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Published: November 5th 2006
Excavated hut
Taken at the hidden villageThe best and the rest of the north……..
In my opinion, the Coromandel Peninsula and the Bay of Islands were the best part’s of the north island for me. Might have had something to do with the weather being half decent…it was slightly sunny…still freezing. After leaving Taupo we left for Rotorua which stunk of egg. I’m not kidding either, that place stank….I suppose I better explain why….there’s loads of thermal activity goin on under the ground and lots of sulphur which smells. That was a bad explanation. Anyway, we stayed a few miles outside of the town in a campsite right next to a lake, the Blue Lake. We did a walk around the lake which was good but unfortunately it was overcast while we were there, still gorgeous though. We stayed for a couple of days and spent our first proper day exploring an attraction called the ‘Buried Village’ close by which we loved. I liked it due to it being basically a massive excavation you could walk around. A nearby volcano called Mt Tarawera erupted at the turn of the last century and covered this village and destroyed loads of vegetation and stuff. Most of the dwellings
Lunge...and a war canoe
Sweet as. Quite like this lunge, shows a moody yet 'edgy' lunge...intense have been excavated but there are still some that are yet to be worked on. Got to see another waterfall as well although to tell you the truth we have seen so many waterfalls that they are starting to get a bit samey….does that sound like I’m being ungrateful…I’m not but I’m not that excited by them anymore!
We went for a drive up and around lake Tarawera to get a better view of Mt Tarawera and we went for a walk and then got to loads of boggy marshlands and decided to go no further, I could see myself getting stuck and I didn’t fancy goin into a lake in the middle of winter. We also booked ourselves in for some white water rafting the following day thank to our friendly but fairly aggressive and pushy campsite manager….! Anyway, it didn’t matter how much she scared me cause the river was closed the next day due to some flooding so we couldn’t do any rafting…..we had to wait until about a month ago when we did some in Australia. We did the luge which was great fun, better than the one in Queenstown and that was about it
for Rotorua….didn’t go to any of the thermal resorts in the town as we had gone to a couple of other ones previously.
We drove on to the Coromandel Peninsula after Rotorua and as the town of Coromandel was out final destination that night we motored past loads of nice stuff. We did stop at a couple of lookouts and Hot Water Beach which…wasn’t hot. It would have been lovely in the summer to of grabbed a spade and dug ourselves a hole on the beach to sit in and get warmed up by the natural warm water from the ground mixing with the sea…..but from the pictures you can see that we were wearing coats and it wasn’t a great day for sunbathing and sitting on a beach. Did a lunge though. Stopped at Cathedral Cove which was beautiful, when we were there the sun was going down which made it look spectacular….worth the detour of the beaten track. Coromandel town was so small and isolated but we loved it. Our campsite was empty as usual and unfortunately we only had a night there as we had to get the van back to Auckland. On the way back
from Coromandel we stopped at….nowhere in particular….we had to rush to get the van back…or did we? We phoned up and extended our rental for the second time! The beauty of travelling New Zealand in the winter was that there was no one waiting for the van so we could extend our contract and it was all good.
The next day we set off to the most northerly part of New Zealand. Driving through Auckland was a bit of a mission but we got to our next destination ok. We stayed at Orewa beach, a cute little suburb of Auckland, for the night…we were right on the beach which was cool. Fran had to go to the doctors in the morning to get some pills and stuff and then we drove on to Whangarei. The campsite we stayed at was really nice and fairly peaceful…..that was until a coach load of excitable 12yr old boys turned up. Fantastic. They were asleep by nine anyway, they were running around like loons and must have tired themselves out….oh to be young again…25 soon, not looking forward to that. Anyway, the Bay of Islands was our next stop and this was something
Lake Tarawera
Mount Tarawera is in the background, this erupted over a hundred years ago and buried the village nearby (The one i lunged around). the two of us had been looking forward to the whole trip. It didn’t disappoint. We used Paihia as our base for exploring the area and booked a couple of nights at a campsite there. At this campsite we met quite a few people but a couple who we got on really well with were Greg and Amanda from Scotland! Hello guy’s…..how’s Australia treating you?! See you new years eve I think..?! We did a ‘Hole in the Rock’ tour which was really good. We had four hours touring round the islands, stopping on one of them for a drink and a walk to a good lookout, and we were lucky with the tide and sea conditions for the hole in the rock and we managed to go through it which was cool. We also went on a day tour to Ninety Mile Beach and Cape Reinga which was a great day out. Greg and Amanda were on our tour and we had a good laugh, tobogganing down huge sand dunes was awesome, so much fun. The Bay of Islands were beautiful and would highly recommend a trip there to anyone goin to New Zealand. We stopped off at a
Awesome snap
Love this pose.....classic and cheesy, great Kauri wood museum on the way back to Auckland which had loads of stuff made out of ancient Kauri wood…50,000+ years old.
Our New Zealand adventure drew to a close with another few days in Auckland, and this time we decided to actually go out and see some of the city! Had a couple of good nights out in Auckland, met some Irish guys who we got plastered with….played a lot of pool….watched some sport and chilled out before we had to leave. Met this guy called Martin (hello mate, not sure where you are at the moment, think your still in New Zealand?! Take care dude) who was in our room and we all did a bit of sightseeing. We went to the Sky Tower which was really good, tallest building in Australasia I think….something boastful like that…it’s high basically. Anyway, Martin decided to jump off it while we were visiting it……not a random suicide type of a jump but you can do a controlled base jump from the top. Quite cool to watch and it did look like good fun but couldn’t afford it and I’d already done a bungy .
Well, that’s it for
Fran and The lake that we camped next to at Rotorua
The Blue Lake...no seriously it was called the blue lake! Honestly New Zealand……great place. Loved…….. the campervan, the glaciers, Milford Sound, whale watching, the Bay of Islands, crashing the campervan, listening to Classic Hits 88.9fm on the radio, seeing penguins and seals in the wild, skydiving, bungy jumping, jet-boating, driving through the smallest towns I’ve ever seen, crashing the campervan some more, Napier and its ‘gang culture’…ha-ha…and loads more!! Most of all, hello to all the people we met along the way…..you know who you are, stay safe and hang loose. Peace and love to you all. If you want to visit the delightful city of Norwich you are more than welcome to….it is a ‘Fine City’ apparently…….
Right, that’s it, New Zealand is done…. finally! Next blog will be on what we got up to on the East coast of Australia….almost catching up….that’s a lie we are both really behind on our blogs! We have both managed to get jobs in Perth, which is a great city by the way, and we will be here for a couple of months and the weather is glorious every day, it’s fantastic! The ashes are looming as well, can’t wait for that!
Hope you all enjoyed the New Zealand blogs,
Shit playground
What a tease for the kids....'look theres a swing...oh hang on....theres no seats..' some of them were quite vague and random but then anyone who knows me well will know that I’ve always been a bit vague and in my own world sometimes……anyway take care everyone and I look forward to seeing you all next year.
Thommo
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Lamby
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Hey Thomo
Hey man, glad to see things are still going well.. Jealous as that I'm not oer there living it up still! Enjoy the rest of the travels mate, and add me to your Bebo!!!! Laterz. Jay the Lamb