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Rotorua: Boiling Mud And Urban Volcanoes
We’ve read several times that as you approach Rotorua, it’s possible to smell the town before you ever see it. Well it’s not strictly true but the pungent odour of sulphur hits us as soon as we open the car door and, as we are to discover, permeates through this most unusual city 24/7. The smell emanates, of course, from the excessive geothermal activity taking place just below ground level – the whole city of Rotorua is built over a caldera formed during a volcanic eruption around 240,000 years ago, and there is certainly no mistaking the level of activity still present today. It’s impossible to miss, in fact. But…
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The Salar de Uyuni: Part 2
We’ve survived the bitter cold night. The Danish boys Johannes and Valdemar have also slept well, Max is feeling a little unwell. Carlos bursts through the door in his usual animated style, enthusiastically running through today’s programme. Edwin is out in the cold, filling the fuel tank from the spare can and letting air from the Landcruiser’s tyres. Over the course of the three days Edwin will drive over 1,100 kilometres, precious little of it on anything resembling a road. There’s dirt roads in the sand, there’s rough rocky tracks, there’s sections where two tyre tracks are the only clue as to the way – and there’s times where he…
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From City To Wine Country And On To The Hills
With the delights of San Francisco behind us, we drive into the town of Napa just before lunchtime on that most significant of American days, the fourth of July. Stars and stripes are very much in evidence, bunting and banners adorn the streets and there is a sense of anticipation in the air. The River Napa which flows swiftly through the town and runs directly into San Francisco Bay, once supported heavy industry here, until alternative forms of transport took away its water borne advantages and Napa and its neighbours suffered a downturn. What followed later wasn’t quite the Gold Rush of 1849 but you could conceivably call it the…
