Queenstown is set in the heart of Lord of the Rings country and it reminded me a lot of Mordor from the film. Mordor's where the evil Sauron lives, and where the little hobbit Frodo must travel to fulfill his destiny. The similarity with Queenstown is not only in the scenery, but in the fear it evokes - the closer you get to it, you know that the only way the story's going to end is with you jumping off a mountain.
It's where all the dangerous things come together - canyon swings, bungees, whitewater surfing, teapots filled with cocktails. It's a lot for a little hobbit to have to deal with.
Frodo didn't have a safety harness to protect him, but he did have a mate who was a wizard and I guess that kind of evens things out...
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Bungy Jumping
As I looked down to the canyon 43 metres below me my mouth went dry and my legs went weak. Down in the bottom of the valley the white water boiled and seethed - if the bungy broke and the fall didnt kill you the rapids downstream surely would.
It was a good job that I was only standing in the car park and I had no intention of jumping off. The most risky thing I was going to do was eat one of the dodgy burgers from the barbecue outside the gift shop.
We were at the site of the worlds first commercial bungy jump at the Kawarau bridge near Queenstown, and I was joined on the viewing platform by about 70 other people who couldn't jump because they'd developed back problems on the walk down from the car park. One by one the jumpers cast themselves off the bridge and bounced around for a bit on the end of a bit of elastic. The crowd gasped and wowed, the Japanese tourists screamed and giggled. I bought a postcard from the gift shop.
Three days later I did the 134 metre Nevis Highwire Bungy - the second highest commercial bungy site in the world.
It was quite scary.
What? You didn't think I was going to do one?????
The 43 metre one is for pussies...
6 seconds of freefall, a further 2.5 seconds to stop when the bungy kicks in...
It was a good job that I was only standing in the car park and I had no intention of jumping off. The most risky thing I was going to do was eat one of the dodgy burgers from the barbecue outside the gift shop.
We were at the site of the worlds first commercial bungy jump at the Kawarau bridge near Queenstown, and I was joined on the viewing platform by about 70 other people who couldn't jump because they'd developed back problems on the walk down from the car park. One by one the jumpers cast themselves off the bridge and bounced around for a bit on the end of a bit of elastic. The crowd gasped and wowed, the Japanese tourists screamed and giggled. I bought a postcard from the gift shop.
Three days later I did the 134 metre Nevis Highwire Bungy - the second highest commercial bungy site in the world.
It was quite scary.
What? You didn't think I was going to do one?????
The 43 metre one is for pussies...
6 seconds of freefall, a further 2.5 seconds to stop when the bungy kicks in...
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Glacier Hiking
At the very top of the mountains in the Southern Alps, Franz Joseph Glacier is fed by up to 40 metres of snow a year. Imagine how long it would take you to clear that off your drive!There are 2 ways to get up there and go out on the ice - either the hard and cheap way by walking up from the bottom, or the expensive and easy way - being dropped off by a helicopter. We decided on the heli-hike as it promises to get you higher up the mountain than you would get by a full days hiking. What they didn't tell us however is that more often than not the helicopters don't leave the ground due to bad weather. With it snowing or raining 2 days out of 3 there isn't usually great visibility up there so the helicopters can't always fly. This surprised me as I thought that there would be nothing a New Zealand helicopter pilot likes more than the
challenge of flying blindly into a cloud and not knowing whether his aircraft is going to be dashed to pieces on some jagged granite. In the 70's the New Zealanders pioneered a way of catching wild deer for breeding stock by chasing them over mountains with helicopters, going down to an altitude of 6 feet and getting a mate to dive on top of them! These guys are a few sandwiches short of a picnic.So we couldn't do the heli-hike, but opted for the full day trek, and it pissed down. It was the sort of rain where you get wet just by thinking about going outside, and no amount of waterproof clothing would keep us dry.
Our guide for the day was Conan - yes, Conan is his real name (pic left). But he resembled Action Man more than Conan the Barbarian, both in his actions and his appearance. At one point I thought I could see a switch in the back of his head that would make his eyes swivel.
