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Turangi
It
Ross referred to Rotorua as "Rotten-rua" thanks to the sulfurous smell courtesy of the geothermal activity there. It certainly smelled no worse than Yellowstone or any other area of activity, but maybe it was the shameless exploitation of the natural resources or the Maori that was offensive. Oh well, that's why we were headed there, right? We
Heading back south we stopped in Taupo for some grocery shopping before getting back to the lodge by about 6:30pm. We found Katherine had explored our new home, uploaded to her site, and generally relaxed without missing our touristy afternoon. Pretty quickly after returning, we were invited upstairs for dinner. Christine started us off with smoked trout (what else?), cheeses, and crackers. We talked as the sun set and Lake Taupo grew dark. Next up was a pear and parsnip soup which was surprisingly good followed by a roasted lamb with mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and peas. Amazing. It was all topped off by a pavlova which was like an angel food cake without the flour and covered with whipped cream and strawberries. I feared our next meals would not quite live up to that feast. The next morning we got up early to head out for the day. Katherine and Paul would fish with Ross on a beginner stream while I headed to a "double black diamond" river south of the Chateau with our other guide, Peter. Peter
Ok, so maybe that doesn't really tell you anything. Here's a quick crash course in flyfishing. You've got a rod and a flyline. You can throw out three basic kinds of flies; dry, wet, and nymph. The dry fly floats on the surface. This would be like a mosquito you see flying around. The wet fly sinks and you usually give it some sort of action. Wet flies are leaches and small fish. The nymph is a fly that float motionless like a dry, but does so some distance below the surface of the water. The perfect experience is to take a rising fish on a dry fly. We
New Zealand fishing is more European than American in nature. Shown a new stream my first inclination would be to jump into the middle of it and start walking it up, casting where I thought there would be fish. Traditional English fisherman would rather cast only to feeding fish and could go an entire day without casting blind even once. I followed Peter as we moved from pool to pool looking for rising fish. We found another and took our time moving into position only to find the fish had again disappeared. We walked up a bit more, but quickly got out of the river to try a spot downstream. Unfortunately, that section proved fruitless as well. Rather
Flyfishing lesson #2: In the western U.S., if you see a fish take your dry fly you need to strike immediately else the fish will taste the artificiality (yeah, I made that word up) of the fly and pit it out. In NZ you need to let the fish hold the fly in his mouth for a second before striking. So my fly is well-presented and approaching the fish and I'm getting excited and I see the fish take the fly and I freeze. Not good. "Strike!" says Peter so like an automaton I raise my rod and it turns out my chilling was a good thing as I've hooked the rainbow who takes off upstream. Yee ha! It turns out to be a nice five pound hen. We were in the good water now. We headed upstream to find more fish, but found none. We must have been at the upper edge of the range of the rainbows for although we saw spectacular pools that's all we saw. I took a full card full of pictures of the amazing scenery that ought to have housed elves or at least a few hobbits. Climbing out of the canyon we headed back toward Taupo and stopped at a small river that feeds the Tongariro and took a couple of fish from a badly miscolored stream. (Heavy rains a few days before (remember Christmas?) had washed tons of sediment into the system.) Back at home we found that the other party had taken one fish, but were a little disillusioned by the whole prospect of two more days of fishing. Even I was a little let down after a relatively slow day. We ended with a tasty chicken casserole (an official moosefish recipe, I might add) and then we relaxed in front of a roaring fire. The next morning began even earlier. We drove north to Taupo to meet Peter for a drive west. I left with Ross to fish the Waipunga River which was quite small and amazingly straight. (Wondering why many of the rivers start with "wai?" Turns out that's Maori for "water" so Waipunga is actually "river with tree ferns.") There's a set of waterfalls that rainbows cannot get above so this section of the Waipunga had only browns in it. We started relatively low where the fishing is difficult and therefore it's underfished. On my second or third cast we took a good-sized brown which set the tone for the morning. The
I freed the branch and threw it in the water and tried a cast up to the right, but that landed in a tree. I pulled it free and it landed in a pile to my left. I went to cast again and lo-and-behold, I had the fish hooked. Go figure. After
We cleaned up a bit and then headed into Taupo with three things on our mind:
We started at the cybercafe which was mostly fine if you stayed in the front half, but the back half had been given over to gaming monkeys -- I mean high-schoolers -- who had forgot the purpose of showering. We got the discs burned in the end, picked up tickets for the movie, and had a decent dinner at Wisconsin Burger. Go figure. We got home well after 1am. Our final day fishing we swapped back to our original guides. Early in the morning Ross came in and said he had a bum knee. He offered Kitty and Paul the opportunity to run the Crossing. After a disappointing first day and a good second day I was sure they would take him up on the opportunity (heck, I was tempted), but they said they'd rather fish. Woo hoo! I
