New Zealand North Island

We arrived in Wellington from our 3 hour ferry trip and were picked up in our new rental car, this time we had a grey Nissan Sunny, great! We had a bit of a nightmare trying to find somewhere to stay here and then the small problem of trying to find a parking space for our sweet ride. Eventually though we ended up in a hostel in the centre of town. It was an old hotel and was slowly crumbling apart but legend has it that the Queen stayed here back in the 50’s. Anyway it was a good enough for the likes of us and was really central to everything.

On our first night in the capital we paid a visit to Mac’s brew bar. We tried their beers down south and decided we had to visit the brewery when we got chance. It was a really great set up, the bar was round the back of the brewery so they had everything on tap, and when I say everything I mean stouts, lagers, bitters, wheat beer and cider. It was dirt cheap too and the food was amazing, if only there were places like this back home!

Looks like Guinness, tastes a lot better

The biggest tourist attraction in ‘Windy Welly’ is the cable car. It runs up the side of the hill and has great views from the gardens at the top. It wasn’t quite as spectacular as the one in Penang Malaysia but we realise there probably weren’t many other people making that comparison when we did the trip! There was an interesting museum at the top; apparently lots of people have their own cable cars running up to their houses in the city. When I’m 75 and can actually afford a house I’m going to make sure it has a cable car!

Actually its a fernicular railway...(Rachel is a trainspotter)

We paid a short visit to the maritime museum in the city centre which was actually really interesting, although we only had 45minutes due to some bad planning (and a small hangover from the beer) we managed to learn a lot about the history of Wellington and New Zealand, including the import of MacDonald’s in the 70’s which apparently gave New Zealand a choice in their takeaways ( and they can’t figure out where the obesity is coming from!). We also got to see an awesome vintage Peugeot owned by the Mayor as a gift from France, bless them!

One of the highlights of our time in Wellington was paying a visit (and watching a film) at the biggest cinema screen in the southern hemisphere, this was also the cinema that hosted the world premiere from the final Lord of the Rings film after being restored to its original glory. We didn’t know what to expect from the cinema but it was really brought to life with a small bar and a jazz trio performing. The building itself was an art deco design and a lovely place to be on a Friday night, you can even sit in the chairs that the stars of Lord of the Rings sat in on the premier night (it cost a little extra so we were sat in the lighting crews seats). Unfortunately we saw the Clash of the Titans remake that night, not such a great film!

We moved on from Wellington and drove up to Lake Taupo in the centre of the North Island, this is the biggest lake in the country and where we would make the biggest mistake of the trip…

Not far from Taupo is the Tongariro National park, which houses two big active volcanoes and if you are as crazy as we are you can walk the 18.5 kilometre path between them. It’s not as dangerous as it seemed though, the the last time either volcanoes blew their tops was in 1995, and there are signs to show you which way to run! The other volcano is still the centre of attention as Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings films. Almost everywhere is New Zealand at some point has a claim to those films! One of the highlights of the hike was reaching the highest point of near 2500ft at red crater; this is like something from another world with steam escaping from the red coloured rocks around the top of the crater. From here you can see the Emerald and Blue lakes which are exactly what they say they are and the colours are so vivid.

The ground was pretty warm at this point!

The next day we woke up with a sense of trepidation…why? Well blame Rachel! She managed to convince me to sign up for a tandem bungee jump at Taupo Bungee. It seemed like such a good idea when we were booking it online back in Wellington, but now we weren’t so sure! We arrived at the site early and spent about 20 minutes watching people jump while we tried to decide whether we could do a runner. In the end though we decided to bite the bullet and get on with it (good job too as we’d already paid for it). The jump is from a platform hanging over the edge of a cliff above the Taupo River. It’s famous for being the highest water touch jump in New Zealand (meaning you can get wet at the bottom if you want to). We were both attached to the same bungee and were told to hold on to each other in a waltz kind of pose, then we waddled to the edge and got the ‘three, two, one, bungee!’ count and jumped. I say jumped but really we just leaned over and fell (Rachel says she wasn’t planning on going on the first count but I think I took us both over). I can tell you that it was the worst few seconds of my life, I’ll never do it again and even typing this is making me feel queasy! It has been funny meeting other people who did a jump on their trip because none of them seem to have the same reaction as we did, they all loved it. Having said that I’m glad we did it and we even ended up doing the bungee swing afterwards which is similar but you’re strapped into a harness and after the fall you end up swinging towards the cliff face. We have videos of both and maybe one day I’ll put them on YouTube!

This makes me want to puke!

After the jump we headed up to Roturua which is a town built around a thermal area and therefore the whole place stinks of sulphur! While we were there we visited a ‘thermal wonderland’ which was full of bubbling mud, steamy lakes and stinking holes. The main attraction was a geyser which goes off every morning at 11am (with a little help from a bloke pouring a bag of soap power down the top).

