Cooper's district council sent Sir Colin Meads and King Country Rugby Union chief David Trewavas to Wales last year to drum up supporters' tours, but most of the travellers I have encountered are Irish.
Eamonn Morris and three mates, all from Galway, had been at New Plymouth to see Ireland versus USA and were making their way to Auckland for today's game against Australia.
There appeared to be legions of Irish here, he said, "despite the state of our economy at the moment".
Cheerfully cleaning out their van at Taupo, they had been struck by the country's hospitality.
Somewhere on the road from New Plymouth they had stopped to check their bearings and a car pulled up beside them to offer help.
They intend to stay until the quarter-finals, which might be hopeful on Ireland's form so far, but at least Irish travellers are accustomed to rain.
This wet week has brought one blessing for me. I might not otherwise have sought shelter in a museum.
Museums are not the fusty places they used to be. Even in smaller centres they are turning into Te Papa, and this month most of them are doing something for the Rugby World Cup.
They have more life than the rugby clubs I visited last week, and present the game's heritage with fun, film and sensory experiences.
In Hamilton's museum you can smell the game. An array of identical boxes invite you to press their buttons and try to identify what you sniff.
I'm not going to give the game away but this is Waikato, you take the invitation with trepidation.
Another exhibit describes a day in the life of a professional provincial player these days.
They are said to spend a great deal of time taking tactical notes and consuming mysterious milkshakes.
Inevitably, there are blazers in glass cases, tributes to province favourites and film loops of great moments. These include the Hamilton non-match of 1981.
"The whole world's watching," the protesters chanted but a young woman behind me didn't know what she was watching. Aoifa Dolphin from Galway is 26. She wasn't born during the anti-apartheid protests.
She is here with her friend Sandra Moynihan for a World Cup holiday they have planned for a year.
I hope the rain stops.
Taupo's tiny museum has made a modest effort, though Aucklanders will be surprised that it claims All Blacks Mac Herewini, born at Mokai 15km east of the town, and Stuart Conn, who was posted to the Taupo police district near the end of his playing days. Museum assistant Neil Peterson was his sergeant.
When Peterson played rugby here the town was in the Hawkes Bay union and it was a two-hour drive to Napier.
Some time in the 1980s, he said, it switched to King Country, though Bay of Plenty seems closer. That would have meant competing with Rotorua and Tauranga for events.
Now Taupo vies with Te Kuiti and Taumarunui to be a rugby union base. Trewavas says Taupo has the commercial power, and lovely Owen Delany Park where Wales have been training this week, but Te Kuiti has "his eminence", Pinetree. That counts.
Wellington, too, has some rugby art worth seeing.
A portrait galley which has been given over to 100 full body photos of players immediately after the final whistle. Nearly all are players we don't know, and yet we do know them.
They all stand for the camera, muddied, bedraggled and exhausted.
The photographer, David Matches, has chosen mostly chunky props or stringy locks. His captions record no names, just team and score. Nearly all have lost.
Nothing in their expression says they've enjoyed the game, or not enjoyed it. They are caught in the moment between fatigue and recovery.
This is as close as World Cup visitors might get to the colour and flavour of amateur rugby in this country, unless they go where I'm going today.
Tolaga Bay hosts the East Coast-Poverty Bay home derby in the heartland championship this afternoon.
Travellers to Napier for tomorrow's France-Canada clash have been urged to go around the coast.
If they're coming it could be good.