We bumped down a bad road to where it ended and then climbed down into another canyon. Above us a footbridge extended from the end of the road into the face of the opposite canyon wall. There's no hole in the wall, no magic door that connects to the caves in Oke Harbor, just a ferny face. Go figure. Just upstream from our entry into the canyon we saw a couple of fish. We cast to the bigger of the two, but a small (only 18 inches) rainbow swam in and took the fly away from the bigger brown. Happily, the fish went downstream and didn't disturb the brown. I cast again and the brown took the fly, but with such strength took off upstream as I gave chase. We never saw the fish as it sped off and under a log at the base of a cascade. I felt a pop and the fish was gone, though the flies remained attached to the log. We
Finally,
We moved upstream to let the first pool rest (we had seen at least one other fish in it) and quickly landed a seven pound brown. This fish took a dry which adds a couple of pounds to it in the eyes of most fishermen so perhaps it was a nine pounder... Returning
I was in a daze as we climbed out of the canyon and trucked back to the lodge. Unfortunately, the others got skunked which must have left them with a sour taste in their mouth. I guess it would have been too much to ask that they had as good a day as I did. But what about Amy? Did she go fishing? Was she confined to the house? No and no. She's never been much for fishing so she opted out of that. The first day she headed into Taupo for shopping and managed to come away with virtually all our Christmas gifts. (Yeah, we know it was after Christmas, but big deal.) Day two found her lounging at home getting bored. Day three saw her driving south to a wool store where she discovered that New Zealand possum, while a nuisance as in the U.S., is a heck of a lot cuter and way softer. A tad dry perhaps, but certainly more fun than fishing. For her anyway. The next morning we said our goodbyes to Ross and Christine and headed into Taupo to pay our respects (and bill) to Peter. Kitty and Paul were moving from the lodge to a motel in Taupo to be closer to the "action" and to prepare for the next day when they'd catch a flight from Taupo to the South Island. They seemed genuinely sad to see us go (and subsequent emails have reinforced this fact), but our goodbyes were short out of necessity. Amy and I had to fly north to Auckland, some three or four hours on the two lane country roads that serve as the thoroughfares of New Zealand. We had little trouble until we arrived at the airport and tried to check in with our e-tickets. "Sorry," said the clerk, "I don't see you registered for this flight. Why don't you go and talk to David." Uh oh. As you might expect, I'm rather accepting of technology and I figure that an e-ticket is as good as a paper ticket. Amy's not quite as comfortable with this approach and would rather we carry paper tickets at all time. Nonsense! (If you think I was digging myself a hole you are right.) David told us that although we were booked on the flight and we had seats reserved for us we needed paper tickets to get on board. It turns out we were travelling as "students" because we were able to get a special rate thanks to Amy's status as a teacher. Students always travel with paper tickets. We needed paper tickets. Of course, if we needed paper tickets how did we get on the plane in Los Angeles? Well, said David, that was the fault of the folks in LA. Contractors, not Air New Zealand people. Ok, fine. What do we need to do now? We needed to either
Of course, getting our tickets from Seattle to LA, the nearest Air New Zealand folks, would take at least a day. The Auckland office was downtown and closed and since it was New Year's Eve it wouldn't open again until January 3. Our flight left in an hour. I tried suggesting a variety of solutions, but they were unwilling or unable to bend. I asked to talk to their supervisor and although David was ok with the idea an elderly gentleman was not at all helpful. You know how there are some people who should spend their lives dealing with the public because they have a natural ability to be civil and try to help? This wasn't one of those guys. This guy should be locked in a basement where he never talks with the customers. Had it been up to him he'd have left us tied to the floor of the airport with jam smeared on our foreheads so ants would torture us. Happily, he wasn't in charge and most likely never will be. David found the manager, Katie, and she helped us work out a solution. We'd give a credit card impression for the amount of one-way tickets to LA, but they wouldn't process it for a few days. In the interim we had the opportunity to get our agent in Seattle, who still had our paper tickets, to send them to an Air New Zealand agent in LA. We ran like the wind through the airport, passed through customs, through the first security checkpoint, through the second checkpoint, and finally to the queue outside the gate. Whew. The rest of our journey home was boring. 11 hours to LAX and another four to Seattle. We were met by Amy's parents and then Amy's father and I headed up to Langley where my mom had Tokul. We had time for a brief stop at a New Year's party before crashing into bed, home at last. So after two and a half weeks of constant adventure, what did we learn? No vacation can be all about adventure. We had only one day in Auckland and we needed at least two, perhaps three. We had no time anywhere for being tourists, shopping, or just bumming around. We needed that. Most of all, we needed more things we could do together. In Amy's condition it was difficult, but even if she hadn't been eight months along it'd have been difficult for her to enjoy fishing and hiking. She could have been bungie jumping and skydiving, though. Next time we go we'll spend more time in Auckland, a few days fishing in Taupo (how could we not?), then off to the South Island to complete the Kiwi Experience. When will all this be? Umm, probably not for a while. Of course you never know... For now, back to the real world. (If you want to see all the pictures I took click here for an iPhoto-generated album.) |
