow on the top. The only problem was EVERYONE ELSE who wanted to do the walk that day too - we reckon there must have been about 300 people on the trail (they get 60,000 annually as it's the most accessible, and scenic, one day tramp in NZ). The walk has become a victim of it's own success - by the end of the day we were stuck in a conveyor belt of slow moving single file ants. It felt more like a 'wilderness themepark' than a real wilderness. All the paths are heavily reinforced with mesh and wooden sides to prevent errosion and we saw a helicopter emptying the toilet tanks (toilets in the wilderness - what's that about anyway?!)
But...at the same time I think it's great that all these people want to go walking - we met lots of people who were hiking for the first time - C and I looked mildly out of place with our thermals and our walking boots and our big bag among all those sandals and strappy t-shirts! The new kids were nervous about it and really pleased with themselves for having done it. I wouldn't want to put them off - but maybe the DoC could promote another walk nearby to take the pressure off the Alpine Crossing? It's a tough call...
The coolest thing we saw on the whole walk was the mountain Taranaki in the distance. It's a perfect triangle with snow on the top - we recognised it immediately...because C has it tattooed on his arm! Remember I said that Rangi, C's tattooist, was from Taranaki and that that was how Maori introduced themselves? Well...he must've put HIS mountain on C's arm as a 'signature'. Cool huh?
OK, enough for now. The rubbish film on telly (Conspiracy Theory) is nearly over and it's time for bed. Leftovers tomorrow :). Hope Santa is kind to you all
H&Cxxx
Lots of Eva's friends came round to say hello throughout the day - a lively bunch (including a very lively 78 year old who wore his silk pyjamas all day and sang 'O come all ye faithful' several times clutching a champagne bottle). We had beer, wine, bubbles, ginger ale, apple whiskey and juice - all with the right glasses - Eva has more glasses than John Lewis!
After we stuffed ourselves silly we went for a walk along the coast and now we're watching a film on telly. Perfick. (Still doesn't feel very Christmassy though - no Slade or Bob Geldof on the radio and I didn't get woken up by C letting off one of those balloons that makes a horrid whiny noise and whizzes round the room (a regular occurance when we stay at his parents house for Xmas as he always gets one in his stocking)). This year Father C brought me a lovely brown merino top and C got a hand stitched advent calendar full of sweeties.
I should back up a few days though and tell you about our walk on Monday - after waiting for nearly a week we finally managed to do the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. The clouds lifted in the morning and we could see the 3 volcanoes perfectly all day - Ruapehu in particular is a spectacular lump with snow on the top. The only problem was EVERYONE ELSE who wanted to do the walk that day too - we reckon there must have been about 300 people on the trail (they get 60,000 annually as it's the most accessible, and scenic, one day tramp in NZ). The walk has become a victim of it's own success - by the end of the day we were stuck in a conveyor belt of slow moving single file ants. It felt more like a 'wilderness themepark' than a real wilderness. All the paths are heavily reinforced with mesh and wooden sides to prevent errosion and we saw a helicopter emptying the toilet tanks (toilets in the wilderness - what's that about anyway?!)
But...at the same time I think it's great that all these people want to go walking - we met lots of people who were hiking for the first time - C and I looked mildly out of place with our thermals and our walking boots and our big bag among all those sandals and strappy t-shirts! The new kids were nervous about it and really pleased with themselves for having done it. I wouldn't want to put them off - but maybe the DoC could promote another walk nearby to take the pressure off the Alpine Crossing? It's a tough call...
The coolest thing we saw on the whole walk was the mountain Taranaki in the distance. It's a perfect triangle with snow on the top - we recognised it immediately...because C has it tattooed on his arm! Remember I said that Rangi, C's tattooist, was from Taranaki and that that was how Maori introduced themselves? Well...he must've put HIS mountain on C's arm as a 'signature'. Cool huh?