It wouldn't have been a complete day without someone having a little accident. This is the ice cavern that Andrea fell into. She was ok though, but if she hadn't been at least we would have found out whether rescue helicopter pilots are brave enough to fly through clouds
Quad Biking
We took some race prepared quad bikes out round a crazy mud and dirt track on the way into Westport. As usual in New Zealand you had to sign a disclaimer saying you realised that you might die, you weren't too bothered about the prospect and that you wouldn't come back as a ghost to haunt the offices of the quad bike company afterwards. You also agreed that if the bike got damaged it was your fault and you'd pay to get it fixed the
n take everyone in New Zealand out for beers. So it was highly amusing when Big Ben (left in the photo) rolled his quad on the first corner and it landed on top of him. Simultaneously some other people we knew were horseriding in the same area and one of the horses slipped and fell on a Scandanavian girl's leg. I'm pleased to say that neither the horse or the quad bike were damaged in the incident.
Oh, and Ben and the girl were fine too in case you were worried.
Monday, February 20, 2006
Nelson and Sea Kayaking
Nelson on the South Island averages 2500 hours of sunshine per year - that's almost 7 hours a day, so you can almost guarantee good weather. It's also about 30 minutes away from the Abel Tasman national park, so a great place to get out and see some fantastic scenery. We took sea kayaks out from Kaiteriteri and paddled up to the park with some American girls and a guy with one leg. Strange but true. 
After kayaking North for about 5 hours we were left with about 2 hours to get back and we were all shattered. But Gloria, our guide brought out a sail and tied it to the paddles and we rafted our three kayaks together and sailed back.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
An interesting bus journey
I travelled down to Wellington from Auckland on an Inter-city bus. I knew that this probably wasn't the best plan as whenever I mentioned it to anyone they looked a bit concerned about the state of my mental health. The problem is that it's an 12 hour journey and the buses have no toilets. They are also packed so you're guaranteed to spend a good deal of time listening to the tinny rattling of MP3 players from the people sitting next to you. Most people choose to split their journey into smaller chunks and stop off places, but I'd already been to most of the places en route, and was keen to get down to the South Island.
You get to meet an interesting bunch of people on the bus - the most noticable of which was a Kiwi girl who also got on at Auckland and talked to the whole of the bus for a large part of the trip. I don't mean that she spoke to everyone individually at some point, but rather she addressed the whole of the bus every time she talked. On three separate occasions she got out of her seat excitedly to look out the window and announce "Hey, look at that car! That's awesome, I'm gonna get that car!". Fearful that we might be drawn into one to one conversation, each time we got off the bus for toilet breaks everybody tried to avoid eye contact with her in much the same way as one might avoid eye contact with a gorilla or a grizzly bear. She asked one unfortunate passenger if she could borrow his CD player and in an attempt to quiten her he obliged, but instead of shutting up she started to sing to us very badly and very loudly. The guy didn't get his CD player back until we arrived at her stop some 10 hours later.
I had an interesting assortment of people coming to sit next to me at various points of the journey:
- A huge Maori guy who took up half of my seat and pretended to be asleep.
- An intimidating looking German girl (where I pretended to be asleep).
- An old man of unknown nationality (we both pretended to be asleep, but at his age I'm willing to concede that he might indeed have been asleep).
- A talkative Canadian Girl called Krystyne (see my post on International Loudness Statistics), where I tried to pretend to be asleep but had to keep waking up to retrieve the filling from her sandwich that she kept dropping on my lap
Despite the lack of vowels in her name and her dyspraxic eating habits (I could tell from the state of her top that she was no stranger to mealtime accidents) she was very good company and we chatted for quite a while. She was also freakishly organised and had printed out most of the internet and was carrying it round in her bag. This came in very useful as I hadn't booked any accommodation for Wellington and I already knew the hostel I wanted to stay in was full and there were 50 backpackers on the bus also looking for somewhere to sleep. She managed to find me the number of a hostel opposite the bus station and I called them up on my ridiculously expensive UK mobile. When the receptionist apologised and said that they didn't have any beds I began to think about how heavy my backpack was and taxis to expensive hotels. But then I asked her if she was sure that they had nothing at all she said "No, apart from in a room with 20 beds". This sounded suspiciously like accommodation to me so I asked if I could have one of those. "Really?" she said incredulously. Evidently they don't get a particularly high demand for beds in the sardine suite, but my only other options were a cold pavement and hypothermia or an expensive hotel and ostracism from the backpacking community, so I decided to take it.
