More of NZ

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1 November, Wednesday... So much to update this time around... Stayed in Queenstown for a couple more days. Without wanting to spend too much more money we walked to the botanical gardens (not so great but good view of Lake Wakatipu), headed up the gondola (cable car to you and me) to the nearby peak (don't know the name), where we went for the cheapo 'extreme' luge down a track at the top of the hill. Luging basically involves sitting on a plastic sled with handlebars and letting gravity take you away. Unfortunately they do have brakes and I accidentally stopped a couple of times which didn't look too good on a race track! Oh well, it was good and cheap and reasonably fun.

2 November, Thursday... Day trip to Milford Sound. Milford Sound is a lovely little bay that was named by Captain Cook when he explored the area because it sounded like a Milford or something. The area is very pretty with lots of steep hills around the water's edge and waterfalls and penguins. We were promised dolphins but they didn't show up, I have seen some before but they eluded my camera in Cairns and Fraser Island, we got to see sea lions instead. It's all lush and green around there and one of those places that I really find hard to describe but pictures should do the job.

3 November, Friday... Flew from Queenstown to Auckland, first class all the way. Well not first class but flying on a budget is a bit of a luxury isn't it? Arrived late-ish, signed up for a backpacker bus for the north island (where they cart you about in a big orange bus) and went out for a couple of beers.

4 November, Saturday... First day on the bus and we almost missed it entirely. Had to skip showers to make it to the bus stop in time, I'm sure we made a great impression on the rest of our group. Pretty much slept on the bus and was woken by tit-bits of information from the driver every now and then before we arrived in Hahei. Hahei is a beach with a town attached, it's a very small town and our accommodation was on a campsite (but with real beds). The beach is pretty and there's a nice walk that you can do to a natural archway in one of the bays further down the coast. In the evening we headed out to somewhere on a ferry to watch the local fireworks display. It turns out they celebrate Guy Fawke's night here too but maybe it's just an excuse to blow up some things. It was good fun but went on far too long, there were some funny guys shouting out jokes all the way through which made it seem a lot better than it actually was.

5 November, Sunday... Bus to Raglan, a surfers' town, good surf and nice black sand beaches. Couldn't be bothered to do the surfing for a three hour lesson so played touch rugby on the beach instead. It was good fun but the rules were somewhat lacking. The hostel was cool, they had a flying fox and a basketball hoop. We bought some fireworks (combined bus effort) and set them off at the beach, fireworks from the shop aren't quite as good as ones set up by a town for a fireworks display but it was fun nonetheless. Back to the hostel to drink, one drink too many for me and I left the fun and games early.

6 November, Monday... Another day on the bus this time to Roturura with a stop off at Waitomo on the way. There I had signed up to the Haggas honking, not Haggis as I first thought, caving experience. There were some abseils in the cave through waterfalls and crawling about on your hands and knees in water and a little rock climbing. It was great fun even with a hangover. I did however cheap out and didn't buy the photos so you'll have to believe me when I tell you I did it.

7 November, Tuesday... Stayed in Roturura (no buses). The morning brought White Water Rafting for my first time. The day started well when the guy who was going to pick us up arrived an hour late to the hostel to explaining that his minibus had blown up previously. Then we had a hair raising ride to the raft centre. After a brief safety briefing they let us loose on the river, grade V apparently where the scale goes from I to VI and VI is unraftable. It's not too hard though, forwards, backwards, cower in a ball, etc. Noone fell out of our raft which was rather disappointing but then I guess we were just great.

After a hectic morning what better way to calm down than going for a nice Zorb? Another first for me, I jumped into a giant inflatable ball with two others and a bucket of water then we rolled down a hill. It's more fun than it might sound and you stay quite out of control sloshing around inside. It's over quite quickly though, maybe next time I'll zorb off of a mountain.

