Paddle in Hastings

(11.14.08 the Café. Rarotonga. Noon)
Next morning (11.6.08) I woke up at 9:30 am and quickly ate breakfast on my way out the door. I was gonna try to get to Wai-o-taupo to see the Geyser go off at 10:15am. There is geo thermal activity all around the North Island but Rotorua is one of the best known areas and thus there are several parks where you pay to see the bubbly mud and go in the hot springs. On the flip side you can also just find bubbly mud and hot springs for free if you just know where to look. So I decided I would only pay to go to one of these places if I could also see a geyser go off. At Wai-o-taupo the geyser goes off at exactly 10:15 every morning and at another park it randomly goes off about once an hour. So my mission was to make it to see the geyser. I remember passing Wai-o-taupo on the way to Johanna’s house the day before and thought it was just out of Turangi, but the further I drove I began to wonder if I had remembered wrong. Eventually I made it to Taupo and it was already 10:15am I figured out that it must have been just outside of Rotorua not Turangi. I stopped in the snowboard shop to see how the conditions looked for the Friday and they said it would probably be Saturday before they opened the lift. On my way back to Turangi I saw a man walking towards Taupo carrying a gas can so I spun the car around to see if wanted a ride. He jumped in and I took him to get some gas. He was a Maori man and his name was Clint. He said they run the TV off the car and they had fallen asleep with the car running the night before. On the way back to his house we talked about Hunting, Fishing and Maori culture. When we arrived back where I picked him up he opened a gate and we drove through a maze of campers, trailers and make shift homes til we reach his home. The entire area we had driven through was Maori land with several Maori families scattered throughout. He said his mother had given him a piece of land and he built on it. There were a few posts with some corrugated steal on a few sides and tarps on the others. He had 6 boar hunting dogs which rushed the car when we pulled up, he told me to just keep driving and they’d move. He also had a horse, well 6 horses but only one was there, he said the rest had escaped and were off in “the bush”. He invited me in for a “cuppa”, cup of tea or coffee, and I met his wife and son while having my tea. He showed me a boars’ jaw that he had caught a week prior but had also killed his main dog. After our tea we went outside to jump his car and I was on my way. I got back to Johanna’s house, sat by the wood burning stove and typed away on my blog. Steph and I went to rent a movie and three of us watch it before bed. Next morning (11.7.08) we woke up and had breakfast with Johanna before she headed to work. We planned on going to Hastings so I could paddle with Mike at 5pm and Steph could go on a wine tour from 1-5ish. We were gonna come back and spend one more night at Johanna’s and leave early in the morning for my races in Mt. Maunganui. A 2 ½ hour drive later we arrived in Hastings and dropped Steph off at a vineyard to begin her tour. I ran errands in town to kill some time: printing postcards, checking emails, sending references for CS. I arrived at Mike’s house right as he was finishing up with a tattoo appointment and had a lil time to talk story with his wife. He took me to the river where their juniors practice and we went out for a paddle on a two man canoe for about an hour. After our paddle he invited me in for a cuppa before I had to hit the road. I met Steph at Breakers where we grabbed dinner and headed back to Turangi. We decided we’d just pick our stuff up at Johanna’s and head to Rotorua for the night so that we’d do the extra driving that night rather than having to wake up at 5am to hit the road. We almost ran out of gas but finally made it to Taupo just in time. Leaving the gas station I got a speed ticket for going 70 kmh in 50 zone for $120. The cop asked me if I’d been drinking and gave me a breath-a-liser test. It was kinda weird though, cause rather than blowing into it you just talk and it reads your level. After grabbing our bags at Johanna’s and saying goodbye we had a two hour drive to Lance’s house where we arrived at 1am for the night.