i wish i still had photoshop

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 03:57:24 GMT

Very short space of time to squeeze this entry in, but I'll give it a go - forgive me if it's a bit rushed!
Yesterday dawned warm and bright - I obviously fulfilled a reasonable enough amount of my yearly rain quota in Franz to allow Mr Weatherman to let me have mostly nice weather for my travels! - and I eventually decided to get up early to go down to the ferry terminal. I'd not slept very well, despite being exhausted, and I was achey and painridden, as I still am. Woe is me! I definitely need to get better balance before I start trying to go canyoning again... I wanted to go to Rangitoto, which is a young volcanic island about 25 minutes from Auckland, it's visible from pretty much everywhere around here. Walking to the summit was definitely out, but fortunately for creaky old me, they run an 'explorer' tour, which takes about 3 1/2 hours and takes you most of the way to the summit and around the western side of the island. As it was the weekend, I didn't want to risk the afternoon trip being full, hence the decision to get up early and go down for the 9.15am tour. Not much to say about the ferry, but the tour was definitely well worth it! Much of the lower part of the island is still all black volcanic rock, basically solidified lava, as it's only about 600-700 years old and hasn't had time to mulch down into any kind of soil yet. It's also covered in pohutukawa trees, which are among the few plants hardy enough to survive in such tough conditions, so apparently in summer the whole island looks a brilliant red when they flower. It was a bumpy 20 minute ride up to the summit boardwalk (we were taken around in a little trailer-type thing on the back of a tractor, all very high-tech), my legs weren't too impressed with going up all those stairs but, bafflingly, I still managed to make it up before all but two other people, which made me feel much less unfit than I did the day before. Hooray! Got to peer down into the crater, now filled with trees, the bush is much denser on the top half of the island as more ash fell, creating better soil-type-stuff. I am trying to be technical, but I'm afraid if you want to become a volcanic vegetation expert, I shall have to point you in the direction of your local encyclopedia! There were great views from around various points at the top out over Auckland city, and in the opposite direction, across Motutapu (the neighbouring, much older volcanic island), Waiheke Island and right out to the Coromandel peninsula as it was such a clear day.
We'd had about 50 minutes to walk up, look around, then walk back down, though of course there were - as there always must me - a bunch of people incapable of good timekeeping, so we were delayed a little, but no matter. We made our way back down and around the Western side of the island, which would've taken forever if I'd wanted to walk it, so it was a great way of seeing much more - though it is all a reasonably similar black-rock-and-pohutukawa landscape! We got to stop off and have a closer look at some of the rock, and also down to what is apparently Rangitoto's only white sand beach, which has some brilliant lava-flow rock formations coming out across it. Quite a new experience to be able to see a volcano that you can still see all the volcano-ness of! Most of the volcanoes in NZ, certainly the easily accessible ones, just look rather like big grassy hills with a bit of a ditch at the top (or like gigantic, completely unvolcano-like lakes). Also got to throw some of the rocks around - yes, I was allowed! Bit of a long story, but apparently the driver had had a dispute with some chap who had a boat that turns into a car (I have no idea what he was talking about but apparently they're reasonably common, and driving on the island isn't allowed for the public) and was having a jolly around the island, driver told him off, chap was obviously unhappy, and we'd come across a big pile of rocks strewn across the road. Bit pathetic really, first time it's ever happened, but as there were only two blokes on board and nobody else seemed too keen on going, I hopped off and helped chuck them to the sides. It's surprisingly heavy, jagged stuff!

Eek - have just spotted that I only have 6 minutes left. I'll get the pictures up, and you'll just have to wait til I get home to hear about my aquarium adventures today, and my zoo fun tomorrow!

Motutapu, Waiheke on the right and the dark mountains in the background are the Coromandel peninsula!

Crater!

Auckland from the summit

You can see at least three of Auckland's volcanoes in this... Off you go, find them!

Adrian Monk? On a volcano?

Ello!

Well, this is me, signing out from New Zealand (sob!)! See you back in the UK....

Back in Auckland...

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 03:32:18 GMT

Onto my last few days in New Zealand, sob sob! This is likely the last time I'll get online properly to update my journal, so I'll try to get as much done as I can - tomorrow is my last full day and it's going to be a busy 'un (Auckland Zoo and Cirque du Soleil, thank you very much!).
We'll go back in time a few days to the 24th now though, as that's where I was up to, not that it was a very exciting day... I got the ferry over from Waiheke Island at 11am, turns out that's quite a busy ferry on a Friday. Fun! On the Auckland side of the water, I managed to find the most honest taxi driver in the world. In Auckland! Who'da thunk it? I asked before getting in how much it would be to the YHA I'm staying in, as it's at the opposite end of Queen Street - aka, traffic light hell, and was quoted $10. Imagine my surprise when, not only was she nice the whole trip, she only charged me that $10 even though the meter said $16! Female taxi drivers are clearly the way forward... Didn't do much for the rest of the afternoon except browse souvenir shops, it's surprising how much time you can waste looking at various types of plastic and fluffy kiwi birds! I did meet up with my friend Hanna (we worked together in the supermarket in Franz Josef) in the evening and spent many hours chatting in the 24hour McDonalds (they are useful for something!), as she was leaving the next day! Spent a while, too, puzzling over the amount of things I had to get done before leaving, then decided that four days was plenty of time to be able to think about it later... I may or may not still be thinking that 48 hours is also plenty of time! Oh dear..

My first full day back in smelly Auckland was actually not really spent in smelly Auckland! I was off on a canyoning trip, about 45 minutes west of the city in the Waitakere ranges. I'm not sure now what made me think this was a good idea, but all the pictures in the advertising looked fun, and I went out with a company called Canyonz. We just had the one guide (Neil, I think?), and it was me and three British guys, all about 19 and on holiday from uni. They were also on the Kiwi Experience bus - but they actually did good work improving my opinion of Kiwi Experience kids! They were all lovely, we had a good laugh the whole day and they were actually helpful instead of getting annoyed with me and my Bambi antics (more on that later, if I can bear the embarrassment), so that rather improved the whole day. Pick up was at 9.50am, so I think we got to the general location of the canyon at about 11am, but after collecting wetsuits and dumping baggage, it was a good 30/40 minute walk to get to the canyon itself. Uphill, and downhill. Through lots and lots of mud. Picture nice, claylike piles of mud, and now picture us with our rubber, flatsoled shoes. Oh yes, this was fun. I think we were all beginning to wonder why we'd decided to do it after a few minutes and yes, I was the first one to fall over... They didn't see me the first time, though the mud splattered legs gave it away. I fell, I think, three times on the first walk (with many more false alarms, we all had a good chuckle at each other sliding around), once up a reasonably steep slope where I was distinctly unimpressed with the idea of sliding all the way back down, and had to crawl to the nearest tree. Yummy muddy.
Then came more fun as wetsuiting time was upon us! And... my wetsuit was at least a size too small! Hurrah! In case you're not familiar with wetsuits, here's the thing; they are meant to be skintight when they fit. So ensued the super fun game of squeezing chubby into the too-small wetsuit! Ahh... the shame... With various hauling and tugging efforts, I eventually managed to get the thing on properly, and with experience I can now say that trying to walk in a tiny wetsuit is fabulous exercise - we could start a revolution! Wear one under your work clothes! Don one at the gym - never mind the chafing, think of the resistance! Or, erm, maybe not. I do think perhaps it would've been wise to check the wetsuit sizings before trekking out to the middle of nowhere, though...
Still, after an hour of what could easily be considered torture, the real fun - no, seriously, ACTUAL fun! - began! The idea of the whole trip is that you get to be very silly in a big persons playground and jump around in lots of water, and the first few things we did was throw ourselves off rocks into big pools of very, very cold water. Yay! If you are now raising your eyebrows, I promise, it's better than it sounds! Of course, one or two of the boys put me to shame by doing acrobatic flips into the water (whereas my general efforts varied between pindrops and bellyflops), and my attempt at trying to do a front flip actually ended up being me curled up into a tiny ball bombing into the water, but never mind... Several times I ended up so deep in the water I did wonder if I was ever going to surface again, which didn't much help the brainfreeze effect it was having - we were all shivering away for the first half of the day, whilst having overexcited fits of "What's next? Is it BIGGER?". And, you know, pretending to be in some sort of army-action film when we were wading through chest deep water in the midst of the bush. Who says kids have the best playgrounds?! I continued to fall over numerous times during the day, including once down a muddy slope that could've led to great doom (sorry mum, erm, I mean, great fun?!!?), and once quite firmly on my rear end whilst abseiling - not my fault! Mr Guide told me, "Make sure you keep your feet up high, as this one's quite slippery". Back I went, tipping til my feet were just a little higher than for normal abseil and BOOSH. Ouch?!

"Not that high!"

Thanks! We did two abseils, once on aforementioned slippy rock, which was quite an easy one after the initial slope as it was much more vertical than the first - which I got well and truly stuck on, as I hit a log. Apparently he told the two after us first two to go left to avoid it, not much use for us! It took me forever to clamber over the log, whilst trying to keep hold of a shoe that was determined to escape, at which point the bag I had on slid over one shoulder and my arm got stuck. Can't imagine what they thought I was up to at the top, it's quite an odd position to find yourself stuck in the middle of a waterfall, on a rock, about 15ft above solid ground. I did eventually manage to shake the bag back around and make my way back down the rock, and mishaps aside, the abseiling was great fun - can't believe I used to be terrified of it when I was young! There were also two water slides, the first a gentle backwards one, the second a steep, terrifying slide of doom - ah, there's that word again, I mean joy! Honest! It started off alright but then came a massive bump that suddenly shot you at a million miles an hour into the air before plunging into the pool at the bottom. I was second and we had a good giggle at the faces of the last two as they went over the bump - pure horror! Canyoning is grand fun just for watching other people, never mind doing it yourself!
We had pictures taken of us the whole way through, which were surprisingly great photos, and we all had the same number taken of each of us (as opposed to the Waitomo caves photos, where there were more of certain people/not that many pictures of our trip in general), they will naturally be posted at the end.
Oh, we also saw an eel! Only a tiny one, fortunately, considering how big NZ eels can grow - it was at the bottom of the first abseil, whilst the last of the group was coming down. It swam right up to us and was poking its head out of the water to have a good look. We were, naturally, terribly excited by this and distracted the poor lad who was trying to abseil by shouting "THERE'S AN EEL! HURRY UP!". Unfortunately for him, it swam away before he reached us, and as he wandered over to see what the fuss was about, he looked very confused and said, "I thought you were shouting 'You're an eel!', I didn't get it, why am I an eel?!". Teehee. And thus, he earned himself a new nickname for the rest of the day!

The walk back, after we'd finished leaping about in super cold water (where we could always see the sun and blue sky, but never quite reach it), we had about a half hour walk to get back. No, that wasn't fun either... I can't even remember how many times I fell over, including - to my amusement, if nobody elses - just after Neil had said "remember, the most dangerous part of this trip is walking!". Cue me slamming knee-first into a rock. What was that you say, Neil? He chose this moment to mention that the two broken-limb incidents he'd had on his trips had both occurred whilst on the return walk. Gulp. That's comforting, thank you! Not that canyoning is at all dangerous, oh no, I can just see the British Health and Safety folks giving a big old thumbs up to this on a regular basis...?! To be honest, it takes a special kind of person (aka, your average Kiwi) to think "hey, look, a 30ft drop into a pool of indeterminable depth, let's jump in and see if we can make it a sport!" So anyway, the walk back wasn't too entertaining, especially the 10 minute, mega-uphill climb. I fell a bit behind (and fell, literally, because that's just what I do!), it's hard to describe the intense aaahhh-feeling of sitting back in that van at the top of the hill... I was quite pleased to discover I was already coming out in some rather dashing looking bruises - let's face it, if you're going to be in agony, you might as well have something nifty to show for it!
I wish I could say I was filled with adrenaline and spent the evening running around like a headless chicken, but the truth is I barely made it up the stairs when we returned just after 6pm, and I'm reasonably sure I was asleep just after 8pm... Ahhhh!

No remarks about the whiteness of my legs, please...

This actually looks easier than it was...

Wha'?

Hahahaha. What we don't see here is that I'm behind the camera, absolutely plastered in mud. Shh.

This makes me giggle. Resemble a small elephant, but funny expression and general jumping style (if indeed style even comes into this) means this gains top marks

Wahay!

Yummy, slimy rocks!

Heehee, I fell over!

The invasion of the abominable wetsuit! About 1/4 through the tour, we all perched on a rock after our jump and Neil decided to take a picture

I do this how?

Can't leave New Zealand without one of these...

Abseil number one!

Hard to pose when you're being attacked by a waterfall...

I like this one - cheesy grin o-rama!

Interesting pose there

Shortly after the painful backwards fall... Apparently my doing that terrified the other two who were yet to go. Sorry!

We abseiled down the right side of this

Two people are standing on a bigger rock - guess who! At the end of the trip.

Paihia, to Auckland, to Yet Another Island

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 07:09:32 GMT

My last day in Paihia was reasonably uneventful - I'd had a room to myself for the night (and had one again that night), which was really quite nice, so I took advantage and lay in til just after 10am. As soon as I got up and showered, it started raining, I'm sure you can imagine the glares I gave the clouds at that point but it was a very short-lived downpour. I'd been told there was a lookout walk up School Road, and I think we've learned by now that I'm a big old sucker for a lookout walk, even though my legs and hills are really starting to not get on very well... I'm sure we'll resolve the conflict eventually, but for now, I creaked and crawled my way up the apparently never-ending hill (possibly the only walk in NZ that comes close to underestimating walk time. Half an hour? Maybe, if you can fly), and was rewarded with.. um... a very nice view of some pohutukawa trees. No no, it wasn't all that bad really, but it was the most disappointing 'lookout' I've seen in my time here, so not especially worth the trek up. I spent a while cooling down and sunning myself (do those two phrases really go together?) whilst chatting to a girl who'd only just arrived in NZ, so I recommended a few things to her. Mainly, advising her to avoid Base Hostels like the plague, as she was travelling Kiwi Experience (I'd have told her that they're a hellish piece of constantly drunken work, too, but apparently some people enjoy it so I kept that to myself) and they tend to stay at Base. Base know that they're always going to get these poor, unaware souls, and consequently seem to put very little effort into being clean and/or comfortable. I should watch what I'm saying, actually, as I'm sitting in a Base hostel now, abusing their cheap internet... Shh!
Anyway, needless to say it took me far less time to get down than it did up, and by the time I'd finished shop-browsing, it was mid-afternoon and getting cloudy, so I settled down in the hostel to watch lots of films!