OK, enough for now. The rubbish film on telly (Conspiracy Theory) is nearly over and it's time for bed. Leftovers tomorrow :). Hope Santa is kind to you all
H&Cxxx
Saturday 20 December 2008
Rain rain go away
Helen: Just had breakfast – always an interesting meal in a hostel – C and I play a game trying to guess where people are from – the Brits are easy to spot with their jars of Marmite and the Germans are a dead give away as they always have salami and cheese and bread – C is worried about what they then have for lunch... We haven't seen a Tongan at breakfast yet, but we spotted one at our last hostel – he was in bed, fully clothed, at 4 in the afternoon – typical!
Since I last wrote we have been up to Ohope on the north east coast of the North Island, near Whakatane – C got his right arm finished – it took the guy about 6 hours to draw and then tattoo, and then another half an hour to tell us what it all meant – lots of stuff about the sea and mountains, which are important for Maori people to be able to 'place' themselves – a Maori will introduce himself to other Maori, not using his name, but by saying where his mountain is. If you can see mountains you can recognise in the distance you can use them as reference points – geographically and emotionally.
Rangi (the moko artist) drew many vertical 'hake' (ribs) which are a connection between the living and their ancestors. Ancestral Maori houses are designed to represent a body with the central beam along the roof as the backbone, a face at the apex at the front, the sloping beams as the body, with hands at the end at the front. The ribs (also called hake) that the roof rests on represent the living, connecting the earth with the ancestors. Each shape is filled with loads of horizontal lines or layers which represent 'whakapapa' (genealogy) also represented in the ancestral house by the sloping roof beams and the horizontal slats that go between the sloping beams. Hope all that makes sense!
It was hard listening to him as some of the Maori ideas are very different from Western ideas – it helped having been in Polynesia for a year, but still Maori culture is based on very different cultural assumptions. For example, Rangi explained that when Maori talk about going forward into the future they do it facing backwards, so they can see the past, rather than facing forwards with your back on the past, which is how I always imagined it. He also told us how Maori tribes used to be divided up into 'upper jaw' and 'lower jaw' people – the 'upper jaw' lot learnt all the knowledge to do with ritual and the sacred and the 'lower jaw' people learnt all about fishing and farming etc...
When I called this 'practical' knowledge Rangi said he didn't see it that way as all the ritual/sacred stuff was practical too and he didn't want to make a value judgement about it. Fair enough. It was hard talking to him sometimes though as we both got the feeling that he was very defensive – for example, C said he thought it was amazing how the early Maori explorers set off into the big blue ocean not knowing where they were going. Rangi immediately said that was a very Eurocentric view that assumed their vessels were less seaworthy than ours are now. That's not at all what C meant though – all he meant was that, after months of experience of being at sea and knowing how scary it can be not to see land for a long time, he could imagine how brave the early explorers had been. But sometimes it's impossible to explain yourself properly when someone doens't want to see it your way!
But anyway...we're now back in National Park (what an awful name for a village) and are still waiting for the weather to change so that we can go walking. I think everyone in the hostel is waiting for the same thing! But there really is no point in going for a 9 hour hike to see the stunning scenery when the scenery is hidden underneath thick cloud and you are more than likely to get drenched and cold and blown off the top of a mountain by gale force winds. There really isn't.
So to pass the time I'm sewing (nearly finished C's advent calendar – yes, I know it's almost too late – it would have been finished by now if it didn't need so many small pockets – I guess I should just be grateful that Advent doesn't start when the commercial countdown to Xmas starts or I'd have to have pockets all the way from Oct 1st!) and C is playing the 'iPod downloading blues' on his harmonica – it's taking forever and a day to backup all our music and he's (predictably) grumpy about it. Maybe he'll perk up in a bit and we'll go (indoor) climbing.
Hx
Since I last wrote we have been up to Ohope on the north east coast of the North Island, near Whakatane – C got his right arm finished – it took the guy about 6 hours to draw and then tattoo, and then another half an hour to tell us what it all meant – lots of stuff about the sea and mountains, which are important for Maori people to be able to 'place' themselves – a Maori will introduce himself to other Maori, not using his name, but by saying where his mountain is. If you can see mountains you can recognise in the distance you can use them as reference points – geographically and emotionally.
