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Published: April 7th 2010
So I flew to Wellington from Christchurch as it was cheaper than getting the ferry, go figure. Windy Wellington wasn't too windy and I made it the whole day without wearing a jumper, the sunshine helped with this too. I was in Wellington for 2 days and I visited the City and Sea Museum, very interesting things about how the city has developed over the years and some information on the trade and some storms that have occured and been quite disasterous in some cases. Also visited the Te Papa National Museum of New Zealand. It's huge. I only visted a few exhibitions there, a couple about the Maori culture, weapons made from bone or greenstone, food storage houses, Marae meeting houses and the carvings and weavings therein. They also have a giant squid there which is giant (obviously) and a lot of interesting stuff about different parts of New Zealand and the plate tectonics which make it volcanic and prone to earthquakes. I also met some people who were heading North on the bus who I caught up with in a few places along the way, always nice. At this time I was feeling a little unwell, some may say
that this was due to the severe lack of sleep/partying/adventure-ing and I would tend to agree so I rested and even had a lie in in Wellington, what a treat!
Next I went to the lovely River Valley and went white water rafting. The place is in the middle of nowhere and you have to do something there. So off I went, guide Gordy was really good, knew his stuff, shouted instructions, no major crashes or injuries or people falling out of our boat so all in all an awesome trip down the river. The guys that were on the trip aswell were on a work do from the cattle station (aka ranch) down the road so had some drinks with them and then a roast dinner. It was an amazing roast dinner, lots of it and delicious - a long time since I'd had a roast like that! Anyway had a good night there and made it to hook up with my bus in the morning again, horray! The bus took me to Taupo, the home of the largest lake in New Zealand and lots of fun activities though not as crazy as Queenstown. I decided it would
be wise to to a one day hike through the Tongariro National Park. Now this walk is supposed to be one of the most scenic one day hikes in the world and what does it do, rain. So instead of beautiful views from the East to the West coast once you eventually get up the volcano, instead of being able to climb 'Mount Doom' and see the lovely views, I was walking through cloud, in the wind, getting wet and cold-er. The walk was good, but it took 6 hours to walk the trecherous 18km up and down the sides of volcanoes and up a million stairs. I got to the end, thankfully and literally fell asleep as soon as I got on the bus. It's probably one of those things that's on the hypothetical list of things-not-to-do-whilst-ill but I had fun, slept it off and was back on the road the next day on the way to Waitomo.
Waitomo, means water hole in Maori, a cave basically which I went in and walked through the freezing water and got in my tube (rubber ring) and jumped off a water fall and looked at the glow worms that looklike
stars in the night sky. Glow worms aren't actually worms you know, they are maggots, with glow in the dark poo. It doesn't sound so nice now does it! I can understand why they don't try and market that, glowworms sound much nicer! The bus from there took me to Rotorua in the middle of the North Island where Suzanne, who I met that day, and I had some dinner and planned to go out, it was Saturday after all. Unfortunately I was very tired so went to bed instead and managed to sleep depite the music being so loud at the bar that I could sing along in my room. The next day Suzanne and I went to a place called Te Puia which has a lot of geothermals. We saw a couple of huge geysers and some hot mud pools and water pools. It gives the town a bit of a stench all this geothermal activity but luckily I don't live there. We had a really good day and we even saw a Kiwi bird, it was so cute I wanted to take it home or give it a cuddle. I didn't though. That evening I went to
a cultural evening called Tamaki. The waka (canoe) aka bus came to collect our tribe from the different hotels and drive us to meet another tribe. First we had to elect a chief to accept a peace gift from the tribe we were going to visit as we all watched the tribe's warriors do a war dance. Then as the peace gift was accepted we were welcomed into the village to look around. The games and training exercises were all centred around building up physical and mental agility. After we had been shown around the village there was a show of traditional song and dance before a traditionally cooked hangi meal, cooked in underground oven. It was a really fun evening with lots going on and a lot to learn. That was my last night in Rotorua before heading East on a tour to Gisbourne and the East Cape.
On the way to Gisbourne the bus stopped at a couple of places including a tree to ask for good weather and some totem poles for a photo stop. I stayed a couple of nights in Gisbourne which is the first place in New Zealand that Captain Cook landed. It
is also home to the world's shortest river and a very nice lookout point from which to view these places. I met some nice people in Gisbourne and I went swimming to the Olympic Pool with Yvonne from the Netherlands, first time I've done swimming up and down for a while! I also went wine tasting at the Works with a girl called Bettina from Switzerland who was really bubbly and lots of fun. When the bus came to pick me up it drove me and my new group to Tatapouri, just outside Gisbourne where we were staying the night. It was very secluded and very pretty there, right on the beach with nothing else around. The next morning Yvonne and Chris, who weren't in my tour group came with me to go rock sliding at Rere, think inflatable boogie boards and a water slide made from rock. It was 'awesome fun' as the Kiwis would say, the people not the bird. I was having a bit of trouble with the Kiwi accent and my name because instead of Jen, said how it's spelt, I got Jin because the e sound doesn't exist in Kiwi land its i. This did
mean, to start with at least, that even when someone was yelling my name at me I wasn't responding at all, funny.
