New Zealand - Highlights

Aha! This blog format is blatently not working as I just never get time to update enough and always leave my diary in the van/hostel! Definately going to change this for South America, and will probably continue in a more usual 'blogging' manner ie, random updates as i go along.... so he's number 1...


Update
Well I've been out travelling in New Zealand since October and have bought a camper van and driven around North and South Island with Sophie who is now joining me to South America!

At the moment were stuck in Auckland trying to desparately sell our camper and going a little stir crazy...

A quick tour of the highlights so far (see diary for more details day-to-day)... anyway here we go...

NORTH ISLAND

• Parnell - cool Auckland suberb - excellent food! Loadsa galleries!
• Waitomo caves - saw glow worms up close!
• Bay Of Islands - stayed on a boat, swam in phospherant waters and kayaking to an island! Got fed weird sea-things caught by the crew and snorkelled with loads of fish around reefs!
• Tauranga - got drunk with a crazy Icelandic fisherman & his medium-wife (see previous diary entry).
• Rotorua - Wai-o-tapu - incredible thermal and volcanic pools, geysers and crusty formations, streaming ponds and all manner of weird coloured rocks, sand, bubbling mud and shooting steam!
• Coromandel Pensinsula - found crabs and wandered around cathedral cove, missed out on Hot Water Beach (where you can dig a little thermal pool for yourself in the sand) but got to New Chums Beach after a 30 minute trek over headland and rocks - totally stunning beach, weird volcanic rocks and deserted!!!

SOUTH ISLAND

• Cape farewell was isolated and a really amazing headland. Farewell spit is a massive (and i mean massive) expanse of white sand you can get lost in - as far as you can see, theres just dunes of sand and sea - incredible! Best place in New Zealand!!
• Wharariki Beach was incredibly desolate and beautiful, Soph wandered into a cave past some weird looking rocks only to be grunted at by them! They were a couple of Sea-lions! She came scampering across the beach to me pointing after a bull-sea-lion warned her not to get any closer! We got really close to them. They smell really bad.
• West coast was bleak and rainy, rainy, rainy. Dismal!
• We went on an Ice Hike over Fox Glacier and scrambled over the headland to Franz Josef Glacier. They were both big wedges of grey/blue ice streaming down between mountains. We spent a day hiking over Fox in crampons and wandering through ice holes and crevaces. Wanted to do a skydive over the glaciers but defeated by poor weather over the next few days...
• Went hanggliding in Queenstown - running over the edge holding onto a Japanese guy and then swooping over the mountains was amazing and caught some really great thermals (both our flight partners - spookily from Japan and Chile! - said so). Perfect weather, excellent flights! Really wanted to take a course to do paragliding afterwards!
• Spent Christmas at Milford Sound - an incredible fjordland area with breathtaking scenery, huge mountains rise up from nowhere - really sharply- and give way to valleys, waterfalls and gorges. theres a basic tunnel cut right through one mountain you drive through - kea's (alpine parrots) hang around the car parks.
• Went to Stewart island - a haven for wildlife especially Kiwi's although we didnt have longenough to see any (they're nocturnal).
• Spent New Year in Dunedin - a University city, went to outdoor fireworks, got very drunk and felt a bit miffed at the lack of NZ nightlife even on New year! A french girl summed up well when she said "These Kiwi's need to come to Europe! We'll show them how to party!"
• Otago pensinsula was pretty - saw Yellow Eyed Penguins (World's rarest!) Coming ashore and clambered over a massive sanddune in the pooring rain, then hid in a hide watching seals fight on the nearby beach.
• Christchurch was a weird chunk of England dumped in New Zealand even down to the filthy public tiolets (which have been immaculate most places in NZ so far!). Watched Benjamin Button at cinema (during which I almost died of old age!).
• Saw a whale in Kaikoura on a really rough sea, people were looking green at points! Also saw a blue shark, little blue penguins and some albatross.

BACK ON NORTH ISLAND

• Went tubing underground in Wait-o-mo and floated, leapt and scrambled through rock caverns with running water and glow-worm lighting
• Tongariro Crossing was a day trek over the volcano, which was just incredible from start to finish! Volcanic craters, green & blue lakes, amazing views, thermal pools - just look at the photos on my facebook & see!
• Big Day Out festival in Auckland - saw Mike Patton, Trevor Dunn & Dave Lombardo in Fantomas play the Director's Cut - stunning & really cool if a tad 'orchestrated', got crushed to death in the dance tent to the Prodigy , Son of Dave was the best act at BDO with his impromptu beatbox blues, he got 2 girls on stage and gave out spirits and fruit(!?), Pendulum were shocking and dumbed down all their own stuff plus covering 'Master of Puppets' by Metallica - they had guitar, drums & bass player - what happened to the DnB?!?!? - luckily saved by dancing our asses off to Simian Mobile Disco!