Rangi (the moko artist) drew many vertical 'hake' (ribs) which are a connection between the living and their ancestors. Ancestral Maori houses are designed to represent a body with the central beam along the roof as the backbone, a face at the apex at the front, the sloping beams as the body, with hands at the end at the front. The ribs (also called hake) that the roof rests on represent the living, connecting the earth with the ancestors. Each shape is filled with loads of horizontal lines or layers which represent 'whakapapa' (genealogy) also represented in the ancestral house by the sloping roof beams and the horizontal slats that go between the sloping beams. Hope all that makes sense!
It was hard listening to him as some of the Maori ideas are very different from Western ideas – it helped having been in Polynesia for a year, but still Maori culture is based on very different cultural assumptions. For example, Rangi explained that when Maori talk about going forward into the future they do it facing backwards, so they can see the past, rather than facing forwards with your back on the past, which is how I always imagined it. He also told us how Maori tribes used to be divided up into 'upper jaw' and 'lower jaw' people – the 'upper jaw' lot learnt all the knowledge to do with ritual and the sacred and the 'lower jaw' people learnt all about fishing and farming etc...
When I called this 'practical' knowledge Rangi said he didn't see it that way as all the ritual/sacred stuff was practical too and he didn't want to make a value judgement about it. Fair enough. It was hard talking to him sometimes though as we both got the feeling that he was very defensive – for example, C said he thought it was amazing how the early Maori explorers set off into the big blue ocean not knowing where they were going. Rangi immediately said that was a very Eurocentric view that assumed their vessels were less seaworthy than ours are now. That's not at all what C meant though – all he meant was that, after months of experience of being at sea and knowing how scary it can be not to see land for a long time, he could imagine how brave the early explorers had been. But sometimes it's impossible to explain yourself properly when someone doens't want to see it your way!
But anyway...we're now back in National Park (what an awful name for a village) and are still waiting for the weather to change so that we can go walking. I think everyone in the hostel is waiting for the same thing! But there really is no point in going for a 9 hour hike to see the stunning scenery when the scenery is hidden underneath thick cloud and you are more than likely to get drenched and cold and blown off the top of a mountain by gale force winds. There really isn't.
So to pass the time I'm sewing (nearly finished C's advent calendar – yes, I know it's almost too late – it would have been finished by now if it didn't need so many small pockets – I guess I should just be grateful that Advent doesn't start when the commercial countdown to Xmas starts or I'd have to have pockets all the way from Oct 1st!) and C is playing the 'iPod downloading blues' on his harmonica – it's taking forever and a day to backup all our music and he's (predictably) grumpy about it. Maybe he'll perk up in a bit and we'll go (indoor) climbing.
Hx
Wednesday 17 December 2008
Cold Mountain
Helen: 2 hours ago, this would have been a very different post. 2 hours ago it was wet, windy, cloudy and miserable. Now the sun is shining and 3 majestic mountains have suddenly appeared out of nowhere. One of them (Mt Ngarahoe) was used as Mt Doom in LoTR. Looks spectacular – conical with some snow at the top. Hopefully we'll get to go walking right past the mountains later in the week...but we need to 'pop' up to Whakatane first to get C's right arm finished by a highly regarded Maori sculptor/ta moko artist. By then I'm sure the clouds will be back and the mountains will be hiding again. Actually, they're volcanoes, not just any old mountains. The hotel is full of signs of what to do in case of an emergency – thankfully, we're at NZ's highest hotel, so if there is a sudden rush of molten lava, or, apparently more likely, lots of mud, we should be safe!
