New Zealand

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We arrived in New Zealand at 3.00 a.m. so hung around at the airport for a few hours and then got a shuttle bus into the centre and checked into a backpackers hostel. There were noticeably more young backpackers, as New Zealand and Australia seem to be popular with first time travellers, and South America more appealing to an older crowd. Everything was so organised for backpackers, with things like free phone to hostels at the airport and electronic signs at the reception which tell you how many minutes till the next airport bus arrives outside. One of the first things we did was stop at a bar that was offering all day breakfasts, English style, which tasted fantastic. Ruth has been to New Zealand before 9 years ago, so it was quite fun for her to recognise parts of the city. It seemed very organised and safe compared to South American cities, and small as well, having a population of a few hundred thousand compared to however many million live in Rio. The weather was a bit cold and rainy on the first day but was nice and sunny the next two so it was really nice walking across the park to the museum, and going up the tower in central Auckland. This being New Zealand every now and then you’d see someone fly past the viewing window outside on a free fall wire going back to the ground level the fast way.
On the 18th May we left Auckland in a hired van from a company we had found on the internet, which painted the vans in free hand spray art, which seemed quite fun. For N.Z. $41 a day ($2.9 = £1), and with a gas cooker, sink and cool box it seemed perfect for independence and economy. Of course there was fuel costs and camping charges if you stay at a camp site, but being in our own van it was really exciting to be heading out of Auckland and into the countryside. We planned a vague route for the time we had, heading south east to East Cape on the first day, soon driving across some spectacular scenery, with hills and forests of trees all shades of red and orange, and then down to the coast following the coast road which wound it’s way south. The first night we went to Opito Bay on the East Coast, arriving there as the sun was setting after a beautiful sunny day. The whole place was dead, the bay lined with summer homes, most of which had shutters on the windows, and the only other people on the bay were some fishermen putting their boat on a trailer. It felt great to be somewhere so peaceful, with only the sound of gentle waves lapping the shore, and it was fun cooking our first dinner in the van and having a cold beer after the days drive.
Early the next morning we woke up to another beautiful day, the fishermen were back launching their boat further down the bay, and some funny birds were running up the beach by the waves looking for food. It felt great to wake up in such a beautiful place and we soon had the water boiling for a nice cup of tea. After slowly getting up and changing the van from night mode to day mode, we decided to carry on heading south and stop when we wanted. We didn’t get very far. A couple of hours later we went to check out ‘hot water beach’, where at low tide you can dig yourself a hole in the beach and it will fill up with thermally heated water. Apparently this place is heaving in the summer but there was only one other van there when we arrived, and it was ‘Jimi’, another Escape van (the company we had hired a van from), this one with paintings of Jimi Hendrix on it. We soon started chatting to the English couple who had hired it, Lee and Mel, and in the end stayed there all day, and later went into the nearest town for some beer and a game of pool. As the bar filled and we drank more we started talking to some of the locals and they were all off their heads, drinking lots of beer and smoking funny cigarettes, making no sense as they shouted or sang to each other. It was a bit like we had entered hickville, outsiders in a pub full of locals, an older crowd. One guy was normal and you could chat with him, about how he had worked building roads in England in 1977. We talked about travelling and safety, and he said New Zealand was pretty safe, if you’re alright, but how if your ‘up your own arse’ you could end up getting stabbed just like anywhere else. A valid point! I knew what he meant, even though New Zealand felt safe after South America, there were still dodgy people around everywhere in the world. In New Zealand there are large biker gangs which have quite a bad reputation and are often in trouble with the law, part of the darker underbelly of New Zealand. It was an interesting night chatting with some ‘real’ kiwi’s. Later we returned to hot water beach and slept in the car park. The next day the weather had changed so we basically spent the day chatting, cooking and reading, and on 21 May we said goodbye to Lee and Mel and carried on south. The drive was really enjoyable and through a part of the country where many Maori live, and we saw several traditional Marae (meeting places) in some of the villages we drove through, stopping just after it got dark in Te Kaha, checking into a quiet campsite, which has the benefit of showers, kitchen and electricity for the van (which came with a plug in heater and adapter so I could plug in and charge pc/camera batteries). Parking up we met a young local Maori and his girlfriend who after chatting a while invited us round to theirs for dinner, as they were having a ‘boil up’, a large pot of several vegetables and chunks of meat that lasts them a few days. They both lived in the backroom of a huge farmers shed, as they worked together picking various harvests depending on the time of year. We had a good night chatting to them and having dinner, though I had to force some of the food down.
On 22nd we drove to Gisborne the largest town we’d been through in a while with a population in the thousands! Having a few shops we went looking for an electrical store where I managed to purchase an ‘itrip’, a FM transmitter for my ipod so we could hear our music through the car radio. With the miracles of modern technology we could now drive around with practically my whole music collection playing on random wirelessly from something smaller than my hand. From Gisborne we went to Mahia beach on a peninsular, and then to Lake Taupo, a village on the side of the largest lake in New Zealand. This is one of the cheapest places in the world to skydive which I was considering, not 100% into the idea though as it doesn’t seem entirely rational jumping out a plane voluntarily, however the cloudy and rainy weather provided an adequate excuse not to do it. We went to a place called craters of the moon, where lots of steam came out of the ground from heated water underground. It was very surreal to walk around through the steam, though not much like the moon I suppose.
