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Published: November 20th 2006
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Akl
En route to sydney. Who can spot the Kangaroo? Greetings from New Zealand the land 'under down under'.
Flying over here was the longest journey ever for me. 4 flights + transit took us about 42 hours. The time difference (12 hrs) made that we arrived in Auckland on Wednesday evening after having left Brussels on Monday afternoon.
I love the Qantas flights though, good food and a great entertainment system (about 60 movies to choose from).
The film 'No man's land' on the Bosnian war was a great link with my previous travels, while the great 'An inconvenient truth' from Al Gore was very actual in my next destination Australia where one farmer after the other goes out of business because of the droughts there.
X men 3 was pure entertainment with a great Aussie actor...
Auckland
The economical capital of NZ is not really that exciting. We spent most of our first jet lagged morning fixing our transport passes for the trip. NZ's public transport is a bit of a disaster. Moreover a lot of the interesting things are far away from everything. So we decided to buy a pass for a 'backpacker bus'. A bus where you can jump off where you want but that
visits the things away from the cities. We (ahum I) chose the 'Stray' bus that focuses on hiking and outdoors stuff as opposed to the 'Booze' (Kiwi experience) bus that targets...you guessed it partying.
The rest of the time we hopped on a free bus round AKl with some cool view of the city, harbour and had a walk under a bridge where we saw some people bungee jump. Unfortunately my budget didn't allow a jump this time. I guess I'll have plenty of chances on doing crazy stuff the next weeks. NZ is the adrenaline 'sports' centre of the world...
Hahei and Raglan
First two stops on our route were beaches.
Hahei on the east coast has some really nice coastal walks. We did a great walk to Cathedral cove and found a giant swing while getting a bit lost. A first (free) adrenaline experience...swinging above the sea.
Next up was surfer town Raglan. I decided not hop on a board this time and save that for the warmer waters of Australia. In stead me and some other travellers took a free course 'Kiwi culture' and learned to play rugby on the beach. Great game...
akl
Spring in Auckland if I was 16 again I'd find myself a team to play with. The next days I would be able to see (on TV) the NZ 'All blacks' (probably the best rugby team in the world) destroy all other teams on their European tour.
Waitomo and Rotorua
In Waitomo we took a trip into the glow-worm caves. After our eyes had adjusted to the darkness, thousands of glow-worms lit up the cave that had seemed pitch black a couple of minutes earlier. It felt like we were in outer space and had stars all around us. Amazing.
Next stop was at Rotorua (aka Rottenrua). The place is sitting above a very active volcanic zone. The whole city smells (read stinks) like sulphur, the city park has small steaming lakes and boiling mud pools. At some places you hear the water boil just a meter under your feet. It makes a lot of noise and is quite intimidating. While walking through the city you could see huge clouds of steam come from the sewer in the middle of the streets.
We checked out more boiling stuff at Whakarewarewa (pronounce Fakarewarewa) village. A town built on top of
akl
Bridge walking one big boiling water cooker. When crossing the bridge over the river to the village the earth crust goes from 4 km thick to only 4-5 m thick. When you jumped up you could really feel the ground shake and the heat from the hot lava a couple of meter under your feet was going straight through your shoes. The place was full of boiling pits and geysers. The boiling water is used to cook food (Maori microwave), hot therapeutic bads, curing asthma, heating houses, etc.
The rotorua region is also one of the centres for Maori culture. The Maori were the first people to populate New Zealand. This probably didn't happen before 1200 AD. So while in Europe the Middle Ages were in their full (dark) swing, NZ was still in the stage of 'Pre History'.
Maori people (unlike the Aboriginals in Oz) are pretty well integrated in 'modern society' but have been able to keep their cultural uniqueness. In the village we checked out a 'cultural show'. With a lot of singing, dancing...and crowd participation. And of course one of the 'volunteers' called to the stage was yours truly. Marijke has an amazing movie of me making
a fool out of myself on stage if anyone wants to see that.
On route to Lake Taupo we checked out some really amazing waterfalls while everyone was hoping for the sky to clear.
Taupo
The huge Lake Taupo came into being when the local volcano exploded somewhere around 100 AD. One of the biggest explosions in human history. Even in Rome historians reported 'blood red skies'.
However these days Taupo is known as the cheapest place in the world to do a tandem skydive. As we drove into town for the first time that day the sun pierced through the skies. We hurried to the airport to see if we could jump. To my surprise Marijke wasn't going to join me just to take pictures but wanted to jump herself. After some reassuring remarks ("Nobody pays until they are back on the ground" and "We'll start to worry about landing when the parachute opens") were getting ready to jump.
Half an hour later we were both sitting in a very small (and shaky plane) about 4 km above the earth. The door opened and out went Marijke and Reno. Just about 5 seconds later as
Hahei
Cathedral cave I was sitting on the edge of the plane I saw Marijke falling hundreds of meters below me. Me and Erik tumbled out next and after a nice summersault (I saw the plane pass by a couple of times way up there) it was about 40 seconds of free fall...great...before the parachute opened. After the incredible noise during the free fall ( I could not hear myself scream) it became so peaceful and quiet as we were slowly returning to earth. Probably one of the greatest feelings there are.
Tongariro National Park
One of the things I had been looking forward to, was walking the Tongariro Crossing (one of the most beautiful walks in the world) in Tongariro National Park. This NP featured in the 'Lord Of The Rings' movies as the land of 'Mordor'. Unfortunately due to bad weather the Crossing was closed so we had to do some shorter walks. However the weather was so bad that we couldn't even we see the huge volcano that featured as 'Mount Doom' on our walk. Bad luck!
Wellington
The second windiest city in the world (after Chicago) and we felt it... The highlight in town
hahei
Big swing is the great Te Papa museum. It's free; it's huge and has loads of cool high tech exhibitions. We decided to see a part of it this time and some more on our way back up. We focused on the 'Nature and and Earth' part this time. Witnessing simulated earthquakes, watching volcanic eruptions, creating tsunamis, protecting our house against earthquakes and messing around with alien/introduced species in virtual reality. Cool stuff.
Next day, on a very rainy and stormy day we took a motion sickness pill and got on a ferry to the South Island.
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Kathleen
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Kia ora!
Hey Jan en Marijke, Ziet er allemaal super uit. Heb daar ook (helaas maar) een paar daagjes vertoefd en heb er weer heimwee naar. Prachtig land en coole kiwi's toch? Groetjes uit een grijs Gent, Kathleen