Or more to the point, unpclesbian will go hot pooling. I dragged my sorry arse to work the last two days and I'm now feeling well enough for the trip. The inside of my throat however has been stripped raw from the excessive acid of all my vitamin C consumption, not that I'm obsessive at all, but I used all mediums, pills, juice and raw fruit.
I am of course now praying madly to the weather gods, as I see Turoa has the most snow cover ever, but I'm not concerned about the piste, my worry is will the Desert Road be open!!
The plan is to drive up midday tomorrow, and I hope the weather is as stunning as today as I think the Desert Road is one of the most interesting scenic roads in the world, the only one to surpass it would be the drive from Keflavik Airport to Reykjavik in Iceland. I do wonder though that since the road gods managed to turn the infamous Mangaweka road into a straight one, why they haven't worked on the gullies at the northern end of the Dessert Road.
First stop after that is of course the Tokaanu hot pools, private naturally. Go ooh ahhh at the size of the trout swimming under the bridge, then a delicious soak in the pool, and weather depending the obligatory walk round the micro thermal trail.
After that on to Taupo, meet the rest of the house party then beer, food, wine, gossip and fun. Saturday will have to be De Bretts, though oddly here I prefer the public pool, I like to laze under the bridge by the water fall. Saturday night a repeat of Friday but with a different menu, then back home on Sunday, with another visit to Tokaanu on the way.
I fear on my return it will be a double session at the gym to attempt to remove some of the quadrillion zillion calories I will have consumed over the weekend. Also, as NSBG is one of the house guests I'm sure there will be some stories to tell.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
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8 comments:
Although, I imagine all juicy stories won't be publicly divulged.
I would kill to be at the Tokaanu thermal pools!
No worries Kitten, I'll text tyou from every pool just to rub it in a bit more!!
As you know LDB, never kiss and tell......there is however the select mailing list!!
The highway road from Keflavik to Reykjavik is interesting? Seriously? We just did it several times over 2 weeks and all I could see was lava fields!
Maybe it's better with snow?
Give me the Desert Road any day.
Have fun in Taupo but don't talk religion and politics. Last time I was there with a whole group of friends, we did just that and it all went downhill!
I thought the lava fields and the shapes were cool...but yes it was the middle of winter and the bits were poking out of the snow. In fact most most of Icelands scenery is well cool (sic) except for the straight strip of white clinging to a fjord wall which you realise is a landing strip that your plane is about to touch down on.
If it wsn't for the excrutiatng expense of at all it's a place I'd love to re visit, this time as a tourist!!
You lived in Iceland or went for work?
Yup - it's a bloody expensive place to go to and our landing at Ísafjörður was just as you describe - sans snow!
We got to Ísafjörður on a public holiday and everything was shut. We were staying in Bolungarvik and the only place open for food was the local burger bar which doubled as the service station.
They had on special: 4 hamburgers, french fries and a 2 litre coke for 28,000 kronurs.
We re-read the price.
Nope - we saw it correctly.
Euros 23 or NZ$48.
We had sandwiches and potato chips for dinner!
I've yet to blog a lot about what we saw and did there. I think that I'm still traumatised by the prices of everything in Iceland.
I worked there, and that was in the days before beer was legal....6 months NO BEER!! Ooh Isafjordur...special place in my heart as there was licensed outlet there, we had our booze flown in from there...I was in Talknafjordur, sorry haven't got Icelandic on my keyboard.
Food prices outrageous but when you're stuck on the side of a fjord woring 6.5 days a week not a lot to spend yr kroners on.
Also, they had NO TV on Thursday nights, and they were really big on Greek movies with Icelandic subtitles, after half a bottle of single malt it was easy to keep up with the story.
Search the blog for "leggings" and you'll see a pic.....maybe I should do a story on the place.
The weather, HOT POOLS, scenery and life still haunts me, in an oddly pleasant way tho.
Sorry - make that 2,800k not the 28,000k that I mentioned. I blame the beer and sambucca that was imbibed after attending an exhibition (50 years of Berlin Lesbian History) at the Gay Museum here in Berlin. Shows that we also shouldn't comment on blogs while under alcoholic influence!
Must have been interesting to work in Iceland. Apart from the prices, the people are wonderful (and most speak English!) and the scenery is spectacular. Would love to go back there during winter/early spring to photograph.
TV now seems to show a lot of Norwegian programs with Icelandic subtitles. Perhaps they overcame their fascination with Greek movies.
What I especially loved about the place (and also found this in Zurich) is that if you wanted to stand on the edge of raging waterfalls which make the Huka Falls look like a shower head, you could. If you wanted to wanted to stand on the edge of a boiling hot water thermal pool, you could. No barriers or signs or officious people telling you where to go and where not to go. People are treated like adults. I like that!
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