New Zealand - North Island

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A great site to visit if you are travelling around NZ in a camper van is www.parkyourcamper.com

We have pictures for this, but on Daniel's camera. He will put them on soon. Read on if you can be arsed, its a long un

Hello to everyone.

We decided just to do one big entry for New Zealend, although now as we come to write it we are regretting it. It is over five weeks since we landed in Auckland and some things we did seem like a lifetime ago. Anyway, here goes...

The trip from Santiago to Auckland was a bit of a nightmare. We were offered some cash and a hotel for the night as the flight was overbooked, but as all three of us had already left south america in our heads, we declined the offer. This turned out to be a bit of a mistake as the flight was delayed by around 6 hours, with no information given as to why or what was happening. On the positive side it meant we landed in NZ at around 8 in the morning rather than the middle of the night. As we landed being spoken to in English was a welcome change to all.

We spent three days in Auckland, although the first was just walking around and getting to grips with the time change and jet lag. On the second day Jake and Danny had a massive walk around Aukland (which is the 4th largest city in the world in gepgraphical terms!) and ended up on one of the beautiful beaches. They also got a ferry to Devonport which was a beautiful place, a right little retirement haven, where you are never too far from the beach! Instead of this Craig stayed around the hostel, looking round the shops and the like as he met up with an old friend from uni. This led to a trip to where she was staying, her friends house, and a proper sunday dinner with all the trimmings. Belting, and if Laura reads this, cheers again!

Danny and Jake also had a big night out in Aukland which started in minus 5, a bar made completely of ice, and those intelligent readers will have guessed the temperature...minus 5! Here they met a lad called James and his flatmate Natasha. They ended up going back to their flat (along with a few others...a guy from texas who was suprisingly over here to drill for oil!) to have a few drinks and then back out for a night on the tiles. They had a really good night, although they were feeling a little rough the following morning.

Our final day in Auckland we picked up a campervan we had sorted out. We went with the cheapest company (of course) which turned out to be called Wicked. Each van has a different design and as we walked to pick ours up we joked about how we would probably end up with one with naked women all over it or something similar. We couldn't have been more right. Breasts on one side and arses on the other. The back read 'I'm straight, don't rearend me' and we knew we would be getting some funny looks in the next three weeks. The van was pretty good with a sink, chairs and a stove and a table/bed in the middle.

After picking up our passion wagon we headed for Waiheke Island, a 45 minute ferry ride from Auckland. We spent two days there and generally lolled about doing bugger all. Here we learned that people like to take pictures of vans with women on the side. A lot! We ended up sleeping on the beach front...in front of a house that was rented by Bill Gates the previous year.

From Waiheke we headed north up to the Bay of Islands. This area was the first discovered by Europeans and the place where the Treaty that handed over the country to British control was signed. Our first full day there we headed out on the 'cream cruise'. What started off as a method of delivering basic supplies to the many small islands soon turned into a popular tourist trip. The boat was still used for its original purpose, dropping off newspapers and mail at many amazing houses across the group of islands. The following day we spent kayaking around in the (sometimes quite rough) sea visiting some of the closer islands. Although some of the islands are privately owned, all beaches in NZ are open to the public so stopping for a drink and to rest tired arms was never a problem. From the Bay of Islands we headed south to visit the coromandel peninsula which was an extremely beautiful area with a walk to some coves. We set off without looking at our petrol gauge and got to a petrol station with what we guessed about 25 yards of fuel remaining.

The highlight of Coromandal is the natural hot water beaches. The water is warmed from below naturally and is around 60 degrees celcius if you go more than 4/5 inches below the sand. Ideally you can dig a hole and sit in it staring out to sea. However, around 200 people and a tide that wouldn't stay out prevented this. Just down the road we headed to a small cove which was really beautiful. It had some huge waves with real bad rip and we saw more than one person leaving the sea holding their heads after being hammered into the sea bed!

Rotorua was our next stop. There is a huge lake at the centre which has natural sulphur. Long story short, it smells of rotting eggs. Although the smell is constant you kind of get used to it. Then the wind changes direction and it hits you right at the back of the throat. Rotorua is a kind of playground with many activities to do. We headed for a few games of pool the first night which quickely turned into a game of poker once we saw people in the bar playing. We sat down, all at different tables with mostly men who had many, many tattoes. We laughed and joked with them however and had a good night. Our second day we spent walking around the government gardens. We also fitted in a round of golf. No par 5's, just 3 and 4's and good fun, although it was a scorcher of a day and we all needed a bit of r & r, so headed for a spa and natural pool part of the gardens. This was very relaxing and a welcome shower after several days without one.