The next day - my last Intercity trip! - was another one of those boring travelly days... My bus to Auckland was at 8am, and took me nicely up to 12.30pm. I wasn't foolish enough to try walking anywhere with my backpack this time, and nabbed a depressingly expensive taxi to the ferry terminal. I was headed for Waiheke Island for 2 nights, mainly because I didn't have any wish to spend 7 nights in Auckland. Waiheke is about 40 minutes from Auckland, one of those places that Aucklanders go to relax - it's typically green hills and sandy beaches-type New Zealand. It has a population of about 8,000 but it's smaller than you'd expect for quite a big island, though it has an efficient bus service with friendly drivers that was jolly good for getting to my hostel. Well, it was, until I realised that I still had a hill to go down (very thankful it was down, too), and honestly, my shoulders were not at all happy with the constant hauling about of over-heavy backpack at this stage. I made the decision at this point that I'd be getting a taxi when the time came to go back... My hostel was tucked away in the bush, so quite peaceful, though I was annoyed when I arrived there at 2pm to discover the office was closed until 4pm. Uh, what?! I wasn't keen on the idea of standing around til 4pm when the weather was nice and I quite wanted to walk down into the nearby town, but fortunately the owner turned up to meet some friends at half past, so I grabbed him and got sorted. He did tell me that "the office isn't actually open until 4", couldn't help thinking that it's hardly my fault he keeps stupid office hours! So I did get to walk back down to Oneroa town, which is a sweet little holiday village type place with a big beach just behind it. Went back to the hostel on the bus, cause I'm lazy like that and it's uphill all the way back, and spent the evening watching television and talking to a friendly Brit chap. He'd been on the island on and off for two years, he and his partner were writers who have a website dedicated to travelling and talking about destinations around the world for kids, which meant he had some interesting stories (including one about getting banned from Samoa!).

The next day I was booked onto an 'Explorer' bus tour of the populated half of the island (there's only really sheep and cows on the other half), as I'd decided it was the easiest way of seeing as much as possible in the short time I had there. To be honest, I wasn't that impressed with Waiheke - it's nice enough, but after seeing the Coromandel, it doesn't really compare! I walked down to the ferry terminal in the morning to catch the bus, which I was on with only two other people... Quite odd when the driver had had 45 people on the tour directly before ours! Meant we could spread out a bit though, I suppose... The tour went first up to a hill above the ferry terminal, probably the best part as we got a fantastic view right across Waitemata Harbour and could see Auckland city even though it was hazy and a bit drizzly. Got to see the hills and ranges of the Coromandel peninsula when we went the other way too, quite impressed with that! We spent a while around on Onetangi beach, which is about a mile long, Waiheke seems to have three main attractions - beaches, vineyards and alpacas! I think perhaps I would've liked it more if I were one of those artsy wine drinking types... The evening was spent giggling about the fire, as there was quite a gale blowing all night, and it was blowing all the fire smoke back down the chimney and setting off the fire alarm! The owner wasn't too impressed with us and we all had watery eyes by the end of it, in the end the Frenchman gave in, shovelled everything into a bucket and chucked it outside in the rain...!! I did get to cuddle the owner's dogs though, they kept following him in and demanding tickles. One of them was a horribly cute wiry Jack Russell (and it must've been nice, I don't generally have anything good to say about Jack Russells!!) with a daft yappy bark. Aaahhh!

Pretty clouds!

Yet another sunrise picture

Waiheke island, wave to the mainland!

Look for the giant hypodermic needle in the background - that's Auckland and the Sky Tower!

Waiheke

Sorry.. not many pictures for an awful lot of text there! How disappointing... I'll try harder next time!

Cape Reinga

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 06:27:33 GMT

Another long day for this one, so it needs its own entry! This was my day trip to Cape Reinga, leaving Paihia at 7.15am! I was outside the hostel for 7am, which is hideously early, but it wasn't so bad as I got to see the beginning of the sunrise and it made for some very pretty colours out over the water! I got picked up first, and the (surprisingly large for the time of year) group mostly consisted of a big German group. By which I mean there were lots of them, not that they were really big. They were actually quite small...
Anyway, that aside, we had a friendly and cheerful driver named Spike, who'd been doing the tour for four years. It showed - he had perfect timing for telling his stories just as things came into view. He stopped us briefly just past Waitangi to let us take pictures of the sun coming up over Russell, more perfect timing though I think that was more luck than his timing on that occasion! I would've happily slept on the bus after that, but the commentary was almost constant and there was loads to see, so I had to endure the tiredness until it went away (sob, it's a hard life travelling!).
The first main stop was a short boardwalk through Kauri forest, the Manginangina Kauri Walk. Please appreciate the effort it took to type that correctly...!! Kauri trees - as I think I may have mentioned before, possibly maybe, if I have, forgive my tired brain! - are basically the biggest trees in New Zealand, they can live for thousands of years and grow to many metres in diameter. They were incredibly sacred to the Maori, and only very rarely used to make waka for special ceremonial occasions. The Europeans cared for no such thing and lopped them down with glee, so there's not too many of them left now, but they are at least now protected. The oldest one in the area we were walking through was 'only' 500 years old, but still huge - Kauri trees would definitely make some seriously formidable Ents! Saruman wouldn't have lasted five minutes...
Ah, erm, yes, back to my Cape Reinga trip. We had quite a few stops on the way up, including morning tea at 10am ish, followed by lunch er, 25 minutes later. No, the Kiwis aren't sustenance-challenged, but the tides on 90-mile beach control whether we drive up it or down it, and therefore when we can have lunch (as lunch is at a set place). We had to drive down it this day, as low tide was at 1pm, so we had to squeeze lunch in before going up to Cape Reinga. It'd become quite a sunny and warm day, even though it'd rained in a couple of the places we'd driven through, so I sat out in the sun and got a damp bum. Curse those wooden benches and their inability to dry instantly...

The portion of State Highway One up to the Cape (SH 1 being New Zealand's main road, running all the way from Bluff on the South Island, though it obviously takes a break through the big old section of ocean that's in the way of getting to the North) proved to be quite entertaining. Though they are in the process of finally sealing it - properly sealed roads are still quite the novelty in NZ - the majority of it is distinctly winding and unsealed. To add to this, after having to crawl behind a stupid tourist camper-van thing going at about 30km until the limit ("Well they can't be German. Must be French." "Or Dutch!"), we got held up for a good 20 minutes by the second most typical New Zealand traffic hold up. Cows. Lots of them. In case you're wondering, the first is sheep. Third? Tourists...
Once parked up near Cape Reinga, it was about a 15-20 minute walk down to the lighthouse itself. The land around there is tapu (sacred) to Maori, so they stopped allowing cars to drive all the way down a while back. The reason it's considered tapu is because the Maori believe that the spirits of those who've just died travel to this point, and it's where they turn and wave goodbye to their land and people. Not a bad spot to do it from either, it's quite a nice concept too. There's a 'spirit tree', a lone pohutukawa, clinging to a rock way down below the lighthouse, which to my surprise was quite easy to see from the walkway. Oddly enough, as I read on one of the information boards, this tree has been there for countless years, but has never flowered - pohutukawa trees normally have a bright red flower during the summer months. Strange! We were briefly rained on by a passing cloud down at the lighthouse, but the sun followed soon after, and quite conveniently it travelled off behind us, so all pictures still featured pretty blue sky! Hurrah for considerate rainclouds! I wandered back up to stick my postcards in the postbox back up the hill, it's NZ's most northern post box and apparently all things posted there get a special postmark! I couldn't resist a fancy gimmick like that, so postcards had to be sent, this postmark had better be good..

It was only a short drive from there to the giant Te Paki Sand Dunes. And when they say giant, they're not kidding. This is where the reasonably infamous sand boarding takes place, which looks like super duper fun on all the pictures. What they don't show you is the near vertical climb you have to endure beforehand... Ever tried scrambling up a near vertical sand dune? No? Don't...
It was worth it though, honest. Due to rain flooding the stream and making it impossible to park by the usual - smaller, and considerably more horizontal - sand dunes, we had to go up this beast of a dune, but though it was more tiring, it did mean we a) went faster and b) got a much longer run back down. Lucky, really, cause I wasn't flipping well walking back up! Slightly embarrassing that the people who went up first had come down and caught up with a few of us laggers from the back. Oops. It does look quite scary from the top, but it's not at all, so I went once down the big hill and twice down the smaller hill for wusses. I mean, erm, the older/more scared/more sensible (tsh) people who didn't want to risk their teeth on the big hill. I can only imagine that driver Spike must've had calves of steel to go running up those dunes every day - he seemed to enjoy the sandboarding just as much as any of us! I was well and truly covered in sand by this point, as was everyone else judging by the state of the bus when we got back on. It was a little after 2pm by this point, and time to drive down 90-mile beach. Oh, and I discovered why it's called 90-mile beach! Back in the days before giant tape measures and engine-powered vehicles, it would take people about three days to walk the length of the beach. They knew from experience that they could walk around 30 miles a day, so 90-mile beach it became. I'm not sure if they just had sand issues, or neglected to notice that day 3 only involved a half hour stroll to the end, because it's actually only 64 miles. Still, the name has stuck, presumably mostly because it sounds much better than '64-mile beach', and cause it means NZ sort of beats the Aussies and their 80 mile beach. Which is, presumably, actually 80 miles. We got to have a bit of a play about on the beach for a while, and quite a few people went out in search of mussels. I wandered out to join them after I'd finished writing in the sand (oh, how juvenile), and got soaked when it turned out that the sea runs faster than I do. Hmph. Driving along the beach was quite good fun, Spike obviously enjoys it too as he was demonstrating how one would avoid the 'sweeper' waves by swerving around them. Completely unnecessary, but entertaining all the same! We also got to stop and look at one of several herds of wild horses, who had quite kindly parked themselves right on the edge of the beach. I think he said there are three herds that wander around the area alongside the beach, all protected by law.

Our final stop of the day (not including the brief dash to get fish and chips at Mangonui) was at the Ancient Kauri Kingdom, a big shop that sells Swamp Kauri carvings and furniture. Swamp Kauri is stuff they unearth from areas of, well, swamp, and is basically trees that died a long time ago and have been preserved in these swamps for what they reckon is upwards of 50,000 years. They have problems dating it accurately cause carbon dating only goes up to about 60,000 years. Basically, though, it's very very old. Some of the furniture pieces were amazing, but also startlingly expensive. There was a swamp kauri guitar that I think cost about $35,000. Ouch! The centrepiece of the shop is an incredible staircase carved out of the middle of a gigantic kauri log, so you're completely surrounded by tree when you're halfway up. Not bad work!
We arrived back in Paihia at about 6pm, extremely tired, I couldn't keep my eyes open for long and got a nice early night!

Early morning!

Couldn't quite capture the colours/streetlight contrast but this is fairly close

Sunrise over Russell

Kauri trees

With people, for a bit of scale!

There's a 1 missing there

Traffic jam!

Cape Reinga

Ah, you can see the raincloud here!
I am a long way from home...

The rocks with the spirit tree on the inside of the smaller one...

Cape Reinga lighthouse

Fairly typical Cape Reinga picture

You can see where the Pacific and Tasman oceans meet here just over the hill - where all the crazy foaming waves are!

Most northerly postbox! Not quite as grand as I was expecting, admittedly...

Bye bye postcards!

Got excited when I read this - look, look, it says manuhiri!

Cape Maria van Diemen

SERIOUSLY big sand dunes! You can see our trail up the hill - it was essentially like walking up one twice as big, too, as every step I took my feet sank back to about 2cm above where they were before. Annoying! For scale, there are actually people on top of the sand dune, just to the right of the trail... Yes, that tiny black dot that looks like it's probably a bit of dust on your screen.

90 Mile Beach

Wild hosses!

Bus on a beach!

Giant Kauri staircase!

Paihia Round 2 (19/07)

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 05:17:10 GMT

Ooooh, dolphins!!! Yes, more of them! I was on the 9am Fullers/Great Sights dolphin cruise this day, so another nice early-ish morning for me. Despite the whole metservice-predicting-lots-of-rain thing, it was distinctly rain free and (mostly) quite a windless day too, so all was looking good. The cruise also took in Hole In The Rock, which is World Famous, apparently. I suppose that's why I'd known about it for, um, three days? Like L&P is to NZ, Hole In The Rock is World Famous In Paihia... You do come to learn after a while that Kiwis are quite free and easy with the term 'World Famous'! We'd been out on the boat for about 20 minutes having a look at an island or two when word came from 'the opposition' that dolphins had been spotted (you've got to love a country where competing companies actually help each other out) back near Russell, so we turned around and sped back towards them. It turns out that they hadn't spotted any dolphins for three or four days, so I definitely picked the right day to go out! They normally do a swimming with dolphins thing there, but as there was a calf somewhere in the pod, swimming wasn't allowed (it's against the law in NZ, they're very strict on the conditions in which you can swim with dolphins here), which was quite good really as it afforded us more time to move around looking at them when we got there!
The pod was really quite big, separated into a few groups that would pop up in one place, swim around and then disappear off fishing in the depths again. I went down to the front of the boat, quite close to the water, and a lot of the dolphins - they were Bottlenose Dolphins - swam really near to the boat, and they were much easier to watch than the Hector's Dolphins! It was also fun to hear the 'dolphin expert' (?!) recognising each dolphin instantly as it surfaced (they have distinctive grooves on the back of their dorsal fins, which she said "look the same to me as faces now"). One dolphin even swam up right beneath my feet down the middle of the catamaran, so I got rather a good view of that one! Best bit was definitely when two dolphins did a vertical twisting leap into the air right in front of us - sadly much too unexpected to get a photo of, but brilliant to see!

We spent about half an hour dolphin watching before heading off to finish the cruise around the islands and to that super-famous hole in the rock. Sorry, Hole In The Rock, mustn't forget the caps! There were actually quite a few interesting basalt rock formations and yes, the Hole In The Rock was quite cool. They'd usually sail through it but the wind out there had picked up on one side so it was too risky, we did back up into the other side though so it was pretty much the same! It's been formed by erosion and there's another one forming just next to it, going to be quite a while before that one gets through several more metres of rock though...
On the way back we passed a nice sunny little island called Roberton Island that looked quite appealing, until we were then told a joyful story of how a young Maori boy axe-murdered a man and the family who employed him there. Erm, lovely. It also has a hill that Captain Cook climbed to look out over the Bay Of Islands, so it does have a bit of nice history to it as well. I managed to make myself feel horribly seasick on the calmest water I think I've been out on to date, not sure how I managed that but quite an achievement I suppose, managed to quell it after curling up on a chair towards the back of the boat and getting to have a nice walk on Urupukapuka (say it out loud, I dare you) Island. Had a bit of a walk up a nice squelchy hill to have a look over the islands, very pretty. We briefly saw dolphins again on the journey back to Paihia after the island stop, where I spent the afternoon doing not much, though I did chat to a Belgian lady working in a shop for a while about sharks. As you do!

Not sure why I took this one, to be honest

Dolphin!!!

More Dolphins!!!

Yes OK this one's not that good

OK so I'll admit I cropped a bit of the picture off to make this one look much better than it is, but come on... It's still not bad!

Bye bye dolphins! (they were diving for fish)

Oooh pretty water colour!

Hole In The Rock, from the choppy side

Going in!

Urupukapuka Island

Climbing up to the lookout

The top!