Don't worry, we haven't gone all up market – we just found some vouchers on the back of a supermarket receipt and so could afford to stay in a hotel for the night. We got here at 10am (the last hostel we were staying in was miserably cold and unfriendly – C was meant to book somewhere else, but phoned the wrong people, as we discovered at 11pm the night before when we turned up where we thought we were staying only to find no room at the inn – oh well, 15 minutes before that I'd sent us to totally the wrong village in search of our accommodation – needless to say we were both tired and grumpy when we finally got to the right place in the dead of night in the middle of a rain storm!) Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, we got here (the hotel) at 10am and they let us have our room early, so we sat here, practically on top of their heater, using the hairdryer, watching the telly, bouncing on the comfy bed and drinking hot chocolate. Doesn't take much to keep us happy :)
But I've skipped a bit – need to tell you about Napier and Hastings – Napier was a bit of a disappointment to be honest – we had been expecting amazing Art Deco everywhere...but it wasn't even as grand as Glasgow. We did see kiwis at the National Aquarium though (wonderfully cute fluffy looking nocturnal birds that look more like rabbits with long legs and a beak than birds), Hastings was much the same, dreary town centre that sprawls out rather than up – totally lacking in character. Good baked potatoes though, and a really friendly tattooist (pink hair, fairy skirt, army boots) who did a bit on C's arm (she copied a linear design he'd photographed in the Auckland Museum from a Fijian artifact – a head rest that chiefs could lie on at night and not mess up their hair dos).
We spent our time in Napier staying with old friends from London (thank you loads Sasha and Roger) and their young daughter Arabella who's 4. Our week with them was another eye opening window on family life – ballet shows, gym shows, birthday parties with small girls in pink fairy outfits, demands for ice cream for breakfast, chocolate treats for tea and Arabella's favourite dummy at all hours. Exhausting! We thought we'd spend lots of time recovering in front of Sasha and Roger's TV – having not had one for so long we thought it would be a welcome luxury. Not so! NZ TV is worse than we remember British TV – every morning they have an hour and a half of 'infomercials' – dreadful programmes sponsored by some company or other trying to sell you their wears – everything from acne cream to pants that keep your tummy and bottom in to super-dooper-makes-the-supper-for-you kitchen whizzers. I could feel the life leaving me as I watched them – but it still took a surprising amount of will power to turn the idiot box off!
Anyway, surburbia is behind us and we are now in the mountains – all good. Will write again soon
H&Cxx
Don't worry, we haven't gone all up market – we just found some vouchers on the back of a supermarket receipt and so could afford to stay in a hotel for the night. We got here at 10am (the last hostel we were staying in was miserably cold and unfriendly – C was meant to book somewhere else, but phoned the wrong people, as we discovered at 11pm the night before when we turned up where we thought we were staying only to find no room at the inn – oh well, 15 minutes before that I'd sent us to totally the wrong village in search of our accommodation – needless to say we were both tired and grumpy when we finally got to the right place in the dead of night in the middle of a rain storm!) Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, we got here (the hotel) at 10am and they let us have our room early, so we sat here, practically on top of their heater, using the hairdryer, watching the telly, bouncing on the comfy bed and drinking hot chocolate. Doesn't take much to keep us happy :)
But I've skipped a bit – need to tell you about Napier and Hastings – Napier was a bit of a disappointment to be honest – we had been expecting amazing Art Deco everywhere...but it wasn't even as grand as Glasgow. We did see kiwis at the National Aquarium though (wonderfully cute fluffy looking nocturnal birds that look more like rabbits with long legs and a beak than birds), Hastings was much the same, dreary town centre that sprawls out rather than up – totally lacking in character. Good baked potatoes though, and a really friendly tattooist (pink hair, fairy skirt, army boots) who did a bit on C's arm (she copied a linear design he'd photographed in the Auckland Museum from a Fijian artifact – a head rest that chiefs could lie on at night and not mess up their hair dos).
We spent our time in Napier staying with old friends from London (thank you loads Sasha and Roger) and their young daughter Arabella who's 4. Our week with them was another eye opening window on family life – ballet shows, gym shows, birthday parties with small girls in pink fairy outfits, demands for ice cream for breakfast, chocolate treats for tea and Arabella's favourite dummy at all hours. Exhausting! We thought we'd spend lots of time recovering in front of Sasha and Roger's TV – having not had one for so long we thought it would be a welcome luxury. Not so! NZ TV is worse than we remember British TV – every morning they have an hour and a half of 'infomercials' – dreadful programmes sponsored by some company or other trying to sell you their wears – everything from acne cream to pants that keep your tummy and bottom in to super-dooper-makes-the-supper-for-you kitchen whizzers. I could feel the life leaving me as I watched them – but it still took a surprising amount of will power to turn the idiot box off!
