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Published: February 4th 2007
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Morning(?!?). Rod here. My body clock has yet again been hit for six due to a 11 hour flight from Auckland to Santiago so have decided to venture to the depths of the Galerias hotel basement to update the blog.
We were up at 6am on a grey overcast day in Kaikoura, ready for our whale watch. Binoculars in tow we were picked up by coach and on the giant sized cataraman by 7.30am heading towards the deep ocean shelf that is a real hot spot for sperm whales feeding. With the sonar equipment we were able to track 2 of these giant creatures, ´Noodle´and ´Little Nick´before they each flipped their huge tails and headed toward the depths of the deep blue for a feeding frenzy, dives of which can last up to 45 minutes at a time. It was amazing how close we were able to get alongside the whales and we both consider this to be a unique experience.
Back on land by 10am we headed for the ferry port of Picton to make our way across the Marlborough sound on the 3 hour ferry trip to Wellington, north island. We are again blessed with clear blue
skies and sunshine.
In the evening we hit the town and met up with our english frango friend Justine and her New Zealand buddies for a pizza and some drinks. Wellington appears to be a chilled, funky and windy city with some nice bars and cafes and diverse set of folk!! we stayed in the Hutt area, a nice area a bit out of the centre.
25 January - Jumped on a bus and headed into Wellington for a look around the centre. I managed to get a well needed shear (as the locals would term it) and we sauntered around the cuba street area (pretty alternative, camden style with lots of cafes and oriential food) then around the contemporary civic centre and then along the harbourside. Had some tasty asian grub in the Courtenay district which again is very cosmo and has loads of nice cafes and bars and watched a bit of the Australian open tennis.
helen here.....
so from Wellington we headed north (the only option really :-)) to a fab campsite near the tongariro crossing and Mt. Raupuhe (which is apparently due to erupt soon but luckily didnt the day we visited!).
From Okupune we had an early start to do the one day 17 km trek which was amazing, taking you across massive craters and stinky sulphur pools. It was quite a climb but the views were well worth it - photos to follow.
We thought it was about time for some good ole fun by this point so stopped off to do some white water rafting the next day which was great fun. Met a couple from Aukland who gave us the low down on the city which we due to visit. Awesome and eh? were the words of the day....
then headed upto lake Taupo which was seemed a pretty big town after the ones we´d visited lately. stopped the night in a massive campsite there and headed off to Waitomo caves for a glow worm adventure !! as always there were loads of tours to choose from, including black water rafting etc. but we went for the mellow spellbound trip option which took us by raft drifting down a couple of the best glow worm caves in the area. Decided to stay night at campsite in Waitomo as such a sunny eve and took a walk
down to a nature reserve where we saw, yes, more glow worms and a morepork (owl like bird). Really loved Waitomo, great setting and a nice couple of days.
You still reading this???? Rotorua was our next stop - were getting a real feel for the mauri culture by this point so it was really interesting to get to rotorua and visit the geysers and mud pools around the area. We ended up visiting Te Puia, a thermal village just outside Rotorua which was well worth a trip. We also experienced a bit of mauri singing and dancing at this point.
We then hit the road (again) to the Coromandel Peninsula which was recommended to us as a less touristy option than the bay of islands. We weren´t dissapointed! pretty windy roads led us to beach there where we parked the van up for the night (one of our 2 non campsite nights). Early start the next morning to head to Coromandel town - made a grokle mistake of taking a road (309) which we thought would be quicker but ended up being a dirt track that took ages, but was gorgeous. Had brekkie in the lovely Coromandel
town, a nice change from the rather surburban towns of a lot of NZ....
only a couple of days left in NZ so decided to head to Hahei beach on the east side of Coromandel peninsula where we´d heard there were fab beaches. Again, NZ didn´t disappoint and we walked around the coast to the gorgeous cathedral cove. I took a lovely swim in the sea...bliss.
So...onto Auckland for the afternoon. We stopped off in the centre for a bit but then parked up by the harbour (very Sydney-esque) for a short boat trip to Devonport where we spent a couple of hours and had some nice thai food...again... Devonport was a really pretty area with some lovely art deco and victorian buildings and great views over the harbour and bridge. We then stayed in campsite in North Auckland for last night in NZ before heading to drop off our home for the last 3 weeks (the good ole trusty van!) and then to the airport. The camper van hire place turned out to be a second car showroom who only seemed to have one van, oh well, it lasted the trip which i guess is what counts
:-)
Ok so we´re now in Santiago now for one night before heading over to Sao Paulo. We had a good walk around the city which was pretty manic after NZ but really great, in a different way. There were people ranting on street corners (we can only guess what they were ranting about!) and people playing cards on street corners and lots of food stalls. We visited some very impressive old squares and a very grand cathedral and then hunted for a nice place to eat. After being spoiled for choice of different styles of food in Oz and NZ, Santiago only seemed to have food on the go so we ended up having a dried up ham sandwich which was only made up for by a great coffee.
It´s now 5 am and better think about getting sorted for our trip to brazil. back soon xx
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