Paihia

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 04:27:57 GMT

So, er, I actually just realised that I didn't do much the next day either! I know, that's three days in a row where I've done absolutely zilch that's of any interest. It wasn't really my fault this day though, the rain was torrential pretty much non-stop all day. I assume this was karma for all my gloating about how nice the weather's been over here recently. Hmph. I ventured out to the supermarket, as I had no food available (except ketchup and hot chocolate, and I really wasn't tempted to start combining the two), and got drenched. Ah, memories of Franz Josef!

The next day, and we're up to the 18th of July in case you've lost track, I - wait for it - actually did something! Hurrah! Even better, the weather was alright again! Hurrah hurrah! It was raining on and off very lightly through the day but for the most part it was reasonably warm and sunny, so I hopped on the ferry over to Russell, just across the water from Paihia. This was mainly because it'd featured on Billy Connolly's World Tour of New Zealand, with a church that's covered in musketball holes, so naturally I wanted to see this. Unfortunately it was distinctly windy on that side of the bay! It's got quite an interesting history, being New Zealand's very first capital and one of the first places to be inhabited by the Europeans. Had a quick look at Christs Church - the musketball one! - and the graveyard, which sounds morbid but was actually reasonably interesting (as interesting as graveyards can be, anyway!), as a result of being NZ's oldest working church it has a lot of equally old graves, some Maori, quite a lot of sailors and other Europeans. The town is also home to a flagstaff that was put up in 1840 after the Waitangi Treaty was signed, and subsequently cut down by an annoyed Maori chief on four occasions... It has, obviously, eventually managed to stay standing, so I walked up the hill (imaginatively named Flagstaff Hill), where there is also a very pretty sundial that is set on a mosaic map of the Bay Of Islands. And it's even accurate!

On returning from Russell, I still had a few hours of afternoon left, and the weather forecast had featured an awful lot of rain for the days that I'd be in Paihia, so I decided to keep tourist-ing while the weather was reasonable that day and walked up the road to the Waitangi Treaty Grounds! I had a guided tour, not the most fascinating guided tour ever but we were told a few interesting things about a couple of the different carved figures in the Whare, so it was worth doing for that. The grounds feature, along with the Whare that was built in 1940 to celebrate the centenary, a gigantic ceremonial Waka (built for the same purpose), that's sailed every Feb 6th. I think it held something like 80 rowers and 60 passengers, that's a lot of people in a hollow tree! The stump of the Kauri tree that the main chunk of the boat was made from was there too, and it's HUGE! There's also the house of James Busby, the man who was one of the main powers behind the Waitangi Treaty and bringing peace to the area. The Treaty was signed in a big tent on his front lawn, which is now marked by another giant flagpole. There's now quite a good little museum inside the house, and the grounds are brilliant, great views across the bay to Russell (which is the the reason the house was built there, so he could keep an eye on it!). I was there for a little over an hour before heading back to the hostel, nicely avoiding the rain that returned later that evening...

Kingfisher!

Some grounds between Paihia and Waitangi, where a meeting was held amongst Maori chiefs about whether they should sign the Treaty

Paihia beach

Christs Church

Looking back towards Paihia from Flagstaff Hill

Plaque about the flagstaff

Russell

Ahh pretty rainbow!

Gigantic waka

Equally gigantic tree stump

Carvings inside Whare Runanga

the Whare

Waitangi

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 04:00:43 GMT

Eek - I am now back in Auckland (lucky me?!), which means I only have a few days left in New Zealand (boo :() and I still have a lot of blogging to do! Better get on with it then, I suppose!

My second full day (and last one, come to that) started off sunny again, but there was no chance of a boat trip - the water had come up unexpectedly overnight, and the swells were even bigger than the day before! Whoops! Stupid ocean, but ah well, I didn't want to waste the nice morning, so I trotted off in the direction of a short walk up to a historic Maori Pa site that overlooks the beach. '20 minutes', it said, as about seven minutes later I reached a cliff edge and found it went no further. I know they like to be generous with these things, but come on... It was a nice gentle uphill stroll, anyway, as opposed to the sweaty, gasping uphill crawls that usually accompany any kind of lookout walk. I sat up there watching the ocean do its thing (quite a dramatic thing it was that day, too) for a while, occasionally remembering that it was mid-Winter and feeling quite bemused by the fact that I could sit on a hill in a t-shirt and be pleasantly warm at such a time of year. Bizarre! My return to the hostel was timed quite well, as the wind began to pick up on my way down, and about half an hour after plonking myself on the sofa, the rain started. The afternoon, therefore, involved me, a blanket, and a book. It's a hard life.

Most of the next day was spent on buses, which seems to have been happening and awful lot recently... I had to get from Hahei to Auckland, which meant getting an 8am bus to Whitianga, then a bus that afternoon to Thames (the main city on the Coromandel), and then one from Thames to Auckland. Yawn. More annoyingly, the bus from Whitianga actually went right past Hahei, but as it doesn't make the 5 minute trip down the road into Hahei itself (no, I do not know why it doesn't), I wouldn't be able to get it, so I'd had to spend about 4 hours meandering around Whitianga instead. Could be worse, though, as I managed to go and watch Ice Age 3 at the cinema, so that took up a lot of time. Auckland, when I eventually got there at about 6pm, revealed itself to still be rubbish. This opinion was not helped by my foolish thought of 'oh, the hostel doesn't look very far away, I'll walk!'. ERGH. OK, to be fair, I wasn't wrong, it's not all that far. But add warm weather, a warm jumper, 30kg of bag on back and about 7-10kg in the hands, and a largely uphill route all together, and IT'S A VERY VERY LONG WAY!

I'm afraid this entry isn't going to be very interesting, I've just turned the page of my journal and realised the next day was all spent sitting on a bus, too. I got a taxi to the bus station this time around, though. I didn't get to Paihia til 6.45pm, by which point it was dark and everything was closed, so I ended up getting a reasonably early night. Paihia is the main tourist hub in the Bay Of Islands - probably in the whole of Northland, actually - and I had quite a bit planned, especially as it's just along the road from Waitangi, where the Waitangi Treaty was signed (not that the name gives it away, or anything).

Pohutukawa trees

Coromandel coast, towards Cathedral Cove

Yep, it's that limestone stack again. This time from a really, really long way away!

Hahei (you can see the waves are going right up the beach - this is not normal, and it wasn't even high tide)

Think this is a view over Tairua, Coromandel, on the way to Thames

Hahei, My Favouritest Place

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 04:34:44 GMT

So, basically, I'm buying a house in Hahei when I win the lottery (I will win it! Don't spoil my dreams!). But I'm getting ahead of myself!
The day I left Whitianga, I actually spent most of the day there. The power eventually returned at 9.30am, I checked out, and then made myself comfy in the lounge, accompanied by the Americans I'd been playing monopoly with, and watched Prince Caspian (again). We then watched the most horrendous 80s monster of a film ever to exist, called Ladyhawke, and I deny all responsibility for this - it was the Americans' fault!!
My bus was due to pick me up from outside the hostel (it's a little way outside town) at 4.40pm, so I plonked my bags outside at 4.20pm, as it'd stopped raining. And I waited. And waited. When it eventually got to 5pm, I realised I was going to have to ring, so trudged round to the office with my bags, where the super helpful owner rang the bus company. I was travelling with a different company, as Intercity don't go to Hahei, and wasn't feeling too pleased with them when they announced that the driver had waited for me at the i-site in town then left. My ticket said to go there, they insisted! Erm... really? I showed everyone in sight my mobile with the confirmation text, I was assured that I am neither blind nor daft, and was slightly relieved when the silly woman on the phone said they'd get him to turn around and come back for me. Hurrah! The owners told me that he'd dropped someone off there at 4pm, much too early for me to have been outside, and that the driver is often quite hasty and quick to speed off without people. I was expecting him to be moody with me when he eventually arrived at about 5.30pm, but apart from a few comments ("We don't usually come back here this late" yes, well, sorry, but er, not my fault!) it was fine. Got to Hahei without incident, it's only a half hour drive, and settled in for the night. Really nice wooden lodge-y type hostel, only problem being that there was no soundproofing, and I had to endure the discussions of a large group of annoying, drunken teenage girls for most of the night. Hmph. They left the next day though, so no worries, I lived!

The next day saw the return of blue skies to the Coromandel - I discovered that that powercut had affected the whole peninsula, and apparently happens reasonably often, whoops! - so I was up at a reasonable hour to do the main thing I'd been looking forward to doing for an unhealthy length of time - I was going to Narnia! Alright, only Cathedral Cove, but it's so secluded it may as well be Narnia and I absolutely loved it all the same. It's about a 70 minute walk from Hahei beach, through mostly native bush, and sadly also mostly uphill. Erk. Lookouts and lovely views are all very nice indeed, but why must they always involve exhausting uphill climbs?! It's just not fair! I suppose it's only right that you have to put some effort in to get to see pretty things, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. It was a nice walk, though, with views right out south over Hahei and north along Coromandel coastline, which has quite a lot of little islands and coves. The main issue of the day was the still very high tide, the waves coming up much higher than normal and the sea being quite rough as a result of the storms. I ventured down to what is usually a calm snorkelling cove, but now was more a rocky bed of doom. I foolishly clambered across rocks to get a better look at an information board and was efficiently trapped in for a few minutes by the waves suddenly deciding to come much, much higher. Stupid ocean. Needless to say, I didn't bother with the next snorkelling bay... The whole walk was rather a race with the impenetrable-looking clouds that were heading in a near perfect line towards me (and the cove!). They won - it's not really fair, they didn't have hills to contend with - but luckily they thinned off and broke up quite quickly. The tide/waves issue was much the same at the cove, normally it would be quite easy to walk through to the other beach, but this day the other beach no longer existed and on occasion the water was swirling through the cave at a few feet deep. Problematic!
I sat on the rocks and beach for an hour or two, just in case the tide would go out a little, to no avail. Still, it was an impressive sight to behold and a little bit surreal, I suppose because it's such a familiar image (Prince Caspian aside, pictures of it tend to get printed on just about everything promoting NZ). Eventually I gave in, and played the fun game of dashing in and out of Cathedral Cove whilst trying to avoid all things watery! I like to think I got quite good at it, I certainly got a better look at the inside of it anyway, as well as a couple of good pictures. It's much bigger inside than it looks from the outside.
Eventually tore myself away and headed back, much easier walk on the return. I did get distracted for quite a while up by the car park (it's only a 40 minute walk from the car park, but obviously to get there you need a car. I do not have a car.) as by this time it was really quite warm, and there was an amazing view over the cove and the coastline. I felt really quite content to stand there all day looking out there, but alas I'd only had a mandarin for breakfast and, being 2pm now, my stomach was complaining quite loudly, so I had to return to Hahei.
I spent the afternoon sunning myself on walks along the beach, enjoying the town. It's tiny, and I suspect much busier in the summer (although it's a little out of the way so it's not too huge of a resort), but really a friendly, chilled out little place, you couldn't ask for much better. Oh, and I of course spent a while relaxing in the hostel, which was now quiet as a mouse. Just as I like it!

Hahei

Small cave, Cathedral Cove is just behind it (you can see part of the stack that can be seen through CC just poking out on the right)

The clouds that were chasing me!

Cathedral Cove

From the beach further along

Unconcerned seagull!

More Cathedral Cove! I took a lot of pictures of it, can you tell?

Getting braver and figuring out the waves!

Getting there!!

I wasn't the only one who braved it, but these two ended up soaked up to the waist. Hah.

The quintessential Cathedral Cove shot

Just to show how big/long the cave actually is

The view that made me stand around staring for ages

Happy happy :)

Pretty much the entire township of Hahei

Hahei Beach

Oystercatcher

Errrmm. I didn't do it? Honest?

This is normally a very calm, flat swimming beach. The surfers weren't complaining though!

Bye bye surfer!

I wouldn't like to live in that house...

Whitianga

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 03:55:52 GMT

I'm back! Hurrah! Yes, I have finally come to update you on what I've been doing for the past week or so. I'm in Paihia now, but I've spent most of the time since I departed Taupo in the Coromandel, a peninsula near-ish Auckland.
The day I left Taupo dawned clear and sunny, but I wasn't annoyed at the weather for waiting til I left to clear up, oh no. I was happy, cause I could finally see the volcanoes! Across the lake is the Tongariro National Park, featuring three massive (and active!) volcanoes, all well and truly snow-covered at this time of year. Mt Ruapehu, which last erupted in 1995, I think, is world famous (in New Zealand) for its ski slopes. Whatever makes you happy, I suppose...!?! And I'm sure there was something else I really wanted to see them for... Oh, oh yes - Mount Doom! Come on, you didn't really think that was the last time I'd ever mention Lord Of The Rings, did you? Ruapehu and the much more volcano-esque Ngauruhoe were both used - in their non-snowy form, that is, Mt Doom wouldn't be quite so scary if Frodo and Sam could've sledged their way back down - for the films, predominantly Ngauruhoe. They are surprisingly huge, actually, even from what is quite a long way off right on the other side of Lake Taupo.
My bus was at 10.50am, and I did spend most of the day on one bus or another, eventually arriving in Thames (on the southern edge of the Coromandel) at 3.30pm. The hostel, quite conveniently, was about 5 steps away from the bus station. Not the best hostel in the world, but I can't complain too much when I was only staying for one night and getting a bus first thing in the morning..!

The next day was equally blue-skied, which made for a brilliant bus trip around the Coromandel. The bus route went all the way along the coast up to Coromandel Town before coming around and back down to Whitianga (DIE SANDFLY DIE! sorry - sidetracked by sandfly deciding to settle on my person), my destination. It was back to the typical winding, cliff-hemmed New Zealand road I know and, er, love, but rewarded with amazing views out over green hills and blue seas. You wouldn't have believed it was the middle of winter... Took about two and a half hours to get to Whitianga, where I promptly dumped my bags and ran off towards the ocean with one of the hostel's free to use kayaks. Hurrah! They were just simple open topped boats, but more than sufficient for me to make good use of the weather. I never trust NZ weather to stay nice for long, though it usually actually does, but if you expect it to then it invariably laughs in your face and shoves a storm or two in your direction. In this case, it was feeling mean and did it anyway, so it's lucky I went straight out that day really!
I'm sad to admit that it took me an alarmingly long time to get out to a point where I was actually floating, instead of bobbing up and down on the sand. It was probably only actually a few minutes, but a few minutes feels like a very long time when you're sitting in a boat on the beach and people are walking along looking at you... Hmph. Eventually, after much dignified shuffling and sand-shoving, I was afloat, instantly soggy as it was a boat with holes in the bottom (I know, that doesn't seem logical, why would you go on water in a holey boat?!), an issue compounded by the waves that washed across my boat. Just to make sure, you know, the ocean obviously wasn't sure that my legs were completely drenched. I was out for about an hour, at first was paddling out from shore for quite a while (it's quite a sheltered bay), before I realised that I was a) quite far out and further than I wanted to have to swim if anything went wrong and b) that the swell was getting quite a bit bigger, the wind was picking up, and I wasn't entirely sure if I was moving forwards through paddling or just bobbing up and down at the ocean's will. Hmm. I was having fun though, having most of the bay all to myself, I was having a bit of a sing and dance (as much as one can dance when in a kayak). Don't tell anyone!! I did attempt to stop paddling once or twice just to see, but I can only assume that my efforts were doing something as the boat would start turning around and rolling about quite alarmingly...! I headed for the cliffs and boat lane that runs down to the south end of the beach (I'd come from near enough the north end, it's quite a long beach) and eventually got over there, not before I had a disorientating moment near a buoy - the water was rolling in all different directions around it, I was bobbing, the buoy was bobbing, and I was quite convinced that it and me were very shortly going to become much better acquainted. Fortunately, I missed it easily and got over to much stiller, shallower water near the rocks. Paddled about around there for a while before heading back up along shore to go back, at which point I stumbled upon a riptide-y current-y whirlpool-y thing (I have no idea what it actually was, but it wasn't fun). Not good! I didn't see it until I was on top of it and it'd spun my boat quite violently to face the ocean, had a minor panic but fortunately I'd been going at a reasonable speed and a quick paddle got me back into normal water. Phew! Then came the challenge of the breaking waves as I strayed too close to the actual beach, which turned into quite a fun game! I had to keep an eye out and decide which ones I could just roll over (very entertaining) and which ones were rather big and should be paddled straight into. Of course I occasionally forgot to keep check and got exceedingly wet as swells as big as me broke over my boat and rolled me about, it's surprising how sturdy a big old chunk of plastic can be in water!