From Tatapouri we drove to Whangara where a Maori lady gave us a tour of a marae, meeting house. We had to sing a song called Pokarekare Ana, a traditional Maori song, in Maori and had spent the entire time on the bus learning it. From there we headed out to Tolaga Bay and to see New Zealand's longest wharf. We walked as far down it as we could but there were some repairs happpening so we couldn't walk the whole way. The place we stayed at the second night was a farmstay in the hills, a short walk from the beach. The weather, unfortunately was not brilliant so I decided not to go horse riding in the rain and instead read a book and watch telly, not very imaginative when you consider I'm the other side of the world but there weren't many options, being in the middle of nowhere and all. The night there was uncomfortable to say the least. Earlier in the evening I realised that I had got whiplash from a particularly hard
landing at the bottom of the rock slide and this was not made better by the bed that sagged in the middle quite severly. The place was called Rangitukia, the eastern most part of New Zealand. It is a good place to watch the sun rise but due to the cloud it wasn't possible. The last day we made some stops on the way to Te Kaha, one of which was to see a really really old tree that has 22 trunks and is believed to be over 600 years old. We also stopped to climb the seven hundred and somehthing steps to the East Cape lighthouse and see the view to White Island and Whale Island. Te Kaha was the nicest spot of the whole trip, it is family run, next to a lovely beach with a hot tub and an awesome dinner of home made fish and chips. I had a walk along the beach and a awim in the sea, watched the sun set, had dinner and then the whole group, that is 12 of us got in the hot tub. We had to sing a song by way of saying thank you to the hosts so
we made up some new words to The Venga Bus is Coming to make it fit to the 4 day trip. It was very good if we don't say so ourselves. Sitting in the hot tub under the stars and just talking with everyone there was brilliant. I love the stars. And talking. Perfect.
Our last day on the East As trip was the drive back to Rotorua, first though we went to a beach and had a group photo to remember our time together. Aww. Back in Rotorua, I took a walk with Paul and Sarah from the tour through the park nearby that has yet more hot pools. I also bought some superglue to try and glue the bottom part of the zip of my backpack back together, with some sort of success. Let's just say I won. It was Saturday night againand this one we all met at the bar and had a few farewell drinks before heading in our different directions. It was a pretty good night in all, with good music and dancing. The next morning Rachel and I got the bus to Auckland stopping on the way in Matamata aka Hobbiton for photos
with a sign and a dodgy looking Smegal. When we got to Auckland, Rachel and I decided to go up the sky tower there for the 360 views of Auckland, it was a nice day so the view was nice. We both had vertigo though but blamed it on the combined lack of sleep and the consumption of alcohol that had occured the night before.
I had a day to spend in Auckland before heading North to the Bay of Islands so I visited the Auckland Museum, very interesting exhibitions on the Pacific Islanders and the Polynesian, Micronesian and Melanesian cultures. I had a wander around the Domain and the green houses with lots fo varieties of flowers until the peace and tranquility was invaded by Japanese tourists taking photos (what else?). I also went to the city centre for a wander and met up with Rachel from the Inca trail who lives in Auckland. She drove us to Mission Beach and we had dinner and ice cream and a walk along the sand. Very romantic, haha. It was great to catch up with her though, we had become friends over the Inca trail and were tent buddys, so
it was really good to see her.
Next up I went even more North to Paihia in the Bay of Islands. We drove past some pink sheep on the way and I got talking to a couple of people on the bus who were also on the Cape Reinga day trip the next day. I met some random people in my hostel and went to the beach with them that evening. Another early start to go to Cape Reinga and an annoying tour guide who I came to like less and less as the day went on. He just loved the sound of his own voice and would talk about nothing just so he could keep talking. His only redeeming quality was that he did provide some good information. The first stop of the day was at a rainforest, aptly it had been raining, the forest is full of Kauri trees, massive trees that the Maori used to make their waka from. The next place we were was driving along 90 mile beach, took some fun photos, shouted hello to Sydney which is almost in a straight line from there accross the Tasman and then on to the sand
dunes to do some sand boarding. I only went down 3 times because the walk up there is mammoth. Afterwards we all went to a beach for lunch and boogie boarding and washing the sand off. The walk down to the lighthouse at Cape Reinga was windy and it was very pretty. I didn't manage to work out which the part was where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean, maybe that was due to the weather, maybe I just wasn't very good at spotting it. I also went sailing for a day in Paihia and stopped at a very nice, secluded island for our lunch stop. Very good fun sailing, especially as it was raining all day on land and we were sailing around in the sunshine.
Nearly at the end of my New Zealand trip, I returned to Auckland and had a great last night out before catching my flight the next day to beautiful Fiji, woohoo!
xxx
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Lupe Obispo
non-member comment
Greetings from Peru
Dearest Jen, How wonderful you keep on making your dream come true!!!! All the pictures you show and the comments you make help us be with you and enjoy this great trip of yours!!! A big hug, Lupe and Tony (Perú)