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Published: July 18th 2006
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A cold lunge
Had to christen this place with the pose which has become a travelling trademark, sweet. From Fiji we flew to New Zealand and into Auckland. Neither of us wanted to leave Fiji as it was an amazing place and hot! New Zealand is cold! As soon as we set foot outside of the airport the cold hit us, not going to have 30 degree weather anymore! Anyway, we found out a bit of info regarding campervan rental from a few companies stationed inside the airport and then caught a bus into the city that dropped us off outside our hostel.
The hostel was awesome, really clean with a big kitchen and a bar attached which is always good. The only downside was our room which was a 8 bed dorm with no room to move, you literally had to suck in all the air in your chest to get past the beds. Cool people in our room though. We stayed at this hostel for quite a few day’s as we had to sort out a campervan and sort out some flight dates as well. We met some quality people at this hostel, felt like a big family in a weird way as there was always someone up in the kitchen who we knew or in
Great views from the van
You see scenery like this everywhere the bar. Got told about a way to get free internet which was sweet, wrong but sweet all the same. Had a couple of late nights, watched some footy (England beating Ecuador, which was a dire game-like all the England games) and also enjoyed a night out in a bar that is always kept at minus 5 or below (you have to wear big coats that they give you and two pairs of gloves, its freezing). They only let you in there for half an hour, but we met a couple of guy’s who worked there so we had a little longer, quite a unique experience. Everything was made of ice, expect the drink bottles and till obviously!
We will be going back to Auckland so that’s why we didn’t do that much this time around.
We sorted out a campervan and decided to go with a company called Ezy Rentals as they did us a 35 dollar a day deal which is really good. The camper is a cool little 2berth vehicle with a heated towel rail (bit pointless), fridge, couple of hobs, fan heater which is very handy and a flashy 14inch TV which we can watch
Frank and Mike
These were two guys we met at our hostel, sound lads DVD’s on via the front head unit! All good. We said our goodbyes to the people we met at the hostel, no doubt we will see some of them again, and went on our merry way to pick up our campervan!
From Auckland we headed out to a small surfing place called Raglan, on the west coast of the north island. Before we go there though, I had a mishap regarding the van. Drove into a service area, no problem, found a parking space, no problem….drove into a bush…problem! No idea why, never driven an automatic before-that’s my excuse..! Chipped the windscreen but we got windscreen and tyre cover so that’s cool…thank god for that! Anyway, onwards to Raglan.
Raglan was a cool little hippie town, full of surf dudes but due to it being the winter the town was quiet and not as bustling as it would be in the summer. We wandered down the main road which was easily accessible from our camp site and got some supplies from the local supermarket. Now we have our camper, we can cook stuff so we bought quite a lot. Anyway, Raglan has some gorgeous beaches and one of
Me in a tree
An even stupider pose but quite funny!! the best breaks in the world so that’s why it’s a haven for surfers. Would have liked to have spent more time here but we had to move on. On the way to Waitomo we stopped off at a waterfall called Bridal Veil Falls which was gorgeous and a nice place to stop and have our lunch.
Driving through this country is an adventure in itself, beautiful scenery and hardly any cars to disturb the thousands of sheep and cows that align the road munching on grass. You see huge mountain ranges in the distance, rocky cliffs, steep hills and tiny farming settlements all while driving. It all looks like it belongs on a postcard, much of it does. We drove on to Waitomo and wanted to do some caving so we spent a couple of nights here. Waitomo is a tiny place that only really exists because of the glow worm’s that reside in the caves under the ground here. They were discovered at the turn of the 20th century and have been visited thousands of times. There are several options here regarding caving and we chose to go with the ‘Legendary Black Water Rafting Company’ and on
Raglan
Beautiful little place a trip called the Blue Labyrinth. This was awesome! We got to go black water rafting which involves plonking yourselves down in a tube and being dragged along an underground stream, bit surreal as all the previous experiences I have had with rubber tubes involved sunshine and were found in a land with a giant mouse called Mickey. There were only three of us on this trip and two guides (usually only one but we had two!) so we got to go through some different areas of the cave, got to crawl through an emergency escape tunnel which was cool, and also got to jump off a waterfall (only a couple of meters high!) twice. There were also people down there taking photos for the internet and brochures so we may be famous…
Along with all that we got to a certain point where the guides told us to turn our head torches off and not to paddle, just to float and look up….wow…the glow-worms were amazing, so many of them!
Anyway, the whole experience was really good, cold but really good. The wet suits we had to put on were soaking wet and you are basically cold as soon
as you put them on and at the end of it I couldn’t feel my little toes….I couldn’t even move them for a few hours after the trip! We got some soup and a hot bagel at the end which was cool.
After all that we chilled out the following day, visiting the local museum and planning where to go next! The freedom to go wherever, whenever is great and so much better than having to be in a certain place at a certain time. We then set off for the area around New Plymouth which houses Mt Taranaki which we wanted to see.
We are in Invercargill at the moment which is a freezing but a cool little town.
Thanks for messages and comments, Lee and Steven thanks for your message-you can subscribe yourself onto my blog if you wanted?! By the time you all read this I think Spurs will have signed Duff which would be so sweet and I see we drew to Pakistan in the cricket so nothing changes there, still doing badly.
Take care and look after yourselves.
Thommo
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lou callander
non-member comment
good lunge!!
Hello!! logged onto me eamil and got a barrage-good word- of photos from you guys from around the world!! Looks like you sre having an amazing time, im jealous!! impressive lunge but what is that dangling between your legs?!!! take care , can you take a photo of you or fran with one of those crazy native black men and send it to me, failing that, another tree shot would be good, have fun!!!!!! louxx