I didn't know anyone in Wellington and wasn't meeting Sarah till the following day, so Krystyne asked me if I wanted to go out with them. She was travelling with another Canadian girl, Michelle, and two German guys, Tim and Sebastian. So once I'd squeezed my rucksack into my luxury dormitory I went over to the hostel where they were staying. I went over to the supermarket and bought a cheap bottle of wine for $15 that I reckoned would be pretty drinkable. Here I learned another important backpacker lesson. Buy the cheapest wine you can - chances are it will be ok in New Zealand, and if it's not by the fourth glass you'll stop noticing the methylated spirit aftertaste. The prices start at $7 or $8 - if you're spending $15 on a bottle of wine you are the backpacker equivalent of Donald Trump. Let's face it, there's no point in spending $15 on a bottle of wine you're only going to end up drinking out of a teacup.
So we had a few drinks in their room then met a guy called Steve who was an English expat who was also in their dorm. Having a modicum of local knowledge he showed us to a decent bar where we could get cheap drinks and avoid getting beaten up. Pretty soon I was wasted - must have been because a couple of Kiwi's kept on trading my cigarettes for chugs on their box of wine. I really didnt want to suck on the soggy cardboard and tried to just give them cigarettes, but they insisted each time that trading was part of the Maori culture so I had to keep putting the box up to my lips.
When the bars shut, in another Donald Trump moment I got a cab back to my mammoth dorm and crashed out. No pretending to be asleep this time.
here's a great photo from near Rotorua that I didnt include in that post - it's of either the Blue or Green Lake - not sure which as they both looked pretty similar to me...
International Loudness Statistics...
It's a commonly observed phenomenon that whenever people travel abroad their voices get louder. I've been doing a bit of scientific research regarding the different nationalities and their various volume levels and I can now present the following statistics:
Top 5 Noisiest Nations
5. Germans - 85 decibels - comparable to a truck engine at high speed. It's not so much the volume that is a danger to the ears but rather the harshness of their consonants.
4. English - 92 decibels - about as loud as a heavy metal gig. Considerably louder when drunk and/or watching team sports. In foreign countries can be heard to shout English words louder when conversing with natives who do not speak a word of it. This is because of the mistaken notion that all people understand English if spoken loud enough and accompanied by unintelligible hand signals.
3. Dutch - 95 decibels - marginally louder than the British, but are just as loud when they're sober as when they're drunk. Also boisterous when watching team sports and/or when fighting with the English. The Dutch really are a crazy bunch.
2. Americans - 107 decibels - like the sound of a Boeing 747 during takeoff. Rarely seen outside America, though those that have passports contravene several international laws pertaining to noise pollution. Fortunately the American tourist is a rarity in the antipodes as the US Department of Cartography has only mapped the globe as far as Hawaii.
1. Canadians - 115 decibels - About as loud and as piercing as pneumatic drill going through concrete. The genetic predisposition for loud conversation evolved as a mechanism for communicating with each other over vast Canadian plateaus and towering mountain ranges. Advanced study has shown that Canadians use a form of subsonic resonance that is similar to that used by whales. Never entice a Canadian to shout if you wish to avoid perforated ear drums.
Top 5 Noisiest Nations
5. Germans - 85 decibels - comparable to a truck engine at high speed. It's not so much the volume that is a danger to the ears but rather the harshness of their consonants.
