Week 21 North Island, New Zealand

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So this is the start of a couple of months exploring the Land of the Long White Cloud, New Zealand. I know that I don’t want to be herded around on a coffin-dodger bus following behind some guy holding a flag so I will probably use a mix of accommodation, trying to get hostels with single rooms (my dormitory days are long gone), centrally located B&B’s or guest houses and the occasional blow out on a hotel. I may even throw in the odd farm stay or camp site. I would have liked to do the camper van thing for a while, but its too expensive when you travel alone.

Tue 2nd to Wed 10th Feb
I lost a day travelling through the night from Hong Kong and did not sleep at all on the 11 hour flight, partly due to several screaming brats who were being ignored by their parents. I did sit next to a friendly chap from Scotland who also could not sleep and who managed to cram in 4 movies and several TV shows to keep himself entertained.

In the UK I had seen the TV series featuring the tough New Zealand customs service with their vigilant agriculture checks and the stiff penalties they dole out to offenders for any undeclared food stuff or wood and plant items. Therefore I declared everything edible I carried, right down to the remaining quarter of a roll of softmints in my handbag and a furry winegum in the bottom of my jacket pocket. They let me in.

My Auckland hotel was quite central and within walking distance of many of the city’s highlights, shops and restaurants. However it was on the top of a steep hill with all of the aforementioned stuff down the bottom of the hill. As we had arrived in the early morning my room was not ready, so I found an internet cafe and did some research on what my travel options were for getting around quite a big country. I had previously shortlisted a couple of tour companies and a couple of backpacker hop on/off buses. Imagine my delight to find that one of them, Magic, had a special offer that started today where if you bought their Northern Discovery pass you got the Southern one free. This was a great saving .

I found that their office was not far away and went to have a chat. With my questions answered I signed up for the deal as it allows me to jump off and stay at interesting places for as long as I like. I will almost certainly be several decades older than the rest of the passengers, but it may be fun.

When I got back to the hotel the Receptionist said they were upgrading me to a duplex but when I went to see the room it was up in the eaves and far too big for me with a lounge, kitchen and 2 bedrooms upstairs. I thanked them and asked for a normal room, which left them gobsmacked. It was a nice gesture but I much preferred the smaller room, which was also cooler - important, as there is no airconditioning and the temperatures are high 20’s.

One of the guys I used to work with in the UK has moved back here to Auckland and we arranged to meet for lunch. He offered to take me for a look around the offices, but I decided I had left that life behind and I didn’t want to think about work. Not yet anyway. We had a lovely lunch down at the Waterfront area, where there are lots of good eateries with views of the expensive yachts in the harbour. I had a delicious lamb rump - something I had been dreaming of for weeks, as they do not seem to serve lamb in any of the countries I have been to recently. It was fab.

In fact I gorged myself on red meat all week, including a couple of expensive but gorgeous steaks. I also spent loads of money on replacement or additional kit, as some of my clothes had deteriorated to the embarrassing stage. NZ is one of the places where you can get four seasons in one day, or sometimes in one hour, so I got a lightweight waterproof jacket that I could keep in my daysack. I managed to pick up a new shirt for a great low price - it had been reduced 4 times according to the label - so I either got a great bargain or I have crap taste and nobody else would be seen dead in it. Reluctantly I bought some pyjamas, as I will be using shared bathrooms in the hostels and didn’t want to scare the other guests by wandering the corridors in my knickers. I spent too much, bought too much and needed another major cull to fit stuff into my pack.

The city centre was full of grown men dressed as schoolboys, wearing shorts and caps. Yep, AC/DC were doing a couple of concerts here and there were plenty of old rockers around. The pubs were also full as the rugby 7’s tournament was on. I used the local Link bus to visit several areas and loved the cool vibes of both Ponsonby and Parnel which were full of hip boutiques and great restaurants and coffee shops.

The first Magic bus I caught was only half full so we could spread out and had an only-slightly-mad driver . Trust me, they got crazier later in the trip. Even with only 17 of us we still had people from 10 different countries and 6 different languages and most people were part-way through their World tours. This was typical of the groups and made for some interesting conversations and good opportunities for swapping tips and tales about countries we had already visited.

