North Island of New Zealand

After spending just short of two weeks in Fiji, I spent one last weekend in Sydney saying good bye to my friends there and having an all-round last hurrah. On that Sunday, I flew Argentina Airlines to Auckland. The first day in Auckland I acclimated myself to the city by wandering around the downtown area and venturing into a couple of the nearby neighborhoods.

I eventually ended up in a very trendy part of downtown where I went to a bar, had a couple of drinks and met a couple of people. One of the people I met was a guy who was half Jamaican half English who now lives in New Zealand. He was a very interesting person who had lived in both Jamaica and Manchester, England. We had a wonderful conversation about world politics and the cultural differences among the places he's lived.

The next day, I "hired a car", as the locals say, and headed up to the north part of the island. On my journey, I viewed some of the most beautiful landscapes I have seen. At one point, I stopped off to get some refreshments and take in a very scenic perspective of the forest covered rolling hills. Not only were the sites breathtaking they were also a bit sad, because from this view you could really see the impact of deforestation happening in New Zealand. I understand that forestry is an important part of the economy here, but I also was saddened because the forests are beautiful and the clearings are not. But, I have to admit, I did see the committed replanting efforts that are employed as I continued my trip.



The destination of my journey northward was the Bay of Islands. Very charming fishing villages and small towns populate the area close to the shore while small sheep, cattle and horse ranches fill the hills. The bay was cluttered with small islands, some inhabited, others just large enough for an outcrop of a couple of trees. I really enjoyed the small town atmosphere up here. My parents would feel right at home here. The people were genuinely friendly and inviting.


Bay of Islands (although one picture really cannot give proper justice to the beauty of the bay)
The day after arriving, I booked a trip up to Cape Reinga (the northern most point of New Zealand). That morning at 7:30 a.m., I boarded a 4-wheel drive bus-type vehicle and began my trek. En route, we picked up several other tourists staying in many of the other small towns and stopped in one of the many forests to take a short hike to view the very large trees. I will probably say this several times throughout my tales of New Zealand, but the scenery was amazing. The "Lord of the Rings" does not even capture most of the stunning landscape.

Once we arrived at Cape Reinga, we hiked around a bit looking at the coastline and observing the two seas, the Pacific Ocean and the Tasmanian Sea, clashing together at the tip of the island. The strong currents produced some amazing beaches on the western side of the island.


Cape Reinga

After leaving the tip of the island, we headed further down the coast and stopped to have some lunch at a beach. The bus driver invited us to have a swim if we liked, but I thought the weather was much too cold, especially just coming from Fiji's hot sun and warm water beaches. I felt the water, and it was very cold. The cold temperature, however, did not stop the English travelers on the bus, whose blinding white skin evidenced their recent arrival to the southern hemisphere. Instead, a dutch woman whom I befriended on the trip and I spent the time hiking around the beach exploring a river that emptied into the sea.

From the lunch spot, the bus took us to the largest sand dunes I have ever seen.



When we got to the sand dunes, the bus driver told us that we were going to go sand surfing. I had no idea what this meant of course, until we turned the corner revealing several other bus tours doing the same thing. Sand surfing is much the same as snow sledding, only instead of sledding down a snow covered hill, we sled down a huge sand dune. (I think I prefer the sand dune to the snow covered hill...its much warmer!).


Sand surfing


That's me sliding down the dune

These sand dunes lined what was called ninety mile beach, which is the western side of the tip of the island. The beach is called ninety mile beach because cattle runners used to take three days to travel from one end to the other (I guess it was standard that the herders traveled 30 miles a day). The beach, however, is really only 70 miles, I guess cows can't walk as fast in the sand.

I understood why we had the 4 wheel drive bus when we started traveling down the beach. The beach is literally an official highway in New Zealand. However, no car rental companies will allow you to take their cars on this particular stretch of highway. According to our driver, he witnessed a car driven by two Japanese students being sucked into a sink hole and watched the rental car be pulled out to sea. Apparently, the students had to pony up over $20,000 to replace the car--it was not covered by any insurance.


