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Published: January 16th 2008
1st Morning in Auckland
Ok, this isnt the joyous scene it should be, but here is Laura sleeping on a Airport bench, with the essential Soya milk Mocha! We arrived at about 10pm the night before and had nowhere to stay sorted. I thought we would be fine sleeping here, then up early to find a place to stay til we found a van. Well Laura wasn't overly pleased and I had to undertake some groveling(coffee is 2nd part & me sleeping on the floor underneath the bench was the 1st) Anyway I booked somewhere online that night and we got on our way into Auckland in the morning. The place we stayed was good for the money. We got a double room for 3 nights for $150, and enjoyed the space and TV. Included watching Bad Santa. I cant really complain though as we did have the smae set up for 5 nights in Cairns.Before we begin to tell you about our first impressions of New Zealand, let me tell you a few funny anicdotes about our flight from Cairns to New Zealand. As it was a near to "chrissie" flight, we were accompanied by many Kiwi's returning home to spend their time with nearest and dearest, as well as a few more people heading off on their holidays to get away from their nearest and clearly not so dearest. One family clearly took the biscuit in my estimations for the "writing home about award" and that was a large kiwi family with about 4 young children, the youngest of which was either holding up the queue to the toilet by climbing and getting stuck in the sink or being hoyed (and I mean literally hoyed) up and down the aisle to scream on another family members lap until they ran out of patience and repeated the rugby pass. I can't think of anything exceptionally witty about a small child being in flight, within a flight - so that image in itself will have to suffice. Thom sampled all the beers in tinny format on the flight and critised them all at too full a
volume for my liking (pressure in his ears or just lack of awareness that we were outnumbered in the Kiwi to Brit ratio?) so I buried my head in the in-flight magazine and was delighted to read about the plentiful wines we could sample and whats more, the new fad in chocolatiering that has come about with the Kiwi appreciation for the finer things in life. As you will see from our first picture, the relaxation in Cairns was too effective on us, in that we failed to plan ahead and book anywhere to stay in New Zealand on arrival, so we had to bed it down in the airport. Now I will stand firm with my declaration that I am not and never will be a prissey girl who requires egyptian-cotton sheets and an ensuite, but at the same time if I need to kip it rough I kind of need a couple of hours to psych myself up for it and somewhere fairly quiet to do it. What Thom has failed to point out in the photo is that this chair was right next to the main entrance to the airport and this is what resulted in my
Excuse this man, he has a cold.
Nifty facewear for the man on the go. I was basically annoyed at the runny nose that i had from the cold Laura got in Cairns. It was 35degs there. You work it out? grouch-troll mood. The coffee did work though but I drank it underneath the blanket just for extra dramatic effect.
Like I said previously the relaxation we soaked up in Cairns was rapidly surpassed with a high level of stress during our first few days in Aukland. It was dangerously close to Christmas so everything was about to grind to a halt and we needed to raise enough cash to buy a van to live in. This was incredibly difficult to do as the banks refused to give us cash over the counter so we had to resort to an Anneka Rice inspired leg-it around the city bleeding ATM's dry over a few days. A highlight to this mission which stands out for me was one latenight desperate attempt to source some more cash from the bank that's inside the big casino, located in the Auckland skytower (biggest tower in the Southern Hemisphere). We'd figured if they are happy to give out cash to shifty gambling types we'd proabably be lucky, but sadly we weren't. As we were shuffling out of the tower in disappointment, we were stopped mid-tracks by a penguin-like dressed security guard who informed us we were in
Leaving Auckland
A hurried photo out of the window as we make our way out of Auckland over the Harbour bridge and off into we don't know what! the "Performers path-way" and to "Stand-aside!". With that we were fenced in with his all-powerful red roping and surprised at 3 flourescent lycra wearing performers contorting their way down their very own red carpet into the main marble reception area to kooky manga style music. They did a marvelous show, one on stilts and the other two careering up and down outfit-matching lycra strips (think of that BBC acrobatics insertto get my drift) stopping their undwinding or sliding down the strips with their noses inches from the marble floor. So in the midst of the cash-flow angst we both had, this unexpected free show brought a bit of relief to the situation. It's these little moments of unpredicability that makes me love travelling so much.