Anyway, surburbia is behind us and we are now in the mountains – all good. Will write again soon
H&Cxx
Friday 5 December 2008
Bath time
Helen: Ok, the last post was pretty dull. I admit it. C was standing behind me looking aggitated and hurumphing every 20 seconds or so while tapping at his watch and rolling his eyes. We were behind schedule and supposed to be on the road already. But now...now, I am sitting at my friend Sasha's laptop, in her living room, the cleanest and most relaxed I have been in a whole year as I've just had a BATH and I can spend as long as I like rabbiting on to you lot. C is on the sofa messing about with our new guitar (courtesy of Walt and Tigs on Marnie - it's a cute 'backpackers' version with steel strings which means it even sounds soulful when I accidently knock it - makes me sound like I know what I'm doing - great!) and we have the TV on in the background. How civilised does that sound?
Certainly a million miles away from last night...in a tent by the edge of Lake Waikaremoana, wearing socks and hats in our sleeping bags to keep warm. In the end we decided that the Chicken Tikka Massala was the best of the dehydrated food - but that you should stay away from the Mexican Chicken (although 'small white chunks' might be a more appropriate description than 'chicken' for the contents of either dish). The hike round the lake was wonderfully peaceful, but it made us miss home as it looked like Scotland - the scenery kept changing - rain forest one minute, then pines, up hill (a lot), then down, creeks and shore lines.
So, not much to write about the last 4 days (scenery, walking, sore feet, feeling chuffed that we were fully self sufficient the whole time, camping). Instead I thought I'd make up for the last post being rather boring. What I should have written was this:
- we had oysters with Tigs and Walter. On crackers with chili sauce. On their boat looking out over the Auckland skyline at sunset. It's not often that pre-dinner snacks are special enough to tell people about. These ones were.
- Rotorua was wierd. On the one hand it was full of backpackers who wanted to get drunk and see gysers. On the other it was this old fashioned, very English looking town. The museum was in this mock-Tudor building with a croquet lawn and a rose garden out the front. It reminded me of the Japanese who take English pubs and transport them brick by brick to Japan. So perfect it felt fake. The museum was pretty good (full of the obligatory 'god, I'm so bored' school groups) but all the information was so difficult to read as all the names are in Maori. I felt the same trying to read the book on Al Queda on Nomad - I couldn't pronounce all the Arabic names and it was hard to concentrate on the thread of a sentence. The locals don't ever seem to have a problem with Maori pronounciation though - they must get taught it in school or something! One of the most interesting things in the museum was a bit written by the local Maori iwi (tribe) about the Treaty of Whatangi (treaty that ceded NZ to the settlers). The iwi said (in so many words) that even if they didn't agree with it, their ancestors had signed it and they would honour it today. Not the usual 'we hate white people' rant I was expecting.
- we forgot to turn up to our US Embassy interview (for visas, not cos we'd done anything bad, honest). Oops. (In our defense it was almost impossible for us to call them - you can't do it from a mobile or a payphone and we don't own a private landline). Hope they don't try to arrest us when we go to America the next time...
- the area near Rotorua looks like The Shire! (Well, it would - this is near where it was filmed. We're going to Mount Doom next - will try to take a cheap ring to dispose of in the crater...)
- and finally, thought you'd think this was funny - quarentine here is very strict - you're not allowed to bring in any seeds. Not even popcorn or lentils. But, the Department of Conservation sells 'native NZ seeds' in it's shops that it encourages you to take back to your country of origin. Hypocrites!!!
OK, I'm all out of steam now! Time for the trashy 8.30 movie.
Love to you all
H&C (currently singing the 'campsite blues' on his harmonica) xx
Certainly a million miles away from last night...in a tent by the edge of Lake Waikaremoana, wearing socks and hats in our sleeping bags to keep warm. In the end we decided that the Chicken Tikka Massala was the best of the dehydrated food - but that you should stay away from the Mexican Chicken (although 'small white chunks' might be a more appropriate description than 'chicken' for the contents of either dish). The hike round the lake was wonderfully peaceful, but it made us miss home as it looked like Scotland - the scenery kept changing - rain forest one minute, then pines, up hill (a lot), then down, creeks and shore lines.