We left central Auckland early and drove to a viewing point where we could see the whole bay and the city skyline. Heading southeast we passed over the Hauraki Plains then stopped briefly at the little town of Thames to drop of a couple of people going up to the northern tip or the Bay of Islands and to collect another couple who returned from there The Magic bus does many different routes with interconnecting stops, so the passenger list is always changing. People decide to stay at overnight stops for different lengths of time so you get more change. However, you often come across fellow passengers again further down the route.

A strange stop was at Paeroa where we posed for pictures alongside the World famous 7 metre tall L & P bottle. Well, World famous in New Zealand. The drink, called Lemon and Paeroa, is a lemony ginger beer and is reputed to have beneficial qualities for a whole range of ailments. It is popular here and the brand has just been bought out by Coke, so it may actually get to be known outside of these shores.

The main reason the town of Matamata is famous is that Peter Jackson used it as one of the main bases when making the Lord of the Rings films and a farm here was the setting for Hobbiton (remember the hobbit houses that looked like burrows). You can take a tour of what’s left of the hobbit village filmset if you are a huge LOTR fan, but there is not much to see there apparently. None of us wanted to go, so we only stopped briefly in the centre of town and took some daft pictures by a concrete hobbit-hole. This was only slightly less pathetic than the concrete statues of various LOTR characters scattered around - the Golum one being particularly awful. The locals say “Nothing really matters in Matamata”.

Another weird town we passed through was Tirau which has become known for its collection of signs and models all made from painted corrugated iron It was strange and we drove through slowly with all of us shouting out when we saw a sign. It was a mild diversion in a long stretch of rolling countryside, some of which resembled Tellytubby Land.

Early afternoon we stopped at Agroventures for some people to get their adrenaline fix. This place offers various ways to spend your money on a few minutes (sometimes just seconds) getting a rush and scaring yourself silly. They offered Agrojets which were like mini powerboats driven my a staff member around a tight winding course, while you get the thrill as the passenger. As I went up to the fence to watch the next lot of victims getting strapped in, I noticed that the grass was soaked and a very small sign that said “splash zone”. I figured what that meant and moved just far enough away to get a great shot of the remaining people getting totally soaked when the boat did a tight turn and a 6 foot wall of water covered them. This was slightly more than a splash.

Freefall Extreme is their next offering where you hover over a powerful airjet getting the feeling of a freefall decent. Swoop was where you and two friends (or strangers) got to wear a suit that looked like a cross between a giant condom and a pantomime costume for a slug. Before you could worry about your loss of dignity, you are hooked onto a crane, tipped horizontally and winched up very high. They then release you and you swing back and forth screaming a lot. Finally the Shweeb which was a couple of perspex capsules with bike-type peddle equipment inside, suspended from tracks. Two people race against each other and against the course records. Basically you went for a reclined, sweaty, expensive bikeride. Hong, one of the Korean guys from our bus did a great time and was given a second free attempt to challenge the record. We all stood around the track and cheered him on, but I think we were more of a distraction than a help, so he didn’t break any records - he did well though but admitted that he was shattered. I had fun watching other people but was not tempted by any of these activities.

On to Rotorua, our overnight stop where we had a brief look a Lake Rotorua with its black swans and bird sanctuary and the lovely flowers at Government Gardens and then got dropped at our various hostels. Many of us had signed up for the Maori Hangi this evening so had a quick shower and then met at the tour office where we were taken by bus to the venue.

You get to hear more about this fabulous culture, learn some of the traditions and language, have an outstanding meal and an entertaining evening. The food is cooked in a pit in the ground where they burn a wood fire and add large rocks until they get white-hot. The pit is then raked clear of ash and the rocks returned. The food is placed on top, wrapped in wet sheets and hessian sacks and the heat and steam cook the meat until its wonderfully tender, which takes around 3-4 hours. You will not leave the Hangi hungry as there is loads of food, including good puddings.

Briefly what happens during the evening is that your bus represents a village and you elect a chief for the welcoming ceremony. A single chief is chosen (as there are quite a few bus loads of people) and he accepts the token laid out by one of the Maori warriors who do some intimidating dance moves and lots of yells and grunts - by accepting the token it means we all come in peace and are not declaring war, so we get invited to the Maori village and the Hangi which is a feast. The village is atmospheric and is set in the forest. You are told about various aspects of Maori village life in olden times, shown their weapons and costumes and then are invited to the meeting house. Here they put on a good show of song and dance and perform the Haka at the end. Then you go to the dining room and eat lots.