4. English - 92 decibels - about as loud as a heavy metal gig. Considerably louder when drunk and/or watching team sports. In foreign countries can be heard to shout English words louder when conversing with natives who do not speak a word of it. This is because of the mistaken notion that all people understand English if spoken loud enough and accompanied by unintelligible hand signals.
3. Dutch - 95 decibels - marginally louder than the British, but are just as loud when they're sober as when they're drunk. Also boisterous when watching team sports and/or when fighting with the English. The Dutch really are a crazy bunch.
2. Americans - 107 decibels - like the sound of a Boeing 747 during takeoff. Rarely seen outside America, though those that have passports contravene several international laws pertaining to noise pollution. Fortunately the American tourist is a rarity in the antipodes as the US Department of Cartography has only mapped the globe as far as Hawaii.
1. Canadians - 115 decibels - About as loud and as piercing as pneumatic drill going through concrete. The genetic predisposition for loud conversation evolved as a mechanism for communicating with each other over vast Canadian plateaus and towering mountain ranges. Advanced study has shown that Canadians use a form of subsonic resonance that is similar to that used by whales. Never entice a Canadian to shout if you wish to avoid perforated ear drums.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Waitomo
After leaving Rotorua we drove up to Waitomo via Taupo. We checked into a hostel in the middle of the "town" and made our way to the nearest, and only pub. Waitomo is the best place to do caving in 
New Zealand, and its big attraction is the glow-worm caves where you can see these creatures in large numbers in the huge caverns that are dotted around the area. The caves are pretty wet and most have large areas of open water that you can swim or float through, so it didnt take the kiwis long to come up with "blackwater rafting" - floating through the underground rivers on inflatable rubber rings. Kiri and Sarah decided that just floating was a little bit lame. They wanted some abseiling thrown in for a bit more danger - evidently the risk of drowning isn't sufficient and you need to add in the possibility of a long fall down to your watery death - so we booked on a trip to "Hagga's Honking Holes". We got rubbered up in thick wetsuits and had a crash course in abseiling from the guides, then descended into the caverns. It consists of three abseils down waterfalls, and one occasion when you get dropped down into a pool of water by one of the guides. Seeing that everyone else was more scared than me was a great comfort. I even managed to look happy in one of the pictures which is unusual as in normal photos I can rarely manage a smile...
It was a fantastic trip and nobody died, which is always a bonus. But of course now I'm a true extreme sportsman it was just a walk in the park to me...
New Zealand, and its big attraction is the glow-worm caves where you can see these creatures in large numbers in the huge caverns that are dotted around the area. The caves are pretty wet and most have large areas of open water that you can swim or float through, so it didnt take the kiwis long to come up with "blackwater rafting" - floating through the underground rivers on inflatable rubber rings. Kiri and Sarah decided that just floating was a little bit lame. They wanted some abseiling thrown in for a bit more danger - evidently the risk of drowning isn't sufficient and you need to add in the possibility of a long fall down to your watery death - so we booked on a trip to "Hagga's Honking Holes". We got rubbered up in thick wetsuits and had a crash course in abseiling from the guides, then descended into the caverns. It consists of three abseils down waterfalls, and one occasion when you get dropped down into a pool of water by one of the guides. Seeing that everyone else was more scared than me was a great comfort. I even managed to look happy in one of the pictures which is unusual as in normal photos I can rarely manage a smile...
It was a fantastic trip and nobody died, which is always a bonus. But of course now I'm a true extreme sportsman it was just a walk in the park to me...
Stranded Cars
You've got to laugh at this - this was a classic Mercedes 280 in mint condition 5 weeks ago before the driver drove it on 90 mile beach during a storm. He tried to get away by driving up a riverbed (actually quite a sensible thing to do because the sand is packed down harder) but the river was swollen and the car sank. Now every time the tide comes in it sinks a little bit further.
