Bacon

Bacon was once a subject of great interest in this forum. Do a subject line search for "Bacon," and you'll find it. In it, I described the various sorts of bacon I have had and wondered if there were more. In a nutshell, there is American Bacon, which is the Food of Kings. It loses half or more of its mass during cooking and gets all dark and crispy. English bacon is anti-bacon. It looks sort of like American bacon before it's cooked but retains most of its size and shape and color when it's cooked. It gets a little crispy, but it needs to be eaten with a fork and knife. Then there is Canadian Bacon, which, as far as I can tell, isn't available in Canada (they have American bacon) which is just thinly sliced ham that's cooked like bacon. The primary use of Canadian bacon is as a pizza topping.

Upon first hearing about the different types of bacon, Brunnen-G reckoned she had the American kind, but she doesn't. She has a fourth type, New Zealand bacon, which seems to resemble English bacon the most. It tastes like a cross between American bacon and ham, leaning on the ham side, and has the texture of English bacon. It's available in different cuts. You can get strips of it, which look like normal bacon, or you can get round bacon steak slices, which I am told are grossly fatty, and then you can get the kind we had for breakfast on the morning of Day 2, which was sort of in between: ragged, wide, uneven strips that look like bacon on one end and have an oval of ham-like meat at the other.

Puck

I met Puck while watching Thunderbirds the night before. Leen had already gone to bed by then, so she met him this morning. Puck is a very easy-going kind of guy, who likes to joke and tease with a straight face. We learned very quickly to be distrustful of anything he said. In other words, my kind of guy. Puck had been around RinkWorks a little before this visit but not much. All he knew about me was that I kicked him out of RinkChat once. "I was going to kick you out of the house," he said to me after breakfast in his thick New Zealand accent. "I had it all worked out."

"I knew that was going to come up," I said, laughing. "You should have done it."

I didn't realize it at the time, but it would hit me later that where Americans tend to say "figure out," New Zealanders tend to say "work out," as in, "I can't work out why Brunnen-G likes these people."

Then it was off to Rotorua, southeast of Auckland, where we would spend two days doing things there. But we took the scenic route and did some other things on the way.

Ma and Pa Brunnen-G

We met Brunnen-G's parents from the inside of their car (BG borrowed their car for the two weeks we were there, because it was larger than her own and better suited for carting us all around). Brunnen-G handed her mother the house key so she could feed the cat, named Cat, while we were gone.

The residents of that part of town had STEEP driveways, and I noticed several other neighborhood with clifflike driveways, too. In a New England winter, these driveways would be iced over, and everybody's vehicles would be sliding down into the road.

Candyland

The highlight of the trip for Leen, I think, was the visit to Candyland, in Gordonton, just outside Ngaruawahia, some distance south of Auckland. Candyland is a candy factory with a huge candy shop where you could buy pretty much any kind of chocolate or fudge imaginable. We came out with more chocolate than we could eat, partly because it all looked so good, and partly because it was sold in New Zealand dollars per gram; consequently we had no conception whatsoever about how much we were spending.

Outside Candyland, we saw goats in goathouses. They were on chains (the goats, not the goathouses) and were essentially lawnmowers. This prompted oral recitations of "GOAT DA BETS AMINAL one one one one." Brunnen-G took some time getting used to hearing such things as that and "r0x0rs" out loud instead of just reading them online. We also saw a paddock full of ostriches, which struck me as pretty surreal.

Kiwi House

From there we went to the Kiwi House, a native bird park in Otorohanga. This is a place where injured birds are brought in and cared for, and people can pay some money to walk around in. The birds we saw there don't count on birdwatchers' life lists, so Darleen didn't get any mileage out of the place in that respect, but the Kiwi House was a great place to see a lot of extraterrestrial birds close up. They have some WEIRD looking birds. The Pukeko, for example (which we saw in the wild the day before), which look like skinny chickens, blue in front and black everywhere else. This was the only chance we'd have to see a Kiwi -- they're rare nocturnal birds, and few see them in the wild anymore. The Kiwi House had Brown Kiwis, the largest and most common kind. They're much bigger than I thought they'd be. We hit it lucky -- two kiwis were being unusually active when we were there, sparring with each other over some matter.

How We Found Out Brunnen-G Was A Scary Internet Psycho After All

At Waitomo, we engaged in one of the most anticipated events of the trip. It was the Tumu Tumu TOObing adventure, in which we would descend into a cave, get in inner tubes, float around and see the famous New Zealand glow worms, and emerge from the other end of the cave not much the worse for wear.