That was me satisfied for the day, anyway, and that was the one big thing I'd really wanted to do in Whitianga - which was, as I mentioned earlier, really quite lucky, as overnight some massive storms broke out over the Auckland and Coromandel areas. And I mean massive storms! The gales were up to something like 120/130kph, the rain did not stop, and it was generally not good weather. Most people stayed tucked up in bed dozing and reading most of the day - I didn't manage to force myself up until about 1pm - and a huddle of us formed in the lounge watching rubbish TV (and Prince Caspian). We'd all settled in for the evening when we started getting 10 second powercuts every few minutes - very annoying when you're trying to read/write!! Eventually, at about 8.20pm, it went and stayed gone... You really do forget just how much you rely on power until it's vamooshed. When it looked like it wasn't returning, Monopoly came out, and I spent two hours losing at it with two American girls, by light of failing torches and a (fortunately) freshly charged mobile.

Volcanoes..

And a bit closer, just in case you couldn't see them..

The superduper bay window in the fantastic hostel in Whitianga.

Not a bad view!

Beach at Whitianga

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:36:31 GMT

To be honest, not enough happened today to really warrant its very own update; I don't even have pictures! However, I remembered that I forgot to find some of the rock carvings for the last post, and I'm heading off to the Coromandel tomorrow for about 6 days of nothingness and won't be online in that time. The next time I'm likely to be online will be when I briefly pass through Auckland (ew) on my way to Northland!
Since I'm posting, though, I may as well fill you all in on the thrilling (!) day I've had! Another late get-up this morning, I spent a little while at the Taupo Museum. It's not a bad little museum, it has a reconstructed Chelsea Flower Show winning garden and, not surprisingly, a lot of volcanic rocks.
After hanging around the hostel and watching most of The Dark Knight (can't believe I paid $6 to rent it in Franz, I must've seen it at least three times for free since I left), I went for a wander in the opposite direction to town - there's only so many times you can walk around four streets of shops - and stumbled upon the Taupo Bungy location! No, I didn't do a jump, but I did amuse myself for about an hour watching about ten people hurl themselves off the platform. Quite entertaining watching, or rather hearing, their different reactions on the way down, and I got to chat to some nice people (ie. the sane friends of the jumpers) at the same time.

Well, tomorrow I leave Taupo at 10.40am, getting into Thames at some point after 3pm. I'm only there for the night, only reason I'm really staying there is because it's a bit difficult to get from Taupo to Whitianga all in one day. I'll be in Whitianga for two nights, then going down to nice secluded Hahei for three nights. Hopefully I'll get reasonable weather, as I want to walk to Cathedral Cove (NARNIA!) and make a trip to Hot Water Beach, too. Should be a nice relaxing few days away from much civilisation!

Thought I'd post a few videos that I'm not sure I've posted before.

This gives a good idea of how big the main carving is

Sorry for the huge size; wanted one that shows the lizard and other carvings to the left.

Pokarekare Ana

Huka Falls

Pohutu Geyser

Sky Swing

This is an old one, taken about 3 days after I arrived in Franz when we had a lot of rain.. The river does not usually look anything like this! It normally looks a little more like:

This...

Taupo, The Place The Rain Found Me (Again)

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 06:48:04 GMT

Yes, sadly after a few days of cunningly fooling the rain away, it settled upon my location in Taupo, and it was clearly not happy with me. I didn't get to Taupo til a little after 2pm, and fortunately it was dryish for the short dash to my hostel, but when it got going, wow did it rain. It was almost up to Franz Josef standards! Wasn't too heartened when I saw that metservice reckoned (at the time, anyway, you quickly learn that they change their minds at least every, oh, five minutes or so?) it was going to rain a lot the whole time I was in Taupo. As a result, I didn't do much the first two days I was here - I stretched to going to the cinema to see Easy Virtue on my first night, which to be fair, wasn't really the cinema. It was in their 'Lounge Room', which is indeed a glorified lounge with cinema seats! It has 11 seats, the projector is located in a box next to the bar, and it's one of those pull-down white projector screens.. Hmm! Interesting experience but I had the room to myself, so who am I to complain. Quite an enjoyable film, if you're wondering. I spent the next day in the hostel, watching The Princess Bride, because I can and it makes me happy!

Yesterday (yep, I'm that up to date that I'm doing yesterday!), I stayed in bed til hideously late - I wasn't in the mood for looking at more rain, so I laid around til about 11.30am, eek! - and was pleasantly surprised when I finally went outside to discover blue sky! Not that much, you understand, but it was there all the same, and it wasn't raining. I made up my mind to go on the Huka Falls Cruise, as it was only $35, though in the end it only cost me $30 as I managed to get into town just in time for the slightly cheaper 12.30pm cruise. It's a fairly simple little boat ride out to see Huka Falls, NZ's highest volume waterfall - and you can tell! It's not particularly high, but there is a LOT of water coming over that thing! It's on the Waikato river, also NZ's longest river and Lake Taupo's only outlet. When you consider that Taupo has about 27 streams and rivers going into it, and it's NZ's biggest lake, it's not really surprising there's a lot of water coming down there. The water is disturbingly clear, a bit like the stream at Te Wairoa, only it was much more blue too, and much deeper. Could still see to the bottom in places that were easily 10-20ft deep! Also got to see the equally impressive Aratiatia Rapids before and after the cruise - before you say anything, they aren't there all the time! The river is dammed at the top of the rapids and diverted for power generation, but several times a day they release the water back down the rapids for the tourists to gawk at. Quite surprising how much water fills up down there after you've seen it near enough empty.
I also discovered that Taupo is more than 150 years overdue for another epic volcanic eruption, fun! The lake itself fills a crater left from a few eruptions, including what is recorded as the biggest in the last 5,000 years, the effects upon the sky were seen in China and Rome... Let's hope it doesn't do that any time soon!

Today was definitely a good day - I spent quite a while yesterday trying to sort out going to see the Maori rock carvings, they can only be seen by boat and I wanted to kayak out. There are a few companies that do it, but one was closed til the end of the month and another had no trips running (they tend to have minimum numbers for these things, which is a bummer for me as it's usually two so I have to rely on other people going). I eventually found one, Kayaking Kiwi, who gave the OK to go out this morning! Didn't realise I was going to be on my own, but I was, taken out there by a very lovely chap called Shane. Went out in a double kayak, which was actually quite good for me as I've never been paddling through waves before (they were occasionally at about a 1/2 metre swell, so not too huge) so it was a good introduction. We were out on the water for about 2 hours, and it was glorious weather, especially when we were in the more sheltered bays as there was no wind - mmmm warmth! The skydivers were out on a mission while the weather lasted too. The good thing about winter is, despite the occasional bad weather and troubles getting onto certain activities, it's peaceful. Shane told me that in summer, you would always be able to count at least 50 boats in front of you pretty much all the time - whereas I think we saw a maximum of six boats on the whole trip! Nice to be able to enjoy the lake without speedboats and those silly jetski things flying past every thirty seconds.
The carvings themselves are incredible, they don't look nearly so big as they are on pictures! There's one main one, about 10 metres high, of Ngatoroirangi, the original leader of the iwi (tribe) who settled in the Taupo area. He's obviously quite significant in local Maori legend, and it's accompanied by numerous other carvings, including an impressive lizard. Of course, I was asked how old I thought they were. Now in my defence, I'm rubbish at guessing games, and they look like they've been there since the dawn of time, so I just threw out an answer of 'about a thousand years?!'. Nope, they're all of about 30 years old. Oh, the shame. The tools for carving rockfaces weren't really available to Maori back then, greenstone and rock is only really good for carving wood, but these carvings were done by a master carver over a number of years. They're still an impressive achievement though! As Shane said, it's a bit like Stonehenge - they'll still be around in thousands of years (well, if the lake doesn't blow up), and they'll probably grow in significance. As it is, they're still a pretty big tourist attraction in Taupo.
I didn't take any pictures as the water was a little rough around there, didn't want to risk donating my camera to the fishies, but there's plenty of pictures on the internet so I will dig one up.
Anyway, my love of kayaking has been well and truly resurrected, I'm hoping to go out somewhere up in the Coromandel if the weather's not too bad, they do quite a bit of sea kayaking up there. I have discovered that the paddle has inflicted a nice blister on my thumb though, silly wussy hands! I shall have to toughen them up... Most of this afternoon has been spent having a bit of a wander around town, until the sun stopped being so warm and the wind started being much colder. Last day in Taupo tomorrow - planning on a visit to the museum!

Waikato river

More Waikato

Huka Falls

close up

There were lots of sections of cool layered volcanic rock like this

Aratiatia rapids, before the water was released

Released!

Some rather good street art in Taupo

Post-kayak

It was so ridiculously warm on this beach!

Lake Taupo, the land sticking out there is roughly about where I was kayaking

Waitomo Caves

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:11:24 GMT

This was a surprisingly long day considering how long I actually spent doing 'an activity', but it was worth it all the same! Had to catch the bus at 7.30am, very disapproving to find that it was a KiwiExperience bus I was travelling on (think you have to experience the Kiwi bus kids to understand this)! I think they must've combined the Waitomo Wanderer, that I was booked onto, with the Kiwi bus for this section during quiet season, as I was shortly joined on the shuttle by a bunch (about six or seven) of Kiwi Bus kids, and this made me feel decidedly old. To explain briefly: the majority of them are 18 (occasionally 19), British, and very much their age, usually spend most of their time drinking and being rather concerned by appearance. They're not the most interesting people conversation wise... Still, they weren't too bad, and to be honest I dozed most of the way to Waitomo as it was foggy and wet outside. I was booked onto a trip with The Legendary Black Water Rafting Company, just a 3 hour trip called Black Labyrinth. You can do all sorts of different trips with different companies, anything up to seven hours, but I decided to go with the short one a) because it was really rather well priced (I got it for $94.50) and b) I wanted to give it a go and know that I liked it instead of going on a $400 7-hour trip and realising after 10 minutes I wasn't enjoying it. My trip started at 10.30am, and there was the joyous occasion of wetsuiting up. Oh, how I love wetsuits. Not. Let's face it, even Sandra Bullock would struggle to pull one of these things off, and I am most definitely not Sandra Bullock. Anyhoo, we were driven over to the cave they use, called Ruakuri (translation: two dog) Cave. Perhaps I should explain what I'm doing here; all the trips in this area go into the numerous Waitomo Caves, some are dry, most are wet and involve waterfall jumps, abseilling etc, and floating along the underground streams propped on an innertube (mine only had a couple of jumps, which we had to practice by jumping off a ledge into the river outside. What I didn't swallow, invaded my ears and nose instead). Many of the caves also have glow worms, stalactites and stalagmites, too, so they're really quite impressive.
The trip involved a lot more walking than floating, which I didn't really expect, a bit of a bummer considering that the caving shoes I had were squishing my poor toesies! It's another one of those trips the health and safety folks in the UK would have an absolute heartattack over - some of the water is really quite fast flowing and it's easy to lose your footing. I was, surprisingly, not that bothered by the whole tiny dark space and squeezing thing - there was one point where, floating on our backs on the tube, we had to flatten ourselves and lean our heads right back to one side to fit under the rock! We also did the last section with our headlamps off to see all the glow worms, which resulted in lots of bashing into each other and frequent paranoia on my part that everyone else was miles ahead of me..!! The water was much warmer than I was expecting, too, apparently because of the recent rain flushing the colder water out, though everyone else seemed to be complaining of being utterly freezing. Wimps! The guides were lovely though and very helpful in instances like, er, not being able to stand up and get out of the innertube. I wasn't the only one, by the way. They were nice enough to not make me feel a bit stupid when I managed to fall down a big hole at the end. Twice.

I left feeling really rather happy and actually quite desperate to go back down and do another trip! Sadly, time and money means I can't, but I really do want to come back and give some of the longer trips a go.
Had an hour or two left after de-wetsuiting and drying, so after a wander down the road in what was by now alarmingly warm weather, I dropped into the Caves museum for a bit. Usual sort of thing you'd expect really, exhibits on life in the caves, history of caving, how cave formations er, form, that sort of thing. Upon leaving, I spotted a little green sign with the words 'Waitomo Lookout Walk', and that was fatal... The word 'lookout' instantly ensures I have to go, despite knowing full well it's guaranteed to include a hideous uphill hike, but you see, it's always worth it! I wasn't wrong on this occasion either, lots and lots of stairs cut into the hillside, then a super slippery, rather steep hillside to clamber up. Nice view at the top though!
Of course, by this point, it was 2.55pm, and the bus was picking us up from the village at 3.15pm sharp. Righto - it'd taken me about 15/20 minutes to walk up (I wasn't really sure, I hadn't paid nearly enough attention), I knew it'd take less time to walk downhill because, well, it's downhill, very little effort is required. I decided that I still needed to get a bit of a move on though, which resulted in at least three instances of very nearly ending up rather muddier than I would like (steep hills, muddy footpaths and rain aren't a fabulous combination)... Fortunately there was a steep bank cut into one side of the footpath, very handy for late saves, very impressed with my skills at remaining mudless.
The rest of the day went on with little event, funnily enough the bus was deathly silent as everyone passed out on the way home. I was quite thankful to be leaving that smell behind me the next morning, though...

ho ho ho

Reasonably sure this isn't actually me, but this is the ledge we jumped backwards off for practice..

In the cave (I'm on the left, second person back from the camera, first one in the blue helmet)

Trying to look up a tomo, getting water in eyes. I'm right at the back, I think you can see a tiny bit of my helmet. Not sure how i've managed to disappear in there.

This is definitely a bit we floated down, I remember seeing the footbridge

Same here, we bashed into one of the pillary things...