Monday, February 13, 2006
Rotorua - day two
Like I said, Rotorua isn't short of things to do. In the morning we went to Wai-O-Tapu thermal area, where you get to walk around surreal landscapes filled with bubbling volcanic action. The big attraction of this area is Lady Knox geyser, one of only a few geysers you can see spouting water up into the air on a regular basis. And it's very regular - going off at a convenient 10:15 every morning (except Christmas Day). If you're thinking this is suspiciously well organised then you'd be right. Nature is far too unreliable when it comes to pleasing expectant crowds of lucrative tourists, so the staff at Wai-O-Tapu give it a little helping hand. It was discovered a while ago that if you drop a bar of carbolic soap down the top of a geyser it goes off about 5 minutes later. Don't ask me why it does - this isn't "New Scientist". Also don't ask me why someone was wandering along in the forest and came across a hole in the ground and thought "That looks like a good soap dish...". But put the soap down they did, and sure enough five minutes later a great big stream of steamy water gushed out. The next thought they had was "this looks like a great place for a gift shop!" and so Wai-O-Tapu was born.
In the afternoon we went off to do some whitewater rafting down one of the category 5 rapids - category 6 rapids are only suitable for the highly experienced and insane, category 7 rapids are only suitable for corpses. The one we did featured a 7 metre waterfall (Okere Falls) which is the highest raftable waterfall in the Southern Hemisphere. Not bad seeing as none of us had done rafting before, and 66% of us had managed to fall out of a kayak just the day before.
Fortunately we didn't flip over like one in eight rafts do that go down the waterfall. I'm the guy in the middle with the brown shorts.
They were blue when we started.
I was told by one of the guides to lean back for the camera and do a "hang10" sign. I had no idea what a hang 10 sign was, but this is what I chose. I am aware that this means something quite rude in Spain, and for this I apologise.
After the rafting we seriously needed to relax so we went to the thermal spa. I was wrong about Lake Rotorua being the source of the eggy smell in the town. It comes from the thermal spa and anyone who bathes there.
Friday, February 10, 2006
Rotorua - day one
A sign in the hostel read:
"Dormitories - $22
Singles - $30
Twins/Doubles - $50
Eggy Smell - Free!"
Welcome to Rotorua!
Rotorua is the tourist Mecca of the North Island, a bit like Queenstown is for the South Island. It's main attraction is the high levels of volcanic activity brewing just below the ground which results in countless bubbling pools, steaming multicoloured lakes, yellow sulphur clad rocks and a few geysers thrown in for good measure. But with all this volcanicity comes a drawback - the place stinks, and if you bathe in any of the hot pools you begin to stink too.
The New Zealanders call it "Roto-Vegas", which leads me to question whether the person who coined this phrase had ever been to Las Vegas. There arent any casinos in Rotorua, it isn't in the middle of the desert, and last time I went to Vegas I don't remember many outdoor activities or a pervading odour of egg (apart from near the $15 all you can eat buffets). The similarity is that it's a bit of a playground for tourists and it's relatively hard to find anyone who actually lives there. It's the sort of place that you can quite happily spend a few days and spend an awful lot of cash because it's so geared around tourism and there are so many great things to do that will lighten your wallets.
We travelled down with an English girl called Sarah who'd said that she'd be our friend when we'd met in the Bay of Islands . After establishing that all the hostels in town were full we checked into a modest but adequate cabin just outside the town and after a quick nights rest we embarked on our rigorous and exhaustive tourist activity programme.
First stop was a sheep show - well, it is New Zealand and there's an awful lot of sheep out here to show off. This involved a farm hand leading various different breeds of pedigree sheep onto the stage while a sheep shearer worried them with his clippers. Then later on when the sheep lost interest he turned on a small Japanese boy from the audience and worried him instead. Obviously the pedigree animals were for display purposes only and when it came to the shearing display a suitably woolly and confused specimen was produced from behind a door in the stage to have it's entire coat removed in about 30 seconds. Pretty impressive stuff, though I can safely say I won't be replying to any job adverts for farm hands or sheep shearers when i come to look for work in Australia. After the show we went out to feed the animals and noticed several recently shawn animals nakedly skulking about the paddocks - evidently the victims of previous performances.
