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Published: October 13th 2010
The Sky Tower
In Auckland - I jumped off the circular platform at the top :)Hello again, not updated this for a while so here is the next part:
So after a fairly uneventful flight I met up with Matesha at Auckland (City Of Sails) airport and we went back to her house to meet Kris, Kafele (15) and Kishka (12), where we chilled out to Total Wipeout and some appalling bad NZ soaps. The next day I woke up late and wandered down into Mission Bay (Suburb of Auckland) where I decided that it was far too cold to go swimming so went for a walk up the beach instead, followed by Kafele’s dinner speciality: Beans on Toast, and TV.
The following morning I went out for a walk round the bush near the house with Kris and Elsa (the dog crossed with either a big black sheep or a rug), where we saw Fantails, Parrots and Tui birds - so much more interesting than the England equivalent (sparrows/blackbirds). Then I headed into Auckland, and went off up Skytower, and jumped off the top - after all, what’s the point of going up the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere unless you can jump off it? Anyway it's quicker than the stairs. I
got dressed up in an ultra-fashionable bright yellow and blue jumpsuit and harness and clipped onto a wire before falling at 75mph towards the ground (with a brief pause for a “action” shot). Upon reaching the bottom the girl who kitted me out said they didn’t have anyone else booked on so did I want to go again? Yep, only this time I went backwards with no stopping for silly photos - much more fun! Having done this, I didn’t have much to do for the rest of the afternoon so I went down to Auckland Maritime Museum as the leaflet had pictures of boats on the front. As it turned out there were seven sections all about different boats - the first 6 sections were the history of Auckland and boating and generally dull stuff and took about 15 minutes to go round, but the last section was all about the America’s Cup boats and how they’re built, sailed, etc (including games :O), which managed to occupy me for about an hour. Read all about how the boats are built, how the sails are made, and how some of them failed epically (e.g. Aussie boat 1995 split in half
and sank in under 2 minutes), and then played a 6 person sailing game by myself and won (yes, I am that cool), designed my own Cup boat on a computer, and played some navigation game similar to VSK4. Eventually even the America’s Cup section managed to run out of interesting things to do however, so I left, got some food and headed up the Skytower again (got a free ticket with my jump) to go and watch the sunset from the 360 degree viewing deck - pretty cool - and got the bus back to Matesha’s to get an early night in preparation for the 6am wake-up the next day in order to catch the bus from Auckland to Rotorua.
The bus down to Rotorua was long but otherwise good - left my big bag in Auckland so only had a daysack which was nice, and the backpackers the i-site guy had booked me was awesome - climbing wall, cinema and $2 internet. That evening I went to the Mitai Mauri Culture Night about a half hour bus ride out of town. It started off very badly with us all sitting at tables waiting for them to get
organised whilst some old hippy guy played “Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong” on a trumpet. However, once the trumpet was put away, it was a great evening - we met our crazy guide, who, after discovering the nationality of all 50 people in the room, took us outside to photograph our dinner, which was cooked in traditional Mauri Hangi style. This is where they dig a massive pit and line it with hot stones, pour water over it to make lots of steam, then put all the food (meat, potato, veg) in and trap in the steam with wet sacks to cook it. Then we were given torches and guided up through the forest with random dressed-up Mauri guys running around in the shadows with torches, to a river where we heard lots of shouting upstream, and eventually a old-style Mauri canoe came into sight paddled by a bunch of guys in loin cloths and war paint, who put all us tourists to shame because, as we huddled in jackets and blankets, they proceeded to jump into the freezing river semi-naked. After they’d finished splashing about and being generally war-like, we walked up to a theatre-type area with a load
of seats and heaters, and the Mauri’s from the Mitai village put on a performance of their dancing, singing, fighting and combinations thereof (all very impressive), finished off by the Haka (their famous war-dance). When it was over, we headed back for an amazing Hangi dinner, followed by chocolatey desserts (not cooked in the pit) and we were taken round a bit of the forest on a “wildlife tour”, on which we saw 3 gloworms and a few fish.
