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Published: February 21st 2008
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We arrived in Auckland at a ridiculous hour of 1am and going through customs they insisted on looking at everyone's walking boots before they enter the country. So there we are... bleary eyed... digging our boats out of the bottom of our backpacks. Luckily they were OK (presumably the red dust from Uluru is OK to bring into the country) and we were able to enter NZ, and make our way to our hostel for a few nights.
We didn't do a great deal in Auckland in the end. We used the time to try and work out what we were going to do in NZ for the next few weeks and sorted out a hire car etc. We walked around the city and parks a bit, and went up the Sky Tower for view across the city and surrounding area. The city is built on 2 separate harbours and amongst about 40 volcanoes, but none have erupted in about 600-700 years, so we thought we were pretty safe! They also have a harbour bridge (which can also be climbed... but I couldn't convince Elaine this time!), but it is nothing compared to the bridge in Sydney...
From Auckland
we drove up to Paihia and the Bay of Islands, which is in the north of the island. The drive up was just like driving through the countryside in somewhere like the Lake District back in the UK, full of winding roads up and down hill after hill, I'm sure it took twice as long as it looked on the map! We stayed in a lovely hostel a few minutes from the beach Paihia which had a big TV in the living room... where on 2 evenings we watched the 3 Lord of the Rings films! It started off with a couple of people putting on the videos, but not long after the films started, slowly the rest of the people in the hostel came and found a seat, and by the end of the film about 25 people were all sitting in the living room.....very homely!
To try and see as much of the Bay of Islands as we could, we took a boat trip that was based on the 'Cream Run'. This was a boat service that used to make deliveries and pick up cream from the farms... which has now been turned into a boat trip
around the islands, but still includes a delivery service, mainly for the tourists of course, but it was quite a good way to get up close to a few of the islands. As usual, we picked a 'great' day to go out on a boat trip, as there were large swells in the ocean... thoughts of the Great Barrier Reef immediately spring to mind! We were protected for a lot of the trip as we were sheltered in the bays, but when we got out to the open ocean it really was rough, especially at the famous Hole in the Rock on one of the heads. If the tide is right, the boats often go through the hole, but I think we were lucky to actually make it out this far and stay long enough to get a few photos! The captain certainly sounded nervous about going so close to the rocks...
We were also lucky enough to be there for Waitangi Day on the 6th February, and as Waitangi is about a 15 minute walk up the road from Paihia, we went to see what New Zealands National Day was all about. It was much more of a
low key celebration compared to Australia Day, and both the Māori's and the Pākehā (the Māori word for New Zealanders of European origin) took equal part in the celebrations, which was great to see. There was a small Māori protest group going round the grounds, very loud but peaceful... all they really wanted to do was to put the Māori sovereignty flag up, but that made the day all the more interesting watching and listening to the protest. We also got to see a real Haka dance as part of the Māori cultural performance too, which was great to see, and what better place to see it than at Waitangi itself.
From the Bay of Islands, we headed back down south past Auckland to Rotorua, famous for its geothermal parks and nasty rotten egg smell! (From all the sulphur fumes) There is so much to do in and around Rotorua, from the geothermal parks to throwing yourself down a hill in a big plastic ball, that we barely had time to scratch the surface in the two days we were there. We decided to concentrate on the national parks to see all the geothermal features, as that was the
main reason we were here after all. As you can imagine, we took hundreds of photos walking around, and it was weird to think that we were actually walking around the most active volcanic region on the planet and on the Pacific Ring of Fire! By the end of the walk around the second park though, I think we were both getting a bit 'geothermaled out' and fed up of the rotten egg smell... who knows how people actually live with it all the time!
A couple hours south of Rotorua is Tongariro National Park, which is home to three massive active volcanoes (in fact, the last eruption was 26th September 2007, although only a minor one...) and still on the Pacific Ring of Fire, one of which was used as Mt Doom in Lord of the Rings. The pictures of the three volcanoes look absolutely stunning, and after finding out that the best one day walk in all of New Zealand was in the park (which took you on a 8 hour trek across one of the volcanoes), we decided we just had to visit. We found a fantastic lodge with uninterrupted views of the volcanoes in the
middle of nowhere... trouble is, for the three days we were there the cloud was so low that we couldn't see even one of the them! We couldn't do the walk either due to the wind and rain, so all in all we really run out of luck! We managed to have a bit of a walk around and followed a couple of the shorter treks on the lower ground to see some waterfalls but even on these walks sometimes we were walking through the cloud, but really the main attraction was the volcanoes so we really did miss out! Still, just one more reason to come back again I guess!
Our time in the North Island was cut short after Tongariro National Park following the extremely sad news that Simon's Aunt, Pam, had finally lost the battle with cancer. Pam had been fighting cancer for years, and was actually given only 6 months to live back in 2001, and was truly an amazing woman. All during the intensive and difficult treatments, Pam would still always be cheerful and full of life, always thinking of other people first, even though she was suffering immensely herself... neither of us
can think of a time when we ever saw Pam feel sorry for herself or even just look a bit down, she truly was an inspiration to everyone that knew her. We are flying home to be with family for a couple of weeks and pay our respects.
Pam, may you now rest in peace, you will forever be in our hearts.
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