So, not much to write about the last 4 days (scenery, walking, sore feet, feeling chuffed that we were fully self sufficient the whole time, camping). Instead I thought I'd make up for the last post being rather boring. What I should have written was this:
- we had oysters with Tigs and Walter. On crackers with chili sauce. On their boat looking out over the Auckland skyline at sunset. It's not often that pre-dinner snacks are special enough to tell people about. These ones were.
- Rotorua was wierd. On the one hand it was full of backpackers who wanted to get drunk and see gysers. On the other it was this old fashioned, very English looking town. The museum was in this mock-Tudor building with a croquet lawn and a rose garden out the front. It reminded me of the Japanese who take English pubs and transport them brick by brick to Japan. So perfect it felt fake. The museum was pretty good (full of the obligatory 'god, I'm so bored' school groups) but all the information was so difficult to read as all the names are in Maori. I felt the same trying to read the book on Al Queda on Nomad - I couldn't pronounce all the Arabic names and it was hard to concentrate on the thread of a sentence. The locals don't ever seem to have a problem with Maori pronounciation though - they must get taught it in school or something! One of the most interesting things in the museum was a bit written by the local Maori iwi (tribe) about the Treaty of Whatangi (treaty that ceded NZ to the settlers). The iwi said (in so many words) that even if they didn't agree with it, their ancestors had signed it and they would honour it today. Not the usual 'we hate white people' rant I was expecting.
- we forgot to turn up to our US Embassy interview (for visas, not cos we'd done anything bad, honest). Oops. (In our defense it was almost impossible for us to call them - you can't do it from a mobile or a payphone and we don't own a private landline). Hope they don't try to arrest us when we go to America the next time...
- the area near Rotorua looks like The Shire! (Well, it would - this is near where it was filmed. We're going to Mount Doom next - will try to take a cheap ring to dispose of in the crater...)
- and finally, thought you'd think this was funny - quarentine here is very strict - you're not allowed to bring in any seeds. Not even popcorn or lentils. But, the Department of Conservation sells 'native NZ seeds' in it's shops that it encourages you to take back to your country of origin. Hypocrites!!!
OK, I'm all out of steam now! Time for the trashy 8.30 movie.
Love to you all
H&C (currently singing the 'campsite blues' on his harmonica) xx
Monday 1 December 2008
Rotten eggs
Helen: We finally made it out of Auckland!!!!!!!!!! We thought it would be easier to move around once we had our own transport and weren't relying on other people to move their boats...but we seem to have managed to get stuck in the big city for longer than we wanted. Having said that, though, we did manage to do pretty much everything we needed to do in two weeks, which can't be sniffed at.
Now we're in Rotorua - not much to recommend it - lots of tourists and smells of rotten eggs on account of the sulphurous gysers all around. Just been to the museum where they had a v interesting exhibition about the old bath houses that used to be here - people used to come and get 'treated' with hot water, hot air and mud, as well as electrotherapy, until the 1940s (when they really ought to have known better) for just about every imaginable ailment - eczma, obesity, irritability, arthritis. Bonkers. (But, as C pointed out, maybe not that much more bonkers than all those folks out there who believe in homeopathy today...)
We've got our camping gear and our dehydrated food and we're off for a 4 day 'tramp' as the locals call it this afternoon. Wish us luck!
Lots of love
H&C
Now we're in Rotorua - not much to recommend it - lots of tourists and smells of rotten eggs on account of the sulphurous gysers all around. Just been to the museum where they had a v interesting exhibition about the old bath houses that used to be here - people used to come and get 'treated' with hot water, hot air and mud, as well as electrotherapy, until the 1940s (when they really ought to have known better) for just about every imaginable ailment - eczma, obesity, irritability, arthritis. Bonkers. (But, as C pointed out, maybe not that much more bonkers than all those folks out there who believe in homeopathy today...)
We've got our camping gear and our dehydrated food and we're off for a 4 day 'tramp' as the locals call it this afternoon. Wish us luck!
Lots of love
H&C
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