8 November, Wednesday... Another day on the bus, this time to Taupo where they have a large lake, but first a... Cultural Experience. After being in NZ for a while now it's about time to take in some culture we thought so we went on a prearranged tour of a Maori village. It's all horribly touristy and commercialised as you might imagine but you do get to see a bit of what traditional living styles were like (according to our guide people still live there). They built the village around some hot springs so they could bathe, drink mineral water and cook in the hot ground (but not all in the same place). We even got to take in a show featuring some Maori songs (including Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes) which was pretty powerful stuff. The guys really hit themselves during those performances, you can see how red they get.

After that we arrived in Taupo after a shortish bus ride. The promised skydive was cancelled due to poor weather so everyone was a bit clueless as to what to do instead. I decided to go for a nice walk along a river to see a waterfall, Thom decided to watch the tellybox. I was feeling nice and healthy during my brisk walk until one of the other guys from the bus went jogging past me. I guess some people are just crazy.

9 November, Thursday... So sad but this was my first day away from Thom in a long time. The weather was still poor in the morning and we had two choices: either to wait out the weather to see if an opportunity arose for skydiving or take the bus the the National Park, as the hike was cancelled (bleedin weather - the Tongariro crossing is one of the famous NZ walks). I decided to go for the park option, as I wasn't too bothered about a skydive, and meet up with Thom again tomorrow. It was good fun after a slow, slow bus ride ('hey guys there's no rush we can take our time') we made a couple of stops to check out a thermal bath (wow just like in Bath but smaller) and Gollum's pool where they filmed some bit of Lord of the Rings. Gollum's pool turned out to be great fun as one of the guys, Jamie - the crazy jogger, decided to go for a swim... but the water was flowing very fast and he was swept into the rapids. Ok, maybe fun is the wrong word but it was strangely funny and at the same time everyone was quite alarmed for his safety. Crazy fool. First jogging, now this.

Another stop was to make a walk to a waterfall but while we were in the information centre it started to snow. Yay! A snowball fight ensued before everyone got too cold and went to check out the hostel (or is it hotel). The accommodation was super sweet. 'Sweet as bro' rang out across the land, wood fire, big kitchen, ensuite bathroom (to the dorm), spa, 50 inch tv with Sky and fantastic scenery (although mostly covered by cloud you could still make out Mount Doom or Ngarauhoe as it's known here). Pub dinner and a couple of beers rounded off the day.

10 November, Friday... Ok. The backpacker bus screwed up my booking and after much dallying and faffing about booked me onto a regular Intercity bus at 3pm (not the 9am start I had woken for). Anyway, I wasn't bothered too much. The guy at the hostel leant me his bicycle which I broke (or was it him who hadn't screwed the new pedal on properly?), while making my trip to the muddiest walk of the trip so far. A nice walk to a viewpoint over Mount Taranki I thought but the gods were against me and it was hidden behind cloud. Eventually I caught the bus to Auckland and met up with Thom in the hostel. He'd been able to do his skydive this morning and seemed rather pleased with himself.

11 November, Saturday... One more day in Auckland. What to do, the only thing in the guidebook that looks any good is the museum so off we went. It's pretty interesting stuff, some cultural stuff on the South Pacific Islands as well as the Maori (of course), some less interesting stuff about recent history (kids toys etc) and some stuff I could have taken or left on natural history. The museum is just too big though - it took me some four hours to go around and I couldn't concentrate on what I knew was an interesting exhibit at the end. Time to go back to the hostel and read my book a bit. I, Robot was on in the evening. That helped me get to sleep.

12 November, Sunday... Need to buy a guidebook and Spanish dictionary because this afternoon we flew to Chile. We're going to arrive on the same day (about 5 hours earlier than departure) with the time difference and crossing the international dateline. It confuses me slightly to think about it so I don't bother.

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Photos

Snowball Fight!
Snow is so cool

Queenstown
Me, Remarkable

Milford Sound
Boat you say?

Hahei
Arch

Zorb
Great fun, if a little weird

Gollum's Pool
Would you go swimming here?

Muddy Walk
And there wasn't even a view at the end. Great fun though.

Culture
Finally the culture. It wasn't this blurry in real life.