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Published: March 14th 2007
We have finally got round to writing our first blog of New Zealand. Sorry that it has taken so long - we’ve just been having such a good time as you can see!!
Auckland We were pretty sleepy when we arrived in Auckland late on the second day of the new year. Not only were we feeling the effects of our recent eating and drinking to excess, but our flight from Melbourne had been delayed by a ridiculous 9 hours or so. Luckily, our friend Elanor, who had been to Auckland before us, had already recommended a good place to stay and we spent the whole of the next day relaxing there.
Auckland is not the capital of New Zealand (Wellington is) but it is still a big city (1 million people) with a lot of entertainment on offer. The highlight for Vanessa was a delightful tea shop/cafe which we happened upon while wandering around the town a few days after arriving. It had a choice of a whole range of speciality teas to drink and an excellent selection of home made muffins and scones to accompany the perfect cup of tea.
The weather was sunny but
Albert Park
Our favourite lunch spotstill a fair bit cooler than Australia - which was a good thing - and very windy. We had lunch in a pretty city centre park (Albert Park) on a couple of occasions, the best thing about this being that we could share our lunch with the local sparrows who happily picked crumbs from our hands!
One day we caught a ferry on a day trip to a suburb of Auckland called Devonport (although it can be reached by road, it is much quicker by boat). We found Devonport to be a pleasantly quiet place with nice sea views and an interesting selection of shops along the main street - the best of these being the second hand book shops which had many old fashioned and expensive looking books on display. We didn't buy any of those of course, but James was happy to pick up a beginners guide to scrabble to try and help him with Vanessa's continually improving play.
Oh yes! We also bought our New Zealand car: a biege Nissan Bluebird costing 1,200 NZ dollars (about 400 GBP). A great car, which even has (fake) wooden panelling inside.
Rotorua Our next stop
was Rotorua, which is renowned for its geothermal activity and resulting rotten egg smell! Here we met up with Vanessa’s best friend from England, Elanor, who also happens to be travelling for six months at the same time. Rotorua itself was very touristy and so we spent a lot of time walking in the surroundings, visiting a grove of big Kauri trees and several waterfalls and lakes. Vanessa and Elanor went to a cultural Maori evening, which involved lots of singing and dancing (including a very impressive and scary Haka) followed by a delicious Hangi (dinner steamed in the ground) and a nocturnal walk to a ‘sacred pool’ with millions of glow worms, the naturally luminous larvae of the fungus gnat which glow green at night. They actually make sticky threads which they leave hanging from themselves to catch unwary insects who are attracted by their light. Vanessa and Elanor also went and pampered themselves in the Polynesian Spa for a day, which involved lots of time soaking in the naturally occurring hot mineral pools and gossiping!
We visited only one of the ‘thermal wonderland’ tourist attractions called Wai o Tapu which was vast and very impressive. The best
of the various bubbling mud pools and geysers had great names such as: Devil’s bath, Devil’s ink pots, Champagne pool and Lady Knox Geyser, which you can see in the pictures below.
Taupo After nearly a week we left Elanor and headed south to Taupo. We much preferred Taupo, which is a town with a stunning location on the northern tip of the lake of the same name (the largest lake in NZ and also we later found out that it is a massive caldera!).
Tongarino National Park Vanessa started getting very excited at her first view of New Zealand snow capped mountains on the other side of the lake and so after just a few days we headed down to the Tongarino National Park to do one of the country’s “great walks” - The Tongarino Northern Circuit.
The best day of this four day walk was definitely the second day where we effectively did the ‘Tongarino Crossing’, the most popular day walk in NZ. This passes through some stunning volcanic scenery including huge craters, sulphurous lakes of amazing colours and the aptly named ‘red crater’. The highlight was our 3 hour detour to the
top of Mount Ngauruhoe (or Mount Doom in Mordor if you watched the Lord of the Rings films), a scarily steep and perfectly conical mountain, covered in scoria and hence very difficult to climb! There was an interesting double crater at the top which you could walk around (complete with rising steam and the sound of bubbling water underground) and the views from the top were just spectacular. Unfortunately, since the climb was so tricky, we left our camera (and everything else!) behind and so don’t have any photos. Towards the end of the walk the scenery became more alpine than volcanic, which we found to be a nice ending.