On Friday 26th we drove down to Wellington, going across some mountains which were hiding in the cloud, and were used as Mordor in the Lord of the Rings films, and it was easier to imagine hoards of orc charging across the countryside than tribes of Maori. In Wellington we went to the museum which we had heard good reports about, but wasn’t as impressive as the one in Auckland.
Sunday 28th we got the 3 hour ferry to Picton on South Island, and then drove to Nelson, where we checked into a the town campsite. Walking around the town in the evening it was pretty dead as it was a Sunday, but we managed to meet and chat to some local youths who were pretty interesting. From Nelson we drove to Takaka one day, past Abel Tasman park, a good place for kayaking and walking. The weather had cleared up a little and though it was too cold for us to bother kayaking it was a lovely drive and we had a great picnic lunch with the view of a deserted bay.
On May 31st we drove down to Hokitika, on the west coast of the South Island. The weather was very changeable but generally got worse as we went south. Hokitika was famous for its greenstone carvings, or jade, and we browsed some of the shops selling traditional Maori jade carvings but all the decent stuff was pretty expensive. We stayed in a campsite near the beach and as it was getting dark early we hired out a DVD and watched it in the van on the laptop. On 1st June we drove to Fox Glacier, and stayed at a campsite in a village which exists primarily on those coming to see the glacier. It was a small walk from the road and very beautiful though we couldn’t help comparing it to Perito Moreno in Argentina which was so much more dramatic. It was still interesting to see the remnants of what had many years ago covered this land and created so much of its geological formations. The weather also started to clear so we planned to do a helicopter flight around Mount Cook the next day, but unfortunately when we woke it had clouded over again. On Saturday 3rd we drove to Queenstown, a ski town in the mountains and next to a lake, a bit of an adrenaline driven party town. It would have been a great place to have hung out and done some skiing, but there wasn’t any snow yet, (it was expected any day soon), and we didn’t have that much time. I was a bit jealous of those who were arriving and going to stay for the season as it would have been a good place to have stayed. It’s pretty expensive hiring all the gear and getting a pass anyway so we moved on pretty quickly to Te Anau on June 5th. This was another small town by a huge valley lake, and on route to Milford Sounds, a renowned bay on the South East Coast which has boat cruises around its coves and hills. We went there the next day, a lovely 2 hour drive along mountains and lakes, being a little careful round corners as there was a frost and possible ice warnings. Fortunately the weather was also great, with clear blue skies, so the boat cruise was really good. After the cruise we returned to Te Anau for the night. On June 7th we drove the long way round to Dunedin, via the south coast, the Catlins, Nugget Point and Kaka Point. We were hoping to spot some yellow eyed penguins but unfortunately there weren’t any around. We did see a few seals on the rocks though.
Dunedin was the main university town of South Island, with lots of Scottish heritage, the name being Celtic for Edinburgh. By this time the nights were getting really cold, and often in the morning the ceiling of the van was dripping with condensation. My bones literally ached from the cramp conditions in the morning, I must be getting old, and it was a bit of a drag getting out of the van in the freezing cold if you needed the bathroom at night, so we decided to check into a motel. It was a lovely place run by a very friendly elderly couple, and there was a living room, kitchenette and even electric blankets on the bed so we had one of the best nights sleep in quite a while!
The next day we took a leisurely drive around the Otago peninsular which was absolutely beautiful, and the weather was great to. We had to keep stopping the van to take photos.
On June 9th we went to Lake Tekapo, after driving up to Mount Cook village, but the mountain itself was obscured by cloud. Lake Tekapo was also very picturesque but the weather had clouded over and it got cold again so we were snug under our duvets in the van pretty early. On the 10th we went to Christchurch for our last night in New Zealand, flying to Sydney on the 11th, sad to leave New Zealand but looking forward to a bit more warmth hopefully in Australia. It was quite a funny place New Zealand, difficult to summarise. I was quite surprised how British Auckland was, a more positive or friendly attitude to the far away island than in Australia where pommy jokes are rife. Then there is the whole Maori aspect and the cultural integration which has resulted. They seemed for the most part to have integrated with the modern world much more successfully than the aborigines of Australia for instance, though quite a few of the Maoris do enjoy drinking and many have joined violent gangs. Naturally it’s difficult to summarise. How exactly the schooling works and who learns what history was something we didn’t really discover though there is definitely a lot of pride amongst some Maoris of their heritage. One night in the van we watched the locally made film ‘The Whale Rider’ about a Maori girl growing up with the conflicting pressures from modern and traditional society which was really good.
The scenery of New Zealand was literally stunning, and so variable for such a small country, so that you could drive from a city to a mountain or beach in a few hours. Sometimes we talked to people who had emigrated from England 30 years ago and it must have pretty mad to have emigrated back then and left everything behind.

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