Well, that's what we expected it would be like. Obviously things never work out precisely as expected, but I certainly didn't imagine that I would be wandering around hilly sheep paddocks in diving gear, far away from any visible water, looking like a lost extra from "Thunderball."

We piled into a dingy white van, with the sliding door on the wrong side, with about five other people, including one of our guides, who drove. Two Swiss women were in the front seat with him, and we overheard snippets of their conversation. They had been learning English in Auckland for the past two weeks. At some point in their conversation, one of the women referred to a "garAGE," and the guide didn't understand her. "Oh, a GAR-age?" he said, the light dawning. The Swiss woman repeated the word. "GAR-age," she said. Leen and I snickered and noted how she had it right the first time.

The van ascended a windy little road that went up cliffs. I should take the opportunity to mention how tense it can be for an American, unaccustomed to either left-side driving or controlled curve careening, to be in a vehicle that is soaring around blind curves on one-lane gravel roads high up in the mountains where there are no railings to keep you from plummeting into gorges and getting impaled on extraterrestrial pine trees. The fear is that you'll round a curve and encounter another vehicle travelling the other way, a vehicle that just might be driving on the *correct* side of the road. Our guide told us how to tell a native from a tourist. The tourists drive way over in their lane, while the natives plow down the middle of the road and see no reason to worry if there are 2.54 centimeters of empty space between vehicles.

Actually Leen and I found New Zealand drivers to be less maniacal than Massachusetts drivers, but they drive differently. They don't generally make kamikaze swerves in and out of traffic, cutting people off and tailgating like madmen. They do, however, seem comfortable driving with their vehicles pretty close together, owing perhaps to the fact that the width of the lanes in town are MUCH narrower than ours. In the city, the road lanes don't seem all that much wider than the cars themselves, which might explain why they have no qualms driving next to other vehicles that aren't so very far away. We saw one Dodge pickup-truck, similar to the one we own, the entire time we were there. I don't know HOW it got around. I'm pretty certain our truck is wider than their traffic lanes.

At any rate, we ascended the hills and ended up in the middle of miles upon miles of steep grassy hills. If you saw a contour map of the area, there would not be any part of it untouched by ink. It would consist pretty much entirely of contour lines. There was no visible water, no visible caves, and the only visible building was a warehouse sort of thing perched atop one of the myriad hills. Of course there were sheep galore. All areas of land in New Zealand not used by forestland, beaches, or homes are used by sheep or cows or horses. Even on the actual cliffs themselves, there would be sheep or cows grazing. If you trek across the countryside, you'll have to pass through many fences via either gates or stiles. This aspect of New Zealand reminded me of Scotland, where it's pretty much the same story.

So we were handed wet suits and shown to the changing area, men to the left, women to the right. We changed into our swimsuits, then donned wet suits, which was easier said than done, and waddled out to be fitted with boots and helmets and battery packs. If we stood up straight, our arms would sort of hover to the side, because it wasn't exactly easy to move around in those things.

So then, as I say, we found ourselves hiking around the hills, through sheep paddocks, in wet suits and helmets. "Excuse me," it seemed like we should have been saying, "Can you tell me where the ocean is? They said it was everywhere in this country."

We hiked for what seemed like 1.6 kilometers (it wasn't) and descended into a valley, until we entered a forested area. Eventually we came to a rocky thing where there was a hole in the ground. There was a bridge that went over it, then a rope ladder to the side that would allow us to descend into it. It was a bit of a squeeze, especially with the battery pack, that powered our helmet lamps, sticking out in the back. From there we had to wade down a rocky stretch of tunnel where the water was flowing pretty fast. Then we regrouped, and our guide gave us an introductory spiel. All I remember of it is that we weren't supposed to touch the stalactites or stalagmites unless you were going to fall and had to choose between grabbing onto one and splitting your head open. They're fragile, and even if you just touch one lightly, the skin oil you leave behind damages their growth.

And they were beautiful. What was neat about the caves was how much the nature of the terrain changed as we went along. Sometimes it would be wide and open and peppered with stalactites (each with a dewdrop at the tip, which glowed when the light hit it) and sometimes we'd be on our bellies, crawling through mud. Sometimes we'd be wading or even swimming through the water, and sometimes we'd be navigating up, around, and through uneven areas where the floor was anything but flat. There's no way this kind of thing could be done in the United States. The first time someone twisted an ankle or got cut on a sharp rock edge, there would be a skillion dollar lawsuit. And it wasn't like they went to the other extreme, putting us in truly dangerous situations or not preparing us with the proper equipment or surveying us ahead of time in case anyone had any problems with claustrophobia or related health issues that would interfere with a safe trip through.

