Bay Of Plenty Bed Bugs

As soon as we round the East Cape, the weather clears up again. The Bay Of Plenty is ancient Maori cultural land. The first canoes of our ancestors from the Pacific landed here sometime between 700 and 1400. We also land here. These are the last days of a great journey. This too ends as good journeys should: We are ready for a holiday.

I catch bed bugs in a hostel in Opotiki. Bed bugs are by far the worst travelling nuisance. Neither the white and black ringed giant mosquitoes of Fiji nor the clouds of sandflies off Milford Sound have anywhere near the same potential to turn you into a walking pile of bloody mincemeat.

Bed bugs come quietly, only when you are still and asleep. Usually only in warm and humid countries like the Philippines and Thailand, or in countries with very “easy goin” hostel staff like Australia. This time they catch me here in New Zealand. They’re still keeping quiet in the hostel. Nothing the next morning either.

We drive back down to nearby Lake Rotorua. For centuries, the Maoris have fought for the right of first refusal on the fish-rich Kaituna River. Kaituna means eel food. Nowhere else are there bigger eels than here. The Maori laid their dead in the Kaituna, where they were stripped to the bone. The bones were then buried behind the seven metre high Kaituna Falls. Eel eats man eats eel. Perfect recycling close to cannibalism.

At the beginning of the trip, I won a rafting trip over the Kaituna Falls in a poker game. Uli is a little apprehensive. She went overboard on her first rafting trip in Australia – I still wonder today how that can happen in the almost complete absence of water. I take on this job today on my second trip over the Kaituna Falls. After escaping the eels by a hair’s breadth, the guide successfully surfs the standing waves a few rapids further down. We sit right at the front of the raft and get our stomachs pumped full of water for half a minute. In other words: great fun.

That night, for the third time in my life, a higher power tries to make contact with me. The bed bugs imported from the hostel in Opotiki to the Christian camp site in Papamoa wake up. I lie awake for hours scratching my head and pondering the content of the message. Be steadfast? But it’s so itchy! Don’t curse on God’s ground? Bloody hell creatures! Wash your sleeping bag more often? But I’m such a clean chap! In the early morning, there is only one modest realisation: bed bug bites still itch even after they have long looked like bloody minced meat.

The exorcism is relatively simple: wash your sleeping bag and all your clothes warm, because apparently no New Zealand washing machine can do hot. Then dry them hot, no matter what the label says, and hang them in the burning Bay of Plenty sun for a day. Climb Mount Maunganui at lunchtime to kill the rest of the big game with UV. Wave washing and sand bathing on the 20 kilometre long empty beach. It works. The next night, only the bites from the previous night are still itching, just enough for this blog entry at three in the morning.