This then leads me on to thinking about the buying of a van game we then encountered. Now, it must be said that I really do not like the ole motor game. The incessent lying, bartering, del-boyesque tone of the whole affair leaves me in a nail-biting mess to be perfectly frank, and as Thom has never had the joy of playing said game we were both not really looking forward to the whole business.
1st morning on the road
This is the beach at Waiwera, Orewa. A thermal resort area. (I have a strong feeling there's more to come). So with an agreed performance (If you scratch your left eye once you like the car, but if it's the right eye then we need to walk away from the sale etc) and half of the cash we needed we hit the Backpackers Car Market. It was bad! Half the vans were very over-priced and falling apart, or they had whole spiders webs inside them which indicated how long they had been sitting there waiting for a dumb-ass buyer. One vehicle was particularly desperate - fully decked out with a butt-jointed bed made out of T-chests in the back. The desperate seller (standing right next to the van all day trying to promote the fact that it was really a good deal because the engine had no leaks) who had several pulsating coldsaws round his mouth, was clearly malnourished and "Really homesick" provided us with our cue to leave and try somewhere else the next day. So, up with the larks on that fine Saturday morning we got lost in an industrial park for a while and then found ourselves suddenly inamongst the car market and instantly hounded by the del-boy characters I was fearful of. We met a nice
Get used to your surroundings
Laura trys to settle into the close quarters again here in 'Bart'. English couple who had a nice looking van for sale which we took for a spin, they had done the travelling thing and had decided to move out to New Zealand permanently. On quite a black-comedy note however, when the guy was discussing the engine with us told with me considerable fervour how quiet a runner it was and at the same time displayed his hearing aid I had to cough to hide my giggles. As we were getting more and more desperate, a nice blue van pulled up with two jolly looking blokes inside it. We waited for them to settle in and then went over to check out the inside, it had a distiguishable pong-de-homme about it but on the whole seemed fairly canny, so we took it for a spin and Thom tackled the old-school gear box as I discussed selling details with one of the owners - Thorben, AKA Tom. They were happy with our part cash, part bank transfer offer so we went ahead and made our way to the post office to sign over the van ownership. We gave them half the cash, I ran off a merciless contract in a nearby net cafe
Welcome to New Zealand
Ok.......so they may not be as deadly here (White-tailed excluded from Oz) but you can realise with my spider record that seeing this made it worrying times. for us all to sign and then we all went down to a Hari Krishna place that was giving out free meals to the poor and homeless for christmas and had a feast! The agreement was that they could kip in the van that night then we'd exchange it in the morning and pay the rest of the cash, as you can imagine neither of us slept a wink with worry that we'd been done like kippers by 2 german rapscallions, every half hour or so saying "Are you still awake stressin?" to each other. It was all gravy though and they pulled up half an hour before the agreed meet up time and we dropped them off down the YHA. We even had a cute key hand over photo taken (included here of course).
