hail.
alls well and so forth.
in toupo at the momant shortly going to napier as the weather here is crap. just bourt a sheri s. tepper book and “Carter beats the devil” as the bookshop was selling them for rediculouse prices. i say selling but “giving away” would be more apt.
i forgot to tell what we did in rotorua. after the car fiasco we were a bit stressed so to chill out we went to the moiri thermal village, this was about as exciting as it sounds, which is to say not very. one pool of bubbling mud looks much like another and once you have potted around the ghastly buildings and checked out a steaming vent or two then there isn’t much to do really, apart that is from choking to death on the unholy stench. the gyser was cool but we were to far away from it so we sneaked into a restricted area and checked out close up. it was maybe six feet high. we had come quite late so our tiket was valid for the next day with a concert and a tour. so we went the next day. the concert was nice, untill they tried to get the audience to dance, unplesently ambarasing. it was performed by moiri’s who were mostly pale skinned, i liked the war dance(i felt a mild urge to join in.) and the pom-pom twirling was very skilled. the tour was alright but short as the place is pretty small. afterwords we sat on the insanly hot ground eating icecream and watching the village baths fill up. jolly.
the day before yesterday we decided to do the tongarearow crossing. this is an 8 hour trek across some volcano or something. the weather looked a bit dicey but we decided to chance it. we booked a bus there and stocked up on provisions, then went to bed early as we needed to be up at 5.00am. the night was hellish. at 1.00am ish, a pack of girls roamed past our room squealing like pigs and shreaking with amusement. god know’s why they did this but they kept it up for quite some time. after what felt like five minutes more sleep we scraped out of bed had a hurried breakfast and leapt onto the waiting bus. it was populated by three english oiks and three japanese of mixed sex. the bus ride took about 2 hours and by that time it seemed they bhad decided not to let us do the walk as it was to dangerous- winds of 60km anddriving rain was in evidence. as a lake district veterin i scoffed at this craven atitude. the driver took us to another area were less dangerous and 6 hour walks were to be had. every one else eyeballed the hellish weather and declined to do any walking whatsoever. repulsed by such cowerdice annika and i leapt of the bus, and set of into the driving rain. we were in good spirits made a good pace. what followed was one of the wetest and coldest experiances of my life. i was wearing light trousers, my fleece and my trusty leather jacket, annika had forgoten her raincoat and as i was so gentlemanly i gave here my kag in a bag. she also had water proof trousers so she fared a little better than me. i also had the rucksac with the food which i refused to part with as it kept a small portion of my back warm. it took maybe an hour for me to get soaked to the morrow and as we were constantly in the teeth of a violent wind, you can imagine that i was a smidgion cold. the draw distance was loughable, or to put it another way, visability was very poor. 20 foot at the most, then pure white mist. luckily the walk was well signposted, unlike in the lake district were marker cians are rationed to three per mile. the walk took us to a massive lake and past a very nice waterfall(this was nifty as the wind wipped the spray about in an impresive manner)we didn’e stay long at the lake as the freezing wetnes wich had been continualy creeping up my trousers had finaly reached my boxer shorts and i was bergining to feel the strain somewhat. the return whas a little unplesant as the right side of my face seemed to have frozen and my woolen hat purchased at grait expence, deciding to absorb the rain instead of deflecting it, continuasly dribbled freezing water down my face. this was almost usefull as when i became thirsty i could collect a good mouthfull with my tongue. we were so scared of missing the bus that we made record time and ended up 2 hours early waiting in a hellish volcano musium. we were so, so cold. i made made multiple visits to the toilet so i could warm my hand on the hand dryer, untill it stopped working that is. it is nastto walk in wet trouser so we sat down on the only seats which hapened to be infront on some sort of tv. this was showing endless repeats of a thirty second silent film on the volcano. this new horror nearly broke us. there is nothing quite as soul destroying as watching the same thing over and over for two hours. acasionaly one of us, driven beyond endurance would be forced to get up and making muffle noises of pain shuffle around the museum. unfortunatly the rest of the exibits were some billbourds with text on them and some fake lava. cursing we would shuffle back and continure to glare at the demonic volcano film, hoping against hope that the bus would turn up early.
all in all good fun. that is now that it is over.
tan: i made my flight to the first as they didn’t have anything closer to the 6th. so mayhaps i can meet you someplace outside singapore? i am yearning for hot weather, i would be glad to swap with you. try to controll the swellings, it only takes will power!
dod+mama: the flight stuff is for annika, she is getting a bit fed with the cold weather here, and wants to take a short break. i recon’ you should tone down on the excitement back at the old homestead, no need to over do it is there! congratulations and all that rot!
liv: nice to hear that you are having a jolly time! god rot all exams i say. i don’t believe understanding the course is a requiment, or is it?
julio