I can only assume this is glowworms

wandering down the road in Waitomo

halfway up the hill

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:52:41 GMT

Despite having two more nights, the 2nd was my last full day in Rotorua itself (the next day I was going to spend at Waitomo Caves), so I had to cram in the last few things I wanted to do. I was very pleased with my decision to wait til today to go on the Gondola, as it was perfect weather - sunny, reasonably warm and clear blue skies, hurrah! As I was booked onto a shuttle bus at 1.30pm to go out to Te Wairoa, I got up to the gondola for opening at 9am to make sure I had plenty of time. The views were spectacular, as expected, so pottered about taking pictures for a bit before making my way to the luge. They have one of these in Queenstown too, but only two tracks, whereas this one has three (Scenic, Intermediate and Advanced). I spent just over an hour on the luge, as I'd paid for 5 rides, and the chairlift took FOREVER. Honestly, it must've taken at least 7-10 minutes to get back up - yawn! Lucky it was a nice day so I could enjoy the views, I suppose! Requirement is to do the scenic track first, which is fun but not nearly exciting enough, so I headed to the intermediate track for the next 2 goes, planning to do advanced for my last two. So, for ride number 4, I set off down the advanced, and came alarmingly close to death... OK, I might be exaggerating a bit, but it didn't feel like it at the time! It's insane, bumps and slopes and twists and turns all over the place - the luge carts aren't exactly the most secure, solid vehicles to go careering down a hill on, and I knew I was in for trouble when I slowed (as the signs told me to, all the way down) for a corner, but felt the cart beginning to tilt... Desperate not to hurl myself down the concrete, I stopped turning and yanked back on the brakes, but alas it was not enough and I flew off the track, across the safety matting stuff, across the sandy bank, and rather further than I would like down the adjoining hill. Whoops. Fortunately nobody was there to see my failure as I dragged my cart back up the hill (heavier than they look) and rolled down the rest of the track a little slower than before. Safe to say, having no real death wish, I went back to the intermediate track for my last go...
Having not had quite enough adrenaline yet, I headed over to the Sky Swing, which is, as it sounds, a giant harnessed-in swing over the city. It's rather good fun! It's basically a big ball with three seats that I was strapped into - alone, nobody else was around, though funnily enough a huge crowd turned up to watch as soon as I was up in the air - before being winched up and having to release myself by pulling a rope. For the first half of the winching, I was feeling rather comfortable. 'It's not that bad!', I thought happily, rather sure that I could cope with this height. But then it kept going. And going. And going. I wasn't feeling quite so confident when it finally hit the top... Knowing what waiting is like, though, I yanked the rope as soon as I was given the OK and hurtled to my doom! Not really, but it was very, very fast and lots of fun. Also fun was watching the video afterwards and seeing my face growing increasingly worried during the winching process. Teehee.

I came back down the gondola and got the bus back into town in just enough time to have lunch before heading off for the shuttle to Te Wairoa. Te Wairoa is often known as 'The Buried Village', and it's sort of a small scale Pompeii I suppose. It consists of a number of buildings unearthed from the 30s onwards that were buried during the Mt Tarawera eruption, including the Rotomahana Hotel. The hotel is where the rather well known (locally, anyway) lone tourist (a Brit, funnily enough) at the time, Edwin Bainbridge, was killed by a falling verandah whilst trying to flee. It's a bit eerie to wander around the place, a lot of the buildings have been reconstructed a little, presumably to protect the excavations underneath as much as to show what the buildings looked like. It was once a big tourist area in the 19th century, as there were the nearby Pink and White Terraces (Pink And White Terraces, Wikipedia style"). They were destroyed by the eruption, a bit unfortunate for everyone these days, they look like they must've been quite a sight.
I only had about an hour and a half there, having stopped off at a viewpoint to see over lake Rotomahana up to Mt Tarawera itself. Not very long, long enough to see everything but not to linger and have a really good look. I was, however, mystified by the incredibly clear water in a stream that runs through the village, it's filled with some very large Rainbow trout and I could've spent ages watching them! It was a metre or two deep in some places, but I could still easily see right to the bottom. This walk led around to a very impressive waterfall, 30ft high, with a few smaller ones slightly downstream of it. Well worth the steep and slightly alarming steps to get down to it (not to mention back up again).

Me and Hansel enjoying the views...

Rotorua and Mokoia Island in the lake

Rotorua city

Pesky sunshine

This is otherwise known as chairlift-induced boredom

The sky swing (not me, the couple after me). Look how blue the sky is!!!

This is also the couple who went after me, just thought I'd video it to show everyone wot I did! The bloke's voice, by the way, is actually from a repeating video that plays of the swing, I was standing next to it

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:24:31 GMT

You can all breathe a sigh of relief - it's time for my very last Lord Of the Rings tour! Sob sob... Just a half day trip up the road from Rotorua, to Matamata, the site of Hobbiton. It's the only filming site that still has any set remaining - rain stopped the demolition, and in the meantime, the owners of the farm it's situated on asked for what was left to be kept there. It took another two years for them to get permission to run tours out there, but they've got strict regulations - they're not allowed, for example, to paint the hobbit holes or put any flowers outside them. Erm. So, as it is, they're just 'shells' of hobbit holes, which means they're really not that exciting unless you're a big geek, like me. Yes, you are still going to have to look at the pictures.
It was just a half day tour, but I opted for the morning and was gleeful to discover that there was BLUE SKY outside!! Very glad I went for the early start, as it ended up clouding over and drizzling again by the evening. Hah at you, lazy people, the early bird really does catch the worm! Or the sun, you know, whatever. Anyway, I was driven up at 8.35am, on my lonesome once more with a friendly chap called Danny for a driver. It is hard to express the excitement I had to keep contained when he told me that he could give me the 'official line' and announce that they were now rebuilding Hobbiton ready for filming The Hobbit next year. Oh. My. Word. They were only doing the 'gardening' at this point, installing hedges and stuff, as they all need time to grow and look natural (when they originally built it, it was left sitting for a year before filming), but still, eeeeee! Not sure what will happen with the tours when they start rebuilding the hobbit holes proper, I can't imagine they'll continue what with the intense amount of secrecy that goes on with these things.
I was dropped in Matamata, where they have a 'Welcome To Hobbiton' sign and a Gollum statue, all in the middle of the road, presumably so all the locals get a good look and laugh at the fools dashing across to take pictures. As if I'd do something like that.. Ahem. Our tour guide was a woman whose name I cannot remember, I was initially only with a Czech couple but we were joined at the site by a ridiculously huge group of international exchange students. Ergh? The site is right out in the middle of farmland owned by the Alexander family, proper English countryside-esque rolling green hills, no civilisation for miles sort of place. It's a perfect location, and it's impossible to see the set until you get right round in front of it. Had all the places pointed out for where the catering, makeup and various other tents/animal fields were, quite exciting to see trailers for the gardeners in the place all the trailers were for original filming! Amusingly enough, despite it being a sheep farm with thousands of sheep, it was decided they weren't English-looking enough, so 'stunt sheep' were brought in! Ah, the efforts they go to. More excitement caused by some pieces of plywood across the hillside, which are apparently going to be new hobbit holes, which means Hobbiton version 2 is going to be HUGE! This is probably only exciting for, er, me. I'm sure some other geeks out there would appreciate it too. Tour itself was good fun, Hobbiton as a whole (for example, the location of Bag End) didn't actually look much like I envisioned it, ah the magic of film! The party tree is there and, I suppose helped by the fact that there's actually holes there still, most of it looks much the same as it does in the film. I realise this sentence rather contradicts the last, I'm trying to think of a good way to explain it but I am coming up blank... I mean, though, that there are lots of landmarks, like certain hills or trees, that help place the things that are no longer there. There was a lot of digging going on for planting hedges and, bizarrely, a lot of noise coming from across the lake where they were trying to prop a tree back up on the edge. I'm not sure why. Important tree?!
Much fun was had posing for pictures, and there were the usual stills dotted around showing what the view looked like in the actual film. The only downside was that the group of students took a very, very long time posing for billions of different pictures in every combination possible, agh kids. After the tour of Hobbiton itself, we were taken up to a shed for a sheep shearing demonstration and lamb feeding, bit of a random end but it's good for people not familiar with sheep to see stuff to do with the actual working farm.

Returned to Rotorua a little after 1pm and headed over to the museum for the afternoon, which to get to, you have to pass the worst smell ever. Seriously, the sulphur stench is so awful I was genuinely and uncontrollably gagging. Ick. Most expensive museum I've come across too; $12 entry, but I suppose that's mostly because of the odd cinema thing they have, and it includes an optional guided tour. It's inside the old Bathhouse, nice old building with a lot of the original rooms kept much as they were, used as exhibits now. You can climb up to the roof (by stairs!) to get a view over Rotorua town and out to the lake too, quite a good point to see the rim of the crater that all Rotorua and the lake sits in. The odd cinema is a 10 minute recreation and story a little about the history, but mostly about the eruption of nearby Mt Tarawera in 1886 that killed 120+ people. I say odd, because the seats do a jerky vibration thing when the volcano erupts. Hmm. Entertaining enough though.
The evening, I have to say, I spent watching TV and reading children's books. It's not my fault! I went into the Sallies shop to buy a copy of Wuthering Heights I spotted in there for $3, and foolishly had a look at the children's books too - they had two Jill's books and two other horsey books of the same 1960's style. I couldn't help myself! Surely Wuthering Heights makes up for it...

Did I say I didn't do this? Oh. Erm. I may have lied.

Gollum scary!

Bag End is the top left hole, with lots of windows

Where Gandalf drove his cart after the bridge, also some hedge they're in the process of planting... Quite fun seeing loads of trucks carting tons of hedge down to the set!

The party treeee!

More hedge

Bag End at the top, Sam's was in the hill that's just beginning on the left hand side but it was removed :(

The Green Dragon, the bridge and the old mill

The Green Dragon

Can just about see three yellow markers across there, that's where The Green Dragon was, the bridge went across from around there to that hilly bit sticking out in the lake on the right.

Sam's hobbit hole... sort of

Bag End in full filmy glory

Not so much glory, but me.

I am not a hobbit.

Looking down from Bag End

Hard to get the angle right but you get the picture

One of the boards for a new hobbit hole (supposedly)

More boards

Sheep!

Shearing does not look fun

Hedge truck!

Rotorua from museum roof

Rotorua (1)

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 05:51:55 GMT

Here follows the period of time where, after weeks of cunning evasion, winter finally found me. This was more than a little inconsiderate of it, as pretty much everything I wanted to do in Rotorua was outdoors. Then again, not much that I've wanted to do in NZ has been indoors, it's just not that sort of country. My first full day in Rotorua, the 29th, started off alright though, so I braved it and hopped on the bus out to the Agrodome and Zorb (they're opposite each other).
The Agrodome is basically a big farm with lots of sheep, they put on a show with (I think) 19 rams, their herding dogs, and a cow, and do farm tours. In more recent years they've started branching out into the 'adventure' things, I suppose helped by having Zorb across the road, so these days they also have a bungy, 'swoop' swing and a few other things. I wasn't doing any of those though (I know, what's wrong with me?!), just there for the sheep show. Basically, what they do is get these rams out onto platforms on the stage (you'll see what I mean in the pictures), and go through their uses. Wool, that is, and meat. Yummy. Evidently some sheepies are much tastier than others, don't ask me though as I really can't remember which... Remembering is made especially difficult when considering that at least half of them were named after various British counties, SOME OF THEM THE SAME COUNTY! Dorset Horn, Dorset Down, Dorset Up, Dorset Black, Dorset Pink, Dorset Short And Fat, Dorset Stupid But Cute, etc etc. Down side was that the presenter chap was talking very, very quickly and ever so slightly difficult to hear, was good fun though. There were three dogs brought out, one bred to herd sheep silently and two others that were not nearly so quiet, some duck herding was done before the dogs went to plonk themselves on the backs of the poor old sheep - not that they seemed to mind much, too busy sleeping. Also brought out a cow to milk, slightly baffling, closely followed by the biggest lambs I've ever seen, supposedly only a few days old. Yep, maybe if they were going to be five foot high sheep (can you imagine?!)!! I spent a while giving the dogs cuddles afterwards, one of them was an especially dopey looking creature that was quite endearing, then dropped into a small room - not literally dropped, I walked through the doors, but you know what I mean - with the name 'Animal Nursery'. Yay, baby animals! Sure enough there were some normal sized lambs out with the Titan Lambs from the stage, and puppies that I really, really wanted to shove in my pockets and run away with..
After I'd finally realised there was no chance of successful escape with any of the various fluffies, I had a farm tour, which owing to the rain turned out to be a private farm tour just for me! Any excuse to see animals for me, had to smile and nod often as I was told things I already know about llamas/sheep/goats, pleased to say I was also told things I don't know about other animals and was rather surprised by the size of some of their cows up close - remind me not to argue with them! Got to sample some rather tasty Kiwifruit wine too, not complaining!

I was then dropped off over at the Zorb, by this point it was most definitely raining and horribly cold. Not a problem, except that I was doing Zydro, otherwise known as rolling down a hill in a ball filled with water, which meant padding around shoe-and-coat-less beforehand. Brrrr!! Trying to have a conversation with the chap driving you up the hill is distinctly difficult when you have to fit it inbetween the loud clanks of your teeth violently chattering... Tried not to look too disbelieving, too, when informed that the best way to get into the impossibly small (well, small when you're a me-sized person, anyway) hole was to 'dive like Superman'. Really? I mean, really really? There is definitely no dignified way to get into a Zorb ball. The water inside was mercifully warm so aside from the initially 'errrgh, wet!' feeling, it was rather nice. I was only a tiny bit nervous (excusable, I feel, when facing rolling down a hill in a distinctly unsafe looking manner), but I was mostly rather looking forward to it, Zorbing is more fun than scary. Had to wait for a tap on the outside of the ball for the OK, at which point I had to launch myself by pushing on one side of the ball. Eek! It's one you have to experience yourself, it's very silly and lots of fun sliding and flipping around in there, and it feels like it lasts much longer than it looks! Definitely a good giggle, though having to do another classy slide out of the ball whilst the photographer takes pictures of you in all your soggy feet-first glory is a little embarrasing..!! Promptly legged it to get changed into dry clothes before I developed hypothermia (not before they made me do one of those silly jumping photos, here's me thinking I'd get through life never having to do that...), feeling very satisfied with myself and happily able to spend the rest of the day hiding inside in the dry.

Zzzzzz!!

Sheep shearing demonstration

Poor sheepies!!

Just realised this picture makes it look like the dog was chomping on the sheep. It wasn't!

Dopey doggy!

I remember that this one is used for carpet...

CUTE! It would take a heart of stone not to aahh a little bit at that, surely...

You won't hear me say this often, but I actually thought this was quite a sweet looking alpaca..

Giant sheep!

Away we goooo!!

you can just about see my feet sticking up in there

Even I can't figure out what I'm doing in there

soggy!

He told me to do a thumbs up, so I did.

That's... attractive

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear.

