A TOURISTS WOES

Rotorua Morning Post, 1 March 1933, Page 6

A TOURISTS WOES

HAD SEEN IT ALL fastidious gentleman who refused to be pleased. ROTORUA' LACKS APPEAL. The sights of the Rotorua distriet impart to the average visitor a keen sense of enjoyment, but occasionally a snag drifts along whose mind is incapable of registering a favourable impressiori of any kind. Sueh a being recently spent three days scowling at the thermal regions ; then he pined for a quick return to Wellington, there to embark for his Ibeloved London. He took a local tourist office iixto his confidence where he unfolded his impression of Rotorua and his plans for an early escape from the neighboixrhood. The suggestion that the Limited express would put the greatest possible distance between himself and Hades in the shortest possible time was received with disdain. He had come up on the Limited and would not endure the excruciating torment of going back on it. He was then advised to *go south by cax* via the National Park and New Plymouth. But to this proposal he raised the objection that the National Park did not contain the only range of moixntains in the world and why subrnit to the insufferable boredom of seeing once again what he had already seen in other parts. "Mount Egxxxont might interest you," tentatively-suggested the agent; but no\ a commonp.lace spectacle such as Mount Egmont would affront his aesthetic sense and the suggestion was at once cast aside. The route via Wairakei and Napier was then recommended; but here the boolcing agent met his Waterloo. A contemptuous frown greeted the mention of Napier. He had been. to Pompeii and had seen "that sort of thing" before. "But there is no ana.logy between the two," ventured the agent. "What happened two thousaxxd years ago in a foreign country and what happen- • ed two years ago in a British Dominion the foxmxer the. resxxlt of a volcanic eruption and the latter the resulfc of an earthquake are as wide apart as the poles." The intellectual calculating mind of the visitor was, however, proof against such a sophism; he would not do outrage to his reason by visiting Napier and repeating what his discriminating travel experience had already rendered familiax*. He would seek other means of getting to Wellington but what those other means were the agent never found out for, at that xnoment he rexxxembered pressing bxxsiness elsewhere and left the fastidious travel eonnoisseux* to his own resources. The latter has since faded from Rotorua but how, when, or where no one seerns to know: He will return to London with the conviction that New Zealand is a kind of island Sahara; its xxxountains, valleys, alpine and bush scenery, fiords, inlets, icelets, lakes, glaciers and thermal wonderland representing the dreariest and most desolating expanse of wilderness in the "whole world.