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Published: August 12th 2008
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New Zealand is about as far as you can get from the UK, so for the final few weeks of our trip, we will be homeward bound the whole way!
Despite arriving in Auckland at 3.30am with a cracking case of jetlag brewing, our first impressions of New Zealand have been great. There is a lot to love about the country - everyone is mega friendly and helpful, the scenery is beautiful, the food is amazing, and the place names are just great...the first bus we got on, when the driver read out the list of places he was stopping at, it sounded like he was saying 'boingaboingaboingaboing'. On the minus sides, we landed at the same time as one of the worst storms in three years. We were lucky enough to never be in the worst affected areas (there was a lot of flooding, trees down and roofs blown off), but we did spend about a week being rained on torrentially. Hey ho - its all good practice for getting back to England!
With the weather in full flow, we didn't see much of our first destination, Auckland. We made it up to the Karangahape Road, known as
Mud + Steam
wouldn't fancy falling in the city's 'trendy' area, for a late lunch and a peep in a few shops, but then the fact it was past bedtime in South American time kicked in, and had us in bed not long later! For the same reason we were up and wandering the streets at 5.30am, starving and trying to find some breakfast. Wandering round sober, surrounded by drunken all night partiers made us feel like a bit like losers but was also quite amusing.
Rotorua, home of surface thermal activity, geysers, and an all pervading smell of farts was our next stop. We had been told that the smell 'wasn't that bad' and that we would 'get used to it'...hmm. It would be ok for a while, and then suddenly you'd find yourself walking through a bad patch, and practically choking on it! On the plus side, the cloud managed to clear for a morning, so we went to visit one of the many thermal parks in the area, the Wai-o-Tapu 'Thermal Wonderland'.
The tour consisted of three stops. First up, boiling mud pools...just the spot for an early morning dip! The pools belch globs of mud out, and form amazing concentric circles
as they fall back down. The whole thing is steaming and not a little icky smelling. Pretty amazing to watch though. After the mud, the next stop was soap and water to counteract, at the Lady Knox Geyser. Back in the pioneer days, folks washing their clothes down in the water noticed that dropping soap caused the geyser to go off (something to do with breaking surface tension). Nowadays, a guide drops soap down the hole at 10.15 every day, in front of an audience of tourists sat round on ampitheatre type seating. Fair dues, it goes high...twenty metres or so and it was still spouting when we had to leg it to get back on the bus. Third stop, and highlight, was the Wonderland itself...a park of thermal lakes, fumaroles and, well, holes in the ground, coloured various colours with minerals and vitamins (ok, not vitamins) and named with the usual devil and hell related names that seem to pop up whenever anyone wants to give a geological feature a tourist friendly name. The photos do it a lot more justice than my words, so I will stop here! Although they do not do justice to the smell.
Our next north Island stop was all the way down in Wellington, having decided to skip most of the central part due to the raging storms. It was raining and windy in Wellington, but apparently it is famous for being windy, so I guess we didn't do too badly! We spent a day mooching round town, including a visit to the fabulous Te Papa national museum (complete with an earthquake simulator), which is well laid out, informative, and most importantly has a lot of buttons to press. On our second day decided to catch the train west to Wairarapa, one of New Zealand's many wine regions, for some tasting fun. You will be fascinated to hear that I am a new convert to Sauvignon Blanc!
After three nights in Welly, we headed off to the south Island on the Interislander ferry. Six days in the North Island really wasn't enough, even in the rain, and I am compiling a list of destinations for 'next time'. Don't tell Si though, I'm not supposed to keep planning future holidays...
Hope you kids are all well...take care and lots of love.
Nat xxx
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