Bus traveling down the beach highway


Me on Ninety Mile Beach

When we returned to the Bay of Islands, the dutch woman and I met for a couple of drinks at a backpackers bar. She said she got a good picture of me sledding down the sand dune mid air off of a jump at the bottom of the hill. If she e-mails it to me, I will put it up on here. There were many backpackers here. In fact, Paihia, the town I stayed in, was known as a backpackers paradise (despite this claim, I chose a nice small hotel). The night on the town was very interesting as almost everyone out was approximately 18-21 years old and drunk (really drunk). This would foreshadow events to follow on the south island.

On my way back down to Auckland, I stopped at Whangarei Falls. Just outside this medium sized town (by New Zealand standards) poured the very large falls into a slow moving river destined for the ocean. The park surrounding the falls was a very mellow quaint park filled with local trades men taking their lunch outside of their vans each advertising their particular business. I took the opportunity to have a bit of lunch with them and enjoy the falls. After a quiet picnic lunch, I continued on my way to Auckland.


Whangarei Falls

Upon driving into Auckland, I discovered that the harbor nestled by the city rivaled Sydney's harbor in beauty.


Shot of Auckland coming over the bridge (the Auckland bridge, however, did not rival Sydney's Harbor Bridge, but it was still nice).

That night, I met Matt (the guy I met in Fiji) out for dinner. He took me to this traditional steak and seafood place. Red booths, german kitch, mountain scenes and a golden chandelier adorned the room. The steak, as can be expected, was sensational. I had not had a really good steak since I left the States and I really enjoyed it. After dinner, Matt and I ventured out to explore the Wednesday Auckland nightlife, which was not too exciting, but we ended up having a great time chatting, drinking, playing pool and admiring some damn good karyoke.

The next morning, this wonderful woman at the Kiwi International Hotel, where I was staying, helped me book my next adventure. She sent me out to the Waitomo Caves. After a beautiful 3 hour drive, I found myself in a very small town known for its underground caves. First on the agenda for the day was abseiling. Abseiling, I now know, is bouncing down a cliff while strapped to a rope anchored at the top. In this instance, instead of bouncing down a cliff, I bounced down into a gorge about 60 yards deep. I was a bit disappointed because I thought I was going to get to do a bit of rock climbing with it. The decent was nice, but more interesting was the walk along the gorge. Here, there were carcasses of small animals who have fallen into the divide. The carcasses included bones from a cow that fell in about two years ago. The dead animals, as morbid as this may sound, gave the decent a much more dangerous feel. Having the morbid details below revealed, I enjoyed the second decent, which was done without the instructor by my side, much more.


Nick abseiling

After the abseiling, the instructor preached his new world order philosophy/predictions to me and gave me a newspaper outlining the theories (actually pretty funny). Within a half hour, a second guide came to retrieve me to take me Black Water Rafting. The guide was a 6'5" 300+ pound Maori guy with about 4 teeth. Although his appearance was intimidating, I soon found his demeanor and sense of humor delightful. Once we were outfitted in our wetsuits, we were guided into this old van and driven out to the middle of a pasture. Interestingly, on my way out to this little town, I noticed that there were little pockets of fenced-in trees dotting the pasture fields like large cow pies. I could not figure out why they were there. The guide told us, as we drove up to one of these pockets, that each pocket was an entrance to the caves (i.e. a very deep and large whole in the ground where the cows could fall into--recall the morbid details of my abseiling story).

When we arrived at the entrance to the cave, the guide told us to choose an inner tube (one for a large truck tire) and follow him. Apparently, we would be "rafting" in these tubes. I wish I could have brought my camera because the site of the ten of us in our head to boot wetsuits carrying inner tubes with mining hats on our heads walking across the cow pasture looked very strange and almost alien. Once we crossed the pasture, we came to another pocket. We entered the pocket and descended down some stairs built into the cave. Once we reached the bottom of the cave, we walked about 200 yards through these beautiful caves underground.

