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Published: August 4th 2009
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Wellington
The old and the new merge at the NZ Houses of Parliament After a consideration of the alternatives, we bought an Inter City bus pass for the North Island and headed to Waitomo. It was a very different experience to the Greyhound services in Australia and it was like being looked after by a long lost Uncle - with a full explanation of the rules of the vehicle and a fascinating description of how to use a service station.
Whilst I am sure there are those who would disagree, there is no reason to visit Waitomo apart from the caves. There are a host of caving options, ranging from the high adrenalin black water caving to the more sedate float along and look at the gloworms. A brief check of the insurance, suggested the former wouldn’t be such a good idea and we opted to float awhile and look at gloworms. An enjoyable hour was spent in a non-descript sort of way, before setting off to seek if there was in fact anything else of interest in the village. The short answer was no and the burning question of the afternoon was why was a Japanese tourist wandering round the clean air of a village on the North Island of New Zealand
Rotorua
Champagne Pools wearing one of those pollution masks? We have to assume that he was still mentally in his Tokyo traffic jam or had seen the advent of swine flu, but I guess we’ll never know the answer to that one! We retreated to the hostel and spent some time talking to Falkland Islands native, clearly on a world tour of sheep.
We left for Rotorua and it’s hot rocks. The subject of Rotorua was largely covered in a 2006 blog - Steaming In - where the Funky Green Voyager was still quite funky, very green and somewhat expanded from this earlier visit. For the first time since Australia, we noted that barefoot supermarket shopping was back in vogue. We took a minibus to Wai-O-Tapo, a geothermal wonderland on the road south towards Taupo. At vast expense, you can see such sights as the Opal Pool, Devil’s Ink Pots and Champagne Pools, smell lots of sulphur and if you get your timing right, see the Lady Knox Geyser erupt up to 40 metres skywards. Of course all is not as it seems, in respect of the timing issue, as it needs to erupt just after the bus load of Japanese have
Wellington
View over Wellington from Kelbourn been deposited to their ring side viewing positions (who despite the suplhur in the air were not attired in their face masks). The key ingredient is soap powder, which apparently is the tried and tested method of causing the eruption. After an overdose of sulphur, we slept all afternoon and headed out for an evening of more sulphur at the hot pools and mud baths of the Polynesian Spa.
We underestimated the distance to the Agradome on the northern edge of town to undertake a zorbing experience - it transpired to be 9.5 kms. After careful consideration of the options and studying the form, we opted for a joint zorb - basically both of you, a large plastic sphere and two buckets of water rolling down a hillside.....and the chances of standing to the bottom to claim a free ride are zero!
Taupo was scratched from the schedule and we opted for our first earthquake. We selected the Criterion Backpackers, primarily based on it’s venue in an art deco building and it’s free pick up service. It proved it’s worth, as we didn’t even feel a quake of 4.5 that evening which lasted over 90 seconds. As the
Napier
The Napier Daily Telegraph building Sunshine & Art Deco blog of 2006 will testify, we generally have an unhealthy interest in art deco buildings and would maintain even second time around that the National Tobacco Ltd in Napier is the most pleasant building on the eye in all of New Zealand. Photography disaster struck the following day, as the trusty Pentax started flashing warning signals ……..shutter fault and that it would like to go back to the said company. It never did make that journey...........it might still possibly reside in Greymouth..........but it provoked a major assault on the funding to purchase a replacement. Napier was an introduction to the talents of Anika Moa and Bic Runga - a Beautiful Collison indeed.
We swapped East coast for West coast and took the bus to Plimmerton on the Kapati Coast to stay at Moana Lodge. As converted followers of the BBH hostel trail, it was a venture out of curiosity more than anything else to see exactly how good a hostel could be that recorded 98% ratings. The hostel didn’t disappoint with feather duvets, immaculately clean bathrooms, well equipped cook your own kitchen and the sound of waves lapping against the shore. We didn’t do much
Rotorua
Lady Knox Geyser in Plimmerton ………..there really isn’t much there anyway ……….but it was a good restful sort of a place and if you had a car, a good base from which to explore Wellington. We took the commuter train to transfer into the city and checked into the contrasting abode of the YHA, which is a good city base if only the parties of school kids in there were kept under a bit more control. Wellington was probably our least favourite of the big three cities on this trip - possibly due to the inclement weather for most of our stay - but there is certainly plenty to keep you occupied from the Te Papa Museum to bohemian coffee shops of Cuba Street and the Parliament Building. We went to Prime Minister’s Questions and found a meek, mild, almost polite version of what we know at home, which was still interesting and free. It fitted in nicely with a side trip to the National Library in search of obscure publications on the fate of merchant ships in World War 2. The heaven’s opened on our final morning and we opted for the extravagance of a taxi to the ferry terminal to set
Rotorua
Anyone fancy a mud bath? off for Picton on the South Island. We bought a combined train and ferry ticket for the Transcenic journey to Christchurch, which meant we had to skip across the wine regions and miss out on Kaikoura. However, we figured the humpbacks of Hervey Bay couldn’t be bettered and were keen to see if Christchurch would rank higher in our estimations than Auckland and Wellington. We actually spent a split period of time in Christchurch on this trip after our circular tour of the bottom half of the South Island, so our thoughts will get covered in another blog………………
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