Last train to Parksville

Er... hello blog readers. (I know there's more than one of you because you left a comment a while ago... if you're still reading, don't be shy, let me know what you're thinking!) I kind of dropped off sometime last week as we were leaving Rotorua. Since we got back our container arrived, some work came in, we still have a house full of kids and their incessant demands and the little time we've had to ourselves has been spent on our bikes. It's sooo good to be out on two wheels again, even if we do live in the hilliest part of the hilliest town in all hillydom. I took the car in for a service yesterday and chucked the bike in the back, figuring on checking out Auckland's city riding while it was getting sorted. What a place. Like a rollercoaster with traffic lights. Anyway, I'll try to keep the blog ball rolling from now on, but bear with me if there's more waffle about riding bikes than there has been of late.

Backpedalling a coule of weeks, Rotorua was the site of the last night of our holls, a lovely dingly dell farmlet just north of the lake, full of sheep and goats and chickens (the farmlet, not the lake..) most of them rescues from animal hospitals and local dairies. You forget that a reliable supply of goats milk means removing the kids from the nanny when they're very young, whereupon they either get the chop or they get a place on Ed & Debbie's farmlet. Eventually they end up on Ed & Debbie's plates of course, but it's better than no life at all, especially when you get to spend it being hand-fed by excited boys and girls. There are pics of this and the rest of our trip on the Picasa page I linked to last time. It's grown a bit big (about 120 pics) and I've filled it out with some non-iPhone shots, so you have to scroll down a bit if you want to skip the older ones. Anyway...

The town of Rotorua is incredibly smelly. Clouds of sulphuric steam billow out from boiling mud pools along the roadside and all over the surrounding area, setting loose what is effectively the world's biggest eggy fart. It drifts through town, in and out of shops and bars and hangs round pavement cafés like a hungry dog. You get used to it quite quickly and to my jaded palette the egginess gradually mellowed, taking on chocolatey, popcorn notes with just a hint of buttery vanilla. Surprising when you consider – as mankind throughout history surely has – that only your own ever smell that good.

It's also surprisingly good to be back up in Auckland, which is to say the thought of it was clearly much worse than the reality. We really lost ourselves in this wild and startlingly deserted country. It was a very nice kind of lost, where your fears aren't borne of what might be lurking round the next corner, instead they emerge when you contemplate your return to suburbia. In fact on the road back north we realised we were more worried that it might take us so long to return south, the rest of the world will have beaten us to it. All that wonderful wilderness will have become parkland, hemmed in by quaint wooden houses, all congregated around tastefully-laid-out shopping malls.

Aukland's not that bad. Being away has kind of made us appreciate it for what it is: so good, everyone wants to move there and in fact already have... a third of the popluation live here and in Howick they live cheek-by-jowl in a low-rise sprawl which very occasionally breaks into parkland, allowing the passer-by a glimpse of ocean. Satellite pics give you the best idea. Domains (as in "public") are bits of incredible hilliness that are thankfully geologically incapable of supporting a house, and they are nice, in a kind of urban parkland kind of way. The truth is it's so beautiful round here you start to resent those fortunate enough to have built their houses right in the way of the lovely views. Honestly, it's that bad. When you do peek between them you get a tiny hint of the breathtaking scene it must have been before they were built. It's not just ocean views, either; a few miles south of here you get an idea of the way it must have been in Howick before it got built up, all rolling valleys and wooded hilltops.

We're fortunate enough to have some good friends who are fortunate enough to have just such a view. So that's alright then. We won't be falling out with them in a hurry. But like us, they're keen to go south and leave their privileged spot behind, and like them, we took one look and realised there are still plenty of places there busy enough for the kids, cheap enough for the Dream House to be built and wild enough for everyone to fall in love with. There are also a lot of hills but what the hell, at least we'll be able to see them as well as bust a gut riding up them...