Ever Been Bitten By A Prawn?

To Andy's amusement, yesterday saw us setting off from Taupo to visit Huka Prawn Park, one of only two geothermically heated prawn farms in the world, the other is owned by the same people and based in Iceland. The farm was set up next door to a geothermic electricity plant which uses the water which cascades down Huka Falls to produce electricity. The warmed waste water is then diverted into the prawn farm where the prawns, which are originally from Malaysia, bask in the tropical temperatures. We signed up for the 11am tour, and our guide, who knew more than anyone else in the world about prawns, took us through the process. First we visited a couple of large fish tanks where we were (un)lucky enough to view some "prawnography". Then we were led through to the breeding pools where each male hangs out with his harem of up to 7 females, fighting with the other males and producing 36 million young in two years, impressive! The farm has a 75% survival rate - thats a lot of prawns. By this time we were quite surprised at how much there was to know about prawns and how interesting it was! I got brownie points for asking a good question; "Er, is that one dead?" "Oh, yes it seems to be, oops!". A new career as a prawn farmer beckons? After having a good look at the millions of tiny babies, we got to feed some of the older prawns that were about 6 months old. Bizarrely they were all different sizes from miniscule to quite tasty. This was where Andy learned something of his own - he's a prawnophobic. No matter what he could not be induced to put his hand in the tank and let the prawns nibble the food out of his palm. The occasional yelps from the rest of the group who were getting the odd bite from one of the big ones didn't help. It did feel very weird, having prawns nibbling and climbing all over your hand. However we couldn't hang about for Andy to conquer his fear, off we went to view the prawn pools, have a go on the prawn related "fun" stuff and feed the trout in the river. At this point the heavens opened, the tour was over and we ran back to the restaurant to sample some of these delicious crustaceans for lunch. After a prawn pate and shrimp cocktail was tried our hand at prawn fishing. This was to take up most of the afternoon... Given a bamboo stick, a hook and some chopped ox heart, off we went, dreaming about big piles of steaming garlic prawns for dinner. An hour and a half later, and Andy finally landed one, to a general cheer from me and the others around the pool who had been glumly staring into the water all afternoon. Andy's pleasure soon turned to horror when he realised that, in front of a crowd of onlookers, he was going to have to wrestle this thing off the hook and actually touch it! Eventually I came to his rescue, swallowing my own revulsion I managed to get the thing round the waist (with it clutching my finger imploringly with one pincer) and between us we got the hook out and manhandled it into the small metal bucket containing iced water which we had optimisticlly been given. The excitement!! Then, back to gazing hopefully into the water for another hour - me frantically hoping for a catch of my own to even things up. It was not to be. Thoughtfully contemplating the metal bucket an hour later, I was surprised to see a couple of tentacles waving over the side. About to ask Andy if he'd given the thing a knock on the head, my question was answered when under my watchful gaze Mr Prawn made an impressive bid for freedom, leaping bodily over the rim, landing on the boardwalk and moving towards the water in a style which was frankly much faster than I would ever guess that a prawn can move on land. My yelling alerted most of the Prawn Park to the escape of our dinner, arrested only when Andy executed a flying tackle on the little bugger and flung him back into the bucket, safely resting an umbrella on the top. Well, for the rest of the afternoon our tally came to only two prawns, thrown back into the water in disgust at 4.30pm. We had Chinese takeaway for tea.