Monstrous Media!

Just for the uber-curious, I’ve made a google map of my travels thus far. It’s a roughing out of the road traveled with little markers along the way of some of my stops. The map needs some refinement but you’ll get the basic idea.

View NZ in a larger map

Needless to say my sprits have picked up almost immediately following the smash-smash incident; one can’t dwell on these things for too long.
My last few days in Rotorua were excellent. I met some nice Kiwis that took me to some secret local hot springs about 20 km outside of town. The spring was piping hot and flowing perpendicular into an icy cold river creating a warmth gradient in between. You could move in close to the spring and get really hot and then just slide down closer to the river to cool off. It was perfect, especially at night with the stars smashing down.

On my way out of Rotorua I stopped at Agroventures, a big extreme sports company that owns a huge piece of farm land where people go zorbing and jet boating and bungee jumping and all sorts of shit. This emu was hanging out.. Magnificent animal. Although Agroventures was tempting, I couldn’t bring myself to throw down heaps of cash to roll down a hill in a ball. This also meant skipping the Shweeb (bike-powered monorail race track).. SORRY WILL. maybe another day.

The following morning I woke up in a farmer’s front yard and made my way into Waitomo to do a bit of glowworm caving. I signed up with a badass company that took it’s patrons on a 5 hour tour of the legendary caves which included abseiling down into a huge dark crevice, spelunking through tiny lava tubes, blackwater rafting on underground rivers and gazing upon magical glowworm displays of epic status. It was incredible. The glowworms appear like tiny blue stars on the cave ceiling; a milky way of bioluminescence, and they only enumerate as your eyes adjust. Making loud noises ups the quantity quite a bit as well. Apparently they respond to the vibrations in the still air and think there is a moth flying by. Coolest ever. The above shot is from inside the cave looking out at the entrance and below it is an open exposure of yours truly taking a gander at the spectacle.

That evening I drove out to a towards the coast and stumbled upon a small town called Raglan. It’s a quiet surf town with a focus on sustainability and organics and crap like that. The above shots are of sunset at Manu Bay, a world renowned surf spot. I like the one shot through my shades.

I managed to mind a dream-like hostel called Solscape that lets me park Gerty for a reasonable price. They also have a million dollar view of the sea and rent surf boards and bikes for day use. There are tons of hip kids here and good vibes all around. The other day some WWOOFers build a clayfire pizza oven. It had to have a fire burning in it for 36 hours to dry properly. I’ve been here for 3 days now and will probably be here for a few more. I really like it here AND I went surfing yesterday AND I got UP!. I’m going out again today for like 12 hours. yesss.

Sufjan Stevens – Introductory Fanfare For The Hooper Heroes

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The Polyphonic Spree – It’s The Sun

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