After our heightened levels of stress we decided we'd check out Auckland properly when we return to fly onto Fiji, and thus made tracks northwards to try and find somewhere lovely and calm to spend a quiet Christmas together. We set our sights on the picturesque Bay of Islands as our destination, and as there were many free rest-stops indicated on our newly crisp map
First of many Kauri Trees
This one near Warkworth, Northland (the area north of Auckland in New Zealand) is over 800 years old, and thats young! Many that have been dug up over the last 150 years for timber and gum, have been estimated at 45,000+ years old. They are all over this peninsula. we were rather smug with our selection. To our disappointment we found our first rest stop was at least 20k's out on the map and it didn't have any of the facilities as indicated on the colour co-ordinated rest-stop map key, but we put it down to one little mistake made by those cheeky devils in the Hema office and pressed on towards the Islands. We filled the next day by seeing a whopper of a Kauri tree in the Parry Kauri Park, went to Goat Island Beach and then drove onto Rawhiti to the pre-selected rest-stop for our peaceful christmas. We were both gob-smacked with how beautiful the scenery was so soon outside of the city, and as we drove into the night to get to the stop I noticed how many houses with their huge gardens were fully decked out with massive tents to accomodate friends and family already celebrating Christmas Eve together and it gave me a nice warm cinnamony-christmas pang. This was extinguished after an hour of searching up and down dusty roads with no rest stop revealling itself to us. So as we were both running out of patience and ready to begin the festivities
Goat Island
This piece of rock is off a Black sanded beach, which is cool in itself, but you can swim to it, like Thom did, or snorkel. Or just relax. I am staring to realise that is just what NZ is like. Lots of choice and opportunity in a very small area. with a Christmas beer (at 11pm) we pulled over on a grassy section which was already full of people. Sadly our dreams had been dashed at being by ourselves but at least we had a nice view. I set to making some grim substitute super noodles as we had no tine to prepare the feast we'd bought and just as I had the water on to boil we got a knock on the door. It was a very friendly lady called Margret who had all her kids with her, she asked us if we were aware that we'd just pulled up onto private land and that she had some relatives coming who needed our spot to park up on tomorrow morning. We were ashamed and apologised profusely at putting her out and started to rush about packing up everything to get back out on the road, and then she insisted we stay for the night as we both looked so tired, but could we please be off the land by the morning, so we compromised by pulling up onto the side of the road well away from her plot of land and both made plans to just get out of
there as early as possible the next day as we were so embarrased.
We woke up at the crack of dawn on Christmas Day and headed out to try and find a campsite that might be open, we pulled up at a very hostile place that told us our cards didn't work (even though Thom saw them pressing the wrong buttons on their card machine) so we had to leave, then we failed to find 2 more rest stops! I was adamant we were Mary and Joseph and was starting to fret about the whole immaculate conception business and finding a manger at midday when all the shops were shut, so Thom took care of things and found us a campsite in Oakhura that was open, had nice owners and could operate an eftpos machine. In the end it all came together and we guzzled our fine sparkling pinot chardonnay blend and chomped on some lamb chops and rissoles with random garlic buttered veg for christmas dinner. Not what we'd planned for at all but these things never are I suppose.
We then drove on up to Wangerai, saw the waterfalls and then headed on to a place called Tutukaka
Christmas Day accomdation
This is where we stayed on Christmas Day. It's a bit different from the norm, especially as Thom walked around in shorts & wifebeater all day. to try and find yet another incorrectly placed rest-stop logo. When we finally found this rest-stop we noticed there were loads of cars full of young Maori kids and whole familys standing outside in their front gardens. After driving right through the middle of all this we heard a loud bang and someone shouting "Was that a gun?" then loads of kids with bottles of alcopops all jumped in their cars or ran towards the commotion. We decided to leave the scene straight away but there was a long queue of cars on the only exit road. We didn't see any violence but heard lots of yelling and speeding cars and we noticed that all the families had now fled back indoors. Who knows what had happened, but I'm sure it can be said that a few folks didn't have the best Boxing Day in that area.