Day 2 in Rotorua wasn't much better with the weather, but it was only really a light drizzle and I couldn't afford to waste days doing nothing in Rotorua - I had a lot I wanted to do! So it was back on the bus (they have quite a good public transport system in Rot) to go out to Te Puia, the main geyser/daytime maori experience place, just outside town. They have the most famous of the geysers, Pohutu, as well as plenty of other hot water pools and mud pools. Surprisingly, it didn't smell as bad as I was expecting - think I've forgotten to mention that Rotorua is infamous for its appalling smell! Its entire industry in the past, and the reason it has always had a large Maori population, has been to do with the fact it's a big geothermal area. Loads of geysers and hot pools, not to mention volcanoes (Rotorua itself and the lake are all within an ancient volcanic crater), all of which give off a lovely sulphur aroma. Basically, Rotorua smells like really bad fart.
To be fair, it's not that bad in the town centre, it gets stronger in certain areas though (especially by the museum, it's enough to make one vomit a little in the mouth over there) and those tend to be, naturally, where the pools occur. It's quite bizarre going through Rotorua and the surrounding area, there's just steam billowing up all over the place from these pools. Anyway, back to Te Puia, I spent a while initially wandering around having a look at the plopping mud pools before heading up to where the Pohutu geyser is. It goes off several times an hour, and alongside it there's a terrace to sit on - the pleasant part of this is that the rock making up the terraces is heated from the water below! Lovely! Add that to the drifting steam and I was really quite warm, despite it being a cold day. The Prince Of Wales Feathers geyser, next to Pohutu, started going only a few minutes after I got there, and that is used as an indicator for when Pohutu will go (ie. when Feathers reaches its full height, there's only a minute or two to go). The Feathers geyser is impressive by itself, and was going for about 20 minutes before the main event started - and it was definitely impressive! Well worth the wait, it took a few minutes to really get going but was well up to 30ft. I thought it would only last a minute or two, but it was going for easily 20-30 minutes (though not as impressive towards the end as it had been at the start, so I'm glad I was there for that). Being around all the volcanic formations and steaming pools really felt a bit surreal, like being in that Volcano film (not sure if I'm thinking of the one with Pierce Brosnan or the other one, either will do I suppose!). Spent a little while longer wandering, then headed through their reconstructed Maori village - which was much better than the numerous others I've seen thus far - to the marae for one of the daytime concerts they put on. Really enjoyed that, it was just a half hour/40 minute example of some of the traditional Maori songs, dances and games, including Pokarekare Ana (which I filmed, cause I love it). Could've spent all day staring at the carvings they had, they're just amazing - wish I could win the lottery just to buy some of the massive carvings they had in the giftshop! Not surprisingly they cost in the thousands of dollars, they're mostly done on site at Te Puia's national carving school and the really big, intricate ones can take weeks or months to do. I settled for just taking pictures of them!

Pohutu and Prince Of Wales Feathers - hard to show how impressive they are through pictures

The geysers from a distance - they're in the middle

Marae

Waka

The gap is where the Tiki that I bought resided, before I took him...

Pokarekare Ana

Napier and Gisborne

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:25:43 GMT

I have absolutely no idea how I used to manage to function back in uni on 4 hours or less of sleep a night on a such a regular basis (I think the simple answer is, I didn't), because I felt like death waking up at 6am for the bus to Napier. Annoyingly, though, I couldn't really sleep and so the five hour journey was not the most pleasant.
I was picked up by the slightly odd owner of the hostel I was staying in, hoorah for not having to walk around with my backpack, and spent the afternoon having a bit of a wander and sitting on the pebble beach, as it was gloriously sunny and really quite warm. Napier is quite a nice, relaxed little town, with an awful lot of cafes, but the architecture is nice (it's predominantly Art Deco style, rebuilt that way in the 30s after the whole town was destroyed by an uber-mega-earthquake). You have to look up quite a lot to see the Art Deco now, as most of the shops have modern fronts on the street level, but it's still pretty. I believe I got an early night - it wouldn't surprise me. 10pm is deathly late these days, how cool am I?

The next day wasn't quite what I expected. Expectations: Go to the aquarium, ooh and aah at some fishies, wander around town some more. Actual? Go to aquarium, ooh and aah at some fishies, swim with some 10 foot sharks...
Nope, I'm not joking! I'd noticed something about swimming with the sharks on the website the day before, but as I hadn't booked and it was too late to check, I didn't think too much of it, but asked about doing it on arriving at the aquarium. Basically, for the sum of fifty fine New Zealand dollars, I would get to go snorkelling in the shark tank. To be honest they probably could've charged double that and I'd have still done it, but as it was I paid and had about an hour and a half to explore the aquarium. It's quite a good one, they have a gigantic crocodile (erk) and all the other usual fishy delights, not to mention Kiwi (I'm not sure there is anywhere in NZ that doesn't have kiwi). My brain, naturally, chose this moment to decide that it was really quite scared of giant fish and started making me feel nervous just looking at them, hurrah! I'm sure you can imagine my further glee at discovering the tank I was due to be swimming in also contained both Moray and Conger Eels. I'm sorry, sharks are fine, but eels are just beyond terrifying... Fortunately, as I discovered when wetsuited up (ah, they're so attractive, those wetsuits), the eels were on the other side of a roped off area so snorkellers couldn't swim near them. Phew.
Snorkelling, it turns out, is much harder than it looks, and it took me a while to get used to breathing, especially as (naturally) I am not entirely fond of sticking my face in water with my eyes open. I was wearing goggles, but that didn't help much, it was still weird. It's all very well telling yourself to relax, but it takes a while for that message to get through to the brain and start breathing well enough that some oxygen actually reaches the lungs... It was quite exciting once I realised I could do it, though I occasionally did go a bit funny again when I forgot to concentrate or got too much water in the snorkel (I swallowed a lot. They may have had to refill the tank upon my departure.) and had to start again.
Anyway, the sharks! There were two (I think two, I definitely saw two together though there could've been three, I suppose) of the broadnose sevengill sharks, numerous school sharks (much smaller, but also much more typical sharky-looking) and a bronze whaler (well, I only saw the one). Also plenty of stingrays and other gigantic fish, to be honest I found the gigantic fish scarier than the sharks, perhaps because there were lots of them in a big group... The sevengills came closest to me on the most frequent basis, I was in there for about half an hour and they would often swim just below or to one side of me, and I could follow them about which I rather enjoyed doing - even gave one a bit of a 'stroke', by the tail end mind you, not the business end, I'm not quite that brave! The bronze whaler was an amazing looking animal, it actually is a bronzey colour, definitely a nice change from the usual greys and blues. Towards the end of my swim I spotted a family down in the tunnel, so gave them a wave and promptly got half the tank in my mouth and spluttery splashed my head out above water to breathe. Classy. Still, that's definitely something I never thought I'd be doing in NZ, and I'm not going to forget it in a hurry either!
Spent the evening watching films (Made Of Honour and Quantum Of Solace, a natural combination), and didn't go to bed til after midnight - go me!

The 26th (the next day, silly!) involved more time wandering around Napier before catching the 1pm bus to Gisborne, where I discovered that one should always pay heed to 60% ratings on bbh.co.nz, they are that low for a reason... Sadly, there are a lack of hostels in Gisborne, and as I was only there for 2 nights I just rather got on with it. My room was OK, so I happily tucked up in my sleeping bag to read and do cross stitch in the evenings!
The one full day I spent in Gisborne, the 27th, I managed to spend a mighty six hours walking around the town, and up Kaiti Hill, which is the lookout point over the city and beaches. It was quite a nice walk and there were plenty of James Cook statues and mentions, as Poverty Bay (Gisborne) was where he first stepped onto New Zealand soil. There's a statue up on Kaiti Hill that is supposed to be Captain Cook, and was originally thought to be, but is not only in a distinctly non-British outfit, he also looks absolutely nothing like Cook. Hah! Gisborne is alright, I suppose, but not a patch on most of the rest of NZ tourism-wise, there's not really much there if you're not a surfer.
The evening involved a trip to the cinema to see The Proposal (it was that, Terminator, or Transformers. I've already seen Transformers and I believe I have already discussed my Terminator issues), which was entertaining rubbish, just what I like!

Leaving Gisborne threw up a few issues with a very rude and unhelpful bus driver, evidently there to prove that not everyone in NZ is friendly! Having never had to have a ticket for Intercity before (in the South, I would just give my name and that was all), I naturally stopped printing them off or taking note of booking numbers a long, long time ago, but suddenly this driver was insisting upon a ticket. I showed him my ID, apologising for not having a ticket, but alas - my name wasn't on the list! He demanded my booking number - um, did I not just tell him I didn't have it?! - before throwing a paddy about having to ring head office, where a woman, sounding very unconcerned by my lack of ticket, confirmed I was booked onto the bus, and I was allowed on. Erk. Many panic-stricken scenes running through my head involving being chucked off! Daft thing was, I apologetically explained that I wasn't used to printing off tickets as I was used to the South Island where they weren't used, to which he retorted, "this is a national carrier and you need a ticket". So apparently a completely different service in the South Island then, eh?! Silly, silly man. Still, the one passenger who'd got on before me was very nice to me and told me which side to sit on to get the good views, which made me feel much better. It was quite late by the time I got to Rotorua, and it was raining (hasn't stopped, actually, boo), so I mostly hibernated indoors with my book. Which is still, sadly, Great Expectations. Darn these classics and their taking longer than three days to read!

My favourite of the art deco buildings

GISBORNE

Captain James Cook (actually Cook)

Gisborne, under some strange looking clouds.

Captain James Cook (definitely not Cook), and Hansel...

Gisborne suburbs

22/06-23/06, last days in Wellington

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:01:12 GMT

Didn't really do an awful lot on the Monday, the 22nd. I did initially head off to the Mediaplex in the morning, thinking it was a sort-of museum for New Zealand film/media, but it's not. It's a glorified cafe with a few screens around it! I left about 30 seconds after entering, and went across town to the Wellington City and Sea Museum, which was much more like it! It's not like Te Papa, though it does have the odd interactive display (like a knot tying bit, and a few very good film displays), it's really more of a traditional sort of museum, dedicated (oddly enough) to Wellington. Situated in the former Bond Store, the storage place for goods that needed customs tax paying on them, it had two floors dedicated to the city, and one for the sea - Wellington is right next to the Cook Strait, where there have been an awful lot of shipwrecks. Spent a few hours there, before heading for Cuba Street and - finally - the infamous Bucket Fountain! I know I'm sad, but it may or may not have made my day a little bit. Felt a bit daft taking pictures of it surrounded by lunching business people...
That was about it for my day, more internetting and book reading was the order of the rest of the day.

And OK, you're going to hate me, because the next day was my third-and-not-final LOTR tour. Wellington was rather the base of operations for the LOTR films, and it's still very active film-wise, with Peter Jackson still living and working there on new films, The Hobbit film coming up (Guillermo Del Toro, the director, is actually in town at the moment, along with Alan Lee and obviously Peter Jackson), James Cameron was also there recently to film some parts of new film Avatar. Weta Digital/Workshop is still based all over Miramar peninsula, and they work on the special effects for all sorts of films these days, including Narnia, and all the constant goingson really gives it a proper Wellywood feel! It's quite an exciting place to be, filmwise.
Anyway, the morning was spent on locations, and I was joined by two Aussies who were just doing the half day tour. They weren't especially LOTR fans - the bloke seemed to think he was, but a) he hadn't read the book and b) THOUGHT SEAN CONNERY WOULD'VE MADE A GOOD GANDALF. AGH. Both myself and the guide, Laura (lovely person, and actual LOTR fan, huzzah), were slightly startled by this and didn't quite know what to say. Hmm. I am pleased to say that some of the stories told by Laura were ones I didn't already know, quite an achievement, and very impressive!
Back to the locations, the first was on Mt Victoria. After a brief stop at the lookout point on the top, looking out over the city, Miramar and Welly's ever-so-huge 'international' airport (runways: one. destinations: Sydney, Brisbane and Auckland.). Then down into the wooded footpaths, which were used for the Hobbiton woods, and it was recognisable! Always nice - especially as the trees were much the same. Recognisable trees are really good for these things, you can really pinpoint the exact location with a good distinctive tree. The usual pictures were posed for, then it was off to the quarry used for Helm's (Hell's) Deep and Minas Tirith. Hell's Deep is well known amongst LOTR fans as just about every stuntman was involved and will tell endless stories of the awfulness of the three months of gruelling night shoots. There's obviously nothing there now as it's a working quarry again, but good to finally see the place of endless stuntman suffering after hearing so much about it...

It was then about a forty minute drive to the stunning Kaitoke National Park, used for Rivendell scenes. They've even renamed the place used 'Rivendell'! After the book, not the films, naturally, nobody wants to start paying New Line for rights (they gained permission from Christopher Tolkien to rename it, without telling him it was the place they were using for the films). This provides excellent photo opportunities with the Rivendell sign... There's also an epic swingbridge, they are still horrible and scary.
Next up was Harcourt Park, in Upper Hutt just outside Wellington, used for Isengard in the scenes with Christopher Lee and Ian McKellen. Amusingly, there's a long strip of grass on one of the terraces that is a completely different type to the rest - all because of LOTR! There was a long white path put in, that can be seen when Gandalf gallops through the Gate of Isengard, but when removing the path, they realised they didn't know what type of grass it was in the park. Turns out the type they picked was the wrong one, and now there is a permanent strip of finer, lighter grass running through the park... There's also, nearby, a patch of much longer grass as a result of a small ditch being made in the flat ground of the park. Also a result of LOTR, as this was where they built a tree to be pulled down by the orcs. So much for leaving things looking untouched!
Final destination of the morning, before we got rid of the non-fan, unenthusiastic Aussies, was the Hutt River, one of several used for the River Anduin. We dropped the Aussies off in the city, where I then also hopped in the front for a fantastic afternoon of LOTR gossip and general chatting about all sorts of things, from Wellington, JAFAs and travelling to Australians and their issues with the Kiwi accent. We went to the former Chocolate Fish Cafe, now Scorch-O-Rama, for lunch, apparently a favourite with visiting famous folks and with the LOTR cast when they were here, then most of the afternoon was spent on the Miramar peninsula. Had lots of houses pointed out, including ones lived in by the actors while they were over here for filming (I have no idea how they know these things, stalkers!), and the former army barracks/field where the village of Bree was built. Also paid a visit to the Weta Cave, a new 'museum' and shop located in the old, original Weta building (it still has the infamous Kong Was Hair in the cement outside, done long before LOTR when they were first trying to remake King Kong). Had fun gazing longingly at all the models and swords, especially the ones in the shop - want want want! I had to leave in the end before I started buying all sorts of things, luckily the two I really loved (models of Prince Caspian on a horse and Reepicheep) weren't available to buy yet, otherwise terrible things may have happened to my bank account (I have just discovered that they cost, respectively, $599 and $449, but have all already been pre-sold. Lucky escape!). We spent a while then touring around looking at aforementioned houses, having many large warehouses pointed out as being owned by Peter Jackson - I'm pretty sure he must own most of the peninsula - and Stone Street Studios, where Cameron was filming Avatar recently, and where much of the blue screen studio work was done. We went up onto a hill (also owned by Peter Jackson, but with his permission) to spy down on Stone Street Studios, nothing happening unfortunately.. tut! Very last stop of the day was around the south coast of Wellington, to see another quarry used for Sam's slide down the rocks outside the gates of Mordor, and some pick-up shots, as well as having a look at the distant rocky point where the seal colony resides.

