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Published: January 11th 2010
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Walking to "the mount!"Familiar faces, the smell of eggs and sun burn!!!
Its funny we spent less time on the plane between Fiji and New Zealand than we did in the bus getting from Auckland airport to Tauranga. I mean we’d heard the roads weren’t great and their “motor ways” are well not even duel carriageways, but we didn’t really think we would be sitting down for so long. We had got on two buses, the first we were hurried onto at airport after asking the lady at the stop if she could just confirm something for us…”hey you two, British people, this bus is yours” even though the one we were due to get wasn’t for another hour, we’d just arrived early to ask and check. So we got on anyway and confused the driver with our reservation number for the later bus but it was better than facing the scary woman at the bus stop - what about these friendly kiwi’s we’d heard so much about??
This first bus dropped off at Manakua city, which from what I could see was just a huge shopping centre (well kiwi huge anyway). Within seconds of being there I had some guy trying
to scam me for money even though I was wearing my best “I’m pissed off don’t mess with me” face. Bloody hell, we’re back in the US I thought. Once I’d got rid of him we found our connection stop; now I know we’d just come form Fiji, but it was freezing sat there waiting, it was only the late afternoon, but it was grey and cloudy and very much like home, so we zipped up and tried not to shiver too much whilst we waited.
The naked bus (name of the bus service, not a requirement to get on, much to Nath’s disappointment) arrived and we continued our road trip on what we thought must be a school bus for the number of kids on it. We got to enjoy the base sounds of some dance music from the girl’s headphones in front, but none of the words, and sat opposite a young lad with a pillow on his lap, wearing no shoes and dribbling on his arm as he slept - nice, must be a tough school!! We stopped in Hamilton for a pee break, the driver said 5 mins, so I rushed in and came back
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Our first New Zealand beach walk - water was colder than we expected to find Nath had decided to go in too. I watched the bus driver load another girl on, then get into the bus and start the engine. Just warming it up I thought, but no he pulled away!!! So I had to run down to him and shout, “Hey my boyfriend is still in the loo! Oh and you have left the baggage door open”. What a mad man! he made us feel bad for taking so long in the loo (poor Nath still suffering a little from the Fiji food!) but the driver did thank me for reminding him about the door “I’d forget my head sometimes” yeah and your bloody passengers I thought!
We finally got to Tauranga and we saw Ben (with more facial hair than I remember) and Heather and Marge (their van) waiting for us. It was so great to see them; we couldn’t wait to see where they lived and hear about their lives here, it seemed like it had been so long since seeing anyone we knew, and it was great to finally have a normal conversation without all the polite introductory small talk you have with strangers. We all clambered into
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Figuring out where we were gonna visit Marge and headed for their house, getting the high street commentary on the way. It would seem that most kiwi towns were built about the same time, so have that flat roofed, 50’s look to them and are ugly but functional; driving through it reminded me of a retail park. They told us about the driving rules, the stupid stupid left hand turn rule, which will come up time and time again and become a area of complaint (and near misses) for the rest of our time here I feel!
(Left hand turn rule: if you are turning off the main road into a left hand turn and someone coming the opposite direction is indicating right to also go down this turning, you have to wait for them to cross the lanes of traffic before you can turn after them!!!, this is unless, there are traffic lights, although sometimes the rule applies here too, two lanes to turn into the road that each of you could use, or if you have someone coming up behind you that wants to go straight on so therefore would smash into the person turning right - eh? I know!!!)
We got to
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Mmmmm symmetrical pizza their little wooden house, which looked small from the front but then we realised it had a side part and was actually quite big (3 bedrooms), well we thought so anyway. It was lovely and homely, carpeted, cosy sofas and a log fire, yippee I thought we can all sit round it on xmas eve, but then realised that it would be hot so they wouldn’t actually have it on - D’oh. We had some food and a cup of tea so were well happy and spent the rest of the evening catching up on how they had found living here and where we should visit. There were maps and guides all over the place most of the time we were there as we tried to get to grips with what we wanted to see and how. They were gonna take us to see some of the local sights that weekend, but had to work during the week so we’d decided to stay for 2 weeks and get ourselves sorted before heading to Auckland to meet Natalie (who I’d be liaising with via email but never met) before going to Hearing dogs.
