Sweet As, Bro!

Welcome all to the further adventures of Travels With My Train Geek.

Day 5: Wednesday

We started VERY early this morning. for those of yuo that know me at all, you'll know that this involved herculean effort on my part, and no small amount of grumpiness. Damn mornings, who needs them?!?

We were out of our motel by 7am and on the road to Whitianga. At 8am we were on a glass-bottomed boat in the water. Harbour. Thingie.

The caves, cliffs & islands in Mercury Bay were gorgeous, gorgeous, I tell you! We sailed arbout for about 2 hours, nad Mike even jumped in the (very cold) water for a dip with the other tour men. Us clever womenfolk stayed on the boat and mocked their shivering!

We then drove south towards the Haihe hot water beaches. That is, you go to the beack, dig a hole, it fills up with hot thermal water, you jump in, go "my, my, hot warm!" and hop out again. On this occassion, though, we were sadly disappointed - no easy access to the hot sand, the weather was blustery and damp, so we ended up doing only a short trek across the sand and the saying, bugger it, let's go.

We drove to Tairua, Paunui and Whangamata (Fong-a-ma-TAH), then on to Waihi. Our original plan had been to put Mike on the Karanghake Gorge Railway tomorrow morning, but since we were already there/here, he's taking a ride this afternoon. I'm exploring Paeroa, and we'll come back fro a full lap this afternoon before pushing on to Tauranga tonight. Or something. We may be lost in the wilds, who can tell?


Helen's Wall of Lame

For this trip, we thought that instead of an injury count or track of clothing mishaps, the best measure of our trip could be the lameness of our varuous tour guides. If you've benn following any of our previous trips, you'll know that the sing-song hypnotism practiced by most tour guides is one of my pet peeves.

Lame Tour Guides so Far:

Driving Creek Railway. Lame jokes, but delivered in the same tone as his other prattle, so very hard to sort the wheat from the chaff. Lamest Aussie joke, talking about how they are clearing pine & eucalypts and planting kauri to the property - they ring-bark a gum tree every time Australia win at the rugby. Haha, funny fucker.

Gold Stamp Battery. Dude, just because I come from Australia does not meant hat I know all the intricacies of Aussie gold mining. As if I care?!? If I knew anything about gold mining, would I be paying you to tell me about it?!? This guy was into the red zone on the lame-o-meter.

Love to Ken!