Very nice, eh? But that was yesterday. Today was an entire day of travel. Wes and I left Rotorua at 8 am, with Rick from San Diego as passenger. We dropped him off at Lake Taupo ("the Lake Tahoe of New Zealand" and the geographic center of the North Island), which is the "Trout fishing capital of the world." Apparently rainbow trout eggs were brought here from California and flourished, growing much larger trout than in CA. We continued south through Tongariro National Park, which contains the first 3 mountains I've seen in this country. The largest, Mt Ruapehu, site of the Whapapa ski resort, is 2797 meters. South, south, south, through Whanganui down to Wellington at 4:20. The 4:00 ferry to Picton hasn't left yet, so I book passage on it. It doesn't leave until 6:30 due to what amounts to a strike. The passage over is incredibly smooth. For 3 hours I sit in the "Music Room," listening to classical and reading. I stayed in the Bellvue Guest House, which was kept by one of the most immaculate men I have ever met. He was a Pom, right out of Monty Python! As I and 2 others were watching TV in the Lounge, he came in to inform us (well, someone has to say it) that one of us has B.O! He mentioned something about showers, so I assume he didn't want smelly bodies in his clean beds.

I stayed up to watch snooker on TV. The Kiwi, Dene O'Kane is making his way through the higher-ranked field, and is taking the country by storm. A lot of people are suddenly becoming snooker fans, myself included, although very few have any idea what a snooker is (a shoe that giggles on cue?)