Nov 21st.

In Coromandel. Pleasant area. Went to see a local band in a pub - hmmm. Left early afetr disapointing Maori blues band with out of place Kiwi guitar widdly god.


Nov 22nd.

Went to Driving Creek Railway - a mad railway that takes you up into the hills built by sculptor Barry Briknell. Pottery there - weird surreal pots & people all the way to the top on a ricketty homemade 'train'. Went to Kauri Grove in Coromandel Forest and saw Siamese Kauri trees. Camped up and chatted to some UK girls who were based in Turanga and had parked there car over an edge with 2 wheels off the floor!

New Zealand (2)

Nov 17th.

Worst weather yet. Went to Rewa's Village which is a recreation of a Maori settlement in the Kerikeri Basin. Basic stoneag huts made of flax and wood.

Went out on a cruise on a boat called 'The Rock' from wharf back in Pahia. Shot at a duck with an air rifle off the back of boat in an attempt to win a free beer, fished (without luck) and ended up in an on-board dorm with a cou[ple of Aussie girls and a bloke and his mother. Went night kayaking in the waters around the boat, which was absolutely amazing! The waters have in them phosperance which glows and shoots off like little green stars when you dipped you paddle in! Weird! And really stunning under a clear starry sky. Went snorkelling and swimming of the back of the boat later which was *freezing* but totally amazing - when you moved and swam phospherant green sparks flew off you in the water! The phospherance is actually an algae which for some unknown reason glows when disturbed - The most amazing experience in NZ so far - Swimming with sparks flying off me under a perfectly clear starry sky! Sat on the back of the boat with Sophie, one of the crew (from Coventry!?) and the Aussie girls, before freezing half to death and going to bed.

Nov 18.
After a rough nights sleep (in which Soph decided to chat in her sleep to the dorm) we went down to an amazing porridge & fruit brekkie, then snorkelled out on a reef - saw loads of fish up close and swam until the water made me shake so much with cold I had to go back. After getting back to normal body temperature I kayaked to the beach of an island from the boat, and then want on a wander about. We found that the hills were all covered in soft grass, that was really deep and spongy. Kayaked back to the boat feeling like a Maori warrior.

During lunch a couple of dolphins swam alongside the boat and the crew offered up the chance for us to eat some sea urchin type things and mussels they'd caught. I ate a couple which were actually really tasty (one more expensive than caviar in japan apparently) which looked like and had the texture of a small yellow slug. Mussel's were amazing.

Back at Pahia we set off to the west coast to Oponomi and found an amazing beach with metalic silver colours and stunning sunset caused by the huuge sandspit alongside the coast.

North Island (1)

Having to keep a diary and refer back to it as not getting the time to get on internet for long amounts...

Nov 10.

Staying in Parnell which reminds me of Moseley - lots of art galleries and restaurants. Saw a load of Maori carvings in mesuem which were good, including a full Whare (meeting house) and Waka (Boat). The Maori paint things red to protect them with Tapa (Sacredness) and the carvings have different meanings like spirals are the circle of life, they are pretty intricate with silver shell eyes on the faces.

Nov 11.

We bought a Toyota Lucida at a Backpackers car market with a load of pots and pans etc. After taking the car on a test run it broke down round the corner from the yard! Flat battery... got a good deal on the car though which is in really good condition apart from the flat abttery. Sorted Insurance out (Which is stangely optional in NZ) and road tax (which you buy by the 1000 km). The seller of the van replaced the battery and paid for a new bed to be installed in the back in place of the seats! We also had curtains fitted.

Drove North from Auckland to Warkworth which is very quaint and parked up at dusk at Sandspit. The plan is to go North around North Island then loop back down through Auckland and through Napier on the East Coast down to South Island.

Nov 12.
Bought an mp3 transmitter for the van so we can listen to music on the go - very important! The people who work in NZ are much more relaxed! We asked about the mp3 player and the woman said to bring the van round the back, take it out the box put in a battery and if it worked and we liked it then to buy it! A vast contrast to Argos who we bought the mp3 players from back in UK where they would not refund them even if in perfect condition.

Drove to Waipu which holds a Highland Games at New Year?! then onto Whangarei (Pronounced Fang-a-ray) where Sophie introduced me to the card game 'Slam' at the campsite. Campsites are really well equipped with cookers, pans, microwaves etc. Not exactly 'roughing it'.