Next up was a gondola ride to the top of the hill opposite Lake Rotorua, followed by several goes on the "Street Luge". Street Lugeing involves hurtling down on a narrow concrete track around sharply banked corners in a plastic trolley. There are two things that stop you from ending up in the ditch - the brakes on the front of the cart, and the fear arising from the almost total lack of safety equipment. You're given a bicycle helmet that protects the top of your head, but nothing to stop you from losing all the skin from your elbows, knees, hands and face should you come a cropper on a tight bend. You see people walking around Rotorua with some horrific facial injuries and they all greet each other with a knowing nod as if to say "aah, street luge!". Having spent the years 1981-1985 with scabby knees from falling over in the playground accidents, I wasn't keen on making contact with the concrete too closely this time and it was this fear that kept me safely on the road.
There's nothing more attractive to a backpacker than something that comes for free, and the cabins that we were staying in included free use of their kayaks at the side of the river. In the afternoon we took them out down the stream and onto Lake Rotorua. The stream was relatively sluggish and calm and navigating it was the easy bit, but when we broke onto the lake the winds had tossed up quite a swell and it became apparent that going out too far wouldn't be a good idea. Lake Rotorua is full of nasty green algae and is also a big contributor to the eggy smell that engulfs the town, so taking an early bath wasn't really on our activity list for that day. We did a hasty U-turn in front of some amused fishermen at the mouth of the river, but the lake gods must have already seen us and decided who amongst us was going for a dip. As we arrived back at the cabins and Sarah tried to get out of out of her kayak she ended up taking a swim. I almost followed, spending what was literally 10 seconds carefully balanced between the muddy bank and a slowly receding kayak, only supported by a few blades of grass clutched in my fingers and my face digging into the mud and duck shit. No more kayaking after that, but we couldnt rest because we had booked tickets to the local Maori Cultural show.
For $80 you can go see a display of the traditional dancing, music and haka from the Mitai tribe whose lands extend into Rotorua. You then get to walk up to their sacred spring, before enjoying an enormous banquet cooked by woodchips and hot stones in an underground oven. Needless to say the tourists love it, and there are a few more Maori millionaires than there used to be. It's a really good way of seeing their ancient traditions and lifestyle, and going back to my previous comment about backpackers loving free stuff it did cost us $80 but the dinner was all-you-can-eat!
"Dormitories - $22
Singles - $30
Twins/Doubles - $50
Eggy Smell - Free!"
Welcome to Rotorua!
Rotorua is the tourist Mecca of the North Island, a bit like Queenstown is for the South Island. It's main attraction is the high levels of volcanic activity brewing just below the ground which results in countless bubbling pools, steaming multicoloured lakes, yellow sulphur clad rocks and a few geysers thrown in for good measure. But with all this volcanicity comes a drawback - the place stinks, and if you bathe in any of the hot pools you begin to stink too.
The New Zealanders call it "Roto-Vegas", which leads me to question whether the person who coined this phrase had ever been to Las Vegas. There arent any casinos in Rotorua, it isn't in the middle of the desert, and last time I went to Vegas I don't remember many outdoor activities or a pervading odour of egg (apart from near the $15 all you can eat buffets). The similarity is that it's a bit of a playground for tourists and it's relatively hard to find anyone who actually lives there. It's the sort of place that you can quite happily spend a few days and spend an awful lot of cash because it's so geared around tourism and there are so many great things to do that will lighten your wallets.
We travelled down with an English girl called Sarah who'd said that she'd be our friend when we'd met in the Bay of Islands . After establishing that all the hostels in town were full we checked into a modest but adequate cabin just outside the town and after a quick nights rest we embarked on our rigorous and exhaustive tourist activity programme.
First stop was a sheep show - well, it is New Zealand and there's an awful lot of sheep out here to show off. This involved a farm hand leading various different breeds of pedigree sheep onto the stage while a sheep shearer worried them with his clippers. Then later on when the sheep lost interest he turned on a small Japanese boy from the audience and worried him instead. Obviously the pedigree animals were for display purposes only and when it came to the shearing display a suitably woolly and confused specimen was produced from behind a door in the stage to have it's entire coat removed in about 30 seconds. Pretty impressive stuff, though I can safely say I won't be replying to any job adverts for farm hands or sheep shearers when i come to look for work in Australia. After the show we went out to feed the animals and noticed several recently shawn animals nakedly skulking about the paddocks - evidently the victims of previous performances.
