Kia Ora! No, not a call for fruit squash, but a Maori greeting to you all. So, here we are in the long anticipated New Zealand. We arrived at about 4am after an uneventful and dull 13 hour flight (managed to watch 4 films), having lost a day somewhere over the international date line. Checked straight into our hostel and tried to sleep but were far too excited to be here at last, so we ended up out and about at 8.30 the same morning. After 3 months of the new and unusual of South America, it was quite nice to see so many recognisable shops, signs and scenes and the familiarity of our surroundings relaxed us immediatly. We spent 3 days in Auckland exploring on local transport and we managed to visit the Sky Tower, (highest structure in the Southern Hemisphere, from which crazy people do a free fall jump (albeit attached to wires) for no good reason as far as I could see!), The main museum (to learn more about New Zealand, and we watched a Maori concert there), The national Aquarium (complete with sharks and sting rays bigger than either of us) and the downtown area of Auckland for a bit of shopping, which was always eerily quiet for a main shoppping street. At night we visited the local hot spot of Ponsonby, a main road lined with bars and restaurants, but even on a Saturday night it was very quiet - the bars were about as busy as Dublin's on a Sunday morning! In the midst of this we were quickly developing a first impression of Auckland. It is incredibly clean and orderly - there is no graffiti or litter, no obvious council housing, or gangs of angsty youths smoking on the corner of any street. Everyone is very friendly - people in shops fall over themselves to assist you without being pushy, and yet, something seems to be lacking. Maybe it is because we have been in the totally contrasting environment of South America, but the order seemed almost sterile - the suburbs made me think of Stepford with the perfect housing and pristine gardens. Anyway, enough of this introspection! You will all just have to visit it yourselves and make up your minds! (and sorry to our Kiwi friends if my observations offend!)
Anyway, our main purpose of going to Auckland was to find a campervan. We visited a car fair one morning, and were disappointed by the lack of gleaming new campervans being sold for a pittance! In all seriousness there really wasn't anything that would have been able to get out of Auckland in one piece let alone all the way round the country, and local advice was that this was the case unless you had big bucks to spend so we decided at that point to cut our losses and just rent one. We collected the van on Monday morning and knew instantly that we had made totally the right choice. Taz, as our campervan is now know, is fantastic. Only 2 years old, immaculate and complete with all mod cons, including microwave, electric kettle and big comfy fold down bed. We were like excited children as we drove off ready to start the next bit of the adventure. The roads are fabulous (as you would expect for such a well organised country) - well marked, signposted and fairly quiet. It only took us about 3 hours to get to our destination of Hot Water Beach on the Coromandel Peninsular, and it was a great drive. The countryside is incredibly green (neon almost in the sunshine), and the trees are given a slightly tropical look with the many fern trees which look more like palm trees (you'll see what I mean in the photos). Hot Water Beach itself is located over lots of geothermal activity (most of north island New Zealand appears to heated by volcanic activity as we are to find out)underground, so at low tide you can dig a wee pit for yourself in the sand and thermal springs fill this with hot water creating a little bath for you. We got there just in time for this - lots of people sitting in smwimming cossies in their sandpits by the sea, slowly boiling in the water! The beach itself it stunning, clean white dans, and clear azure sea and as we camped right beside it, we had a great first night listening to the waves under the stars. Next morning we had a wee drive round the area, and then went Sea Kayaking with a group round by Hahei Beach. The water in this area is incredibly clear, so we could see all the rocks below us. We went on a route round by huge cliffs created by volcanic activity - we kayaked into a blowhole, and round by big caves. The weather was fantastic, and apart fom a ten minute power paddle at the end to get back to the beach it was a very relaxing way to spend the afternoon. We went back to Hot water Beach for our own sandpit bathing to ease our kayak muscles - lovely! The next day we drove off the peninsular and headed to Mount Manganaui, a pretty seaside town, blessed with good weather and a large retirement community (the two are connected I suspect). Mount Manganui (means large hill) is a bit of a misnomer as it's only about 230 metres high, so we climbed up that for amazing views of the surrounding area. That evening we visited the open air heated saltwater swimming pools near our campsite - it was very relaxing to not have to dig our own pool this time.
