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Published: December 14th 2006
Well, it has been quite a while since I've published a blog entry. I apologize in advance for the length of this one...it'll probably take you a few sittings to get through. Except for you procrastinating exam studiers...get back to work!
I've been in New Zealand for over a week now and time has flown by. I had a great flight into Auckland, Emirates Airlines is wonderful, and it was a sunny day upon arrival so I had a nice view of the city as we were landing. As most of you know, Jer has also been travelling since the fall, only he started in New Zealand and spent 6 weeks touring the country. We were both going to be in Auckland at the same time and decided to meet up and tour the North part of the North Island together before he flew to Australia. I met him at our hostel the night I arrived and we spent the following morning arranging a rental car, buying groceries, etc. Much to Jer's annoyance I spent the majority of the morning complaining about the temperature as New Zealand temperatures are not what I have become accustomed to in Australia. They say
Sunset in Paihia
I took this from a golf course that Jer was dying to play on. We also stopped to look at some random cows...they were NOT friendly.the weather in New Zealand is so unpredictable that you can have all 4 season's in one day...some say 5! The temperatures have been around 20C or just below and it's impossible to wear the right clothing because one minute the sun is out and it's tank top weather but the next minute the wind picks up and even a fleece isn't warm enough. I have a feeling all my summer clothes are just going to be extra weight on my back until Asia.
Our rental car was an older Toyota Corolla which we named Betsy. She must have been destined to be a Betsy because both Jer and I came up with that name before even talking to eachother. We quickly learned that Betsy had a mind of her own as well as many likes and dislikes. She definitely liked to take hills at her own pace and would not respond to any encouragement from us or the accelerator. She also must have liked to hear us play repeated games of 20 questions because she frequently faded the virtually non-existent radio stations in and out. We concluded that Betsy felt more alive with Jer driving but a little
Island stopover on the sailing trip
This is where we hiked up for a snooze in the grass. It was such thick grass that I got a rash on my legs from walking through it. If this was Australia it would have been snake haven. more confident she would live to see the next day with me driving. Just joking, Jer was a good driver minus a minor incident on the first day. Overall, Jer and I handled the driving on the left hand side of the road fairly well. The biggest issue was probably that the signal indicator was on the right side of the steering wheel. Much to other drivers confusion and probably annoyance, we often turned on the windshield wipers in an attempt to signal. It had to have looked pretty funny. The other issue with driving on the left hand side was positioning the car on the road, we had to re-adjust our spatial senses to make sure we didn't veer too far to the left. On the first day poor Betsy had a bit of a rude connection with the curb as Jer got used to the road. Thankfully there were only a few minor scratches and a small crack on her hub cap that the rental dealer didn't notice when we returned her. That's the good thing about renting older cars, they don't notice or care about little marks.
The best part about travelling by car is obviously
the added freedom. We didn't plan anything and only had a below par YHA road map. We went where the road took us and made decisions along the way, depending on how we were feeling. Our major stop was at the Bay of Islands which is a very popular coastal area among tourists. We stayed in the main town of Paihia for a few nights. Our first night Jer befriended a pair of Kiwi business men who were so entertaining that we ignored dinner, or rather ate a lot of trail mix and chocolate, and spent most of the evening watching them down probably 30 beers and re-count hillarious stories involving streaking and subsequent minor jail time. The next day we were supposed to go on a sailing day cruise out to some islands to see (and possibly swim) with dolphins. We woke up to blue skies but discovered the trip was cancelled due to reports of the arrival of bad weather. After deciding to stay one more night so we would take the cruise the following day, Jer and I ventured to a new town. It started to pour rain so we spent some time in good old Micky
D's and the local library before taking a hike to a waterfall.
The following day, thankfully, we boarded our sailboat the Corina. Jer had had his heart set on seeing dolphins all his life so he was really looking forward to this trip. Unfortunately we learned early on that the dolphin pods had moved fairly far out to sea and our skipper Vanessa said it was too rough to head out there. Poor Jer, you should have seen his face. The morning sail was fairly calm and we soon stopped at an island to give people the chance to snorkel or explore. I immediately decided snorkelling was not an option given the temperature and the fact that I felt it could not compare to the Great Barrier Reef where I recently did a lot of snorkelling. Instead, Jer and I made our way up an extremely grassy set of hills where we lay back in a surprisingly comfortable bed of grass to get some sun. My tan has been fading too fast. After lunch, Vanessa surprised us by saying we were going to head out to the dolphins and it turned out they weren't as far out as they
had originally thought. We found LOTS of bottlenose dolphins and without warning Jer turned into a 6 year old boy who also appeared to be a member of the paparazzi. He was so excited that he lost all composure, talking way too loud, and running all over the boat never once putting my camera down trying to get the perfect shot. He must have taken over 50 pictures, many ended up being of sky or just water (which I deleted later). I quite enjoyed his enthousiasm and appreciated the fact that he was using my camera so I was able to sit back and enjoy the beauty and playfullness of the dolphins. They were magnificent, swimming and jumping all around the boat, even racing us for a bit. Jer said this was the highlight of his trip and he now felt like he had completed New Zealand. After we got off the boat we celebrated with a massive 3 scoop ice cream sunday...having someone to share something like this with is another advantage of travelling in two's.