It would spoil the various surprises if I told you too much about the little extras you get on this trip, but if you get a chance do go, as its a wonderful evening. Oh, all right I will tell you one thing that happened. As we were driving back to town we were all singing and the driver started us on “The wheels on the bus go round and round” so when we approached a fairly small roundabout we were in full voice. We were surprised and amused as our bus (and the one in front) drove round and round the tight roundabout 9 times, with us singing, laughing, yelping, clinging on and trying not to upchuck at the same time. Yep, you probably had to have been there to appreciate how funny it was.

I had opted to stay in Rotorua an extra night and spent the following day touring around all of the free geothermal sights within the town. I saw lots of bubbling water, steam holes and stinky vapours but they didn’t make good photos - but we go to see more spectacular stuff on the way back up North in a few weeks time so I will try to get good shots then. The sulphur smell is not constant and you keep forgetting about it until the next waft of rotten eggs hits you. The only time its a bit disconcerting is when you are eating. A bonus with Rotorua is that you can fart with impunity.

On the next sector from Rotorua to Lake Taupo there were more people on the bus. Our first stop was for 3 hours at the Waitomo Caves where we had a whole range of activities to choose from. The limestone caves are extensive and are over 30 million years old. They are famous for the mass of glow-worms that plaster the roof in certain sections of the caves. They are not really worms at all, but bugs that look a bit like large mosquitoes in their final adult form The glowing is at their larvae stage when they catch other smaller flying insects in a fine sticky “fishing line” rather like a spider does, and the glowing is the action of turning the food into energy. As adults they have a bit of an extreme life - they have masses of sex and the female lays her eggs so they reproduce, but they don’t have mouths so cant feed and die after a few days of shagging. Bet they look back fondly at their larvae days.

The activities on offer ranged from absailing down over 100 feet into a cave chimney, blackwater rafting sitting in a car inner tube for almost 2 kilometres through pitch black low-hanging caves in cold water, through to the “Nanny” option of walking through the dry part of the complex and then taking a flat-bottomed boat through the main glow-worm caves. I qualified for the Nanny option, so took it. It was a pleasant but uninspiring trip and after hearing the black-water tubing guys rave about their trip I wish I had done that.

Our next stop was rather strange. We went to watch an angora rabbit being sheared. The animal gets gently strapped into a cradle with its paws outstretched and then is carefully sheared of its fluffy, soft fur. It looks mediaeval, but the rabbit seemed to enjoy it . The staff are wonderfully caring about the welfare of their animals, who provide a pretty good cash crop if the prices of the finished clothes were any indication. They start shearing them from the age of 3 months and given the way rabbits reproduce, its not a bad return.

After a stop at the spectacular and mighty Huka Falls that throw over 200,000 litres of water per second and are a beautiful turquoise colour, we made our way to Taupo and the massive lake of the same name. Lake Taupo is the largest freshwater lake in NZ covering an area larger than Singapore. It was formed in a caldera after a massive volcanic eruption about 26,000 years ago. From the town of Taupo I could see the 3 volcanoes over on the southern shore (Ruapehu, Tongariro and Ngauruhoe) that lie in Tongariro National Park.

This area was used n the LOTR films with Mount Ngauruhoe being digitally transformed into Mount Doom, home to the Dark Lord Sauron and other areas of the Park were used to create Mordor’s desolate landscape. The whole area has geothermal activity but the most recent eruption was in 180AD and produced red skies as far away as Rome and China.

Its all very picturesque. We glimpsed the volcanoes with their tops under clouds, but it was actually a beautiful clear, sunny day on our side of the lake. Some of our group opted to go tandem skydiving as you can see both coasts as you plummet towards the ground - if you open your eyes. I do want to do this, but will wait until further into the holiday.

Again I chose to stay an extra night and spent the next day in the sunshine wandering around the shores of the Lake and taking in the views. The three volcanoes came out from under the clouds and the water sparkled. It was a relaxing and peaceful day. I spent the late afternoon chatting to some of the other travellers in the hostel and drinking great wine that I had bought in town. I had bought some internet time so buckled down to write this blog and get it uploaded. We are off to the capital Wellington in the morning.

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