March 30: Opononi to Waitomo

Previously: March 29

Today was to be our only really bad travel day, since we’d gone as far north as we were planning to go and now had to return south to just about our southernmost stop, in Waitomo, which is famous for its caves. We started with good coffee at the Thai Landing Café, where we’d bought the pie and coffee yesterday. Today, we had Thai beef and Thai chicken pies, and both were excellent. They were so good, I bought another one for the road.

The trip down to Waitomo, where we’ll spend a couple days exploring caves, nominally takes 6 hours as the Google flies. But in practice, you need to caffeinate and bathroom periodically, and driving at the posted speed limits would be suicidal if you don’t have superb reflexes and some prior knowledge of the road layout. The main national superhighway is about as good as North America's best roads. But in rural areas, this arises from a combination of economics and bad road design. The economics part relates to insufficient use of the “cut and fill” roadbuilding technique, in which you remove earth from one place to make the road's course smoother or easier on the car, while simultaneously reducing the number or size of blind spots. Think of it as removing the tops of hills that block your view of the road ahead and you'll get the idea. You then move the earth elsewhere to accomplish the same goal without having to buy fill from somewhere else. It’s a best practice, but it’s expensive, and in rural areas, it’s sometimes hard to justify the cost.

The design problem is that the roads weave like intestines through the landscape, which is scenic, but makes driving difficult because you have to constantly pay attention to ensure you stay on the road. And because they haven’t used cut-and-fill enough, you frequently can’t see over crests, so you have no idea which way the road turns until you pass the crest or whether someone has crossed onto your side of the road through inattention or excess speed. For the sane driver, the natural impulse is to slow down, which annoys many of the local drivers. (See what I did there?) For the worst turns, the designers have provided clear signposts, with symbols ranging from < to <<<< to indicate the tightness of the upcoming curve and usually with the recommended speed limit posted on the sign. But the posted limits are wildly inconsistent: sometimes following the limit puts you at a risk of skidding right off the road, and sometimes you can go through the turn much faster than the posted recommendation, without the least risk, but you never know which it’s going to be unless you can see which way the road goes—which you often can't do because of insufficient cut and fill. So again, much unnecessary slowing or panicky braking.

As a result of these factors, the trip took us 7.5 hours. I did the driving, as Shoshanna hasn’t yet gotten comfortable with left-side driving and more importantly, some of the navigation is reasonably complex, so she provides ongoing guidance as I drive, freeing me up to concentrate on the road and other drivers. It’s a fair trade, but exhausting.

We made it into Waitomo well before dark, and found the YHA Juno Hostel with no problem. Our hostess, Stephanie, is not so much bubbly as she is effervescent. A cheery, smiling bundle of energy with boundless enthusiasm. Very energizing and fun to chat with, and also knows the local area cold, so she's a font of useful information.

The hostel’s about 15 minutes out of “cave town”, my name for the cluster of accommodations and restaurants that have sprung up around the caving tourism industry. We chose dinner at the Tomo Café. Mine was, unapologetically, bad; what had been billed as the daily “roast” was rubbery sliced roast beef in tepid gravy, though the Yorkshire pudding and veggies were okay. Shoshanna’s pork belly and veggies was much better. The compensation was the beer, of which they had a good selection. I tried a Wakata Bitter, styled after an English bitter but it turned out less bitter. Lovely rich red color and clean taste, so very good indeed. Shoshanna opted for Speight’s Old Dark, which we’d already tried and knew to be excellent. Thus far, Speight wins the prize for consistently excellent beers.

While we were waiting for our food to arrive, we happened to notice a group of five folks at an adjacent table having an animated conversation about how terrible Canadian cell phone rates were. We nodded along in sympathy, and one of them spotted the nods, and seeing as we’d been eavesdropping, beckoned us to join the conversation. So we moved to their table and had a delightful chat with them. Alan and (Sharon?) were a nice couple from Vancouver who had recently retired and were spending a month in New Zealand. James, the man who’d encouraged us to join them, was a kiwi now, but originally from Fiji, and he was there with his eldest son and his son’s friend. The three were telecommunications engineers, so it was deeply amusing how vigorously they were debating the merits of the various local cell phone services and having trouble securing access to their chosen networks.

They were all friendly, voluble, and enthusiastic, and the conversation ranged all over the map. Before we noticed, it was after 9 PM. We took our leave, and had a pleasant stroll uphill back to our hostel. It was pitch dark, as clouds had rolled in, so there was no starlight or moonlight. (I originally typed “moolight”, which presumably is what you get when the fabled jumping cow comes between you and the moon.) Fortunately, I’d brought a little LED flashlight, which lit our way home. It's a narrow country road, but some wise soul installed a sidewalk (and a guard rail in some places), so it's safe so long as you can see where you're putting your feet.

After showering, we engaged in our nightly ritual of Shoshanna’s footrub. We went to the common room, figuring it would be more social. Because my hands were otherwise occupied, I was the only one of the 12 people in the common room without a smartphone or tablet. Of the remainder, two of the kids were skyping or facetiming with someone, and only one group of three kids were having an actual conversation—though with phones firmly in hand and at the center of their attention. So not so much with the social.

Bedding was a bit of an issue. We did reserve a private room, but as we're at a hostel, it was a two-bed room with the main bed being a bunk bed with a double below, with both head and footrests, and a single bed above. Took a bit of arranging, but we did eventually manage to squeeze ourselves into the bed and had a good night’s sleep.

Next installment: March 31