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Published: March 26th 2011
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Auckland - Coromandel - Raglan - Rotorua - Taupo - Wellington
6th February - 14th February 2011 We collected our Jucy camper at the airport but had a while to kill before my bro, Peter, was to land from Sydney. We drove into Auckland, strolled around the harbour and got nice views of the sky tower. We also stumbled across a Nikon shop where I picked up a second hand D40 for little or nothing. After a nap in the back of the van parked up at a shopping centre near the airport we headed back to arrivals and collected P after his flight was delayed by about 2 hours. We caught up, had a few beers in the van and stayed our first night parked at the Jucy station near the airport, spending the next morning as we did the previous day seeing Auckland, P letting loose buying ridiculously over priced Rugby World Cup 2011 memorabilia around the harbour. By afternoon we were keen to get going so with the fridge stocked with food and booze we hit the road for Coromandel Peninsula.
We took a cross country road from Thames to the east side of the peninsula,
rough enough but a great drive with cracking views. Once on the east side we went first to Hot Water Beach. A section of the beach was full of people with shovels and spades digging their own natural thermal pool. We joined in on the action although at a certain depth the heat got unbearable so we retired to the sea for a dip only to discover it was just as warm. We spent that night at Tairua parked by the beach. The sunsrise the next morning was the stuff of dreams and after a run on the beach, purely to take in the scenery and a quick dip in the Tasman Sea, we were on the road again headin south.
Our next stop was to Raglan but we stopped along the way at Ngaruawahia, residence to king of the maori's, to feed P's new found obsession with the culture, or more specifically their tattoos and haircuts. We hired surf boards and tried our best at Raglan but not with much success. We spent a night here in a camping field but left early the next day before the owner could collect money from us. The Jucy's need for
Hot Water Beach
Hot springs on beach fuel was eating into our budget already and we were turning into right tight arses rapidly.
The next morning we drove to Waitomo Caves seeing glow worms and various formations of stalagmites/tites within the cave. After this we had another long drive to Rotorua. This was a lovely town and we got there in the evening in time to do a bit of zorbing - great fun as we laughed uncontrollably while being thrown around inside a giant ball. On the way back into the town we passed Mitai Maori village and called in. We were just in time for an evening show where the tribe put on demonstrations of tribal dance, combat, haka and afterwards a traditional meal cooked in a Hangi pit (hole in the ground). A woman recommended somewhere for us to stay the night in the van near where she lived by Lake Tikitapu. The directions she gave us took us up windy roads towards the lake and we soon found our site. Not before a collision with some sort of wombat who jumped straight into the side of the van. Unfortunately we didn't stop to check the poor fellow as it was pitch dark.
We had a few stop off's on our way to Taupo the next day. First up was Lady Knox Geyser. We had read to make sure to be there at 10.15 as this was the time it erupted each morning, which immediatley set alarm bells ringing...hmmmmm how does it go off at the same time every morning? We soon found out as we sat around with maybe 100 other onlookers who had bought tickets to see this natural wonder: Out comes a guy who pours soap into the geyser to cause the reaction. Although an impressive reaction it certainly was with heights of the spouting water reaching maybe 20 metres you still couldn't help but feel a bit cheated by the whole thing. Other onlookers felt the same, some leaving as soon as he mentioned how he was going to cause the eruption of water. From this we drove further south to Huka Falls. As our last exposure to a water fall was Iguasu Falls in Argentina it was going to be tough for Huka to compete but it was still beautiful and had some lovely look out points. After this we were not far from Taupo and we
called straight into the tourist info, our first stop in every town we stopped in (all very impressive by the way with free maps and magazines on each area). Next up was the spur of the moment decision to do a sky dive later that afternoon. We couldn't have picked a nicer spot or day to literally fly over Lake Taupo. We were all in diferent zones as we got geared up, met with our tandem diver and reached our 15,000 ft diving height. Kate's guy joked about her gear being too loose, that her helmet didn't fit etc while my guy actually did forget my helmet, rightly saying if things go wrong a helmets not exactly going to do much anyway. P was first out, then Kate and finally me. The craziest and best experience of my life. From the moment gravity sucked us out of the plane all fear was tranformed into shear excitment as we free falled and then twirled as the shoot was pulled and could take it spectacular views of the lake. For anyone thinking of doing this, do it! It took a while to come back down to earth after this. We swam in
the lake and had a few beers then went to our camp grounds for the night, another free one the info directed us to. We spent a couple of days here and had planned to do the Tongarrio Crossing only for the weather but moreso one lazy shit of a brother.
Keen to get to the south island we continued south opting to leave out a trip to take in Napier. We stopped off in Taihape for a night and then to Wellington. We went up Mount Victoria for a view of the city where we bumped into James Nesbitt (northern irish actor) on holiday with his family. We went north again to Porirua where we checked into a pay campgrounds for a couple of nights to charge things, get showered, do some laundry and get ready for the south island. We spent an afternoon by the water here where Peter got talking to a man heading out on his boat who soundly gave us 3 kayaks to muck about with while he was out at sea. We drove back into Wellington early the next morning for an early crossing to Picton.
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