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Published: January 23rd 2009
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We mentioned in one of our previous blog, our trip to Marlborough wine region. We made a little video blog of it but we've had trouble putting it on so, until we manage to sort it out, I'll give a brief summary of it. We hired bikes, we drank free wine, we got drunk.
We were booked on to the Cook Straight (the stretch of water separating North and South island) ferry the next afternoon, so after a slightly groggy morning, we started to make our way up to the ferry terminal in Picton. We stopped for lunch in a little town called Havelock which is famous for its green mussels. For those who don't know already, mussels and a hangover don't go too well together, but we managed to polish off the majority of them. The ferry runs between Picton and Wellington, so by the end of the day we were in New Zealand's capital. We were both less than impressed by Wellington so we didn't stay long but whilst there we did visit Weta cave which is a sort of museum put together by Weta, the company who did all the special effects and prop making for Lord
of the Rings, King Kong, the Narnia films...and Xena.
Once out of Wellington we went east before heading north and we made our way across to a place on the east coast of the North island called Castlepoint but not before stopping at the location used for Rivendell in LOTR and a place called 'The Pinnacles' and, not before time, picking up a bottle of L&P - sort of New Zealand's national soft drink.
After a bit of time spent at Castlepoint we then pretty much drove across the county to a place called Wanganui on the west coast, having a quick look around some of the towns along the way and enjoying some refreshment at the Tui brewery - Tui is one of the two main producers of beer in New Zealand. We were then on the Taranaki peninsula with views across to Mount Egmont - a perfectly conical volcano which doubled as Mount Fuji in the film The Last Samurai. The cloud was a little bit low whilst we were in the area and we could only just see its snow covered peak but it was pretty impressive. Whilst in the area we did a few
short walks, up to the top of Hawera's watertower (really windy) and to a couple of waterfalls but scaling the mountain seemed a little beyond us. A short distance from the mountain is a little town called Stratford, whose only tourist draw seems to be, rather unimaginatively, Shakespeare and its truly awful Romeo and Juliet glockenspiel - a sort of clock tower which at certain times of the day has wooden puppets appear at different windows 'acting' out scenes from Romeo and Juliet.
From Stratford we took 'The Forgotten World Highway' to Taumarunui - a winding road over hills in to gorges and through tunnels, passing waterfalls and lookouts. Along the way is Whangamomona, a town of around thirty people which has declared itself as independant from the rest of New Zealand and is recognised as a Republic with its own elected President - a goat once served 18 months as President.
It was then pretty quick for us to get up to Auckland to start looking for work (boo!) but we did have a few stops along the way, best of which was the hot water beach at Kawhia. Because of geothermal activity, two hours either side
of low tide, hot water oozes out of the sand here. You basically dig a hole in the sand and you have your very own hot water spa. We got there about half an hour before it was too late so it was a bit of a rush to get down to the beach, dig our hole and enjoy our spa but we managed it and it was really good fun - it wasn't so much fun once the tide had come in far enough to fill our hole with cold water mind! We also stopped at a McDonalds to try their Kiwiburger - a burger with egg and beetroot in it, sounds weird but its actually really good.
We were then in Auckland. Most of our time over the first few days were spent traipsing around looking for work, but we found time to celebrate Del's birthday - her first ever summer birthday. The weather was amazing for it and we were able to have a picnic lunch in the park and a BBQ in the evening. I think a good day was had by all. The next day, Auckland's Santa Parade was held. It was basically a
Christmas themed street carnival with lots of cheerleaders. It was baking hot but there were still snow scenes and people in big, thick Father Christmas costumes - it was really weird seeing it all in such heat.
The jobsearch continued whilst we started to have a look around Auckland and its many volcanic mounds - most of which used to be Maori forts called Pa and are therefore terraced. After a week in Auckland, we had had no joy on the job front so we decided to get out of the city and see some more of the rest of New Zealand. We decided to head down to a place called Taupo - New Zealand's skydiving capital! We got to Taupo and booked our skydive for the next day, so we had a day to kill - what better way than trying our hands at prawn fishing?! It was pretty easy to catch them, although there's a definite technique to it - once they've got hold of your bait you have to follow them around for ages because apparently they like to show off their food. Between us we caught 28, I reckon that I could have caught more
but I was handicapped by Del - being the wuss that she is, she refused touch them once they were caught so I had to deal with both hers and mine.
The day of the skydive arrived and we headed out to the airfield to prepare for jumping out of a plane at 15,000 feet! I say jumping, we were strapped on to professional skydivers who take you out with them whether you're ready to jump or not. Sitting on the ledge of the plane was probably the scariest thing I've ever done (other than the first time I ever went in to the Maze of Terror in Caerphilly) but it was a buzz hurtling towards the ground at over 200kph. The pressure really hurt my ears mind, they still weren't right a week later. Once the the chute had been deployed it was a much gentler descent and it was possible to really enjoy the views across Lake Taupo (enormous lake) to Tongariro National Park, home of Mount Ngauruhoe otherwise known as Mount Doom in LOTR. It was a great experience in a really beautiful setting.
Once we'd been on solid ground again for a while it
was time for us to make our way over to Tongariro National Park. We found ourselves a nice little campsite in the shadow of Mount Doom, looking exaclty like a volcano should, and the next day enjoyed a few walks around the park including up to the location used as Mordor. From where we were we could see right across to Mount Egmont (see above) which was well over 200km away.
It was then time to head back up to Auckland, past all the corrugated iron sculptures, to continue with the jobsearch. We still weren't having much luck finding anything and as we had a day where we had no appointments with agencies or anybody else we decided to head out for the day to some of the nice beaches in West Auckland, including Muriwai with its stinky gannet colony, and Piha with massive Lion Rock. A pretty nice little day out, we even managed to find time to have a little tasting at one of the wineries in the area.
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