OPINION
Rotorua! Sulphur City, classic New Zealand, the best scent in the world, all that sexy, smokey, steamy fog, “fuming and humid” as I described it in my book Civilisation – I went there last weekend for the first time in ages, and remembered the very first time I went there, 17 years ago, with my new crush, and we got tickets to Whakarewarewa and saw the comedian Radar walking around the village with his new crush. Love is always in the air at Rotorua, romance capital of New Zealand.
Rotorua! For years afterwards we stayed in a hard-case motel on a side street. It was cheap and very basic, but it had its own private hot pool – you’d turn on the tap, and all that liquid sulphur would pour out. Last weekend I stayed in a hotel very near the hard-case motel, so I went out one morning to look for it, just for old time’s sake. I thought: “I’ll ask at reception if I could make a room inspection.” I am forever revisiting the past and find it hard to let go of things once they are no longer there. Plus anyway I was curious – would it look smaller, even more cheap and basic, would the hot pool look tinpot?
Rotorua! The familiar walk to the tinpot motel was full of awesomenesses. I cut through a redwood forest, and saw a gurgling stream, black and cold. I walked alongside a track fenced in by mānuka, and saw great clouds of thermal steam, smoking from hot yellow waters. I saw another cloud of thermal steam at the end of the street, and headed towards it: workmen were standing around, and a woman was handing out cookies. A digger had scraped the top off a thermal bore. A geyser on a suburban street! Amazing. Only in Rotorua.
Rotorua! One time when I was walking around the streets near the old motel, I came across an old lady in slippers and a thin night gown. I asked her if she was all right. She said she was lost. I asked where she lived. She said she wasn’t sure, but that it was an old folks’ home with a white gate. This wasn’t quite narrowing it down. We walked back to the motel, where I explained things to my partner, and we put the old lady in the back seat next to our daughter, and drove around for about 30 minutes, until she recognised the street where she lived – there was the white gate.
