Since my last blog I've had two full-day scenic drives: the Forgotten World route (highway 43) and the East Cape Pacific Coast Highway (highway 35). The weather has been a bit grey and foggy, which makes it much harder to get good photos, but it still looks spectacular to the naked eye. I've been staying in another AirBnB, this time a distinctly plush lakeside one in Taupo.
On the subject of AirBnB, I have quickly made the full journey from novice to convert to enthusiast to proselytiser to prophet. Lots of people have spare rooms: it's an absolute no-brainer that they should be rented out to people who have a need for them. In San Clemente I got a lovely big en-suite room, with its own balcony overlooking the Pacific, for roughly the same price that I very nearly paid for a tiny Motel 6 room three miles inland where every bedsheet is a Turin Shroud of somebody else's skidmarks.
Hotels don't like AirBnB, just like taxi firms don't like Uber. Tough. Launderettes didn't like it when people started getting washing machines in their own homes! And blacksmiths didn't like it when people started driving cars instead of riding horses. There is no trade to which the rest of humanity owes a permanent living. And more importantly there's no particular reason why all our economic transactions should be intermediated through big corporations. Those big corporations certainly have their uses (nobody is going to ethically hand-craft you a flatscreen TV, or a smartphone, or an MRI scanner), but the whole point of living in a free market economy is that things change: corporations can either adapt or die, whichever they prefer.
My journey through New Zealand, 2000 miles driven in 6 days, finished with a rather severe traffic jam going through Hamilton en route to Auckland airport. Message to New Zealand: you have more land than the UK but only the same population as Yorkshire. You're not allowed to have traffic jams. Sort that sh*t out.
(I'm a bit behind with my blog and I left New Zealand before the weekend's football. Therefore this is not quite the right place to say anything about Sunderland utterly destroying N*wc*stle for the sixth consecutive derby match in a glorious, if slightly jammy, 3-0 home win. So, not a word from me.)
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| Only Poms use namby-pamby euphemisms like 'fertiliser'. |
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| Napier |
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| Chumbawumba Bay |
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| Cowabunga Bay, seen from Mount Bananarama. OK I admit it, I can't remember where I took these photos, so I'm just making names up. In my defence, I'm pretty sure that's what the Maoris did in the first place. |
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| Edd vs Food #29 Berber lamb & rice with mint tabouli at Ali Baba's Tunisian Café, Rotorua. |
