16th October 2003. We both took a shine to Wellington straight away, finding perhaps the best 'backpacker' we've ever been in may have had something to do with it! We managed to get a couple of dorm beds at the Cambridge, which is the nearest thing either of us have seen over the last nine months to a quality hotel, by backpacker standards the bathrooms make the place seem more like the Ritz! As you all know, the following day is the most important day of the calender - my birthday, so we decided to spend a couple of nights there as it was pretty swish. Sarah had kept secret loads of cards and a couple of parcels from home secret, so it was a great surprise next morning when I got them. I think the other people in the dorm were also a tad surprised when Sarah insisted on singing 'Happy Birthday' at the top of her voice at 8am - very funny! To all of you reading this who sent out stuff, or sent nice e-mails, thanks so much I had a great Birthday, to all those of you who didn't - SHAME ON YOU! We spent my birthday night at an awesome Japanese restaurant in the city, then managed to find a pub showing one of the RWC matches and managed to catch the All Blacks v Canada, so there was plenty of atmosphere, a great end to a great day really.
From Wellington we really had to get our act together. We were short on time to take in the rest of North Island that we'd missed when we were up here before. Me made our next stop Turangi, we planned to walk the Tongariro crossing as a sort of training hike to prepare us for South America and get a feel for our packs etc. One we think we discovered pretty quickly about North Island is that it costs a hell of a lot more to get around than the South Island. It cost us NZ$60 to get up to Turangi - ouch! Bring back Atomic shuttles (see previous S. Island journal), all is forgiven! We made Turangi in 6 hours and booked a room at another superb backpackers called Extreme. This place had it's own climbing wall - bring it on! We arranged our tickets to take us up to Tongariro National park the following morning, we were both really looking forward to it. The forecast looked good and the rangers were now saying that it was just passable without crampons if you were careful, which was a bonus being as we had none! It was at Extreme that we met Kit who'd been lodging there while she was Snowboarding up on the ski fields around Turangi. We met over a beer watching England thrash South Africa at rugby 25-6. Kit lives in Rotorua which was where we were heading for after the crossing, she offered to let us stay at her place so we exchanged addresses and planned to meet up a few days later.
At 1880m Mt. Tongariro is one of three dormant volcanoes which sit in tandem looming manacingly over Turangi. Mt Ruapehu, the most active of the three exploded last in 96 and is the biggest, all three at the time we crossed were capped with snow and looked fanatastic reaching up into the clouds. The volcanoes are also where more of the Lord of the Rings fiming was located, our guide book pointed out that Mt Ruapehu doubled for Mt Doom in the film and many of the Mordor battle scenes were shot on the surrounding slopes. So if you want an idea where we were - get the DVD's out! The crossing was pretty hard work, as snow up on the summit craters made the uphill stretches quite hard. However, as we climbed above the cloud base and onto the crater rim the views of the steaming and hissing red crater area were fantastic. Despite sunblock we still got sunburned due to the reflecting sun hitting us off the snow, it's the first time i've been sunburned under my nose - novel! We completed the 17km in around six and a half hours, slow we thought, until we realised we were the first to the bus pick up point and it took some people another hour and a half to drift down from the mountain - guess we're not as unfit as we first thought!
The following day saw us reach Taupo, we had a day to kill and were not planning to stay overnight, just long enough for me to head over to the airfield and do a tandem skydive we'd forward booked from Turangi. Due to cost and the fact that she'd already done her jump back home, Sarah decided to give it a miss, she was kicking herself all afternoon! What can I say about skydiving? Nothing anybody tells you will ever prepare you for the feeling of gravity and speed in the first few seconds you exit the plane - it is AWESOME! You just have to do it for yourself and find out. I had 45 seconds of freefall before the chute opened and it felt more like 4 seconds. I couldn't stop laughing and shouting once the canopy opened and we'd slowed down - it was such a rush, I NEED to do more (donations to Scott's extreme and expensive hobbies fund greatly appreciated - all currencies accepted!!). The view was incredible too, I could see right back over to the Central Mountains and the volcanoes where we'd walked the previous day.
