Can I go Nowhere with you?

Hey Hey Kids,

so Mark and I had a rowdy first night in Auckland...and by that I mean neither of us were awake past 6pm. In fact with the jet lag, Mark set the record for staying up the latest last night with 8:30pm. The good news is we both get up early and we are saving money by not being awake for dinner.

We left Auckland early Sunday morning on a bus to Roturua then switched to another bus to Whakatane (pronounced, and I kid you not, FUCK-A-TUN-EH). We were told this lovely town was the best bet to get to our first great walk. Once arriving and discussing with the friendly lady in the tourist info centre however, we discovered that Roturua would be our best bet where we could call some people that do guided tours who come in for supplies and try to talk our way into their van for the trip down. We set up our tents at a local campground and spent the night in Whakatane, planning on headed to Roturua this morning.

The bus would be about $25 to get us back to Roturua and wouldn't leave till late afternoon. Since we will have to stay in a hostel anyways we decided in the interest of a budget to start walking out of town and stick out our thumbs. About an hour of walking later, while sitting on the side to enjoy a couple Kiwis (delicious and cheap here...as one might assume) we got picked up for our first hitching experience. The guy said he could take us half way and we gladly accepted. He took us about 50km through switchback roads, along a couple major lakes and through a few small towns, not once dipping the spedometer below 90 or taking more than 6 inches to pass a car. In his defence, whether because of his personal sense of restraint or the car's inability to go any faster, he did not once break the 160km/hr mark. He dropped us off at a little roadside stand and we started trekking back up alon gthe road into the next mountain. Ten minutes up we heard someone call to us from up a driveway asking where we were headed, we said Roturua and he offered us a ride. He was an older Maori guy who threw our gear in the back of his truck and gave us a tour along the way, pointing our various aspects of Kiwi culture with the three fingers he had on his hand. The highilght being the statue of a dog created by locals to commemorate a small dog that used to wander up and down a fence for years. Nobody knew who owned it, some people used to throw it food and it would never cross the road, just wander the fence line day after day. One day it died so the locals pooled there money and built a statue at the end of the fence line.

We're in Roturua for the next two nights while we try to find a way down to the first great walk. The entire town smells of Sulphur and there are hot springs and sulphur mud spas all around. We realized our guidebook had a lot of nice information about nicer towns but nothing too practical, so I left it in Auckland and we are just going to go by the seat of our pants and by recommendations from people. If anyone knows of anyone down here or that has been here that saw some "can't miss" places, send one of us an email.