Blogs from Bay of Plenty, North Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 13

Last Friday was my last day at the Apata pack house and Thursday I will be leaving Tauranga with Anne, a Malaysian girl at the hostel who was also working at Apata and is looking to get to Wellington. We’re going to head up north to the Hot Water Beach on the Coromandel Peninsula first, before going to Lake Taupo. I thought it would be a good idea to do it now as I’m not sure if I’ll be on the eastern side of the North Island again, though the timing may be a little unfortunate as it will still be part of school holidays for the kids here so we may find the beach a little crowded when we get there. We had a barbeque this past weekend as an early farewell for me and ... read more

There was an earthquake close to Christchurch a few days ago, I did not even feel it as I am on the north island. To the best of my knowledge it was a 7.4 and somehow there were no fatalities whatsoever! I will update again as any news arrives! PS: The pictured of the car have been uploaded on the previous entry.... read more

Hello family and friends, I’m still working at the pack house and will have 2 long weeks so I thought I’d update you while I had the chance. I’m still renting the car and will be until this Sunday when I’ll be thinking about buying a car (more on that as it happens). It’s not worth renting any longer and having my own transportation for the rest of the New Zealand portion of the trip will be a great advantage. The work here will probably last until the 3rd week of September, at that point I plan to go to Lake Taupo to do some stupid extreme sports stuff like skydiving and tramping (hiking for us North Americans) on some of the nicest tracks on the north island. Here are a couple of pictures from the ... read more

Hello everyone! I have a job now (if only an on call basis one) working at a fish factory. I had always thought that fish were caught out in the ocean, but apparently they just come out of a hole in the wall on a conveyor belt in this place. I can only assume that there is a massive workshop on the other side with cheap backpacker labour where they make the fish. They probably divide the workers into sections like bones, guts, meat, skin, final paint, and the job they all dream of one day having, the slime guy (as in the guy who gets to spray all the smelly fish slime on the finished work). The fish come out pretty fast too so either the people are working really fast, or they just have ... read more

After a bit of luck we found a campervan that we absolutely love it.....a week ago we got it. We went to backpackers car market that was advertised in hostel where we stayed at. We found the place easily and it is located in area where there are lots of interesting shops such as op shops, tattoo shops, etc. Anyway, when we arrived there we thought that it would be hard to find something cos my husbands expectations are too high sometimes. We were helped by staff and bought beautiful Toyota Hiace campervan that we really liked. We did two checks before we bought it, legal and mechanical check and it came up with good results. Everything was sorted in 1 day. We transfered papers from sellers name to our name, purchased third party insurance and ... read more