Nov 13.
Went into Whangarei town basin and had coffee, then went for a walk at the A.H.Reed Memorial Park where there were huge kauri trees and a waterfall. Kauri trees are huge (some of the biggest in the world) and just go straight up - but the are really wide. Plenty chairs in them methinks.

Drove North to Waitomo and dropped into Waitomo Glowworm caves on a whim. George the Maori guide was well funny and kept taking the piss out of an Aussie guy there. The caves were really cool, loadsa stalagtites and mites 25 million years old. Apparently they found some maori woman living there when they discovered them - she'd run away from her tribe. But the most amaziong thing was the glowworms which covered the ceiling and glowed bright neon green in the dark! George showed us them up close and explained that they create a horizontal thread - like a hammock they moved around on, beneath which they hang lines down which catch small gnats that they eat. The worms are about an inch or 2 long and visible with a torch - there bums glow green to attract the gnats.

After that we stopped breifly at Wakawaka for the Toilet - decorated by artist Friedrich Hundertwasser in glass bottles and broken crockery - interesting but a little underwhelming, then onto Piahia which sits on the Bay of Islands and is the off-point for much sea-faring fun inc. snorkelling, driving, sailing etc... Stayed at Haruru Falls.

Nov 14.
Got a ferry over the bay to Russell which Captain Cook (I think) described at the hell hole of the Pacific as it was full of drunks, prostitution etc. It is now a very quaint (most places are quaint it seems) place. We went for a walk upto the flagstaff where the brits and Maori had had a bit of a flag putting up war - one put theirs up the other cut it down and so on for many years. Had fish & chips and saw a weird ameoba like blobs on a shell on the beach - it was a seethrough jelly thing (about an centimeter accross) which crawled around suprisingly fast... and a blobbly shiny thing on the rocks too ... weird.

Nov 15.
Drove round the corner to Waitangi where the Maori signed an agreement that settled their tribal wars and gave the nation over to the reign of the Queen of England. What was best was the aw huge waka (boat) and a really good wander round the grounds - amazing coastal scenery and saw a family of wild Tui birds (they make mad noises like R2D2 from Starwars), small black lizards in the rocks and and shrimp and black/red crabs.

Drove up to Kerikeri which is known for it's stunning citrus fruit and parked up at a campsite after a few beers. Did the washing!

Nov 16.
Wrote a nasty letter to 3 (phone company) they conned me just as I was leaving the UK into some dodgy deal, so I wrote a suiatble nasty letter then couldn't find a postal address for them online - damn them!

Went to the Stone Store which is the oldest European building in New Zealand at a massive 170 years old(!!). The store had a nice atmosphere and big old stone floors - it still sells exactly the stame stock as when it opened - from the same suppliers (!) including pitch forks, rope, soap etc.

Went to Rainbow falls which was also pretty nice, then went to drive inland a bit for a change of scenery to Kaikohe - but it was rubbish! The only site was a dodgy American diner-style 70's place and we drove back to Kerikeri and stopped at... a cheesy RV American-style Waggon Park instead. lol.

Went on a wander to a winder and bar but they were all shut, so nicked one of the famous kerikeri oranges from an orchard for later, naughty me.

Auckland

Set down in New Zealand after a reasonable flight where I actually slept! Thats a first..

Weather is kinda like a warm summers day with a constant sea breeze.

After Japan, Auckland was a bit of a shock as it's very western and people could understand us again, which was kinda weird cos we'd got used to them not.

Best things about Auckland are the amazing restaurants (many Japanese) which are reasonably priced and the mad, mega trees which are huuuuge and really odd, like being stuck in Pan's Labyrinth or Jurassic Park. They look like the have had their trunks removed too. Think loads of roots attached straight to the branches spreading out everywhere.

Settled in for a few days at a comfy hotel and have just bought a Toyota Lucida XR Turbo, which sounds really swift until you discover its a people-mover which is just about to have the back seats removed and a bed put in! We bought it at a backpacker car yard after having a look about and then testing driving a couple. Funnily this ones battery died round the corner from the yard and we had to wait for the guy to nip out with his 4x4 to jump start it. A new battery is assured as part of the Warrant of Fitness (NZ MOT Test) we just had done on it. We pick it up tomorrow and can get going up the North Island and then further South later :)

Just got back from Rangitoto which is a volcano just North of Auckland - you can still see Auckland from the volcano. Went on a 5 hour trek up to the crater and into some caves which were mega.