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Wow after four months I'm finally writing a blog in another country!!! As you can imagine after spending so long in Australia, despite having an awesome time we were quite ready to move on to another country. As the weather in Oz for the last few weeks has been pretty chilly and very autumnal I think we were quite prepared for the change in weather(although I am ignoring the fact that e and luc both had backpacks full of shorts and vest tops!).
Anyway... as we'd planned we decided to rent a campervan to do part of our tour. I will admit now that our camper is probably one of the mumsiest campers that are on the road and we generally try not so park next to nice cars or the cool gang of Wicked and Escape vans. Ours luckily has a heated towel rail (why!?), a microwave, spacious bed for two that involves an ikeaesque mission to put together every night, a dvd player, cd player, gas hobs, sink, heater. So we're pretty much equipped like a married couple really. Thanks to Danielle we've named it Bertha, just in case I make references to our current humble abode
I wouldnt want you to think its actually a person! So we set off from Auckland and made our way round the North Island!
Our first stop was Waitomo Caves and we managed the journey there pretty well, we were a little later than expected, but we made it with Navigator Luc! The views on the way were pretty awesome as I think most people are aware, especially thanks to Lord of the Rings. It's a little bit like England with its greeness but here all you see are massive mountains and hills covered in grass, sheep, cows, horses, goats, very nice! We went to Waitomo to do Black Water Rafting, due to our late arrival we got our own private tour! Basically Black Water Rafting is a bit like caving, you crawl under a few rocks with water and mud, float around on rubber rings in freeeezing water, jump off a few mini water falls and gaze at the million glow worms. Pretty cool! And after you got bagels and soup for free! The tour guide was pretty cool and as it was just us I think we got to see a bit more and spend a bit
more time looking at things. That evening we arrived at Hamilton for our first night in the camper. I have to say its comfortable but since its winter here it is pretty cold at night, this is not what the guy who booked it said! He told us that we would need to open the windows!!!!
After Hamilton we drove to Matamata to see Hobbiton!!!! I have to admit ever since we left Auckland I do look at New Zealand thinking of LOTR, Legolas steaming down the hills (no such luck yet!) and generally visions from the film. I'm not even a LOTR geek but somehow you get the visions stuck in your head. Anyway, Hobbiton was pretty cool, a really stunning location. The only shame was that the hobbit holes (? not sure the proper name! oops!) were missing the original fronts so you do get a bit of a teletubbie land in the pictures.
From there we went to Roturua. More pretty views along the way and the Lake here is beautiful! The only thing you have to get used to is the smell! As there is a lot of thermal activity there is this rotten
egg smell everywhere, I think its sulphur that makes the smell. On the plus side this does mean a lot of cool steaming pools! We saw the geiser, which is one of the few in the world and every 20 minutes a massive jet of water spirts out of the ground. We ventured to a free steam pool which was interesting, despite it being very nice to sit in we only lasted about 5 minutes due to the smell. The steam in the area is pretty useful and we managed to find a camper park where you can cook your meal in a steam oven (it does have a proper name but I seem to have misplaced it in my memory!). Mmmm it was pretty nice, chicken, vegetables and potatoes and worth the 3 hours it took to cook. After enjoying all the thermal activity in the area we did Zorbing! So much fun! All you do is roll down a hill in an inflated ball with warm water. Me and Luc did it together and it was hilarious and definately a good way to wake you up in the morning. The only shame was that it didnt last long
enough. If anyone in the future has a massive house with acres of land I may be asking for you to set a ramp up! Haha.
After Rotorura we went to Gisborne to see the sunrise in the first city in the world. The town itself wasn't anything too special but I think we will never forget the drive there! We looked at the map and chose a route that looked the quickest, set off relatively early. Then after an hour we drove past this sign that said "95km of unsealed road" now we thought, "surely not! we must be misunderstanding something and carried on" only to find out about 15 minutes later that yes it was basically gravel road around a whole mountain range. It wouldn't have been so bad had I not being driving a massive campervan at the time and unluckily the sun also began to set. Eventually we were driving round a mountain range in the dark and I definately got a bit freaked out, felt like the scene of a horror movie. Nearly ran over a few animals, had to bib a few horses out the road and Luc reckons she saw some dodgy
looking man on the side of the road, thankfully I wasn't informed of this at the time. After the colosall driving journey of about 6/7 hours we finally arrived in Gisbourne, only to find the holiday park's reception was shut and the only access to facilities was by a code we didnt have. It wasn't too funny at the time but looking back now we do laugh about it.
Following that journey we drove to Napier, the town obsessed with Art Deco. A pretty town I will admit, however everything closed at 4.00pm. We carried on our journey after an hour or so and drove to Taupo. Taupo was a nice town, had a nice lake and we did a nice walk that was cool. At this point we were a bit down about the lack of people in the whole of the island! This was explained by someone who told us NZ,s population is only 4 million!! Madness! We met a few travellers but when we went out on a saturday there was literally no one around, it was such a contrast to Australia. So after a wander around we moved on to Tongariro, hoping to do the
crossing. This crossing is meant to be amazing
and it takes a whole day, unfortunately though due to winter weather we couldnt do it! we were so disappointed but it was such a risk, 3 people had to be saved the day before by helicopter! We did a little walk though that was nice and by the end of the day some of the clouds were clear so we got to see the mountains a bit better. I think we saw Mount Doom, someone will have to tell me if it is from the picture.
Wellington was our final stop on the North Island tour, we definately had an amusing start. As Luc the navigator we came to some difficultly as to where to find the hostel we were staying in and generally for about 20 minutes we drove the camper round with me shouting "where am I going, left or right??" and luc shouting "I don't know!!!". Wellington turned out to be a nice city. We finally had quite a few people to talk to and met some really nice people. It was definately more lively than the other parts of NZ, but for a capital it
wasn't that big at all and I think Auckland had a far higher population. We had an amusing moment in the hostel we were staying in as we agreed for some unknown reason (maybe the promise of a free drink??) to model for their leaflets. We thought it would just be like the ones already around, but know she made me and this random guy sit on this bed and tickle each other. Soooo embarassing, how do you fake tickling! Luckily I wasnt the only one she got to do this to during the day. I do feel for models now! Other than the modelling shoot we saw a bit of the city, rode the tram, and I was an English geek for the day and went to Katherine Mansfield's house.
In summary for the North Island it is very pretty! I think the general phrase for the whole of this trip is that you feel like your walking around a postcard, it looks that perfect. The only unusual side was that it lacks people, and even a town that is labelled in capitals can be absolutely tiny!
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Nikki
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Really?!
Those hobbit holes really exist!? Amazing! x