In order to continue the generally intelligent, cultural trend of the journey so far, and on recommendation of Gaz and James in Fiji, I got a shuttle bus up to Wai-O-Tapu Geothermal Wonderland, to see the geysers and hot pools and stuff. On the bus up there I met Anka again (from the Mauri night), who was a nice contrast to the mental bus driver who wouldn’t stop talking random crap over the tanoy, and kept slowing down to point out interesting landmarks such as rivers, rocks, sheep, birds, flowers and steam. The first stop the crazy woman let us out the bus for was to go and see a massive hot mud pool, where she warned us not to
touch the mud as some guy had touched it before and it was so hot that even though he washed it off asap and was rushed to hospital, the flesh of his finger was cooked. And although we decided that (due to lack of any warning signs) this was probably a slight exaggeration, it was still very hot and covered in bubbles and steam. The next stop was Lady Knox Geyser, which in the natural course of things would go off every 24 to 48 hours, but for the entertainment of us tourists a crazy kiwi guy with a microphone and some soap turned up at 10am exactly to pour soap into the top of the geyser which broke the surface tension and caused it to erupt, which was very spectacular - it reaches 20ft high, and over the 1 hour eruption period over 28000 litres of water is forced out. Then me and Anka went for the walk around the geothermal “Wonderland” park, which was amazing as the sulphur and other minerals in the water turned the water, the rocks and nearby trees florescent yellow, orange and green. We saw quite a few cool coloured lakes and rocks, a
few more little geysers, and went on a few detours to lookout points and waterfalls on the way up to the top of the park, and then according to the map we could go round in a loop back to the beginning but the first part of the loop back turned out to be closed due to high winds so Anka turned back the way we came, whilst I ignored the warning and agreed to meet her back where the paths met (seeing as there wasn’t much in the way of high winds). As it turned out the warning was right and the massive trees growing in the forest the path wound through were being blown almost to a 45 degree angle by the wind, and there were a couple nearby that had given up completely and fallen over. However, once past the risk of being crushed by trees it was quite a pretty walk.
Once back at Crank’s, I went down to the park to see the natural thermal pools, and went to see a film called Skin at the cinema which turned out to be pretty good. Then me, Maxie (UK), Derbhla (Dutch), and Shane (Brazil) chilled
out in the dorm for a while and went out to Lava bar, which we left, with perfect timing, just before everyone got chucked out as some guy got stabbed. The next morning I was up early to go whitewater rafting on a grade 5 river with lots of rapids which our guide Nick gave long complicated names involving words such as AWESOME, DEATH, FEAR, TERROR, ULTIMATE and PAIN. Other points of interest included a 7 metre waterfall with a Mauri chief buried behind it, and the widest, shallowest part of the river, named Melanie after Ryan (the other guide)’s ex-girlfriend. We managed to get down the whole thing upright, although everyone got soaking wet going over the waterfall and surfing the last rapid (where we had to stop as no one had managed to complete the grade 6 following, and several people had died trying). After rafting, I went horseriding as it was a package deal, which was a very beautiful ride though not as fun as it could’ve been as the guide Sue wouldn’t let the horses go faster than a walk. When I got back to Rotorua I got the bus over to Taupo with Derbhla and
Shane to go skydiving the next day, and as we got there quite late we hung out in an Irish bar for a while eating free lamb rolls, then went to find Taupo Urban Retreat where I was staying.
The next day was pretty much wasted as the skydive was delayed due to wind conditions, and finally cancelled so I didn’t get much done other than watching the new Batman film on DVD, before catching the bus back to Auckland. There I spent the last night in the North Island with Matesha et al, got up an hour late, at 8am, as I forgot to put the time on my alarm clock forwards by an hour (daylight savings), but still managed to catch the 8.30 shuttle to the airport where I chilled on the free internet, before the flight out to Queenstown. The flight was pretty cool as, although there was cloud cover for most of it, landing in Queenstown was quite clear so we could see the mountains on either side, and the wind-created turbulence coupled with the random kiwi girl next to me pointing out useful things such as the short runway and the lake at the
end made it much more fun than normal on a commercial flight.
And so ends my trip to the North island of New Zealand!
Katie x
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GDM
non-member comment
Who's an adrenaline junkie then? Thanks for the latest episode. What a great time you are having. Keep safe, have fun, xxx GDM