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Published: March 2nd 2006
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Within a setup Maori village
Traditional welcome at the entrance of a Maori village in Rotorua. Hey up there peeps! Kia Ora to be precise (Mäori for 'Hello')
Flying into Auckland in New Zealand or Aotearoa (the Mäori name which may mean "Long white cloud" (ao = cloud, tea = white, roa = long)), I have spent 2 weeks on the Northern Island and 2 weeks on the Southern Island of NZ (these are sometimes referred to as the North and South Islands).
I started with a tramp around a nearby island off Auckland and I visited the Auckland museum. On my walk to the entrance, I walked past someone whom I recognised, and it was no other than Michael Barrymore (those not from England - he is an comedian who had a dead body found in his swimming pool !). He was walking his dog and as I caught his eye - he held my gaze as if looking to see if he had been recognised! It wasn't until I left the North Island, I asked a local and they confirmed to me it must have been Barrymore as he as moved to NZ! Anyway enough of celebrities -(kate moss is also experiencing some issues i hear!) my travels continued...
I did some
A Maori family Hut
For use in Winter - built half in the ground. kayaking further north in the Bay of Islands region. After a few days - I found I was getting in sticky mud with pronouncing Maori words and also seeing a lot of rain! But this I expected and I armed myself with a large umbrella and started to break Maori words into smaller chunks!
South of Paihia, where I did kayaking, I stayed in Whangarei to visit the Poor Knights Islands to do some more scuba diving! I did a couple of dives in a day here and one dive involved going into an underwater cave that was amazing indeed. On the way back - the sea was the rough. Really rough. Like the boat was being thrown up and left/right and crashing back down - I am usually sick on these occasions, however I had taken some sea sickness pills, focused my mind on one spot of land in the distance and then later tried going to sleep! and I was ok.!
Next I travelled south to Rotorua, where the area is bubbling with geo-thermal activities. There are some "geysers", where hot water constantly shoots out from the earth and hot mud pools, which are deadly, should
Geyser
A Geyser in Rotorua you enter for a "dip". It's the heat! 'too hot' as Coolio once said. anyway - there are some touristy tours of Maori traditional ways of life and I went to one of these. A lot of wood is used to make the Maori people's homes and boats etc. Their knowledge and skill is passed on from generation to generation and in Rotorua, you can join a traditional wood carving school but you must be of Maori decent.
Thee went neext to Lake Taupo next to do the Tongario Crossing - supposed to be the most amazing (i gotta stop saying that word!) one day tramp in NZ! weee got all the way (2hr drive) to the start of the "tramp" (a walk/hike) and then the tramp was cancelled due to poor weather. A shame, so I headed south to Wellington to cross to the South Island, where the temperature falls a little and prompted me to start wearing some winter hats i had brought.....
I started with some push biking in Murchison and fell off mee mountain bike - this was after the chain snapped - hehe. a bit bruised and bleeding on elbow and hand, some
Caving
In a tube within a cave nice fellows from Bristol, England gave me a lift to my hostel in Murch!
I've always wanted to do some caving, so travelled to Greymouth, where the caves had flowing water and pools within. We got on some tubes in the cave, drifting down the inner pools watching glow worms on the cave ceiling. There was a 5 minute crawl along a narrow section of the cave, at one point, and one tight squeeze. hehe - i managed to get through.
The most wicked thing I've done in NZ though was walking on ice and the Fox Glacier, which I travelled to next. The Glacier is moving forwards and backwards by metres each year and no-one appears to be able to predict what this huge mass of ice is going to do next. (they haven't asked me yet - I've got an interesting theory!!)
From Queenstown, I travelled to Te Anau where I went to Milford Sound. Here we kayaked across the sound (although it is actually a fiord) and it is another breathtaking spot of NZ indeed.
I spent two days in Mount Cook village after this - in a valley surrounded by Mountains of the
(n)ice!
Within the Fox Glacier and I could only think about making a phone call! Southern Alps. One tramp I did, half way up a mountain, was amazing as at the stop was absolute silence - I could only hear the snow as it hit my jacket.... it snowed a fair bit when I was there (making visibility poor for my first and second day) but on the third day, the sun was shinning and we could all see Mount Cook and other mountain peaks..... I took some photos thus! a totally awesome spot to be.
Just spending a couple of days in Christchurch now, sorting out loose ends and going to frequent a nightclub to see how the people here dance (to dance music).
Overall the NZ people are just top draw and really helpful and friendly and I want to marry one! hehe the natural formings of the land are quite beautiful too - a place of constant change, what with the fault line of two plates crossing through the island and the all those volcanoes! anyhow
toodle do for now.
Pat
ps...
someone else's nice NZ photos here
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Fantastic Trip
New Zealand looks fantastic - in spite of the cold and the snow. Enjoyed all your entries in travelblog and the pictures are fabulous. What a great adventure. Looking forward to seeing you soon. Take care.