Advertisement
Published: August 12th 2007
A Friend and I
In the Waitangi groundsAs I sat in the plane on the way to Auckland, New Zealand I thought about some of the innumerable experiences that I had been through since I had last left the Southern Hemisphere; travelled through Europe and Africa (well one country each which may be stretching it!), spent two semesters on exchange in Montreal at McGill University, travelled through Western Canada and the Rocky Mountains, San Fran, Yosemite National Park, LA, San Diego, Hawaii and now finally the last stage of my year away awaited me, one month in NZ with friends.
As I sat on the plane I also thought about the slight loss of existence that occurs on flights west over the date line, I left Hawaii on June 24th 2007 at 11.55pm and arrived bright and early in Auckland at 7.30am on June 26th 2007. This means that for long periods of time I quite simply ceased to exist in the normal scope of time as we knew it, the argument could be made that I had in fact been time travelling, which in my head was how I thought about it!
Arriving in Auckland I made my way into the city centre to meet
up with Morgan, a friend of Joel's whom he had met on his student exchange to Vienna, with whom I whiled away the day until it was time to pick the others up from the airport. We had rented vans from an excellent company called
Escape Rentals who I would recommend to anyone looking to drive around NZ on a budget. Why budget you may ask, well the vans also had the wonderful ability to transform into beds at night. Having just reread that previous sentence I feel that I must now quench any thoughts of "Transformer-esque" abilities and simply make more clear that the inside could be converted into a bed when you so desired.
So later that day we had 2 vans and 6 people and our posse for the first week or so was set. There was the aforementioned Morgan and Joel, me, Katrin an exchange student from Germany currently at UWA, James "Jimmy" Cochrane and Anthony "Deadman" Milton, the origins of that nickname have been lost in the murky depths of time. After having some dinner and drinks we decided it would be a good idea to get out of the city so we drove north
The Haka
Our impersonation of the famous Maori war dance. l-r: Jimmy, Joel, Morgan, Katrin, Deadman and myself for an hour to near the little town of Puhoi where we spent our first night in the vans.
Puhoi - Paihia It was freezing but we managed to sleep till late in the morning and then had a breakfast of Vegemite and Cheese, a combination that we would have many, many more times before we all left NZ. We headed north and stopped at a little cave system to look at some glow worms. The cave had recently been flooded so there weren't many left but they were still damn cool. It takes a while for the eyes to adjust but once they do you are treated to an awesome lightshow that looks exactly like the Milky Way with blue stars.
We continued on with one little stop in Kawakawa to see
Hundertwasser's Loo's, an Austrian born artist who lived for years in NZ and created some cool art and architecture, all mosaics, recycled bottles and tiles and no straight lines. We spent the night in a campsite near the town of Paihia.
Paihia - Auckland The morning was designated
Waitangi National Reserve morning. The reserve is home to much off the early history between the
Maori and the white settlers and is the site of the signing of the Waitangi Treaty, a document outlining the working relationship between the Maori and the British in New Zealand. One of the most interesting items in the grounds was the Maori war canoe,
Ngatokimatawhaorua, a massive great thing carved out of a single trunk.
Later we again hit the road and went to see the world famous
Kauri Forest located on the west coast. The Kauri trees themselves are rather unique as their trunk's are massive compared to their height, the tops spread out in a great canopy which provides a home to numerous other ferns and scrubs. Many have been given names, no doubt to increase the tourist attraction, and we saw "The God of the Forest", "The Father of the Forest" and "The Four Sisters"
Later that night we made our way back into Auckland and had a low key night on the town and then slept in the vans in a very public car park! Cities were not the best places to sleep in the vans.
Auckland - Roturua We pretty much drove straight to Rotorua with one stop on the way
The Vans
After our first night for
Zorbing. It was awesome. For those not in the know, zorbing involves jumping into the middle of a large rubber ball and then being pushed off a hill! The inside can be filled with water to provide a slippery experience, up to three people can jump inside (which we did) and it is quite simply brilliant.
After looking around Rotorua for a while we got dinner and headed out of town to find somewhere to eat and camp.
Rotorua - Palmerston North Following our extreme zorbing experience the previous day we decided to go luging on a large hill just outside of town. We paid for our rides and then got in the gondola up the hill. It was absolutely pouring with rain and as soon as we stepped outside we were soaked to the bone. We had to do one run on the beginner slope but once that was out the way we immediately hit the advanced slope. Now what they don't tell you is that the brakes don't really work at maximum efficiency when they are drenched, we found this out rather quickly! After picking up some insane speed there appeared out of the rain
and mists a rather sharp and rather long right hand turn. Crap. Needless to say we all hit the barriers and Jimmy, Morgan and Deadman flew over them entirely and got a little muddy😊 It was brilliant actually and we managed to scam another ride by defacing the bar code on our tickets, rain damage of course!!
Being soaked to the bone we treated ourselves to a couple of hours at the Polynesian Spa before hitting the road. We made it all the way to Palmerston North where we celebrated Jimmy's 21st birthday in style by drinking in the vans and then managing to get into a cool club even though we all looked like hobo's after days in the van without a proper shower. The spa's counted in my opinion.
Palmerston North - Wellington Not surprisingly we woke up feeling awful and hit the road and drove straight to Wellington, the nation’s capital. We checked into a hostel and had a proper shower for the first time in days. Everyone was pretty knackered and did their own thing for a bit; a few of us went to find a pub and had a few drinks before having
an early night.
The next day, our last on the North Island, Joel and I went to
Te Papa, the National Museum of NZ. We only had about 40mins there because we had to catch our ferry. We saw John Britten’s motorcycle (the pink and blue one) which I thought was pretty damn cool. We mainly focussed on the items and stories dealing with the early European history in NZ and their dealings and experiences with the Maori and the change that this brought about. It was all pretty interesting learning about the Maori culture. After we ran back to the hostel grabbed the others and the vans and made our way to the ferry.
One ferry journey later through some amazing scenery we emerged in the late evening sun on the South Island and once again headed on our way.
Next time the top of the South Island and snowboarding in Queenstown.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.293s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 22; qc: 117; dbt: 0.1143s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.4mb