After coming back down to earth - literally, we made our next connection the same day and headed on to Rotorua. Situated along a fault line Rotorua is a geothermically active town, nestled between a series of dormant volcanic crates which have now become lakes. The place is famous for it's smell which eminates from the geysers and springs all over town, it's a bit like rotten eggs but nowhere near as bad as everybody makes out. We'd called Kit to let her know we were coming and she was there to meet us as we pulled into the bus station. We'd only planned a brief stop in Rotorua, but ended up staying for 4 amazing days with Kit at her place. Lucky for us Kit sails for a living, so doesn't work the whole year round. She took us all around the area including Wai-o-tapu, a geothermal park which is just incredible. We also all went White water rafting down a pretty wicked stretch of water which cuminated in an awesome 6 or 7m drop, how the raft emerged upright i'll never know! The day before we left Kit borrowed her friends boat and we all went fishing on one of the nearby lakes, by total luck I managed to hook a pretty big trout (2.4kg!) which after much debate about how to kill it, managed to get it back to Kit's place and smoke it by the river. It's without doubt the best trout I have ever tasted - bar none. We sat on Kits deck next to the water and just ate our fill with a few beers - brilliant. (Kit, if you read this bit of our journal, thankyou so much for making our time in Rotorua so fantastic - you're an amazing person and we can't wait to see you again in the future. PS, if there's any of MY trout left bring it over will you!).
Kit dropped us on the main highway the following day and we hitch-hiked our way up to Thames en-route to the Coromandel Peninsula, we'd had an e-mail from Kate & Simon and decided to hook up as they were on their way over there for the Labour weekend. Me met up at Thames and Simon drove us all over to the family Bach close to the beach in Whitianga. Generations of thier family have been holidaying there, I have to say I can't blame them, the place is beautiful. It reminded us both of Devon/Cornwall a little. We met the rest of Kate's family down there who are a superb bunch of people, we were both made incredibly welcome, Michelle and Teddy insisted on trying to feed us both to death! Graham meanwhile introduced me to Monteith's Raddler - wonder if I can get that at Oddbins back home? We spent the weekend touring around the area with Kate and Simon, visiting some beautiful beaches and coves. I also went on a bone carving course and learned how to carve the bone pendants that the Maori make and wear, which was really interesting. I made a bone fish hook which looked amazingly good to say it was my first attempt. We also caught the England v Samoa rugby match round at Teddy and Jacks Bach which was a pretty hairy game - I actually thought for a minute we may lose it. All said and done we had a fantastic weekend with everybody and it was really nice to be in a family atmosphere again (Thanks again everybody if you read our journal).
We stayed with friends rather than heading off north immediately, who'd kindly offered to let us spend a few days with them. Also Jen and Pat, two more friends, had also offered to let us go out on their yacht for a sail. We had a amazing time and caught some spectacular views of the coastline. (If you read our journal Pat, I think you need to buy a proper steering wheel for the boat, that little jointed stick’s a bit tricky to steer with, I couldn’t work out left from right half the time!) After sailing, that evening we all ate a roast back at our friends, neither of us has had a huge roast for months so you can imagine how great it tasted – my mouths watering just thinking about it now! As we headed on northwards we also picked up a few letters and birthday cards that had been sent Poste restante to Auckland main office. Sarah and Chris sent me out a Trillium stove base for my MSR which is just awesome, (for those of you who don't know, it stops your stove melting it’s way through the snow and ice when you’re cooking in that type of environment – WHOA!), a truly top peice of gear, I’ve wanted one for ages – cheers fellas! By the 31st we’d got our gear together and took our hire car off towards the far north.
After passing through Auckland we basically followed the east coast road up through Mangawhei Heads, Waipu, One tree point on to Whangarei where we found a nice campsite next to the waterfalls. The following day we toured up through Hikurangi, Oakura and Russell where we stopped for lunch. The car ferry took us over to Opua and we drove as far as Paihia before finding a campsite to spend the night. Paihia’s a bit ‘seasidey’, but the campsite was OK and had good facilities but was bloody expensive at NZ$13.50 per night each! After drying out the tent as it had rained in the night, we headed up to Waitangi and visited the historic treaty grounds where the joint Maori cheifs signed the controversial Treaty of Waitangi, bringing NZ under the Crown. I know there's a lot of debate about the subject now, but it could have been a lot worse, if it hadn't been us it would have been the bloody French! La Ille de Nouveau Zealand - sounds terrible. There are also two awesome ‘Waka’ or war canoes there on display in an ornately decorated boat house, they must look fantastic when they’re out on the water full of Maori warriors. That evening the weather turned and we debated sleeping in the car up at Waitiki landing before heading off to Cape Reinga next morning. (basically as we couldn’t be bothered to repack the tent wet again!) However, comfort got the better of us and we ended up pitching the tent and grabbing a few beers. Waitiki's pretty small, the main building is the café/bar and as it happened they were showing the Ireland v Australia RWC game. I nearly screamed my lungs out for Ireland as they almost overturned the Wallabies, eventually losing the game by just 1 point, 16 - 17, hard luck the spud. Our next leg up to Cape Reinga put us in a bit of a predicament, now we really