The next day we headed to Rotorua. This is a prime Maori area, with very active geothermal ground (big clouds of steam escape the ground all over the place) and being located by a large lake and rivers is also a bit of an activity centre. We checked into our lakeside camp, complete with its own thermal spring pools and great view (as all properties here seem to be) and then went to experience some of this Kiwi extreme activity it is so famous for. WE started with an activity called Zorbing - check out this website http://www.zorb.com/zorbnz.htm for all the facts - we went in the wet zorb, down the zig zag slide and it was FANTASTIC. Like being on a big water slide is the nearest description I can manage, but it was far better than that - it made us both laugh like kids for ages afterwardes - we must buy one of these as well when we get home. Straight after this we went on the downhill luge nearby. Not a lie down luge, as I am sure our concerned parents will be relieved to hear, but more like little go carts with rudimentary brakes, and very steep twisty paths - check out this website http://www.skylineskyrides.co.nz/. Apart from the scary chair lifts to get up there, this was even more fun than the zorb - you just grin and shriek all the way down. Needless to say we spent far too much monmey here, but I believe this kind of daftness is what all our hard work and saving was for!! We headed back to the camp knackered but very giddy. That night we visited a Maori village on an organised tour to see a Maori concert and take part in a Hangi meal (Maori oven, built underground with stones, wood and fire). It was all very well organised - buses collected and took us out to the village, with the guides explaning protocol ion the way. We elected a chief to represent our tribe (us tourists on the bus!) - this chief was chosen to be none other than our very own Paul ( I always knew he was destined for greatness). His duty was to represent our tribe during the welcome ceremony, which involves the Maori warriors coming out of the village shouting, performing tribal dances, and trying to intimifdate the cheifs from the visting 'tribes' as much as possible. They then lay down a fern leaf in front of the cheifs standing in a line, and one of them must pick it up to demonstrate that we all come in peace - when this is done, the Maori lift the Sacred protection fomr their village and allow us to come in. This was all done with great passion and seriousness - none of us were allowed to smile or laugh during this ceremony as to do so would be very rude. The pressure on Paul not to laugh was the worst, not because of the Maori dances, but because there were an elderly couple in the crowd who had matching hawaian shirts on and looked absurd...I would have crumbled in the face of the Maori warrior and probably been beaten up, but he held strong and did a great job of representing his tribe. Once in we got to see some of the traditional Maori pastimes being performed including Poi (balls on strings beat and swung in time to music). The Maori performed some lovely songs and spoke a little about their tradition. Although it was a big tourist night, and a wee bit cheesy, the Maori spoke with sincerity and passion and this took the edge off the tack. After the perfomances were over, we went onto the dining hall, and had great food from the Hangi including NZ Lamb, sweet potato and mussels (Actually I'm not convinced it hadn't all been done in the oven to be honest, but there were about 300 of us so it would have needed to be a big underground BBQ pit to cook that much food!). More songs after dinner, and Paul was presented with a cool wood carving to say thanks for being such a good cheif, then home on the same bus, complete with sing alongs from the various countries represented by the tourists aboard - all in all a good insight into Maori culture, albeit just the highlights that they chose for us to see - we look forward to meeting and finding out more about MAori culture in a less formal environemnt (i.e. the pub).
Next day, another perfect sunny day we headed out to Wai o Tapu Thermal park - a vast site with Geysers, volcanic craters and geysers (including one that erupts every day at 10.15 am - very impressive). It was fantastic landscape, quite unlike anything we had seen before, and the only drawback was the overwhelming stench of sulphur from the ground - rotten egg sarnie anyone?! That afternoon we got active again, hiring mountain bikes for cycling on the specially designed tracks in the nearby forest. This was great fun - the tracks are set in idyllic forest and have lots of jumps, steps and slopes to throw yourself around. No wonder all Kiwis are so healthy with access to this type of facility so easily obtained in relatively good weather - if we lived here we would be out doing stuff like this every weekend! We took it easy that night., having exhausted ourselves, and that brings me up to today, Saturday 22nd October. We have been here just over a week, and done and seen so much already. Paul is going even more active today with some White Water Sledging on a nearby Grade 3 - 5 river (here's another link for you, so I don't have to explain what this is! http://www.frogz.co.nz/). I wanted to do this, but the amount of stuff we've been doing has left me with the sniffles, and I think it might be too hard for me to blow my perpetually runny nose on one of these sledges! So, with that I will sign off - finally you say! Sorry this has been so long, but we've been too busy to update this and I didn't want to miss anything out. Our first impressions are definitely good - everything is so well organised, everyone friendly and now we are out of the sterile surroundings of Auckland, the country seems a lot more real - I'm still looking to see any signs of vandalism or discontent though - I can't belive it's all that perfect! I'll keep you all updated and hope everyone is well, bye for now!
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