North Island - Part 1

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Suzanne here...

So, we've sadly left the South Island behind, and it's time to explore the North Island. We'd been camping for 28 nights straight in the south, and by rights should have been ready for a motel room. To be honest though, we'd have been quite happy to continue our run in the north. However, Wellington doesn't have any particularly convenient campsites, so we decided to get a motel.

Wellington felt like a capital city, the people were all better dressed for one thing (making me feel rather scruffy but hey). It was a Saturday night so we hit the town, mainly on Little Cuba Street. There was more of a buzz than in the smaller towns, but a lot of this was focussed on restaurants rather than bars and clubs. So, we had a very nice mexican meal at The Flying Burrito Brothers, but didn't find any rock nightlife.

Nonetheless we enjoyed Wellington. We had a good look in the national museum, Te Papa, and a good walk around town, along the esplanade and up to the botanical gardens. Having not found any rock on a Saturday we didn't even bother to try on the Sunday night. Instead we got a pizza and watched The Book of Eli on Sky Movies. Nice to have an evening of home comforts. We also had a rather nice bottle of wine we'd bought from a Winery after a tasting session in Nelson. I took the opportunity to use the kitchen to make a nice beef stew to take with us to our next camping destination.

On the way out the next day we called into the Weta Cave, at the Weta studios, where they do a lot of special effects for films like Lord of the Rings and Avatar. Small, but very interesting, but I really wish we could have snuck behind the tourist facade to the actual workshops. We did get a tantalising glimpse of where the real work was going on. Oh for a job with Weta....

Our first camping stop in the north was at a free DOC site called Waikawa in the Tararua Forest Park. We were glad to be camping again, we've loved it so far. You feel so much freer than you do in a motel room. I really think being outside so much is good for you too, people aren't designed to be cooped up indoors for so much of the time. There is nothing like sitting by your tent with a bottle of wine and a great view to make you feel relaxed.

The next stop was Napier, which was destroyed by an earthquake in the early 1930s and rebuilt in the style of the time, Art Deco. It's a really picturesque little town and we enjoyed our stay there a lot. The next day we headed to Taupo, a cute little lakeside town. We stayed at Reids farm, a free site left to the world by someone who just liked campers! The setting was amazing, right on the banks of the Waikato river. The river was so beautiful with crystal clear aqua waters. We took a walk down to the beautiful Huka Falls, stunning. We also messed about by the naturally hot stream, too hot to linger in long but great fun. The campsite gets a bit busy and rowdy, it is free after all, and we were worried it would be noisy all night but like the flicking of a switch at 10pm everyone shut up! It was a good couple of days.

After Taupo we headed to the West coast and Wanganui, a nice little town but nothing to keep us longer than an afternoon. We headed further northwards and stumbled upon a lovely, and cheap, little campsite at Kai Iwi beach where we decided to stay for the night.

David here...

We left the nice campsite at Kai Iwi beach and made our way North towards New Plymouth, stopping off at a few of the smaller towns to have a look. We arrived in New Plymouth and made our way to the art gallery there as it has a big reputation for contemporary art. However we found it to be small and with little of interest which was a disappointment. We wandered round the town which is nice. We made our way to a few campsites but none of them looked great, either being cramped or just not very nice, so we stayed at the Top 10 holiday park at Fitzroy, just outside of the main town. The campsite was alright, but very expensive in the end at $22 each. After New Plymouth we made our way further North, stopping off at the Egmont National Park visitor centre to see the volcano, now extinct of course. Our destination was Waitomo however we passed through Te Kuiti, about 30 minutes down the round and found a lovely campsite next to a river and as the weather was nice, decided to stay there instead and spent the rest of the day relaxing in the sunshine.

The next day we made our way to Waitomo and the glow-worm caves there. We ended up spending extra and going on two cave tours, one in the glow-worm caves and another in the Aranui cave system which held massive limestone features. Both caves were brilliant with good guides and some spectacular features to look at. The highlight being the boat trip in the caves to see the glow-worm cave itself, which really was like looking up at a starry sky. We then made our way out to the West coast and to the Bridal Veil falls, which were stunning. Probably the best waterfall we've seen on this trip. We decided to camp at a little informal campsite at Ruapuke, where we were pretty much the only people there...apart from the owner and his dog, Benji, that loved to sit with us or chase anything you wished to throw or kick. This site was beautiful, if a little run down. It is situated near the coast but has a stream running right next to it. The weather was not so kind to us here as it was quite windy and we didn't think our tent would make it through the night, however miracles do happen and it did last, much to our surprise.