It was from here on in that we got the distinct impression that things were rather hostile in this area of New Zealand. We were regularly greeted with frowns or sneers from people and felt quite unsafe at times when parking up to sleep. This unsafe feeling stayed with us and reared it
Merry Phistmas
Ok so we have finally settled down on Christmas Day after seeing it in looking out to the Bay of Islands, but in a rest stop. Anyway, we finally check in to a a campsite looking out over a beach into a beautiful bay. Good weather too. "So crack out the bargain beaut of bubbly then....'ey." ugly head once more when we attempted to drive up Ninety Mile beach a few days later, we double-checked the tide times and headed onto the huge beach for some exciting off-roading but 10 minutes or so in I could feel Bart's engine was not happy being on the sand and the surface seemed pretty unsolid. Having read about perilous quick-sand areas on this beach I went with my gut instinct and got off that beach as soon as possible, following the lead of a car with 2 young farmer looking types in it. By the time my feeble arms had gotten through the intense steering required to navigate down this dirt track their car was nowhere to be seen, so we reverted to the Thom Internal Compass to get us out of the forrested area (Thom seems to have a gift of being able to find places even though he's never been there before and hasn't looked at a map - goodness knows how it works but we have both been thankful of it on many occasion so far). We drove up dirt hills and down dusty tracks, we passed wild horses and many signs that indicated we were
Whangarei Falls
See how she flows. in a 'Danger Zone'. But try as he might Thom's internal compass seemed to be failing us, so we both started to panic. There was no sign of the beach anymore, there were no roads on the map in this area, no sounds of civilisation either. We got stuck in some mud in the middle of a forrest and had to do a 60 point turn to get back out of it (using branches we actually had to go and forage for to put in the mud so the wheels didn't get even more bogged down). After a good half an hour of blind panic I remembered we did have a compass somewhere in the van. Thanks to Saint Mandy and her canny present of the gas fuelled lighter that has the titchiest compass on it we started to try and work out rationally where the hell we were and how we were going to get out of this wood. We drove down a grassy road that was rather over grown and Thom got all manly and announced I was to stop the van so he could get out and go and find out where this road led to. It
Whangarei Falls
Whangarei. Nice day for Boxing Day, 'ey? was clearly an announcement, so I decided not to argue with him. He scrambled to the back of the van got the bread knife and then headed out with a big frown on his face and shouted back to me "Lock the doors!". So I sat there for what seemed like 3 days and let my over-active imagination take over. Remember the dessert entry, where I was beginning to compare our travels to many a teen horror movie? Well, that kicked back in again. I was sure there was some kind of Mike Myers character hidden in the bushes watching me and chuckling to himself as he was planning out my brutal decapitation. I think the nerves kicked in at this point as all of a sudden I really needed to wee....
*this could lead me onto a mini side story about al-fresco weeing when your a girl but I'll save that for another compliation of prose for another time as I hope you are all on the edge of your seats reading this.*
...So like the silly girls you get in those movies I went against the advice of the man with knife and rescue capabilities and unlocked the
door to try and go and find somewhere to go to the loo. This is when I came across a load of rubbish hidden off in the trees, there were hollowed out TV's, whole sofas with springs coming out and even the odd kitchen utensil! So I clambered over furniture and tin openers and eventually found a suitable location and got it all over with as quickly as possible. Then! I heard a massive crash and what seemed to be some kind of mechanical grinding noise. It was either loggers knocking down trees towards us or a Mike Myers/Freddie Cruger hybrid coming to slay me so I legged it back to the van to find Thom marching back with a happy caveman expression on his face. He'd found road! The rubbish was all down to fly tippers and the noise was loggers after all. We made our way to the nearest roadhouse where a family of 20-odd Indians were chowing down on a load of fried chicken, and we joined them with a strange chicken and gravy sandwich each trying to catch our breath and just being silently thankful we were still alive.
We did eventually make it to the
Rainbow Falls, Kerikeri
At night, so it seemed brighter on my camera.
The Whangarei Falls are the most photographed in NZ, but these were much better. tip of the North Island to check out what it looks like when 2 seas converge (see for yourselves in the photos) at Cape Reinga.
Finally, for this entry, we had a fun day the next day - crossing over towards more Kauri related stuff on the car ferry. We saw a huge Kauri that is over 2000 years old (Tane Mahuta - Waipura) then learned lots about how the pioneers made loadsa dosh from chopping down the kauri's and mining the gum the trees produce. As expected there is now a massive need in the New Zealand environment to try and replenish the Kauri tree (find out more at www.kauri2000.co.nz).
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