After the long walking tour, the water we had been walking in deepened. At this time, we were instructed to get into our tubes and link our legs to each other. We then progressed through the cave afloat in our tubes. After a bit of admiring the stalagtites and other water formed rock formations in the cave, the guide instructed us to extinguish our mining-cap lights. Once extinguished we could appreciate the glow worms that covered the caves walls. The cave soon became a planetarium. The worms lighting the cave like a beautiful star lit night. During the trip, we not only floated down the underground river in complete darkness, we also jumped and slid down waterfalls. We finally came to the end of the tunnel, so to speak, we had to climb many flights of stairs before reaching day light. The entire experience was incredible. I wish I was able to bring my camera to demonstrate the beauty of the caves and the glow worms, but you will just have to take my word for it.

After being treated to a hot shower and hot tomato soup, I jumped in my car and drove another 3+ hours to Rotorua. Rotorua is known for the geothermic activity taking place around the town. Many hot springs bubble up around the city. In fact, the hotel I stayed at had a hot spring pool that looked like any other normal hotel pool, except it was but it was continually topped off with water from a bubbling hot spring. Over the last 200 years, many European and American travelers have come to this spot for therapeutic healing in the hot spas.

After a night exploring Rotorua, not a very taxing endeavor as the town is very small and night life practically nonexistent, I had a dip in the hot springs pool, a nice nights sleep and woke to tour the area. My first stop was the Rotorua Museum, former home to the hot springs spa in the 1930s. The museum informed me of the Maori and European exploitation of the hot springs.


Museum

After visiting the museum, I headed out to explore some of the many parks around the area. In the late 1800's, a large volcano erupted near Rotorua which buried one of the larger villages in ash. This site has recently been excavated and is now, as you can imagine, a museum and park. The site was pretty interesting, I think the most interesting was the abundancee of resources that were immediately available to the people living there. When I walked along the 3-foot wide and 2-foot deep stream running through the village, I watched the salmon swimming. The salmon were at least 2 feet long and pretty fat. I could have just reached down and grabbed one. I am not sure if it was spawning season or what, but it was the most fish I have ever seen in one area. I can imagine the villagers just going to the stream whenever they wanted some salmon for a meal and spearing one without any difficulty.

After visiting the buried site, I went to experience some of the geothermic activity happening around the area. There were a couple of parks devoted to protecting and exhibiting the geothermic activity. I found the sites especially enjoyable because of the dramatic algae that grows along the steaming sites. Some of the lakes in the area were over 110 degrees.



Lake in volcano crater


Bubbling mud

I returned to Auckland once I had finished trekking around Rotorua. In Auckland, I enjoyed my time wandering around the city, going to the gym and doing some reading and writing.


Auckland

On Saturday, I hung out with a couple friends I met and went to a local rugby game. After the game, they took me to a island-themed party at a bar. We had a great time. I spent the next couple days hanging out with friends I met around Auckland, enjoying the city. One friend, Giovani, an Italian-born Brazilian raised now Kiwi, took me around to show me one of the beaches and other parts of the city. When at the beach, I saw some guys playing volleyball--and they were pretty good. Since Giovani had to get back to the city, I rode with him back and then returned to play some volleyball. I had not played on the beach since I was in Brazil, and it was great. I think I could play volleyball on a beautiful beach everyday for the rest of my life. ...hmm maybe I should?





On Thursday, I flew to Christchurch in the south island. I then toured the south island.

See my page on New Zealand's South Island.

After spending my time in the South Island, I returned to the north via a ferry to Wellington. I spent three days in Wellington, which is the capital and second largest city. Wellington is a nice city.


View of Wellington from Botanical Gardens.

After a couple of non-eventful tourist-type wanderings in Wellington, I flew to Auckland. When back in Auckland, Giovani invited to stay with him and save on hotel costs. I was there for about a week. During the week, I dined at some great restaurants, attended a movie festival and went out to some of the bars with some of the friends I met in Auckland.


Giovani, Louise and Charles and Honey--a fun cocktail bar.

Giovani and another friend also took me to one of the islands in the Auckland bay (there are a ton of them). While there we walked along the beach, checked out the small community on the island and attended a local art show.


Giovani on the beach on the island

On Tuesday May 6, I went to the airport to fly to Bangkok to obtain a visa for Vietnam and meet Jodene and Ken! Home page