Waitomo After recovering from our long trek, we drove west to a village called Waitomo. We only spent one night there (mainly because our accommodation was rubbish!) but managed to fit in a really cool night time stroll, which involved following a circular track by torch light in a forest near a fast flowing river. The reason for doing this at night was to see lots of glow worms in the forest.
The region around the village is particularly famous for its deep caves and the outrageously
priced adventure activities you can do in them. We didn’t do any of these but we did go for a lovely daytime walk in the hilly countryside nearby that was reminiscent of the peak district in England.
Broken car! We were taking a scenic drive out of Waitomo, heading for the coast, when we stopped for a little stroll through a gorge. This was most pleasant - the roof of an underground river had collapsed over the course of time to create a natural bridge some 15m tall. But when we got back to our car and tried to drive off we discovered something much less pleasant - it wouldn’t work! Nothing happened when we turned the key. So we tried again, and again, but still nothing happened! After quite a few more unsuccessful attempts we suspected we probably had a flat battery.
A car nearby contained a bloke reclined in his seat who looked like he was asleep. So we woke him up and, having done so, were happy to find him to be remarkably helpful (especially since he was actually at work taking gas - or maybe electricity - meter readings and we had caught
The three craters
Red crater, Mount Doom and Mount Ruapehu him having a quick knap during his lunch break!). Although he didn't have any jump leads, he knew someone who might have a few miles down the road (it was a very rural road) and so he went to get them for us.
Sure enough he came back a while later with jump leads in hand. We hooked our batteries together, crossed our fingers and turned the key, but still nothing happened! It was then that we realised we needed some mechanical help. Unfortunately we were in the middle of nowhere, with no mobile reception and the nearest town about an hour away! The incredibly helpful and sympathetic chap knew of a pub which was a bit nearer than the town and he generously gave James a lift there, where the pub landlord let him phone the 'local' mechanic.
Back at the car, the friendly gas man having gone back to work, we waited for the mechanic to turn up. It took him about an hour to get to us. Then when he finally arrived it took him only about a second to start our car!!! How embarrassing...
Apparently it was an electrical problem not normally found
in Japanese cars: automatics, like our Bluebird, won’t start in gear and even though the gear shifter was in the “park” position the electrical circuitry thought it was in some kind of driving gear and wouldn't let the car start. So all the mechanic did was start the car in neutral instead of park - which is something we are having to do quite often these days.
Raglan surf school We didn't go surfing at Raglan, the town famous for the "best left" in the world, because it wasn’t sunny enough! But we did stay at the Raglan surf school hostel. This was a cool place. Not only did it have Sky Sports (showing the Murray v Nadal game and others) it also had an outdoor ropes course and a "flying fox" (which is a rope which you hang off and slide down surprisingly quickly until you get stopped by some tyres at the bottom of a hill).
The ropes course was a circuit made of ropes, wood and tyres. The thing to do was to complete the course without touching the floor, which was not as easy as it looked. The most deceptively tricky part of
the course involved walking along a tree trunk about 5 metres long, which was suspended in mid air by a piece of metal rope attached to each of its ends, allowing it to swing freely. After a few failed attempts at the course, you’ll be pleased to hear that we both managed to complete it (don't we look professional in the pictures!).
Although the weather put us off surfing, it did give us the opportunity to take a few dramatic and moody pictures of the stunning cliff-lined coast (as you can see in the photos).
Canoeing Blazing Paddles (a canoe hire company near the Whanganui river) leant Vanessa and I a boat each to spend the day paddling down the nearby river. This was a good day out! The woman who kitted us out with our boats and life jackets and things also gave us a map of the river and told us where the hardest sections were. She suggested that we aim for the point of any “V” shapes we saw in the rapids. We followed this sage advice as best we could but I still don’t think either of us had a great deal of
control over where we were going in the fastest sections of the river! Quite often the river split into two around little shingle islands and it didn’t always appear obvious which was the best way to go!
We made it to the point where we were to be picked up in a pretty wet state, with aching lower backs (they really ought to make canoes with more comfy seats!), but having had a great time and miraculously avoided any capsizing.
Since this blog is getting so long we've had to split it in two... just shows how we shouldn't have left it so long!
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