The day didn't end there, oh no. That night, I was going to the cinema to see the preview of Transformers 2! Not because I'm a Transformers geek. Nope. Because I'm a LOTR geek. It was at the Embassy Theatre, yup, that one that Return of the King premiered at. Frankly, it's the most amazing cinema I have ever, ever seen, it's basically like a proper theatre, but with a cinema screen. All the seats have plaques on them with the name of the person who sat there for the premiere (or so I was told, they certainly do feature all the LOTR cast members but a lot of sources actually say they are for people who donated money to the refurbishment of the theatre). The film was quite good, to be fair, I approved greatly of the obviously late-ADR-added Swine Flu joke. It was the first film I've ever been to where the audience has applauded at the end... It was worth going for the atmosphere, with actual cinema fans who laugh at the funny bits! Hurrah! The bad bit would be the fact that it didn't even start until 11.15pm, which got me back to the YHA at 2am, just in time for 4 hours sleep before my early bus. Ouch.

Miramar peninsula

Where the hobbits fell...

Get off the road!

Posing, badly

This needs a large log, four hobbits, a ringwraith and lots of filters

More hobbits and more filters required

Just a ringwraith in this one

THE quarry

Minas Tirith buildings on said quarry

Kaitoke

Swingbridge

Yay!

Oh my

At Harcourt Park, cover the bench and add two Wizards

Can't see it too well in the picture unless you look really hard, but this is the grass strip

Better

Hutt River

Here follow Weta Cave pictures..

Oh I want them all

KONG WUZ HAIR!

Wellington Day 2, 20/06

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:05:27 GMT

Well this was a fun-packed day and a half... I believe I mentioned something about accomodation issues for this day - I ended up having to book into the Travelodge for the night, so I packed most of my things away into a locker at YHA (as if I was going to cart my entire backpack across Wellington for one night!), and headed off to Te Papa for the day as I couldn't check into the hotel until 2pm. Te Papa is the 'big' museum of New Zealand, fairly well known and one of the must-see sort of places. It's probably about the most interactive museum I've ever seen, there's computer gamey things and videos all over the place, must cost a fortune! Naturally couldn't resist two simulator rides they had, so I did those first before the crowds arrived - as a side note, I'm very impressed with myself. It took me three hours of cursing the endless numbers of children and wondering why they weren't in school to realise that it was Saturday. Well done, me!
Anyway, the first one was a 'Deep' one, exploring the underwater Brothers Volcano a little way off the NZ coast, the second (and slightly more amusing/fun) was a collection of New Zealand scenes and Kiwi life like mustering, cycling and er, falling off the Sky Tower.

Won't go into too much museum detail, you have to see it really, though worth noting about the Colossal Squid, apparently the only specimen available to see in a museum in the world. It's big! I managed to spend about four hours in the museum before my brain started to fry and stop taking anything in, but it's quite an enjoyable museum. The only downside, really, is that it doesn't have anything from the rest of the world really (except a bit on Scotland as so many early immigrants came from there), which is what I love about museums like the British Museum. Still, it's supposed to be a dedicated-to-New-Zealand museum, and it's quite impressive that they manage to fill such a huge museum with all things Kiwi.
By the time I was finished, it was time to check into the Travelodge, so off I went in search of it (it's quite cunningly hidden off Lambton Quay). Ah, PRIVACY! Despite the expense, I was actually privately quite pleased about having to go in a hotel... Peace, quiet, and a fridge! Heck, it even had a horrendously overpriced minibar, I've never been in a hotel with a minibar before!
I made good use of my room by crashing out with the TV on - whatever I wanted to watch! HURRAH! Shame there was only rubbish on, but still, I chose to watch the rubbish... So what was that sporting event that caused all the upheaval?
That'll be the All Blacks vs France then. I, naturally, was obliged to buy a ticket (sorry, mum). As I'd used the magical credit card of doom, I didn't quite want to trust that it'd worked until I got to the stadium (handily, about a 10 minute walk from the hotel, I love Wellington). It had! HOORAY HOORAY HOORAY! Took great effort not to do a happy dance in little circles in the middle of the crowd... And I am now very pleased to say that my first ever live rugby match saw the All Blacks beat the French 14-10! I'm not sure my nerves could take much more rugby - though it was important for them to win (they'd been beaten by the French the week before in Dunedin, but have never lost a match against them in the Westpac Stadium), it wasn't a really really important match, but I was still ridiculously nervous, far too many near misses for my liking! They (the All Blacks) made quite a lot of mistakes, which can I suppose be partly attributed to the wind and rain, but they still managed to keep possession for the majority of the game and I loved the match! Should probably learn a bit more about the rules, mind you...

No pictures from this day, sorry! Just to make up, I'll do the next day in here too so you get some pretty pictures...

The next day, actually, consisted of my making the most of not having to check out til 11am (aahh, lie in). Then it was off to the Beehive, New Zealand's unbelievably hideous parliament building. No, I'm being a little unfair, the building next to it (which actually contains the debating chamber thingum) is actually quite nice looking. They operate hour-long tours of the buildings, which are actually quite interesting (honest!). There's an awful lot of modern 'art' in there, but there's also some good art and statuey things, as well as a clock made by somebody Of Barnard's Inn. This excited me mostly because I am currently reading Great Expectations. I've been 'currently reading' it for about a month, but perhaps I shouldn't mention that...
By the time I emerged, the weather was clearing quite nicely, so I headed off to the cable car. It's been around for about 100 years and is still used as transport up the hill by locals living up there, there's a great little museum dedicated to the cars at the top with some old models, not to mention fantastic views out over Wellington. The thing with Wellington is, even though it's a big city, it doesn't feel like a capital city. It doesn't even have really old buildings like, say, London, but it still has plenty of personality and I genuinely like the place. There's also botanical gardens up there (I'm back on the cable car now), which I had a quick wander around, before returning to check back into the YHA and spend the evening updating this blog. I hope you appreciate it!!!

The Beehive. Yuk. The nicer building you can see part of on the right

Cable Car tunnel from Lambton Quay station

A sun dial, which does not work when the sun is not shining.

Krupp Gun in the Botanical Gardens

Welly

Old cable car

Wellington City!

It's windy in Windy Welly...

Cable car

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:54:14 GMT

Ah, the next day (18th June) wasn't that exciting, either. It was the day I left the South Island though - sob! Had to get the bus up to Picton, where the ferry leaves from, and then said ferry at 1.15pm to Wellington, aka Windy Welly, aka Wellywood. The ferry takes about 3 1/2 hours, I was on the Kaitaki, which is the biggest of the boats. It has an onboard cinema, bar, cafes, playroom, all sorts... As the films were Star Trek and Angels And Demons, I decided to just admire the view - I wanted to see the Marlborough Sounds anyway, which are on the way out of Picton and notoriously pretty. Otherwise just sat around reading, did much the same once I arrived in Wellington too! Staying at the YHA, in a really good location across from the supermarket just outside the main city noise but still central. Literally 30 seconds away from The Embassy Theatre where Return Of The King had its world premiere too. Ahhh, being a geek...

The next day, I am pleased to report, was altogether exciting and brilliant! The weather, though a tad chilly (it is the equivalent of the northern hemisphere's December, after all), was sunny and warm again, and I was going to THE ZOO! It's about ten minutes bus ride away, I was so eager I ended up getting there before it was even open... I decided to do the Red Panda encounter, it obviously costs more than just normal entry but it meant I was going to be able to hand feed Red Pandas, seemed like a fairly unique experience!
I had about two hours to go before I was due at my encounter, so I started walking around the zoo. It's a small zoo, but it's genuinely a fantastic one, helps that it's set up on a hill with a view out over the city but the enclosures are all huge, well thought out and with really good viewpoints. There was a large school group in, ergh, but I fortunately managed to avoid them most of the day - only really came across them at a few talks. I did discover in the first two hours that there are apparently only about 5,000 kea left, didn't realise it was so few. Also got a giggle at some cute little monkeys with huuuuge moustaches, I am a little on the easily amused side but still...

The encounter itself was so, so worth the extra money! I loved it - it was just me, a young lad and (presumably) his grandfather/uncle/some relation, called Peter. We sat down on logs and one of the pandas (related to Lemurs, by the way, nothing to do with the black and white pandas at all) came over to sit on us and eat the fruit we had. We only fed two of them, the rest were far too busy sleeping! Alright for some. The first one was rather a fan of pear, and objected when I tried to ply him with grapes whilst hiding a huge chunk of pear in my other hand - he wasn't having any of it, and promptly climbed up me to get it! The second panda was a cute chap called Sir Ed, named after Edmund Hillary, who leapt from lap to lap, they're quite heavy little animals as it turns out. Were in there for about half an hour feeding, then it was off to the rest of the zoo!
I was there until after 3pm, having got there at 9.30am, not bad for a small zoo! Went to a few more feed/talks, including the tigers and the kiwi display featuring Tahi, their one legged kiwi (his leg got caught in a stoat trap). Also got pounced at by a lion - turns out that crouching down by the glass in their enclosure whilst they're trying to eat isn't a good move! Kindof like those videos that always turn up on You've Been Framed, glad nobody was around to laugh at me... Oh, and I got to feed a giraffe again! Not as good as at Orana though.

Don't remember doing much for the rest of the day except crashing out in the TV lounge and watching a bad film until 11pm, great day though, I'd recommend Wellington Zoo to anyone - if Wellington wasn't a great city anyway, it'd be worth going just for the zoo!

From the Picton ferry port

Capuchin

Pelican, BIG BIRD

SEE HOW FANTASTIC THESE MONKEYS ARE?!

Cute!

He wanted the PEAR!

The pouncing lion!

Not many zoos with a view that good..

Chimps

Tahi

Hungry tiger!

Kangaroos sleeping, not dead!

haha

They get better!

Pelican again

Punakaiki

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:07:15 GMT

This was the part where I got reaaalllly sick of buses, as I got up for the 7.15am Intercity to Punakaiki. I'd forgotten, it seems, the great vomit-inducing joys of West Coast highways, or perhaps thought that after experiencing Mt Hercules three times I could cope with anything (I was wrong). Fortunately I was able to sleep for the first bit of the near enough five hour journey, and awoke to cloudy but rather spectacular views from the Hope Saddle. It was cloudy and rainy much of the journey down, despite being sunny in Nelson and at the other end in Punakaiki, too, luckily for me. We did have a brief stop in Murchison at a cafe, which allowed me to rid myself of the green tinge to my face and ponder the whereabouts of my motion sickness tablets. In case you're wondering what is so very icky about these lovely West Coast roads, it's because they all look like this, or worse, give or take a few steep(er) cliff edges on both sides. Fun fun fun!
Anyway, less of the West Coast Journey of Doom, more of Punakaiki - got there just before 12pm and checked into the teeny tiny hostel, basically the only one in Punakaiki. There is another but it's 3kms up the road, 3.5kms from Pancake Rocks, so not terribly convenient. As previously mentioned, there was barely a cloud in the sky, the sun was beaming down, and all was well, so I wandered straight up to have a look at the rocks/blowholes. The rocks, named Pancake Rocks cause they supposedly look like stacks of pancakes (really?), were all once at the bottom of the ocean, made up of limestone and mudstone and shunted up out of the ocean a long time ago. There's a few blowholes dotted about amongst them, too. Oh, and I did also pass a cavern on the way up there. Spotted the signpost on the road, thought 'oooooh how exciting', and promptly dashed over to investigate. Changed my mind, though, when I went inside. Dark, scary, very dark, water noises, very very dark. Did I mention it was dark?! So, I'm afraid I have to be very unexciting and say that I ventured as far as one metre in, then scarpered back to safety. I bet you wouldn't go in there on your own either...
Anyway, where was I... Blowholes and rocks! Well, needless to say, pancake rocks were very impressive and spectacular and all expected things. There's a loop walk that takes about 15/20 minutes and goes around all the blowholes and rocks, with copious amounts of flax lining the pathway. The blowholes were not so great - however, not to worry, because this was about 1.30pm, about four hours before high tide, so it wasn't that surprising. I headed back down to my hostel, and couldn't help but clamber down the rocks to the beach. Note: West Coast incoming tides are a bit scary. The Tasman sea is a rough one and the waves on that day were huge, but I still didn't think they looked too bad, so I stood on the beach where the waves would just about reach me as they came up the beach. AND THEY STOLE MY LEFT JANDAL!

The next wave kindly returned it to me, but still, how very dare it?! I was rather pleased to see it wash up as I sullenly contemplated having to shell out another $15 for a new pair (these ones have kiwis on them and everything!), but it was none the worse for its adventure into the Tasman and I am fully flip-flopped to this day. I still played about in the surf for a while until it seemed the waves were out to get me, at which point I retreated back into the hostel to remove the sand from between my toes.
Eventually went back up to the rocks at about 4pm - high tide was 4.52pm - and this time I wasn't disappointed! The first blowhole, Chimney Pot, hadn't been anything at all the first time I went up. I'd stared at the rocks for ages trying to work out what the sign was there for, to no avail, but when it's going, it's really rather good! I didn't get any videos of the blowholes, but to show off their impressive-ness, I'm seeking some out on YouTube, so here's one of Chimney Pot (might want to turn the volume down).
Next up was Putai, which is the most photographed blowhole (should point out that I did manage to completely miss one of them off on my walk around, can't even remember what it's called - Sudden Sound, I think) and seriously impressive. This was the only one that had really been doing anything earlier, but the spurts this time were ten times bigger! Every now and again there'd be a small-medium sized one, then without warning a giant blast would come up, so I stood watching for what must've been about half an hour in the end. I took a billion pictures but no video as timing was difficult, but someone managed to get one of roughly the same size I was seeing here.
Feel rather sorry for the many people who stop off here briefly during the day and only see them at low tide, it was well worth spending the night there to see them in full force.
I could see the sun setting as I walked back to the hostel, so I went back down onto the beach to watch it (and take pretty pictures!).

The next day was rather dull, stayed in bed a long time, then took over a sofa to read a book as my bus wasn't until 3pm. Had minor stressful time trying to sort accommodation for one particular night in Wellington - seems I'd overlooked a rather important sporting match... More on that later. Got back to Nelson at 7.30pm, didn't stay awake very long. Doing nothing is tiring!

Scary cavern!

I did not go down there.

Scary noisy ocean!

Middle of the day, rubbish Putai

More like it! I took lots, couldn't decide which was best, kept them all.

This took much timing!

