H[subscript]2[/subscript]S

Yesterday evening when I popped out for a run there was a distinct smell of smoke in the air all along the beachfront with occasional flavourings of Ralgex and Copydex besides the standard burnysmell. There's still a trace of it here this morning and hopefully this is the reason why the beachfront path-thing is almost entirely deserted as it would be a shame if it were only used in the summer by promenading tourists even though the sea is fairly uneventful and the steeply-sloping shingle beach has a somewhat artificial look about it. I'm trying to avoid the telly so I'll probably never find out if the smell-causing agent was a fire in a Ralgex or Copydex factory.

The nice motel-owning people let us leave the car in the car park whilst we had a last go at the town. Nicky fancied the aquarium seeing as we'd been to a museum on Sunday and would probably be at a couple more before the week was out but as aquariums go it was a little joyless; very very small enclosures with miserable-looking fishbeasts in, lots of parents misinforming their children, lacks of facts and the occasional lie (an aquarium with sharks in should be aware that not ALL seagoing fish have bony skellingtons), child-screeching in the bit where it asked people to shut up so as to not frighten the poor bewildered kiwi and so on. Next time given the choice between this and the museum I'd probably go for the museum as this one is purported to have a bit about the Local Earthquake of 1931 as well as the stuff about the histories of the various populations of the Pacific region.

We were going to go on one of the Art Deco walking tour things but eventually (after watching from the other side of the street to see if anyone else was going on it) just left to get on to Rotorua. We thought that the enboatered and beblazered guide would be standing outside the Art Deco Shop and thus assumed that the tour wasn't taking place (it being winter and everything) when he didn't appear though the very few people scuttling into the shop appeared to then be ushered into the small theatre at the back. We still didn't bother... the gist is that a Big Local Earthquake knackered the town in 1931 and it was then rebuilt in the popular style of the time. We'd already seen the outsides and insides of some of the buildings without the disadvantage of being accompanied by a bloke dressed seventy years awry.

I was thinking on the way along the road that North Island really doesn't have much scenery of anything approaching the standard of South Island when we turned a corner and hit the start of the lumpy volcanic bit. Most prettisome. Time for a combination toilet/picture stop before the final stretch.

Upon reaching Rotorua and taking a deep breath...
...I grew up in a village suffixed with the -Spa descriptor though it once offered only cold and sulphurous waters to the gouty and dyspeptic rather than steamingwaters. When we first moved there you could smell the oilseed rape and fertilisers in the summer but no olfactory trace of the source of the village's fame and the justification for the relatively fancy hotels remained. Rotorua smells, though it never quite gets to the boak-point and I don't feel at all put-off-food though I am slightly concerned that when we leave the town we, our hair and all our clothes will smell faintly of hydrogen sulphide.

Hopefully the people of the surrounding areas are used to it.