Our next stop was Raglan, a little town near the coast famous for surfing. We then carried on east to Hamilton, where we pitched our tent in one of the city centre campsites and then hit the town. First stop was the art gallery, where they had a Dr Suess exhibition on. Now, we're not fans of Dr Suess at all, but it was very interesting to read about the man behind the name and to see some very god artwork, not all of it in kids books. After a couple of disappointing galleries it was good to see one of this high standard. We then sat by the river reading, while the local rowing clubs trained on the river. We then went for a drink at HSL (Hood Street Local) and sampled their 2 glasses of wine for $10, a couple of times of course before going to a Mexican restaurant over the road, where, after our tasty meal of Chicken Enchilada, Beef Nachos and Beef Burrito, we sampled some chilli tequila. The owner was obviously waiting for us to throw up after trying the drink, looking a bit disappointed when it was obvious that we were going to be fine, and telling us about the bouncer who couldn't take it. However when we stood up to leave the drink then hit our stomachs and it felt like a volcano had erupted in both of us. Anyway we tried to look nonchalant and strolled away, and luckily made it to the next watering hole without embarrassing ourselves. We rounded off the night in Bar 101 where drinks were very cheap, unfortunately the music was atrocious. A Hip-Hop, drum and bass cover of Johnny Cash's Walk the Line was the final straw and we had to get out and head to our bed back at camp.

The next day we headed further east to Rotorua, stopping off in Cambridge on the way. At Cambridge we picked up a bottle of our new favourite type of wine, a Grüner Veltliner and then moved on to Rotorua, which always has a smell of sulphur over it due to the thermal activity in the area. We parked up near Rotorua lake and wandered the town before finally deciding to stay at the Cosy Cottage campsite as all the cheaper ones seemed to be a little bit cheap and nasty or too wet. The campsite also had it's own thermal pools and a natural steam powered oven, which we decided to use straight away by steam cooking sweet corn and monkfish with lemon. Oh, what a meal. Beautifully cooked fish. So good in fact we ended up having Monkfish again the 2nd night with steamed veggies. The 2nd day we relaxed in the sunshine at the campsite before going into town for lunch at the Pig and Whistle, a former police station. The rest of the afternoon was spent by the lake and then in the thermal pools back at the campsite. The first thing we did on our last day in Rotorua was to put a leg of mutton into the steam oven, to be left there all day (over 9 hours in the end). We then went out to the Buried village a little out of town. This is the former town of Te Wairoa that was covered over by a volcanic eruption in 1886 and has since been partially excavated and reconstructed. We then took in a few beauty spots on the way back to the camp and feasted on beautiful, slow cooked mutton.

That night the weather turned and it rained for most of the night, which meant packing up the tent wet before moving on. We carried on heading East and stopped off at Whakatane where we had lunch of a Bourbon Whopper, which was tasty. We had made up some sandwiches for lunch using up the left over meat from the night before but as it was still raining we ate lunch in a town and saved the sandwiches for the evening meal, just in case we had to sit in the car. We then headed to the free DOC campsite at boulders, which involved crossing 3 small fords along a gravel track. We got to the campsite fine and pitched the tent during a lull in the rain. The campsite was beautiful, with a river flowing all around it and lots of hills and forest around. The rain did get worse and we had to sit in the car for the evening, where we listened to the MP3 player, drinking beer and eating our lovely sandwiches. Despite the rain, we felt more than a little content.

The tent stood up to the wind and rain, except for a few small drips however the next morning it was still bad and the river that was a nice low, slow moving little stream was now a raging torrent. We packed the tent up in the fastest time imaginable and drove out, anticipating the worse with the fords. The first one we came to was still a little trickle, the 2nd was a bit higher than the day before but still passable. The final one however was more like a river. Feeling confident though we pushed on and made it across, with only a little skid in the middle that got the adrenaline going.

We made it to the town of Opotiki and had a breakfast there before moving on East along the East Cape for about an hour. We pulled into a lay-by to decide what we were going to do that night as the weather was still quite bad. When we tried to get the car started the battery was flat again. Possibly to the excessive use of the air-con to keep the windows clear. After a few poor attempts at jump starting it ourselves some lovely guys stopped and fortunately had jump leads with them. They got the car started again for us and after us Thanking them profusely and us again appreciating the milk of human kindness, we headed back the way we came to Opotiki. One night of heavy rain we don't really mind, but two was a bit much. So there we rented a lovely room at the Eastland Pacific motel (with a spa bath) and spent the day reading and eating pizza and watching Kick-Ass. We had made the right decision as the rain hammered it down that evening and through the night and we don't think the tent would've stood up to it again, while still wet.

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