Our final day we spent doing some slightly more exhilerating activities. We started with a swoop. This meant being each of us being put in a sleeping bag type device, stranpped together and to a rope, puled 40 metrees in the air and left to swing. The feeling recieved just as Jake pulled the string to let us go was a very strange sensation, and for a split second it felt like something had gone very wrong indeed! After this we went down the road to the gondala. This takes you high up a mountain where you reach the luges. These are hard to describe, but my best shot would be a sledge with a small handle to steer and brake with flying down a narrow track. After each ride you are sent back to the top on a chairlift where you can watch others riding round the track, and on one occasion, see someone go to fast for his own good round a corner and fall out his luge and roll 20 feet down a hill, funny stuff.

While in Rotorua we met two dutch girls, Marge and Mariah, who also had a wicked camper van. Although theirs only had a caveman on the sides, the back read 'a blowjob is a great last minute gift'. And we thought WE were getting some funny looks and hand signals! As Daniel met rachel this night, Craig and Jake spent an evening chatting with them and a 16 year old boy, who had decided to run away from home (to a car park).

We left behind the smell of eggs and headed towards Lake Taupo where we planned to do our skydive. The night we arrived we were suprised by how busy it was. We soon realised why though. The A1 grand prix was in town. The World Cup of motorsport as it likes to be called. We had a couple of drinks and headed back to the van to be woken up at 5 in the morning by the two dutch girls on their way to a walk in the area. We began to think we were being stalked. We then spent the next two days disappointed, as the wather changed and became unsuitable for skydiving. On the first day of trying we decided to cheer ourselves up with a horse trek through the forest. We were each assigned a horse and then headed off in a line. After an hour or so we were given the option of a walk or a canter back to the base. All three of us decided to go for it, but at the last mintue Daniels horse decided he couldn't be arsed, so span him round and headed back with the other chickens! The faster route was fun, although Craigs horse enjoyed staying between a walk and a canter which meant a jerky, painful ride back.

We spent some of the time waiting for our dive the next day playing cards and escaping the now heavy rain the the dutch girls before they headed off again. That night Craig and Jake headed out for some drinks with a couple of English girls, Ange and Lottie, who were camping next to us. Two days spent waiting was long enough, so we had to put the skydives on hold and headed for Stratford, home of Mt Taranaki. Just as we tried to leave the English girls did the same. Or at least tried. We did our good dead for the day and stopped with them while they got a flat battery sorted. We arrived in Stratford on a clear night and the view of the mountain was amazing. We were slightly suprised by the view as we had read in lonely planet that they have a saying in the area: 'If you can't see the mountain, its raining. If you can see the mountain, its about to rain.' The next morning we woke to find the saying very true. It was overcast and we couldn't see the mountain at all. We headed towards it anyway and took a short walk round a small area, the views cleared slightly while up there, but cleared perfectly as we drove away towards wellington later in the day!

Wellington was our last stop on the North island for two reasons. We had to catch a ferry to the south, and if we had kept going we would have drowned. We parked right down by the harbour after a tip off from the English girls. It was a great location and gave us easy access to the centre of town. Wellington is a very nice, very very windy city. After a wander round the town we returned to our van to find the dutch girls right next to us. It was getting scary! While in Wellington we wandered around a couple of museums and visited the amazing Te Papa building. It had 6 floors filled with everything you need to know about NZ This ranged from earely settlers, wildlife, ocean life and everything else you could think of. We also spent an evening at the theatre with the English girls, watching a play called Rabbit about the differences between men and women (think sex in the city with a male point of view and without four whores). Our final night in Wellington was spent out on the town. We met up with James from Auckland who took us to a staff party in his hotel, around a few bars and then to a club where we danced the night away. The next morning we boarded the ferry and headed for three hours before reaching Picton.

Right, have a cup of tea, rub your eyes, whatever. The south island follows in another blog...


A great site to visit if you are travelling around NZ in a camper van is www.parkyourcamper.com

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