Eventually we got to the point where we did the actual tubing part. Inner tubes of varying sizes were stored away in an alcove in the caves, next to where the water got really deep. We hopped in our inner tubes, shut off our helmet lights, and the guide linked us up so that one person's arms were hooked around the boots of the person behind him. There was a rope to guide the way, and we just floated along in the greatest of luxury, gazing up at the ceiling, which was peppered with glow worms. It looked like a starry sky at night, except that it was just a few feet away. The experience cannot be done justice in print. The lapping of the waters, the comfort of lounging in an inner tube, the darkness of the caves, and the bright star-like glow worms passing by overhead as we drifted...it was amazing.

We had seen the glow worms earlier in the trip, on foot, and our tour guide gave us some information about them. 500,000 people come to see the New Zealand glow worms every year. They're actually flies, in the larval stage, which makes them maggots. They hole up in the roofs of caves, spin a tendril of spiderweb like thing, and dangle it from their holes. We could see the threads hanging down when we shined our lights up at them. Each thread hung down maybe six inches or so. It's like the stuff a spider spins, except that it's more lethal, as it has a substance on it that paralyzes unsuspecting insects. When a glow worm catches some prey, it hoists it up and eats it. The glow worm's waste is saved and injected with a chemical that makes it glow, thereby luring insects that are attracted to light. So, yes, when you are looking up at a ceiling full of beautiful glow worms, you're really looking at luminscent feces. Miraculously -- and this says something about the wonder of the experience -- the knowledge that we were looking at things called "maggots" and "feces" did not make the experience any less pleasant. Nor did the fact that we were informed that that particular section of the cave had eels swimming in the water. We never saw any, but I was glad to have the wet suit on.

After that came more trekking, and then came a spot where we had to slide through some mud on our bellies in a section of tunnel that was scarcely big enough for us to fit through. It felt like we were in the marines. The mud wasn't traditional surface mud; it was dense, spongy stuff that lined the rock and looked like rock until you punched it and realized it didn't hurt. Through this part I pretty much just walked with my elbows and let my feet drag behind me. The mud was slippery enough that that's all it took. Then came a spot where we went with inner tubes under our bellies. Then came more trekking and then came a small bit of swimming, which wasn't so much swimming as floating and flailing, because it wasn't easy to swim with those rubber boots on.

And finally, at long last, we emerged into daylight, and then came the hardest part of the trip: climbing back up that darned hill.

Brunnen-G was clever, but I caught onto her plan quickly enough. I knew she was a psycho when she kept saying, "This is so great!" while we were huffing and puffing and otherwise preoccupied with staying alive. But she wasn't going to kill us outright. She was going to make us do things that would take care of the job for her. Very clever. Very clean. But we thwarted her evil plans by surviving to fight another day. Fight another day we did. The very next day, we found ourselves hiking over steaming acid pools and boiling mud pits, but that's another story.

Cool AS

Part of modern slang in New Zealand, the kind of slang that teenagers and early twentysomethings adopt while late twentysomethings and older bemoan the generation gap, is to say that something is "cool as," like you're going to finish by naming something else equivalently cool to the thing you're talking about. But then you don't finish. The analogy is left up to the imagination. You even put the emphasis on the word "as." So a day might be hot as; a night might be cold as; an unfortunate turn of events might stink as; and something really spiffy might rule as. Brunnen-G told us about this element of New Zealand slang long before our visit, but our guide through the caves was the first time we had heard it spoken by a real live New Zealander.

Dinner

Upon our return from the caves, we ate at the restaurant next door to the cave place's office. Most of us, if not all five of us, had fish and chips dinner plates, which cost NZ $10, which was roughly US $5. Spending money in New Zealand was great, because the prices weren't, dollar for dollar, so terribly different from American prices. But the conversion rate was 41ish cents to the dollar, so we got to cut everything in half. Later Puck told us that he hung around us cutting prices in half long enough that he started doing it himself. "Hmmm, eight dollars. Cut in half, that's four dollars...not bad. Hey wait, it's not half for *me*."

Condiments

I have three things to say about condiments in New Zealand. One, they have Heinz ketchup, which is labeled "Tomato Ketchup," and it tastes like American Heinz ketchup. All other ketchup brands, the most common other one being Wattie's (Heinz was never served in any of the restaurants we went to) are called "tomato sauce," as that's what New Zealanders call ketchup. (And, remember, it's "tomahto" there, not "tomayto.") And it tastes very little like actual ketchup. It's spicier and, frankly, sort of nasty.

