Haven’t written in a week but that’s because we’ve been such busy bees. Napier, as I said, was a fab little town. We explored Art Deco buildings, played lots of mini golf (Sue, sadly, coming out on top by one pathetic stroke), visited the Mission wineries (partaking in an excellent Pinot Gris and Geburztraminer) and a small brewery. Left, spent one day in Palmerston North visiting the NZ Rugby Museum and arrived in our new home, Wellington, on Saturday.
Within five hours we’d found ourselves...
Can’t recommend White Island, New Zealand’s only active marine volcano, enough. The obvious comparison is that it was like walking on Mars. We were guided through drained sulpherous lakes past massive vents that shot out superheated invisible sulpher dioxide that created clouds that blocked out the sun. We saw green lakes, odour-less sluphur deposits and walked through the ruins of a mining company’s attempts to build a factory that had fallen victim to an eruption. You could tell it was a bit...
Moving on to Whakatane today after a good week in Rotorua. On Tuesday we went to the hot-water barium Polynesian spas - very relaxing, much like a really hot (44C) bath and apparantly good for you. Wasted Wednesday morning by getting up at 5.45am to see Arsenal getting knocked out of the Champions League but it meant that we could drive to Waiotapu Thermal Reserve to see the Lady Knox Geyser erupt at 10.15. Thought its regularity and accuracy was a bit strange and (sadly) it turned out that...
We had an unpleasantly stressful and eventful journey to our first “stop”, Rotorura, yesterday that included almost running out of petrol, being given a hire car with a radio/tape player that doesn’t work (for three weeks!) and broken/lost sunglasses. We’re staying at the Kiwi Paka YHA youth hostel along with a couple of coach-loads of schoolkids who generally enjoy running around and shouting at each other. Mental note to self: no more YHA youth hostels.
Rotorura’s a big town built on and...
Not much time to write (sorry). Have scanned some new photos in - scroll to the bottom of the page - and will write some explanations as soon as I can. Hopefully the filenames will give you some idea.
Where’s your Year Ending In One now, eh?!
Why do you always think of something witty and damning to say after the event? I’m unlocking the hostel door to my room at 7pm last night when this old woman with a German accent comes out of her room and says, “I would like to ask you to shut and open your door quietly please. No noise.” I shrug, she disappears and I go back down the corridor to find Sue and then return a couple of minutes later. The door swings close behind me, not noisily but...
Briefly back “home” at the City YHA in Auckland until Monday. Went down K-Road with Amy and Sue last night and discovered bars and clubs we’d aimlessly wandered past while living here which looked fantastic but which we were too knackered for. If only we’d seem them before, kind of thing. Had a lazy day at Starbucks and Victoria Park Market before we leave for Whitianga on Monday. Starting to get a bit tired of living out of a backpack and am really looking forward to working our way down to...
Didn’t get to swim with the dolphins after all but had an amazing day nonetheless. We were on a big jet boat tour and, although we found a couple of “pods” of dolphins, we couldn’t swim with them because there were baby dolphins in both and swimming with juveniles isn’t allowed. All the same Sue, Amy and I got to lie on the bow of the boat as the little scamps jumped out of the water at you, showing off, doing little jumps and spraying water at us. Apparantly they love it when you talk or...
The last thing the locals are prepared for in Paihia, the sub-tropical capital of the Bay Of Islands, is rain. There’s absolutely bugger-all to do here that doesn’t depend on sun and lots of it. So when we arrived on Saturday to be greeted by monsoon-like rains and winds it put an obvious dampener (arf) on things. Amy, Sue, Helen (who’d come up for her last few days in New Zealand) and I decided to press on regardless with our plan for a Bay cruise up to “The Hole in the Rock” despite the...
