dead/buried

The smell was still there in the morning (it seems to be concentrated near the motel office where the little mineral pools are) but is still quite manageable and I even managed to start feeling hungry after a nice morning walk. It struck me yesterday on the road on the way in that this place slightly resembled a Vegas-like sort of resort kind of place and last night we spotted a few references referring to the town as Rotovegas; it's certainly not a pretty place and obviously has the bars, hotels and tat-shops to support a fair weight of tourists but hopefully has some stuff worth seeing around it even if the buildings of the town are fairly forgettable. After a nice reasonably-not-too-fatty breakfast of beans, toast and hash browns at Fat Dog (ate there last night and seemed quite reasonable and charismatic) we tried the Rotorua Museum in the old principal bath-house which looks eerily similar to both the big old spa-proximal hotels back home. The introductory videothingby describing the most recent local eruption of note in 1880something probably wasn't as bad as it could have been though it took me until about twenty minutes after it finished to work out where I'd seen the principal actor before; if he'd scowled more and worn Clone Trooper armour instead of a tour bus driver uniform and a set of overalls it might have taken a bit less time. As well as the museum-bit featuring the scant recollections of some of the former employees and visitors and a few bits and pieces of hardware you can see around the underpipes in the basement and look out from the roof at all the codgerettes playing silly posh games on the lawn and has a few little gallery bits too. After eventually giving up attempting to find somewhere which sold coffee AND muffins (another disappointing North Island feature) and settling for coffee and pie we had a poke at the buried village thingby twentyish kilometres southish which was partially buried during the most recent local eruption of note in 1880something. Again, reasonably diverting though mostly for the niceness of the wandering through the trees and lumpyground around the site (including a nice little waterfally steep-path) as much as the various combination of small wooden building and intruding lumps of volcanic mud. Another thing North Island seems to lack is the usual hawk-thing eating the roadkilled possums which just lie there on their own after being squished. Makes for a slightly neater picture, though it is amusing to see the hawkthings attempting to take off with the possum clutched in their talons as you approach at 100kmph and the semi-coagulated possum's insides attempt to remain stuck to the road surface. Didn't put us off our food or anything though we had to omit starters and desserts in order to cope with a main course from Lovely India which was just about the right size to be filling without feeling like it was going to sit there being full for several hours afterwards.