Two, condiments COST MONEY over there. I remember condiments costing money in Germany. I don't remember them costing money in England. In any case, I had no recollection at all of just how ANNOYING it is to have to pay money for condiments. Restaurant food is, by and large, pretty darned cheap over there, even without cutting the prices in half to convert to U.S. dollars. That NZ $10 fish and chips meal was one of the pricier dishes we had. You could get fish and chips at other places for NZ $4. But drinks were expensive -- NZ $1.50 to $2 for a 600mL bottle of soda (converting to ounces is an exercise left to the reader), and NZ $0.30 to $0.50 for a microscopic packet of ketchup or tartar sauce. Fortunately the fish and chips meal at this particular restaurant came with free ketchup.

Three, the tomato sauce packets at this particular place RULED! We have these foil packets, each containing one skillionth of an ounce of ketchup ("nanoliter" in metric), that you have to tear open messily, spilling 70% of the nanoliter of ketchup onto your fingers. At McDonald's, a small order of fries requires approximately nine packets of ketchup.

New Zealand is decades ahead of the United States in the arena of condiment-related technical innovations, which is perhaps why they cost money in the first place. You know those plastic mini-tubs of Chicken McNugget sauce you get at McDonald's? Imagine two of those, smaller, with clear plastic, bound next to each other by the aluminum (excuse me, aluminium) top. In the center, on the border of the two separate cases of sauce, there is this diamond-shaped outcropping. What you do is aim the diamond-shaped hole at your food, then bend the packet along the seam between the two plastic pockets of sauce. The diamond thing splits open with a pop, and sauce squirts out on the food. If you keep squeezing, you mash the bottoms of the two plastic pockets together and squeeze all the sauce out. Just like that. No mess. It ruled as.

Ambush Soda

To drink, I got a lemon & lime soda in a bottle. Like most things there, it was some brand I didn't recognize. It tasted good at first, then left an aftertaste that made it seem alcoholic. The fumes nearly killed me. I inspected the bottle closer and noted that, in the ingredients list, it had "aromatic bitters." The soda was actually flavored "lemon & lime...with bitters," but I didn't see that last part. It wasn't alcoholic, but it might as well have been. That stuff was nasty. I abandoned it after a few swigs and bought an L&P instead. Meanwhile, Leen bought a raspberry chemical drink that turned out to be disgusting also. Leen abandoned it after a few swigs and bought some chocolate milk instead. Meanwhile, Dave, who had avoided the pitfalls of New Zealand drink consumption by purchasing an L&P at the outset, performed experiments on the unused portions of our drinks. Apparently a little L&P mixed into raspberry chemical drink elevates the taste of the latter from "gross" to "not quite as gross as before."

Rotorua

Rotorua is an hour or two east of Waitomo. Rotorua (consisting of the Maori words "roto," which means "lake," and "rua," which means "two") is a tourist town that stinks. It stinks because it is built on top of volcanic and otherwise geothermal activity that spew sulphur fumes everywhere. It's surprising how fast one gets accustomed to the smell of sulphur, though; a couple hours, and I would only notice the smell when a foggy mist of pure sulphur fumes blew into my face. There is much to say about Rotorua, but it will wait until the next installment, because all we did on Day 2 was crash at the hotel in exhausted heaps.

The hotel room cost NZ $120 per night, which is about U.S. $60, which is cheap but not unheard of for a dinky motel room in the United States.

Well, this place was a little more luxurious than a dinky motel room. It had a kitchenette with dishes, silverware, refrigerator, and various cooking appliances. It had a kitchen table with chairs. It had a living area with comfortable armchairs and a sofa. It had a double bed *downstairs* and two single beds *upstairs*. It had a big TV downstairs and a smaller TV upstairs. It had a small enclosed private outdoor area out the backdoor. In this enclosed outdoor area there was a jacuzzi/hot water spa pool. Dave and I figured it would cost U.S. $300-$500 for a room like that in the United States. A single person, even a young married couple, could LIVE there. And that was in a TOURIST town!

Birds

Darleen, birdwatcher extraordinaire, saw the following on Day 2:

4 new birds, 11 total: Silvereye (*), European Starling, Fan Tail (*), Australasian Harrier (a hawk), Nankeen Kestrel (*)(!), House Sparrow, Mallard, Pukeko, Black Swan (*), Welcome Swallow, Myna.

(*) - New lifelist bird.

In captivity at the Kiwi House, we saw tons of stuff, including, but not limited to: Brown Kiwi, Weka, Eastern Rosella (a parakeet-type bird), New Zealand Pigeon (larger and more beautiful than our ugly rock doves), New Zealand Kingfisher, Morepork (an owl).