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:03:48 GMT

After leaving the farm, I went straight up to Nelson - about a 4 1/2 hour bus journey north, the first time I've been north of Kaikoura/Greymouth!
Checked into a really nice hostel, Accents On The Park. It had underfloor heating! Amazing! Didn't really do much except look around Nelson a bit, as it was a Sunday and most places were closed. Did get an early night though, as I was up early the next day for a 7.10am bus to Abel Tasman National Park, the smallest of NZ's national parks but one of the most well known.
As it turns out, I needn't have got up so early. Not because of anything bad, but I could've had a half hour lie in at least - my bus picked me up first then spent half an hour driving round to other pickups, before going to the bus station at 7.45am - my hostel was only 5 minutes walk from the bus station! ARGH! Still, I was booked onto a package with Abel Tasman Coachlines, and was on the coach to Kaiteriteri (just outside the park) for just under 2 hours. We were only there for about 15 minutes before boarding a boat, that was to take us to various destinations around the park - I was, with four others, going to Tonga Quarry, near Tonga Island seal colony, to do a section of the walk that runs through the park. It's one of the 'Great Walks', along with ones like Milford and Routeburn track further down south, and I could see why, it's amazing there. It's well known for having really clear water and golden beaches against perfect blue skies. We were lucky enough to be there in yet more glorious weather, so despite it being winter, the blue skies and warm sunshine were out!
We also got to see Split Apple Rock on the way there, which is much as it sounds - a giant round rock split in half! Also paused briefly at bird sanctuary Adele Island to listen to the birds, never tire of doing things like that.

I was walking from Onetahuti/Tonga Quarry to Bark Bay, only a walk of about 2 hours, we were given an obscenely generous 4 hours to do it in so there was plenty of time to stop and take pictures/stare at things/enjoy the peace and quiet. In summer, the track would be really busy, but being winter it was deadly quiet, which was brilliant as I got to spend ages completely alone enjoying the track. It was perfectly silent sometimes, not even birdsong, it was incredible. Abel Tasman is one of those places that you don't think can possibly live up to the pictures, but it is every bit as beautiful and incredible as it appears. I'd really quite like to do the full track - I'll save that for next time!
Only took me maybe 1 3/4 hours to get round to Bark Bay, after admiring a few waterfalls and a log that looked disturbingly like an alligator (I actually experienced a few seconds of extreme shock when I saw it), I did attempt to eat my lunch on the beach but the sandflies had other ideas... A friendly little seal came swimming along near the shore while I was there though, I seemed to be the only person who spotted her popping her head up and looking over!
Had to spend about an hour at our pick-up beach, Medlands, but I can't honestly say it was too much of a chore to sit on a beach by a pool and native bush... We had another few brief stops back on the boat to have a look at some of the private houses (and to pick up some people!) before getting back into Kaiteri at 3.30pm and heading back to Nelson on the bus. Long, long day (we got back into Nelson at 6pm), suitably tired - and not especially looking forward to my 7.15am bus to Punakaiki, but quite looking forward to one last trip to the West Coast...

Split Apple Rock

Please tell me you can see the alligator too.

Squinty but happy!

Bark Bay

Also Bark Bay

Looking back down at Bark Bay

Medlands

The Farm: Round Two

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 06:10:58 GMT

This'll just be a quick (ish, though it seems that whenever I say something will be quick it ends up being ten times longer than the normal stuff) overview of what went on in my two weeks back on the farm!
Bit strange to be back initially, lots had changed though it was all good - loads of improvements and new things, including (yay!) animals. OK, not all good, as my little Rosie lamby had been sold a week or two before I arrived.. Sob! Fortunately, I should point out, to a friend of Lynn's as a pet. I discovered that she always remained attached to Beau (more on him later), not that he cared much, resulting in her shrieking her head off everytime she lost him. Annoying as I can imagine this was, I have to say, CUTE!
The new additions were mostly in piggy form - four piglets, though they were by now getting quite big, a young deer (imaginatively named Bambi), 2 miniature Kune Kunes, a horse named Chocka, and two female geese for the moody Billy. Oh, and a possum! Bambi very cute, but a nightmare in that she was utterly convinced she was a Border Collie - if the dogs managed to follow us up to where we cut the grass for the rabbits (which was often, new dog Jess was also a nightmare for chasing cars), Bambi would have to come along too. This resulted in, one day, her managing to get into neighbour Regan's field and being chased by gigantic cows. Stupid Bambi! She was not best pleased, but despite our efforts wouldn't come out. I ended up having to clamber in and throw her over the fence. Deer are heavy, in case you were wondering.
Beau, the goat, still there and being a manly man, as it turned out our rubber-band castration method er, hadn't worked. This meant he had a higher than usual tendency to be a bit headbutty, especially at feed time, although I am proud of my efforts at stopping him doing that after a day or two! He constantly escaped (very proficient at jumping gates, it seems), headbutted the feed room door if he knew we were in there making feed and was genuinely convinced that all food was intended for his consumption, but I still couldn't help but love him! He's just a daft little character, even though he's not nearly as cute as he used to be... Oh, not to mention the fact that he wees on himself. Apparently, this is very attractive to the goat laydeez. Mmhmm. Not convinced.
Had the usual fun poo-picking, haynet filling and grass cutting, all the while trying to ignore the adorable distractions that come in the form of little piggies. I learned to trim sheep and horse feet. Quite proud of myself, apart from the incident where I managed to make blood actually spurt from one of the sheepsies feet. I've never seen blood do that before... Oh the guilt! We filled in rabbit holes (how can they dig so quickly?!), moved firewood, chopped at hedges, spread poo on a deceptively large field... We also invented a new late night game - chicken grabbing! There were an overload of chickens on the farm due to well hidden nests since I'd left, which are much too difficult to catch during the day, so after the late-night feed of possum and Bambi, we began snatching them from the trees as they slept... Mean, I know, but REALLY good fun! I got quite good at it, though I did feel guilty when I promised one a safer and happier life in the 'fridge cage', away from being chased by doggies, only for us to have it for tea the next day. Sorry, chicken.
Then of course there were the extra-curricular (should that be farmular?) activities in the shape of baby seals and circuses! We paid a visit on one day to Ohau stream and waterfall, about half an hour north of Kaikoura, which is basically packed with seal cubs, no adults at all. Brilliant! There were some lazing on rocks, but most of them were playing in the stream and pool at the bottom of the waterfall (there's a video of them doing it in my video post 2 updates back).
We went to the circus on the Tuesday of my last week, three people from it had visited the farm the day before and we'd decided we wanted to go - the only animals they had were ponies (one went on a seesaw! I wanted to teach Stuart, the grumpy miniature pony, to do that, but I don't think anyone else was convinced), and an old retired elephant from a circus in Australia who came in, turned around, and went back out again. Obviously be better if it wasn't there at all, but the focus of the show was the human performers, including a Kenyan group who were fantastic. It was mostly kind of a toned down, small scale Cirque Du Soleil!

I believe everyone has seen the pictures on facebook anyway, but you can never have too many cute animals, so here they are again - edited highlights, anyway.

Bambi, also more commonly known as Bam, Bambam, and Bamalam. Not that she responded to any of these names.

Exhausted, post-cow chasing incident.

Stealing the grass we'd been cutting for the rabbits... hmph

Scary turnip!

Piiiiig

PIG

PPIIIIIIIGG!! Interesting to note that on the last Wednesday, two of these piggies were going off to new homes on the north island. Me and Lynn had to carry one each. THEY WEIGHED A TON. Our arms were actually shaking slightly from the strain of carrying piggies and trying to open gates without dropping said piggies (I did actually drop mine once, and had to spend 5 minutes chasing him around the farm to catch him again). I do not recommend it.

The piggie I carried, and a nosy chicken

Ahhh baby seal!

So so pretty here

We also paid a visit to some caves a little further back down the road, where we collected lots of paua shells and bones.

And sticks.

Erm, and gravel.

Hee hee. Jess.

Possum! Who loved being on shoulders, resulting in a lot of late night time being spent trying to get him off my head so I could get inside and get warm again. He rarely cooperated.

Gloves are because it was cold. Very cold. At 8.15am, anyway - most of the days were actually ridiculously warm.

My goat! BIG!

Awwwhh :)

Nigel, still noisy

Err.. yum?

Cute guinea pig.

Happy piggies!

Tut, bad goat!

Stuey, not looking moody for once!

Buddy, the cuddliest goat in the world

Happy place :)

Why it is never a good idea to leave me alone at feed time...

Bambi kisses before...

She decided it was more fun to eat my face.

Ahaha

Acorn, the epic laminitic pony

Marsha, the adorable mini Kune Kune

And her equally adorable boyfriend, Biscotti

Hurshal

Billy and his girlies

Yes, they do fit through the fence - just about!

Chocka

I absolutely love this pig, too. Milo.

Marmite, who is sweet but you do not want to mess with her if you value your life.

Alright, go me! I'm now on the same month - only just over a week to catch up with....

Kaikoura 29/05-31/05

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:53:04 GMT

Alright, so onto the last three days of Kaikoura before I went back to the farm! Probably not the most exciting few days, but they are worth mentioning for one or two things.
The day after my whale watch I was booked onto Dolphin Encounter (basically dolphin swimming). Put it this way, I'm hoping I'll go third time lucky with dolphin swimming - it didn't happen again! This time I at least got so far as putting the wetsuit on and getting on the boat for 2 hours, but the dolphins had all moved further south (due to murky water, apparently) than usual and we couldn't find/get to them. Urgh! I spent most of the rest of the day, reasonably I feel after the ordeal of spending 2 hours in a wetsuit for no good reason, feeling a little bit sorry for myself and watching girly films. If my next attempt at dolphin swimming fails I may just give up for good!

The weather the next day, Saturday, was better than it was supposed to be, so I headed out to Point Kean to see the seal colony (actually sea lions but who's complaining). There were loads of seals up at the colony and it was, blissfully, reasonably quiet, I was standing about as close as one should get to seals with two blokes who were, by the looks of them (and their hordes of equipment), semi-professional photographers. This was mainly good as it meant they were as respectful of the seals as one should be and accompanied me in legging it back up the beach when an annoyed looking seal started bounding down the rocks towards us... Sadly more tourists turned up - and why must it always be the Asian tourists? I'm sure some of them must know how to behave themselves but I am seriously starting to wonder - and thought it was ever so fun to approach dozing seals to pose next to them and stroke them. WHAT?! One of them was growling unhappily at them but they didn't pay the foggiest bit of attention, more crowds came and I had to leave as they were beginning to really wind me up. I decided then to do the peninsula walkway - I hadn't been going to, but realised I wasn't likely to get another chance. It only takes a few hours, quite an easy walk but with some amazing views over parts of the peninsula and the ocean. There's also plenty more seal colonies out on the rocks below, it looks a bit like an army of giant slugs has landed! I got back at about 5pm (I hadn't gone out until the afternoon) and was in bed asleep by 9pm. Believe me, that was a late night compared to the 7/8pm bedtimes I'd been having!!

The next day was my last before going to the farm, you'll notice I did a lot of blog updates on this day somewhere here. That'll be because it rained all day, with lots of nice big sharp chunks of hail thrown in for good measure. I should know, it started about 45 seconds after I stepped outside. Hmm.

You think I'd get bored of them but I actually really don't...

Ah yes, the oft-encountered Kaikoura Chimney Tree.

Rawr!! (he's yawning)

I just love the way they walk

ATTACK OF THE GIANT SLUGS!

Celebrating Being Almost Up To Date...

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 04:45:25 GMT

Yes, I'm nearly there! Hopefully I will get at least up to this past week by tomorrow. To celebrate, I've managed to upload most of the videos I've taken to YouTube (given up on Facebook, it's rubbish), so now, I'll post them!

This is the Yellow-Eyed Penguin down near Nugget Point in the Catlins - he does a little shake and stretch at one point that is CUTE! Also, watch for when he turns and pegs it in the opposite direction - he'd just spotted a sea lion creeping out a little further up the beach, and went straight back into the ocean.

Here follows numerous videos of the Blue Penguins at the Christchurch Antarctic Centre!

It's the penguins making that horrendous noise...

On the 'Backstage Pass'

On the LOTR Edoras tour - attempting to replicate a shot from the films. Badly. Very badly.

That terrible video of the dolphins

I LOVE this video! Taken of the seal cubs at Ohau Point near Kaikoura

On the farm - Pig pig PPIIIGGGG!!!

Attempting to film the perfect silence at Abel Tasman National Park (the scraping noise is my feet moving)

Back to Kaikoura

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 04:38:26 GMT

I left Christchurch on the 7am bus to Kaikoura - sad to be leaving Christchurch (I have spent, in total, almost a month of my time in NZ there), but also super duper excited to be going back to Kaikoura! I was going to stay in town for four days before going back to the farm for two weeks, just to get the whale watch, touristy things done that I didn't have the money for last time. What with the weather being the weather and changing it's mind every five seconds (don't think I'm joking, either), I decided to make the most of that day as it was, most definitely, a nice sunny day. Tours in Kaikoura get cancelled quite a lot as they're very weather dependent - it has to be near perfect... So, I booked onto a 20 minute flight with Wings Over Whales. I chose the flight over the boat option because you actually get to see the whole whale, as opposed to just the fluke as it dives.

Just so you know, tiny little planes are scary. Very scary. Especially when you're sitting up at the front with lots of scary buttons, pedals and controls in front of you. Gulp. I had to be picked up from my backpackers and taken out to the airfield, as it's about a twenty minute drive from Kaikoura and I, well, can't drive. I was on the plane with four other people, quite good as we could all sit on the same side and would, therefore, be able to all keep the whale in view - the pilot circles around the whale with the plane on a bit of a tilt, being on the same side meant he wouldn't have to switch direction. Despite worrying looking controls and nerves for the first few seconds, the flight wasn't really all that bad. Except for a bit when we suddenly banked around in chase of a whale. Bleeurrhghghh. We only saw the one whale, but it was fantastic! It's hard to scale the size of it with having no reference point, but it was still obviously HUGE. We circled around him for a few minutes until he dived, such a brilliant view of the whole thing. On the way back, we flew over some of the hills out of Kaikoura, and to be honest it was worth going on just for the views, never mind the gigantic added bonus of a whale!

I decided not to waste the afternoon, either, and for some reason that I cannot fathom, chose to rent a bike for some self-inflicted pain and torture. Honestly, is it that hard to use padding on those seats?!
I cycled out to the farm, which is about 30-40 minutes away from the town, to say hello before arriving on Monday. Lots had changed! There were loads of new animals (mostly pigs), my little cute goaty had become a big smelly troublesome goaty (but I still love him), loads of new fencing, and of course Kevin, Lynn's partner, had arrived. They kindly gave me a lift back into town, and though I did attempt to ride a little way down the Esplanade, my rear end was having none of it and I had to give in.
Brief and slightly uncomfortable encounter in the evening with my sole roommate, who turned out to be an A-Grade, top quality psychopath. I may be being slightly melodramatic, but I was having some definite concerns that if I stayed in that room, I wouldn't be waking up in the morning... Erk. Thankfully, the owners were really apologetic when I told them, and I was swiftly moved to another room. All's well that ends well, and all that, it was quite a nice hostel otherwise. Definitely slept well after my cycling escapades... Remind me not to do that again!

Pretty!

I should warn you, there's a lot of very similar pictures of a whale coming up

I rather like this one

Bye bye whale!

Mt Fyffe/Kaikoura

This is just so amazing, I don't think it even looks real

Tiny plane of doom!