The first night in Tauranga was sooo
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Ben and Heather's lovely house quiet (minus my screams as we went to bed and I found a spider in the room), it made such a nice change to the dorms. It was so quiet at times it was deafening if you know what I mean. In the morning we were taken out to “The Mount” as it is known locally, aka Mount Manganui for breakfast with Ben and Heathers friends. We were told that most kiwis’ don’t like to park and walk to their destination and would rather wait for a space or squeeze into somewhere illegal, but as we were hungry and British it didn’t matter so we took a short walk along the beach to all the beach front bars stopping on the way to gawk at some trees. Now the kiwis have a beautiful Christmas tree, and by that I mean it blossoms at Christmas not that you hang tinsel on it or anything - the Pohutakawa tree which has beautiful red spinney flowers and covers most of the north island. They were great to see on our first introduction to New Zealand.
We met about 6 of Ben and Heathers friends who were a mix of locals and new
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Look how clear the water is!!! residents from other countries and had a great laugh chatting about the differences between our nations. The main thing that came up was the hatred for possums over here. It would seem that even from a young age, kiwi children are read stories and see pictures of evil looking possums with pointy teeth and are encouraged to hate them. Most kiwi drivers on seeing them will drive at them in the hope of running one over. I can understand that they are a pest here but still I couldn’t abide the barbarism of it all, I mean where does it stop with children so easily influenced then thinking its ok to harm other animals!!! It did however explain the t-shirts we saw in the shops with “POSSUMS - New Zealand’s little speed bumps” Anyway with the social politics over we all went for a walk around “the mount”, noticing a seal on the way round, before heading back to Ben and Heathers house.
I think Ben and Heather thought we needed a wash despite showering that morning as they suggested we go have an outdoor bath - no not really it was a heated outdoor pool but not the
usual chlorine and urine filled type of home, but natural geothermal pool. It was great relaxing in this, although after about hour we all started to feel a bit sleepy from the heat so headed home again. There are loads of these geothermal pools it would seem all over New Zealand, some that are cheap local town pools all the way up to expensive spa’s - I’m glad we went to the cheap one!
Next morning we should have got up earlier to go on some gondolas in Rotorua, but as usual for us, nothing happens early and what with all the faffing I don’t think we got out much before midday!! Ben and Heather took us on a scenic drive to Rotorua, where we stopped off on a jungle walk and waterfall with the cleanest water I’ve ever seen in a river - Nath spending most of the time doing his usual fish spotting routine. We then waited at a photo spot where rafters and canoeists would paddle over a waterfall into rapids - bloody scary to watch but it did look like fun, maybe we will go back and do this at some point I thought.
A quick stop for lunch and then we headed out to some local mud pools. Not the sort that you would want to bath in, as your skin would peel off, but steaming thermal mud pools which to our surprise and concern were right next to a housing estate. Now we knew health and safety over here has yet to become fashionable, but I’m not sure I’d want to chance living on a volcanic island and then add to it by buying a house right next to an area of land that could at any second be dissolved into a boiling hole!!! Some of the near by houses had steam coming up from their back gardens and apparently even holes opening up in them!! All along the walk we passed little cracks in the ground, some with warnings around them, others so new they had yet to be labelled.
After this we went to Lake Tarawera to take in the views. It’s weird to see so much greenery and woodland like home and then realise that interspersed within it are huge ferns, palm trees and other tropical trees - we’ll never get used to that. We also popped in
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Yipppeeeee on the “Cargo shed” which was an old warehouse where Ben had a stall and his photos on sale. I bought 20 of Bens photo postcards from the slave girl he has working the stall there (she works for free pretty much) and as we left I saw a little tear in her eye from knowing she’d be able to eat that night - bless. We then finished the weekend chatting and watching TV back at the house.
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