Our time in the North Island was a lot shorter that the South Island and I think this was a good decision. That said, myself and Gina agree that 3 weeks really did not do justice to New Zealand. For every place that we visited and were happy with, there was another that we felt we should have spent more time or places that we just never got to visit at all.
The ferry journey between the islands takes about 3 hours. There is a faster sea-cat type jobbie, but what's the hurry. The ferry itself was pleasant, it was another glorious day, clear skies and temps in the low 20's. We arrived in Wellington, picked up the new rental car and tried to find our new caravan park for the night. We we later informed by a kiwi who had lived in Wellington for years that the one way system there is a bit of a nightmare. Well, it is. One or two toys got thrown out off the pram on that short journey!! We eventually made it and settled in for the night. We headed out of Wellington the next morning to head north to Napier. The one way system caught us out again, but this time the toys stayed in the pram.
Napier is one of the best examples of art deco architecture in the world. This is because they had a great big earth quake in the 1930's which flattened the whole town, and art deco was in at the time. This was pretty cool to look at, and the town itself was good for food and entertainment. The highlight for me was a quick trip to the aquarium that they have there. It also contains a Kiwi exhibition. Kiwis' are very shy in the wild and live in dark, dank forests. They also sleep up to 20 hours a day, so I didn't expect to see much activity, but these two birds they had were up and about, looking for food in the enclosure etc....shy and timid they may be with humans, but that didn't stop them pecking the heads off each other for some scrap of food.
From Napier we went north again to Rotorua. The drive from Napier to Rotorua is only a couple of hours, so even with a brunch stop in Taupo ( another town I'd like to spend more time in) we knew we were in no hurry to our destination. This led to an incident which has happened to us a few time. We're driving along at 100kph and we see a sign: Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Park 400m. So, with all the best planning in the world sometimes being a tourist comes down to having about 10 seconds to decide if you're going to stop and see something or not. At the time the idea of turning around and coming back to the place does not come into it. We stopped and we were in for a treat. The thermal vents, which are all over the Rotorua area cause is all one big volcano, are well worth seeing. As I said to Gina, it's a real multimedia place.....sights, sounds and SMELLS. OH Boy! The smell!! Thermal vents mean sulphur and that means a smell that gets down inside you and that you keep on smelling long after you've left the area. We spent a couple of hours there, some of the pools look really pretty with differenct colours etc. One is called the Champagne Pool ( though I believe the french have objected and it's being called Champanoise from now on), but man for something to look so pretty and smell so bad is just wrong.
On to Rotorua itself. During the first couple of days here we thought at various times that the smell was following us around. Was it us? Was it the car? Was it our clothes? It wasn't until we met a guy in Auckland who'd lived there for 17 years that we found out that the whole town smells. It comes and goes, we got it really bad one day in the car park of the grocery shop. Not the type of thing you need around food. All that said, we had a really good time in Rotorua. The museum is really good, with lots of Maori exhibitions, they have an excavation of the local village that was destroyed when the volcano last erupted in 1886. (Nobody mentions all the explosions and shit that happen in NZ!). As we said later, the smell in Rotorua was pretty much the worst thing that happened to us in NZ.
Leaving Rotoura a few days later we headed on to Auckland, conscious of the fact that our time in NZ was quickly coming to an end. We had intended to travel further north, but it would have just turned into trying to do too much in too short a space of time. Anyway Auckland. We really only had a day and a half in Auckland. Fortunately, the tour bus that does a loop of the city, hitting most of the major tourist spots made getting around pretty simple. We narrowed down what we wanted to see to the Skytower ( I love high up things!), Kelly Tarltons Antartic World, the Auckland Museum, and Lionzone - a tour of Lion breweries, the largest in NZ ( Guess who that one was for?)....
The Skytower, like all the towers around the world of this sort does exactly what it says on the tin. The views of the city were great, and as I said before, I love that sort of thing. The Antartic world was great too. The main draw for us was the King (or is it Imperial) Penguins that they have. They have some smaller Blue Penguins there too. It's all really well set up, with the animals in zero degree conditions, which is what they like, with a little track for us humans to drive around them and have a look without getting too cold, which is what we like. Like all the wildlife exhibits we have seen in NZ it was great for us, but a lot of attention was paid to looking after the animals too, which was good. They also have an aquarium attached, which I think is about the fourth or fifth that we have visited on our travels. They never seem to get boring.....there are some really wierd creatures living under the water!! The Museum was blah..blah...blah......That's enough about that, let's talk about the tour of the brewery!! It's a big place where they make loads of beer. I was there. Gina was there too. There was also a woman from Cork who told us not to go home and stay in NZ. We asked, but they wouldn't let us. Thinking about it brings it all back.....it turned me into an idiot. As beer always does, but this time I was just around beer, I wasn't event drinking the stuff!!
One final nice thing was being able to make a hassle free last minute change of our flight from Auckland to Sydney. We were due to leave at 5AM with a 10 hour wait in Sydney before connecting for Bangkok. I called, they said no problem, we got the tickets changed at the desk in 2 seconds flat and they didn't charge us for it. It was like a little christmas present for us. The day was long enough as it was.......On a final note.. NZ has been brilliant. It's easy to get around and there is so much to see and do that 6-8 weeks could easily be spent travelling around the two islands. We have as many things that we would like to see more of or see for the first time as we have listed here. We have already decided that we'll be back at some stage in the future.
....on to Bangkok!!
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