South Island Day 4: Sulphur. More Bloody Sulphur.

We waved goodbye to the trampoline and headed into the Hanmer Springs township for about 9.30am. The pools don't open until 10am so we chilled in the van drinking tea while we waited for it to open and watching the queues of people mount up... and up... and up. Even after the doors opened they continued to queue out the door and the queue was full of kids and old people and kids and old people don't always have have full control over their bladder so we carried on to the Japanese style Maruia Springs which has hardly any tourists. At all. It's awesome.

So no sooner had I got the smell of sulphur out of my togs we found ourselves up to our necks in a geothermal spring. Clearly sulphur is my future now. I shall return to Auckland reeking of eggs while people cross the road to avoid me. They'll smell me coming a mile off, take a minute to work out if the drains are backing up before realising its just me and getting the nose pegs out. Ah well, at least I'll be able to scoop a fart out and no one will know the difference.

Sitting In A Bath Of Arse Getting Nommed On By Flies. Fun.

Maruia Springs

I loved it though, I heard Hanmer was pretty much just like swimming in a normal pool only its hot whereas Maruia give you a choice of sex segregated Japanese bath houses or the unisex outdoor rock pools. It would have been perfect if it wasn't for the biting flies, me and Shane stuck it out for a while but Nat figured that sitting in a pool that smells like arse whilst being dinner for insects wasn't her cup of tea and retreated to the cafe.
If you do check out Maruia (and you really really should) just take heaps of insect repellant and whilst, yes, it stinks it's not half as bad as Rotorua.

Then it was onwards to a campsite near Franz Josef called Okarito where you can rent overpriced kayaks or go kiwi stalking at night. The kiwi stalking guy only goes 5 nights out of 7 and tonight was one of his nights off but he told us where to walk, what time was best and what to listen for although by now it had started drizzling. Still, if you don't go out you ain't gonna see them ay.

Obligatory Kiwi Sign Photo

So once again we found ourselves walking in the rain in search of NZ wildlife, this time in the dark with my pitiful excuses for torches. And we didn't find any kiwis either, its really hard to listen for footsteps in the leaves when there's rain falling on the leaves. So basically we went for a walk in the dark up a random hill and sat there for 20 minutes listening to the rain and pretending that they were kiwi footsteps we were hearing.

We headed back to the fun bus, banished my swimsuit to the roof of my car and settled in for the night.

written by

Koala Bear on February 6, 2009 from Maruia Springs, New Zealand

from the travel blog: Tiny Little NZ Road Trip

tagged RoadTrip, LovinIt and SouthIsland

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