Advertisement
Published: November 30th -0001
Edit Blog Post
North Island deserted beach
One of the many little bays we came across whilst driving around the north island, a beautiful deserted coastline Day 174 - Day 196 (20.06.07 - 11.07.07)
New Zealand is a country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two large islands (the North Island and the South Island) and numerous smaller islands. New Zealand is notable for its geographic isolation - very much seperate from its almost-neighbour Australia. We had heard, in our months of travelling, nothing but wonderful stories about this country from other travellers who had since had the priviledge of going there, and so we were well excited about being able to go there too!
A place of wonder and fantastic scenery (lord of the rings aside) New Zealand was a place of envy and excitement in most people. Although we were sad to leave south America behind, this new contient and new country was one much looked forward to.
The 13 hour flight from Chile, over the massive Pacific ocean, felt much longer (we did lose a whole day with the time difference) especially with the total difference in country and culture. For about the first 10 minutes it was exceedingly nice to hear english speaking voices and messages and speaker phones, and being able to read signs and papers and menu's.....this was
Goat Island
A little island off the coast on the north island, supposedly theres meant to many wonderful fish here, but to be honest we didn't actually see any! short lived however and all of a sudden it felt too much like home, like we'd never been in non-english speaking countries for the past 6 months, and we'd never left England. New Zealand is surprisingly english in many many ways, quite freakily so in some ways. This was however a refreshing break in our trip, in what we call the second part of our trip (the first being south America, the second being Australasia and the the third being South East Asia).
[h2 Camper-vanning around North Island
Landing in Auckland, on the North Island, we hired a campervan bright and early the morning we arrived and set off on our road trip to the very top of the north island, lots of driving and eating later we saw many deserted beaches and little villages inc the worlds biggest tree in one of the many forests!
Hiring or buying your own wheels is essential in New Zealand as public transport on backpacker routes is pretty poor, or rather sporadic, especially in the middle of winter when most people stay hidden away indoors. It was however not totally necessary to hire a gigantic minibus-type camervan complete with
One of new Zealand's North Islands beaches
remote and untouched this beach we stopped off at was perfectly unspoilt and perfect for shell-hunting! just like the many many other beaches we saw along our way! kitchen, runing water, fridge, toilet and shower, table and 2 benches and a convertable double bed - it was a beast - a converted 17 seater minibus - and a pig to drive!!
Anyway, well equiped for every situation, we were off! We headed straight off up north on the North Island - hoping to get as far north as we could to explore the mauri lands that are less well known than other areas. It was all going fantastically well, we were driving a bit, stopping off at beaches and deserted coastlines, and cooking lunch along the way, until on the second night of us being in this new country, Kate fell ill. What started off as what we thought was simply flu, took a turn for the worse and i was rapidley getting more and more sick (headaches, red-hot fevers, violent freezing-cold shivvers, sickness and diahhrea need i say more) and so a trip to the doctors confirmed severe dehydration....and that was about it, millions of blood and stool tests later, they still didn't know what one earth was wrong with me - so i was 10 days in hospital in the little town of Rotorua (famous
Home-sweet-home
Our campervan for the week, a palace big enough for a king, never mind a 6foot-swede! as the earths crust here is very thin - so hot steam comes out from puddles on the ground and there's hot pools everywhere and a rather eggy sulphur smell....but the people are lovely!) this was a real blow, but actually i was much more sick than we had ever thought - so it was a good thing we were in New Zealand! Anyway, 10 days in hospital on drips and several weeks of strong doses of antibiotic later i was right as rain again- the south american bug that i had contracted well and truly gone (or so we hope) and we had now only a few days left in our New Zeland travels.
Short and sweet time on South Island
Anyway as you can imagine, this was a bit of a bummer, and as we only had 3 weeks to start with, when they finally released me from the ward, we dumped the camepervan (an unneccessary drain on our economic resources as it just sat in the car park for almost 2 weeks) and headed down to south island to try and see some sights. It was really sad that we missed seeing my
Big enough for a king!
this van was as big as a 17-seater mini bus and we were just 2 souls wandering around it - no cloustrophobia here - it was a beast, but lovely and comfy inside, our home for 10 days! uni friends Jenny and Lizzie, and also missed our long-planned skiing trip in Queenstown with them....also we had somesort of curse upon us, one thing after another kept going wrong inc a dose of very bad weather preventing us from doing anything, we lost our guide book so didn't know where to go, and when we arrived in Christchurch there was the cities first ever bomb scare so we were trapped in a part of the city and missed our bus to Queenstown, so couldn't go there as the nextdays bus was fully booked!!!
Kaikoura
With only days left, Christian and i did managed to see sperm whales (actually pretty amazing) and seals on the beach of a little place on the east coast of the south island known as Kaikoura. Going whale watching was a great experience (if expensive), being so close to these huge natural beasts was very cool, esp after only ever seeing them on tv before! This place, full of fish and chip shops (serving shark meat as the fish) was a great place to recuperate and walk around the pebbly beaches collecting very cool pearly shells on the beach.
Te-matua-ngahere = Father of the Forest
A tree in the Waipoua Kauri Forest, on the north island, believed to be more than 2000 years old, with a trunk wider than 5m, the biggest birth in the whole of New Z! A huge and overwhelming tree! Trans-Alpine Express
The only other thing we had time to do was to take a scenic if grannyish train journey from the east-to-west coast of the south island - a 9 hour return-train journey across country seeing the Alps mountain range, rainforest on one side and deserted barren land on the other and all the great bridges they had built throughout the years, before it was time to leave Nz! It was an informative and interesting train trip suprisingly and at least we saw a tiny bit more of the south island.
We were gutted we weren't able to see more, we will definitely have to come back and do the country justice in the future and in the summer time, as it did rain A LOT whilst we were here!We will be looking forward to it!!
Next stop Australia, where we spent 2 and a half months touring around, then we left for Asia, and we are currently in Indonesia, more blogs coming soon, we are trying to catch up!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.174s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 13; qc: 76; dbt: 0.0791s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Tim (ANS)
non-member comment
Run out of things to Say!
Wow, again!. Hope you are both well, I have been thinking about you a lot recently as I am reading a book, where somebody goes to S.America get bitten by a mosquito and catches "dengue fever". Hope that's not what you had. Look forward to next install.....