Rumble

There are weird, painted lines along some of the roads here and often, in order to cross and turn right, you are forced to run over these lines. They make horrible, scary rumbling noises and the whole cars makes sounds as if it is about to collapse. It is unnerving.
What is also unnerving is that we have travelled all the way up the East Coast of North Island, to see the Coromandel Peninsula, only to discover that the single entry into the National Park has collapsed and the entire Peninsula is inaccessable. Doh.
We drove from Napier to Taupo after a disquieting run-in with some threatening looking locals who scared us by following our car around and making weird gestures at us. So we ran away. On wheels.
In Taupo, we revisited our lakeside parking spot and enjoyed a truly relaxing Sunday. You may be wandering, what have we done recently that is so stressful as to deserve a relaxing Sunday? It is a valid question, but in reply, we have done lots of driving. It was Sunday, traditional day of rest...Okay, obviously those are no-fly excuses. It was sunny, we were by a gorgeous lake, ice cream became involved, who were we to argue with the idea of staying put for a day? For the record, I had passionfruit and malaga, Alex had kiwifruit and boysenberry. All four were sumptious!
We walked round some of the lake, took about an hour. It was very hot and sunny, the water was sparkling and all of Taupo's boat-touting residents crawled out of the woodwork and started displaying their machines. Bizarrely, some of the streams feeding the lake are boiling hot and steam as they run into the lake.

We have been listening to the New Zealand radio stations for a while on the longer drives - they are hilarious. They are in no way as PC as English radios are, although sometimes they just go too far. They swear, they make illicit comments, they insult everyone and yet, they remain hysterically amusing. They have terrible competitions ('What are your King or Queen of?' - 'Sausages', 'Stripping', Deepest Voice' being some of the answers) and crazy headlines - 'Seven Year Old Reicarnated Buddhist Monk'. The Dj's are not in any way reserved, speak their minds and spend a lot of time phoning random people up for no apparent reason. They also have a serious need to mock females. Like I say though, fuuunnyyy!

Anyways, we are currently in a random place (Waihi) at a campsite for showers! Yay! We are trying to work out our next move, now the Coromandel has seemingly collapsed...