Diamond geezer!

We didn’t stay in Roturua too long as we had lots more miles to cover heading north. We spent a night in a place called Turanga but for us it was just a stopover, although we did get to climb our third mountain of the trip Mt Unpronounceable Maori legend says that the mountain was sad and wanted to die so he asked the fairies to drag him out to sea to drown but halfway through (and we still can’t work out why fairies don’t work in daylight-slackers) the sun rose and they left him by the sea, ahh lovely!

Next stop was Thames, originally this place was the centre of a New Zealand gold rush but now the gold has gone and it’s a bit dilapidated. However there is a great mining museum here which we visited. It’s run by a group of enthusiasts (I suppose you could also call them old farts) who were really friendly. We walked down into the side of the mountain and saw some of the old mines and had a wander round some old equipment that they’re restoring. We also got to see a stamp in action and got a sample of some of the product to take home (mostly rubbish but there’s definitely some gold sparkling in there!).

Looking like the typical New Zealand tourist in the mine

We continued north and stayed in Paihai which is part of the bay of islands. We couldn’t afford an expensive cruise around so made do with the view from the mainland. We did meet a woman here who was stuck in NZ because of the volcanic ash cloud. She kept going on about it but neither of us had a lot of sympathy, we could think of worse places to be stranded!

The next day we began the long journey to Cape Reinga right at the northernmost point of New Zealand. It was a long journey but eventually we made it to the lighthouse at the Cape. The Maori legend says that this is the place the dead travel to the underworld and it’s a really spectacular view of the pacific if you stared for long enough you start to think you can see land on the horizon, crazy! We managed to time our visits between coach loads of tourist so it was pretty quite but as soon as the next load of dithering Japanese arrived we moved on.

Cape Reinga lighthouse

Nearby we visited some giant sand dunes which were incredible. After a bit of walking we found ourselves in the middle of a desert, it was just what I’d imagine the Sahara to look like (but colder). We also watched a few people sliding down the dunes on body boards, it looked like great fun but we made our own take of things and instead of boarding we decided to roll down them (the cheaper option) but after a few rolls and the feeling of disorientation and nausea had passed, we had plenty more driving to do so we carried on.

I'm sure its not this cloudy in the Sahara

On our way back down the coast we stopped to have a look at 90 mile beach. It’s a big beach! It’s also a highway but not for rental cars like ours which is a shame because it would be fun to see what land speed record we could have set in our Sunny.

90 mile beach

After our epic drive we spent the night at Ahipara which is a little town at the bottom of the peninsular. We stayed in an historic house which was really nice, although run by hippies so no locks on the doors! We only spent a night here before travelling down to Auckland the next day.

On our way there we stopped off to see the giant Kauri trees on the west coast which were pretty impressive. They dwarfed anything else we’d seen in New Zealand, there was a kid there who said they looked like the tree in the movie Avatar which was a pretty good description.

This group is called the 4 sisters

Auckland was a mixture of inactive volcanoes and aquariums. The aquarium was like no other we had been to because it’s really a tribute to Antarctica and has a penguin enclosure that is kept at 1°c which you get to see close up from a real exploration snow cat (Antarctic tractor) that rides into the enclosure and around a massive tank and various ice embankments. They also have a replica of Scott’s hut from which he made his final attempt to reach the South Pole. It was full of interesting facts (you didn’t want to be a dog or pony on one of these trips, they all ended up in the pot) and the authentic wind noises made us feel pretty cold.

Pingu!

The aquarium itself was pretty standard but it turns out that the walk through Perspex tunnel idea originated here. They did have some big sting rays which we got to see up close and we asked the keeper how angry they had to be to sting you. It turns out Steve Irwin must have REALLY been pissing them off when he got killed as she reckoned they would never normally use their sting.

Whilst in Auckland we visited two of the many extinct volcanoes in the city. We drove up to the peak of both (can you tell we had gotten a bit lazy by this point) and got some great views of the city. We also explored the downtown area and bought a few things for warmer climates over the next month (here’s hoping!).

Auckland skyline

We also went to an Irish pub and did a pub quiz under the name ‘Rule Britannia – The Empire Strikes Back’ which some of the locals found funny (as opposed to beating us up) but we didn’t do too well in the end. We didn’t quite come last which would have won us a booby prize, but we were nowhere near first. Mainly because half the questions were on national rugby teams and the other half about Shortland Street, New Zealand only TV show apparently!

New Zealand had been great fun and we’d seen so much that we never knew was here. It was also exhausting as we visited 16 places and never stopped for more than a couple of nights. We found the Kiwi’s to be really friendly and welcoming, probably more than anywhere else, but by the end of it their accents were driving us mad, stop murdering all of our vowels! Next stop Fiji!