Dispelling any doubts that we were on the tourist trail, European hitchhikers lined the road out of town, holding signs marked \"Taupo\" and looking rather pathetic in the drizzle. Yet again I found myself happy having a bike to move me and my stuff around. The morning's riding was hardly ideal, though: busy SH5 led us up a gradual, interminable incline through monotonous industrial forest. At Waiotapu we turned onto a side road passing through an area rich in geothermal activity. We biked right up to what was the best bubbling mud pool either of us has seen, marveling that this attraction was available to us free of charge.
Not so for the \"painted valley\" down the road a piece, where we rubbed shoulders once again with the ubiquitous bus tourists. We gave the attraction a skip, but stopped for a nasty lunch of meat pies. When Fred got back on his bike, he realized his rear derailleur cable was broken, which basically transformed his 24-speed machine into a 3-speed Dutch cruiser suitable for a leisurely pedal along the canals. Luckily, the terrain ahead was relatively gentle. Our route plunged down into a vast agricultural valley framed by volcanic ridges on either side, with Mt. Tauhara (our goal of Taupo nestled at its base) looming in the distance.
I kept reassuring Fred that we weren't too far from the town, and that we'd most likely be able to find a new cable for him there. In the meantime, he strained in his pedals behind my wind block. Just as we had resigned ourselves to a plodding pace into Taupo against the wind, an apparition emerged out of the drizzle: a panel van full of bicycle parts stopped by the lonely roadside. Had breathing all the sulfur fumes affected our brains? It turned out to be a group of Dutch cyclists on a package tour, eating a lunch prepared for them by their amazingly equipped organizers.
In typical Dutch, no-nonsense style, a woman named Helene sold Fred a new cable for something like four NZ dollars \--next to a sheep pasture, miles from the nearest town. As Fred and Helene fixed his bike, the Dutch cyclists bid us farewell one by one until only one remained, a guy who told us to call him Ray. Since he was on his own, we proposed that he ride along with us to Taupo --a fatal error, it turns out. Ray proved to be an able rider, happy with our often sluggish pace (especially uphill), yet oddly taciturn. He rode behind us most of the way, never addressing a word to us.
I kept forgetting he was there as we cruised through pastureland punctuated with forests of pine and steaming lakes of milky blue and green. Nearing Taupo, we elected to take a detour to check out a few tourist objects on our way into town: the Aratiata Rapids, the Huka Falls, and yet another geothermal area known evocatively as \"Craters of the Moon.\" It was at the first of these attractions that disaster struck. Atop the dam that controls the rapids, I stopped, Ray stopped, and Fred didn't. At first I didn't know what had happened, beyond Fred and Ray hugging the road.
Both of them were pretty badly scraped up, especially Ray, who appeared to be in somewhat of a state of shock. We flagged down the first car to come along. The driver had an American accent, and while he was headed in the other direction, he offered to give Ray a lift into town, where his compatriots had set up camp. For the rest of the day, Fred and I kept looking at each other, feeling terrible to have played a part in what is sure to be the low point of Ray's cycling holiday. By far the worst accident we've been a part of this trip, the event sobered us up a bit to the dangers of the road, and I hope we'll continue with an intensified sense of caution...
As if to mock the darkness of our mood, the sun had come out at this point, shining on some of the most fetching scenery we've seen in this country. Everything looked green and lush, and the sound of the beautiful blue Waikato river filled the ionized air. We gave the rest of the tourist stops a skip in the interest of attending to Fred's wounds, yet I couldn't help but being beguiled by our first view of Lake Taupo --NZ's largest---and the series of volcanic peaks towering on its far shore. Taupo is a charming little place, full of tourists yet far less commercialized than Rotorua.
In the hot pool of our cheesy Canadian-run motel I chatted with a trio of Kiwi tourists (two of them Dutch immigrants living here for forty years) who clued me in on certain aspects of NZ which have remained elusive to me. According to the formerly Dutch gentleman from Gisbourne, employers are hesitant to employ Maoris not because they are racist but because it involves a commitment to the employee's entire family and tribe. If someone in the family (close or extended) dies, for example, the boss is expected to attend a funeral that can last up to five days. I also quizzed them on their opinions regarding the Prime Minister's proposed Code of Social Responsibility, which passes into law such moral notions as \"raising a child is the responsibility of its family.\"
All three dismissed PM Jenny's ideas as \"nonsense.\" At dinner we ran into our mysterious American from this afternoon, the guy who drove Ray into town. A fit-looking and self-possessed man in his forties, he introduced himself as Robin and offered to share with us the bottle of wine he'd brought with him. He told us of his solo travels around NZ by car and boat as well as his forays into the worlds of wine and Steadycam operation. He left quite an impression on both of us, a sort of traveling Buddha, completely free of stress or negativity. In retrospect, I should have asked him about my most pressing worry as we prepare to turn in tonight: what can we do to improve our karma that was so suddenly messed up on the dam today?