That night we decided that we had been spending too much money lately and that it would be fun to sleep in
Hangin' with a 2000 year old tree
It's actually much bigger than it looks there (it's the white area) but we were pretty far away from it when this picture was taken. Betsy instead of a hostel. After driving just over an hour to a very small community on the beach we found a campground to park the car. The office was closed but a sign said that anyone arriving late could pick a spot for the night and pay in the morning. We spent a lot of time giggling over the situation and what our neighbours must be thinking as they teased us with their large campervans with all the ammenities. Jer decided to make himself comfortable for the night on the grass outside while I scrunched up in the backseat using my towel as a pillow. In the morning, as we woke up in precarious positions, we joked about having hit rock bottom (or so we thought), as our senior citizen neighbours watched us wake up and eat "breakfast in bed" consisting of warm yogourt and half a can of fruit each. Doomed by my honesty and guilty conscience, we went to the office to pay for what we thought was a money saving night. As the bill rang up to $28 (just $6 each short of what we would have paid at a hostel) we thought THIS must be
Today near Piha
Please excuse my very poor scenic self portrait abilities... rock bottom. But then following the advice of a local we made the bad decision to drive up a very long, boring and windy road to Cape Reinga which is the very tip of the North Island where we hoped to see to something worthwhile. After driving for nearly 2 hours with no radio and scenery consisting of nothing but cows and sheep, we arrived at the end where there was a dirt road. We immediately remembered the all too chatty rental car dealer telling us about this road, on which no rental cars (including Betsy) are insured. We turned right around and revisited the same cows and sheep, we had wasted a whole morning and almost half a tank of gas.
Our spirits were lifted after an enjoyable break playing frisbee on the extremely windy Ninety Mile Beach and we continued on to a ferry crossing over to Rawane to eventually get to Dargonville for the night. As the ferry was docking and Jer had just finished putting my camera back into its case, a massive tidal wave came over the edge of the boat and right through the open car window soaking Jer and poor Betsy. Hmmm,
Piha beach
This was taken from the rock I climbed to eat lunch..the beach is on either side of it. I vaguely remembered something about driving in salt water as being forbidden. Yet I could not stop laughing for the next 10 minutes while Jer sat there wet and stunned. Just after the ferry we pulled over to take some pictures of a nice view and for a snack. As I was eating my PB&J sandwich I noticed a random goat tied to a fence across the road..weird. Anyways, I pointed it out to Jer and he had some fun tentatively edging closer to it with part of his sandwich in his hand. The goat soon got bored with us so we continued on and drove along the windiest roads of my life...seriously Kiwi's have no concept of straight roads. This country is sports car heaven...Betsy did alright. Soon after we stopped for a break at Tane Mahuta, a 2000 year old Ancient Kauri tree that spans 52m high with a girth of 14m. Woodwork made from Kauri trees are a common souvenir in New Zealand, however as my mom suggested, probably only for the wealthy asian tourists because one small wooden box can go for $200. Once again, outside of the backpacker budget. We spent our last night in a campground near Dargonville asking for a tent site so we could repeat the previous night's classy performance. It turns out that a little room she had with bunks was less expensive than a tent site so we quickly chose that for $10 each.
Jer has now flown to Australia and I have been spending the last few days staying with Celia Moore and her partner Allen. Allen grew up in the Soo but has lived in New Zealand for 17 years and Celia spent a couple years in the Soo as a Speech Pathologist before moving out here. They have both been more welcoming and hospitable than I could ever hope for. It's been so nice to have a house as a base while I have been planning a bit of my New Zealand trip. Today Allen even let me take his car to a beautiful beach about an hour away (another windy roads drive) called Piha. Piha is a surf beach and has black sand! I did have some minor issues with the car...very low oil and engine coolant. It turned into a fun little adventure as I wandered around talking to locals to find the one mechanic who worked out of his home...he didn't even have a business sign out front. After that was all sorted out I climbed a big rocky cliff for lunch and then took a hike to yet another beautiful waterfall. The hikes are awesome here and I can't get over how good it smells in the forests.
Tomorrow I'm leaving Auckland and starting to head South. I'm really looking forward to seeing more of this beautiful country.
Good luck to everyone with exams. It'll be done soon and you'll be home for Christmas before you know it!
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Lindsay
non-member comment
finally!
Heather, I was so excited today when I saw that you had a new post up! I'm in the library, pretending to study... and was running out of things to do to procrastinate (you just gave me a great 15 minutes...) sounds like New Zealand is amazing, i miss you tons.... and I'll talk to you soon! xoxoxo