wanted to get up the lighthouse on the point, but it specifically stated in our rental agreement that we were not to drive on the 26km of unsealed road north of Waitiki landing. Despite having already lost the wheel trims driving on an unsealed road further south, we naturally thought bugger it and set off anyhow – rules are made to be broken eh! It was a beautiful day, we packed the tent early and headed off up to the lighthouse, when we got there we virtually had the view to ourselves. The Maori believe that the spirits of the dead depart the world from the caves below Cape Reinga, I can see why, it really does look like the end of the world up there - it should be twinned with Skegness. We ended up taking hitch-hikers both ways which turned out to be a bit of a laugh. One Swiss, one German and a Hungarian. We could soon see why the hire company didn’t like their cars up there, after an additional stop-off at 90 mile beach I think it would be fair to say there was more gravel and sand in the car than out! On the way back we stopped off at a place called Kauri Kingdom, which surprisingly enough is a large factory selling Kauri products. The great thing is though that many of the goods are made of Swamp Kauri ("what's that?" I hear you cry). Swamp Kauri was created when the ancient Kauri forests in the north were unexplainedly toppled over. The trunks perfectly preservedin the swamps (some weighing several hundred tonnes!) are now extracted and shaped into beautiful furniture and products with an amazning finish and grain. We bought a really nice bowl which had been carbon dated to between 45,000 – 50,000 years old! The factory is actually built around a 200 tonne section of Kauri, carved out to make a spiral staircase up to the second level, allegedly the only one of it’s kind in the world. They even had a Kauri sofa carved from a huge peice of wood there which cost around NZ$37,000! After OD'ing on wood we continued on the car ferry over to Rawene from Kohukohu, eventually reaching Opononi where Oppo a wild Dusky dolphin used to allow people to ride her, before somebody allegedly dynamited her, possibly fishermen or perhaps jealousy due to the massive tourist draw she created – rotten. We got a great tent pitch at Opononi which looked out over the incredible sand dunes just across the bay. As the sun set they constantly changed colour from beige to reds and pinks, we sat for about half an hour just watching from the tent with a cuppa. The following day it rained. Luckily we’d just got the tent away before the heavens opened, so we decided to push on to the Kauri Coast section of the west coast. There is a marked contrast between the two coasts, the west appearing more densely forested, almost akin to tropical rainforest. We visited Tane Mahuta (not sure if that’s the correct spelling) which means ‘God of the Forest’, which is the largest Kauri remaining. It’s an incredible sight, around 2000 years old and has an enormous diameter, it must weigh hundreds of tonnes. The downside was that the God of the Forest was obviously cheesed about something and had put some kind of hex on us. We got absolutely soaked walking through the woods to see it, then sods law, by the time we reached the car the sun came out! The last stretch of our journey took us to Waiwera via Pakiri beach, more unsealed roads – what the hell, but the drive was worth it because the beach there is gorgeous. We spent that night at Waiwera on another campsite which was completely waterlogged and a bit grotty. To make up for it, next morning we visited Waiwera's huge thermal spring complex, it’s a bit touristy and looks more like a regular swimming pool, so you don’t get the same sort of spring experience we got down in Rotorua with Kit. However, it’s still worth a visit and it was nice to spend a few hours in the naturally heated water after laying above the mushy campsite all night. As we headed back south Pat and Jan had asked if Sarah and I would like to go out on the yacht again, but this time in a competition – errrrr......... trick question! Being in yacht race for all of you like us who’d never done it is an incredible experience - nothing at all like the paddle boats at Millhouses Lido! Gone are all the 'niceties' of a days sailing, I think these guys basically get boat rage as soon as the starting horn is sounded. I’ve seen boats come close watching racing on TV back home, but to be there when they all round the marker with inches between each other is amazing. As we rounded one marker our main boom swung across and I swear it missed another guy on the boat next to us by millimeters! The best bit was that Pat never batted an eyelid, it was as if it was all in a days sailing! Pat made his yacht himself by hand and it really is an amazing peice of work. We had a great day (thank you again Pat and Jan) and finished it of with food on the boat back at the berth. (Jan if you get five minutes don’t forget to e-mail me the recipe for making your pickled onions they were great!) We found out later that we came fifth – not bad eh! I think our good finishing position though was totally down to me doing a great job of pulling on the big blue rope – whatever that did! By now we were within shouting distance of Auckland again so we headed in after a night in Orewa and dropped the car off. We got charged for the missing wheel trims, $15, that’s about a fiver - ha ha!
We’d had an absolutely amazing time in New Zealand and we really didn’t feel like leaving, especially after making so many friends here. Thankyou again to everybody who made New Zealand such an amazing leg of our travels (you all know who you are!), one that we’ll never forget. Needless to say we both hope that we’ll see you again in the not too distant future, and if you’re ever in England you are more than welcome to stay with us, just not all at once as our house is tiny! Although sad to leave, the good thing I guess was that we were moving on to a new country, a new culture and most of all we were going to see Sarah and Chris in less than two days!
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