North Island Uncovered...

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Where is the most expensive place in the world? One would hazard a guess, Tokyo, London, Dubai, maybe Moscow? I have a contender for most expensive place in the world, Santiago Airport. I thought I would arrive early to the airport to at least try and see if I could use my charm to get an upgrade from economy. My attempt failed, so I was stuck in ‘Duty Free’ for ages. After I have parted with nearly £5 for some chewing gum, a packet of mints and a soft drink I thought that I might have to resort to busking outside gate 16 to raise some extra funds for my three hour wait until my flight left. Luckily enough for me, and I guess the rest of the people in the airport I didn’t have to resort to singing. I treated myself to a Ruby Tuesdays and made use of the complimentary internet.

The flight was as good as it could be, leaving on time and also arriving into Auckland an hour before schedule. After my episode crossing the border with sundried tomatoes I now know that honesty is the best policy, so on the ‘Anything to Declare’ form which you are required to fill in before you arrive in NZ, I labelled clearly that I was carrying 500g of Tesco’s crunchy peanut butter so there weren’t any nasty surprises when my bag went through the X-ray machine at the airport. The woman at immigration desk proceeded to ask me 101 questions about the purpose of my visit to NZ. At 3am even the simplest of questions took a while to answer. After checking that I had an onward flight from NZ, and answering all the questions on my reasons for wanting to come into NZ, the woman gave me my 6 month visa and I was officially in NZ. I left Santiago at 23.10 on 8th Nov, crossed the time line and arrived in Auckland at 03.25am 10th Nov.

My first day in Auckland involved arranging my transport around NZ. There are several companies which offer this service. The most famous is probably ‘Kiwi Experience’, which was described to me as the ‘big green fuck truck full of 19 year old girls on their GAP year’. I wasn’t sure if this was part of the company’s promotion slogan, but you don’t have to ask which company I handed my NZ dollars to in exchange for a seat on their bus. Seriously though, they were the company which had the best deal going at the time, I swear. It is immediately noticeable that the travellers in NZ are much younger than the travellers in South America. This fact is backed up by the couple of ‘youths’ sat next to me playing snap with a packet of cards. After my transportation was worked out, it was time for Sightseeing. The first place was the Auckland harbour bridge walk, with the possibility of doing a bungee jump from the bridge. The bungee was 40 metres above the water, which, not trying to give it the ‘big one’, or to give the impression that my cojones are larger than they are, if I am going to do a bungee, then I want to do the highest one possible, then if I bottle it then I can say I bottled the biggest one, but I guess writing this now is only going to be fuel for the fire when I attempt to do a bungee. After the walk it was across to Devonport in the afternoon for some sightseeing.

I left Auckland the following day for Paihia in the Bay of Islands, which is north of Auckland. I was due to spend one day and one night there and then head back to Auckland. The Bay of Islands was very quiet and with everyone else on the bus either going diving with dolphins or action activities I took my afternoon in Paihia easy. The following day I rented a two man kayak with another guy from my bus, Tom and we spent the morning going to the different islands in the Bay (not all 144 of them). We paddled from Paihia to Russell. It looked closer than it actually was but we eventually got there, had a look around and moved onto a different island. Whilst on Russell we saw a fishing boat come back and each person on board had caught themselves a huge yellow fin tuna each. Fishing wasn’t on my list of activities to do whilst in NZ, but being able to cook what you catch it suddenly became an attractive option especially when living on traveller’s budget. The only problem was that I was due to leave that afternoon to Auckland, so I would have to try my hand at fishing elsewhere in NZ. Later on I found out that the Bay of Islands is one of the best places in NZ to catch Red Snapper and Yellow fin Tuna so I wished I stayed there a couple of nights longer.

Mercury Bay or to call it by its Maori name, Whitianga was the next destination for the Kiwi bus. The main draw for people here, as the name suggests is the stunning bay and the stunning cliff top views. This place was just R&R and then it was onto our next destination which was Taupo.

