Campervan/Spacehip adventures

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So its been a while since we last posted anything as we have been covering the length and breadth of new zealand, which involved quite a lot of full on driving days for astronaught paul! We're back in auckland now staying with Mark and Fiona in Takanini.

We picked up the spaceship/campervan on the 21st of September, it was named SOLO, and everything seemed to be ok with it. it was a bit smaller than i was expecting but i guess thats what you get when you're on a budget, it is very much a swiss army campervan, everything folds out to become some other amenity. The dvd player was a nice addition incase we got stuck with some really bad weather we had our fingers and toes crossed though, especially because the choice of movies they have available is atrocious! On our travels we have seen some amazing places, a lot of the maori and european history and culture, that they are so proud of here, and some dreadful dreadful movies!

Leg One: The Lord of the Forest

Our first stop on our adventure was at the Hokianga harbour in the northlands to visit the large Kauri trees. This is something I had wanted to do having read about it in one of the many guide books we had while planning the trip. The kauri trees play a large part in Maori mythology, mainly Tane Mahuta, the lord of the forest, according to Maori mythology Tane is the son of Ranginui the sky father and Papatuanuku the earth mother. Before Tane grew so tall the earth and the sky were wrapped together and Tane pushed them apart to create life on earth.
Tāne Mahuta is the most massive kauri known to stand today. It is 51 metres (169 feet) in height, and has a circumference of 13.8 metres (45 feet). There is no proof of the tree's age, but it is estimated to be between 1250 and 2500 years old. Our Maori tour guide Bill, a local in Hokianga, told us the story and sang some maori songs and prayers to the tree and we all had some hot chocolate and paid our respects to the lord of the forest with a moment of silence before Bill taught us how to say goodbye in Maori and we all said goodbye and moved on to visit another impressive tree, Te Matua Ngahere, the oldest and most famous tree in new zealand.
Te Matua Ngahere means the father of the forest and this tree wasn't as tall as Tane Mahuta but is much much broader with a circumference of just over 16 metres!
Here we all sat around again as Bill paid respect to the tree with songs and prayers in Maori before we all jumped in the bus again to get warm. While we were on the footprints tour we also saw the trees called the four sisters, which are four trees growing together from the same spot so the look intertwined together. Bill also showed us how the Maori people use all the resources in the forest for food and medicinal purposes. We didn't see any Kiwi, the native bird of NZ, but we did hear some calling to each other. We both really enjoyed the tour, although we found it a bit strange as we were the only non-kiwi's on it!
The next day we drove to the Bay of Islands, originally planning to stay there for a while, however while it was beautiful there wasn't much to do so, itching to see more, we drove back down towards Auckland.

Leg Two: Coromandel and the Bay of Plenty

Just around the corner from Auckland is an outcrop called the Coromandel peninsular. We had been told that it was worth seeing by a guy from NZ while we were in Seattle and so headed up through Thames and the town of Coromandel itself. The weather was pretty good and the road was long and curvy following the edge of the sea. It was pretty tight at times with alot of one-lane bridges and places where the edge of the road had fallen into the sea! Once we got to the town the weather started to turn and we made the decision to not stay there so ventured back on the windy road and started driving further south. As darkness approached we entered the city of Tauranga and found a campsite that was at the base of Mount Maunganui, a now dormant volcano. The view was amazing to wake up to with the sun beaming down. The city of Tauranga was fairly ig compared to the majority that we had seen in the van, although still the centre was about the size of Melton's. After a quick stop there (to fit in with the tight schedule) we continued south!

Leg Three: The Thermal Regions

This was the first major stop on our trip that was geared massively towards tourists. As we drove down the road you could see the steam rising from different parts and the smell of sulphur grew stronger. We decided that we would have to throw ourselves into the experience at this point having found the journey in NZ to be very reminisant of home so far, so headed to the Agrodome. This involved a guy who came on stage and showed us 19 breeds of sheep that had been introduced into NZ, showed us how to milk a cow, sheered a sheep and then gave us a sheepdog display. The finale was when Stephanie got to feed a lamb on stage! We then left for our first night doing some 'rough camping' at a Department of Conservation campsite (the equivalent of the National Trust). Having driven down a gravel road for a while we found the deserted campsite and set up the back. As we lay there watching a movie on the DVD player we both got a little scared with being so alone and quickly took down the outer awning and locked the doors before having a restless night! We awoke the next morning feeling quite silly having got through it unscathed and headed back into town for our next activity. We headed up a hill in a gondola with an impressive view, headed back down so that Stephanie could put her trainers on, headed up again and headed for our first go on the luge. They had built a concrete track down the side of the mountain and we sat on plastic carts with a basic speed control and the ability to corner. Our first run was down a slow scenic route so that we could get used to the controls and then went on the next four runs down more advanced routes. The whole thing was really good fun but we decided to carry on the journey having seen the boiling mud pools and hot water pools in the town centre so drove to Lake Taupo. It used to be a volcano and was the largest explosion in written history (it was recorded in Italy and China) and left behind a huge crater, now the lake! We had found somewhere that would let us park up for free so headed there, unfortunately it was dark and I managed to knock over their sign while reversing. Luckily the owners were OK about it since it was just a supporting post that broke and it was rotten anyway but I still felt pretty bad for it! In the morning we took a short boat ride across the lake and wandered around the thermal region, looking a various examples of activity including geysers, terraces and one of only 2 known hot pools in caves in the world. It was all really impressive and we spent the best part of 2 hours watching it all, the vast majority of it on own. After a supermarket stop in Taupo we continued to drive so that we could see as much as possible.

Leg 4: To Wellington and Beyond

There wasn't much that we wanted to see between Taupo and Wellington so set off on a mammoth drive. The first part was across a desert road with the army training ground bordering it. It was quite surreal to drive along with tanks only 50m away and signs warning of danger if you came off the road every few hundred metres. It then turned into hilly rolling countryside with sheep seeming to climb at impossible angles. We stopped at a beach town about 100km from Wellington which was very nice and had a drink in the onsite bar having got confused by locked doors and a kind family opened a window which we climbed in through. We drove down to Wellington early in the morning and headed to the museum of New Zealand, Te Papa. The museum had loads of exhibits that showed how NZ had developed and also about Mauri artifacts and customs. We walked into the centre and saw the parliment buildings and then spent some time wandering the streets of the city seeing what it had to offer. For a city it still seemed very small to us and we booked our ferry crossing for the following day. It was all very smooth, with sunny skies but also a cold wind that kept us from being outside for too long. We watched the start of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe but it was cut short by the arrival into the Picton on the south island.

That was the end of the first part of our NZ adventure and so that the entry isn't too long we'll end it here until tomorrow to give your eyes and our fingers a rest!

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Photos

Our Route
This is where we went

Tane Mahuta
The Lord of the Forest

Te Matua Ngahere
The Father of the Forest

The Luge
Stephanie speeds by on her plastic sledge

Boiling Mudpools
The mudpools in Rotarua bubbling away