Blogs from North Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 1150

Well Well... what beautiful sights there are to see! Right now we're in Taurangi... a VERY small town right outside of Taupo, recovering from the most wild tramp (aka hike) yet. We went through the Tongariro Crossing: 17 KM through an amazing volcano!!!! It was absolutely awesome. Granted, I'm having trouble walking now, it was well worth the pain. It was amazing! Did I mention that? We hiked through an active volcano filled with craters, crazy green lakes, and sulfurous steam everywhere. Mt. Tongariro is the mountain they used to film Mt. Doom in Lord of the Rings... it was very long, but georgous! So, tomorrow we're heading off to Wellington to attempt to find a place to live for the next few weeks. Abby will be attending a dance workshop while Benji finds some work, ... read more

Yes yes yes... since leaving a rather overcast and gloomy rotarua we sped south on route 1 to the lakeside town of taupo. Having passed through a couple of weeks previously we wern't really sure if there'd be much to discover but we've been extremely pleasantly suprised with the place. Mainly comprised of holidaying new zealanders intermingled with a large chunk iof the backpacker crowd. The first night we were on the verge of mild panic when it seemed as if there would be no room at the inn - or even any of the campsites, but as has become the case on our travels the YHA prooved to be good and we again reaped the benefit of having a tent (all the rooms in town were full to the brim). After pitching up and surveying ... read more

Today we drove over to Dargaville, where my uncle used to be a GP some time in the 70's. I was saddened however to find that the mullets I so wish to have seen and which he must have seen plenty of back then have begun to die out. A small (hopefully breeding) population still exists in a remote cafe down a dirt track to the south of the town. Which reminds me, I'm going to find a proper NZ barber to deal with my ever increasingly wild mullet. A quiet town, we enjoyed a nice luncheon and tripped up to the museum where we used their bogs, but didn't go in cause it looked a bit crap and cost $7 (thats more than a large beer!) Then treked down to the beach, where we hired ... read more

We get up early, get ready and drive down to the transport station at 8:00 am. Michael leaves me with our bags and returns the rent car about one block away. The person we rented from said to just leave the car parked at the curb and put the keys in a little metal box. The trust in New Zealand is amazing. As we are hanging around for our 8:40 am shuttle bus to Palmerston North there are a lot of people assembling with luggage. We wonder how large this shuttle bus will be. A fairly small bus arrives and the driver appears shocked to see how many people are waiting for the bus. She counts people and tells us we will have to carry our bags down the aisle to the rear of the bus ... read more

After two months apart, Pat arrived at Auckland at 7:45 in the morning on Jan 10th. We bought a car the next day, a Subaru station wagon from a British couple returning home after a year of working and travelling here. The cars are in very good condition here compared to cars of similar vintage back home. The mileage tends to be less as you have not nearly as far to drive to reach the ocean in any direction, and people tend not to commute great distances for work. There are lots of inexpensive Japanese cars, brought into the country as used vehicles with very low mileage. Ours has more than 150 K but runs like a top. It is a 4-wheel drive which only means we paid more for the mechanic's assessment before purchasing the ... read more