Taupo, the adventure capital of the North Island was going to be where I would attempt to do a skydive, saving the bungee jump for Queenstown. After telling myself up that the sky dive would be the day after I arrived in Taupo, I found out that it would happen that afternoon. Luck, good fortune, whatever you would like to call it, the sky dive was cancelled due to bad weather, so it was re-arranged for the following day. The following day I had already signed up to do the Tongariro Crossing, so it would be a busy albeit expensive day. It was cloudy and overcast the following day, so the skydive was cancelled, and also the Tongariro Crossing was also cancelled due to the bad weather. This meant I had a day of doing very little, which was good, because for the past few days seemed quite hectic travelling from town to town on the Kiwi experience and trying to fit in activities as and when. Day three in Taupo and the sky dive was on. The weather looked a little overcast, but where we would be jumping was clear, so it was a half seven rise to be at Taupo Airport for eight. In my group there were four girls and me, all doing the 15,000ft jump that morning. In all honesty I wasn’t nervous until about 30 second before I jumped out of the plane. Getting into the plane, I was the unfortunate one who didn’t have a seat, so I was on the floor right next to the see-through window looking down at the ground which seemed a long way down. All kitted up in my jumpsuit, clear goggles and leather hat I felt like I was more appropriately dressed to visit a Soho sex den than I was for a skydive. After speaking to the guy I would be strapped to, Benny, I felt assured that I was in safe hands for the jump that day. The plane took about twenty minutes to get to 15,000ft and all that time I am sat on Benny lap (because I am strapped to him, not out of choice) I am thinking to myself what stuff can I do on my video. The ‘Hi Mum’ has been done and being strapped to another man at 15,000ft there was only a limited amount of stuff I could do. The running man dance was definitely not an option. The plane door opened and no more than twenty centimetres from me I can see the earth below. The knees started to shake at this point. Questions like, who was the first lunatic thought of the idea of skydiving, and all the countless safety questions went running through my mind. The guy who was taking the pictures and videoing the jump eased himself out first, hanging onto a bar outside the plane. Then it was my turn. Benny eased me out, and the next thing I remember is being outside the plane. At 15,000ft you freefall for 60 seconds before the parachute is opened. All my ideas of doing something funny for the camera went out of the window within half a second of jumping out of that plane. It is difficult to describe the feeling of freefall. Anything above 5,000ft looks the same to your brain. Your stomach doesn’t have the same effect as if you are on a fairground ride and go down suddenly on a ride. For 60 seconds I could see for a far as the eye could see. On a clear day you can see both coast (east and west), and then probably after the second quickest 60 seconds of my life the parachute came out and it was then that I realised that the straps around my waist and groin were a little too tight. When the parachute is open, and you are descending, you hear nothing but pure silence until you hit the ground. The total time from jumping out of the plane to me landing was under 5 minutes, but the experience itself is amazing.

The afternoon was spent driving around woodland and farm land on a quad bike and a buggy. The quad bike was fantastic as you had chance to go on some of the tracks in the woodland which the buggy wasn’t able to go on.

The following day was yet another early start as I signed up for the Tongariro Crossing. The Crossing is described as the best one day hike in New Zealand, with the option of climbing Mount Doom, which if anyone has watched the Lord of the Rings films it is something that you will do. The Crossing is about 19km long, with climbing Mount Doom adding on an extra three hours. The driver said that when you get to the mountain, if you cannot see the peak then don’t attempt to climb it. When I got there, the weather was perfect. The only problem when trying to climb to the top is there is no path way/trail to the top. For you to climb to the top, you have to climb up the lava rocks, which are not attached to anything so for an hour and an half I was crawling up to the Summit of Mount Doom. The summit seemed like it was never getting closer, but eventually I got to the snow covered peak, which made it all worth it. I had perfect weather from the top. After spending some time at the summit it was time to make my way down. For the first fifty metres I used my BMA (black man’s arse) to good use and slid down in the snow, which nearly ended in a lot of pain but luckily I missed a huge rock in my way otherwise the only way I would have been getting down would have been with the assistance of Search and Rescue on a stretcher. About half way down Mount Doom, the weather changed for the worse and within twenty metres visibility had decreased to about forty metres. Even though the weather had decreased people were still making their way up the mountain. I was struggling to make my way down and these idiots were heading up there as if it was a ‘Jolly Boys Outing’.

The rest of the Tongariro crossing on paper didn’t look that hard, but after the trek up and down Mount Doom I started the rest of the trek sore and legs hurting. My other problem was that I had only one bottle of water (which I finished on the top of Mt Doom) and no food. I still had 15km left to walk. Never mind, I thought there must be some form of refreshment on the way around. There was nothing except a hut to prepare food 6km from the end of the Crossing. If I had some matches and petrol I would have burnt that hut down. How can you have something like that but no were that sells food. I eventually got some food back on the bus when I bought 4 mars bars to kerb the hunger.

I am going to be heading to River Valley tomorrow for a night and then it will be onto Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand.

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Comments

[The Shref]

Awesome
Mate that looks amazing! NZ is gonna have to be visited at some stage! so Black men can fly! quality! would love to have seen the running man being bust out!