Next up was a gondola ride to the top of the hill opposite Lake Rotorua, followed by several goes on the "Street Luge". Street Lugeing involves hurtling down on a narrow concrete track around sharply banked corners in a plastic trolley. There are two things that stop you from ending up in the ditch - the brakes on the front of the cart, and the fear arising from the almost total lack of safety equipment. You're given a bicycle helmet that protects the top of your head, but nothing to stop you from losing all the skin from your elbows, knees, hands and face should you come a cropper on a tight bend. You see people walking around Rotorua with some horrific facial injuries and they all greet each other with a knowing nod as if to say "aah, street luge!". Having spent the years 1981-1985 with scabby knees from falling over in the playground accidents, I wasn't keen on making contact with the concrete too closely this time and it was this fear that kept me safely on the road.
There's nothing more attractive to a backpacker than something that comes for free, and the cabins that we were staying in included free use of their kayaks at the side of the river. In the afternoon we took them out down the stream and onto Lake Rotorua. The stream was relatively sluggish and calm and navigating it was the easy bit, but when we broke onto the lake the winds had tossed up quite a swell and it became apparent that going out too far wouldn't be a good idea. Lake Rotorua is full of nasty green algae and is also a big contributor to the eggy smell that engulfs the town, so taking an early bath wasn't really on our activity list for that day. We did a hasty U-turn in front of some amused fishermen at the mouth of the river, but the lake gods must have already seen us and decided who amongst us was going for a dip. As we arrived back at the cabins and Sarah tried to get out of out of her kayak she ended up taking a swim. I almost followed, spending what was literally 10 seconds carefully balanced between the muddy bank and a slowly receding kayak, only supported by a few blades of grass clutched in my fingers and my face digging into the mud and duck shit. No more kayaking after that, but we couldnt rest because we had booked tickets to the local Maori Cultural show.
For $80 you can go see a display of the traditional dancing, music and haka from the Mitai tribe whose lands extend into Rotorua. You then get to walk up to their sacred spring, before enjoying an enormous banquet cooked by woodchips and hot stones in an underground oven. Needless to say the tourists love it, and there are a few more Maori millionaires than there used to be. It's a really good way of seeing their ancient traditions and lifestyle, and going back to my previous comment about backpackers loving free stuff it did cost us $80 but the dinner was all-you-can-eat!
Mount Rangitoto
Mount Rangitoto is an imposing volcanic island that sprang up from the ground about 600years ago, covering a good few villages in burning soot in the process - at the very least preventing them from hanging their whites out on the washing line for a good few months. Fortunately it is now dormant, so Aucklanders don't need to worry that they'll have to dig their cars out from a pile of volcanic ash every morning and it provides them with a nice viewing platform from which to look over the city and the surrounding bays and harbours.We got the ferry over from Devonport and climbed to the top. Apparently it's only 260 metres high. That's quite a disappointing statistic when you've put in the effort to walk all the way up there and are feeling quite pleased with yourself, but the views certainly made it worthwhile. I have photographic evidence of myself at the top looking like Sir Edmund Hillary did when he first ascended Everest, only I suspect if you zoom out you wouldn't find that Sir Edmund was wearing sandals.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Bay of Islands
Kiwis will tell you that the sun burns more in New Zealand because the ozone layer is thinner over them than it is in Australia. They also complain it's hot when it's 23 degrees (they're very english like that), which kind of made me think they didn't know what they were talking about.
Needless to say after a day in the Bay of Islands I was sunburned and pretty damn hot.
