Photo Essay — Rainbow’s End – SCRIBBLESNZ – photos, writing, recipes from New Zealand

It was my daughter’s birthday promise: that we would take her to Rainbows End, New Zealand’s biggest and best-known theme park. Now, I am not a theme park person. Heights bother me. Plunging vertically to earth leaving my stomach behind me bothers me. Perhaps it’s age, but I’m at a loss to understand how that sensation can be pleasurable to anyone.

I can just about manage the log flume and bumper cars,

otherwise my enjoyment from theme parks is derived from watching others’ fear, pain and pleasure and photographing it. Rainbow’s End has improved in recent years with the addition of some new rides, and it certainly pays to go when the sun shines. Drab, cold days there are even less fun than usual as a sense of tired dilapidation seems to permeate the place, the only positive being that the queues are shorter. For my beautiful girl, the sun shone and she had a ball and so did I, for other reasons.