The Bay of Islands is basically a really big bay with lots and lots of islands in it, the most famous of which is called the Hole in the Rock. When explorers discovered Australia and New Zealand they rapidly ran out of ideas for interesting names and went back to the map of England and started recycling city names from it. After they'd exhausted all the good place names they started to name things after themselves, followed by (in order) Kings and Queens, Lords, wives, daughters, friends, random acquaintances and finally family pets. But the lands are so vast that they just kept on finding new areas, so in the end they resorted to playing simple games of "Say-what-you-see". Hence The Bay of Islands makes complete sense in an uninteresting but informative way. Once they stepped off their boats and stopped slaughtering the indigenous people, the New Zealand explorers were delighted to discover that the Maori had already named their settlements, thus saving them from having to listen to Captain Cook announce "I-Spy with my little eye something beginning with B..." for the twentieth time that day.
Little did they know that when you translate the Maori place names into English they all come out meaning things like "Big River" or "Lots of Water". I guess that some problems are common to all cultures.
On Sunday night we arrived in Paihia (the most picturesque town in the Bay region) and we checked into a hostel called the "Pi Pi Patch". Kiri reassured me that the hostel was named after the fields of shellfish (pi pi) and not the yellowish stains on the dormitory mattresses.
Everyone on the backpacker circuit seems to be an 18 year old ex-public school girl on their gap year before university. Apart from me of course, who as you know is a 30 year old ex-public school boy having a premature mid-life crisis. I could have sworn I heard a "So What A-Level's Did You Get" conversation going on in the bar on Monday night but it could have just been an auditory hallucination brought on by the banging music, lack of sleep and my sunburn. At that point we decided to go off and find somewhere to go for dinner that the younger backpackers couldn't afford.
The next day we were up at 7am to go on a tour to Cape Rienga. After carefully waking up everyone in the dormitory who had snored that night, we were off on the Awesome Adventures coach to the Cape. The "Awesome" trip is like the standard trip, but geared around younger people.
The bus drivers dont wear a uniform or anything. Awesome!
The trip comprised a visit to an ancient Kauri forest (Big Trees), more sandboarding on a sand dune (Steep Hills) a trip along 90 Mile Beach (Long Beach), a quick dip in the sea (Deep Ocean) a walk to a spiritual Maori headland (Big Drop) and finally a quick stop at the pub on the way home (Dirty Toilets). I loved it, plus it wasn't sunny so my face didnt burn any more than it already had. Then it was back to the hostel to get shedded and wake up everyone in the dormitory again by stumbling in at 3am giggling like an 18 year old.
Backpacking's great!
Sandboarding at Cape Rienga
New Zealand
I flew from Brisbane to Auckland on Friday - this time with New Zealand airlines and not with Malaysian. I'm pleased to report there were no incidents involving beef steaks on the 3 hour journey but there was a terrible in flight movie featuring Reece Witherspoon. Along with storms, crashes, terrorism and lightning strikes, sickly sweet romantic comedies are just one of the many perils of aviation you need to endure. In their pioneering flight of 1903 the Wright brothers probably would have stayed airbourne for more than 350 yards if Orville hadn't turned on "Miss Congeniality" just as they left the runway.
Auckland is the largest city in New Zealand with a population of just under a million. It's surrounded by little bays and beaches and overlooked by the volcanic island of Rangitoto which is it's most famous landmark.
On Saturday we went to Takepuna, which is a small suburb of Auckland with a good walking beach and some pretty scenery. I spent an unhealthy amount of time being amused by the name (which is pronounced like a Scotsman saying 'take a poo in a') particularly when we went to Takepuna cinema in the evening.
I've never done that before, but if you've got to go, you've got to go...
Auckland is the largest city in New Zealand with a population of just under a million. It's surrounded by little bays and beaches and overlooked by the volcanic island of Rangitoto which is it's most famous landmark.
On Saturday we went to Takepuna, which is a small suburb of Auckland with a good walking beach and some pretty scenery. I spent an unhealthy amount of time being amused by the name (which is pronounced like a Scotsman saying 'take a poo in a') particularly when we went to Takepuna cinema in the evening.
I've never done that before, but if you've got to go, you've got to go...
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