To be honest it doesn't matter at all if the hostel is a complete dump when they give you free cake, but this place was brilliant - it was run by a couple that had spent ages travelling themselves so really knew how to keep the backpackers happy. We really wanted to do some wine tasting (ie drinking) at some point in New Zealand, and Nelson was the perfect place for it; we signed up for a tour and headed out the following day.
The tour was great, we visited four different vineyards and tried so much wine it got to the point where we actually had to use the spittoon by the afternoon :p The lady that ran it was a really eccentric ex-school teacher, and the whole thing felt like a crazy school trip but with lots of wine involved. All good fun - we definitely learned a bit more about wine, but it did take us quite a few days of beer drinking before either of us could face ordering a wine again ha!
So that was it for the south island, as the next day we were up bright and early to drive to Picton to get the ferry. In classic style we'd not bothered checking times or booking, so it was a total fluke that there was a ferry just about to leave the minute we arrived. A little bit of running around the ferry terminal later and we were on the boat, heading north to NZ's capital city, Wellington.
Our fantastic luck with the unpredictable New Zealand weather finally ran out, and as we pulled into the docks in Wellington the outlook was pretty grey and miserable. It stayed rainy for three days running, so we really didn't see much of Wellington. Possibly the most exciting thing that happened is that we stumbled on the enlightening of the city Christmas tree, complete with Sally Army band and carol singing, to get us into the Xmas mood a bit!
With the rain showing no signs of abating, we rented another car and headed north back out into national park territory.
The first stop on the north island tour was Tongariro National Park, a real life volcano and home of one of the best one-day hikes (they call them 'tramps') in the country. After a lot of persuading from Alex I'd agreed to embark on this 21km long by 1km high mission of a walk as it did sound pretty amazing... even if I did think I had a very high chance of collapsing in a heap at some point along the track.
The hostels in the area were set up for sending people out onto the track via buses that ran from the town to the start in the morning, and then they'd pick you up at the other end 6 gruelling hours later. So we dragged ourselves out of bed to get onto the bus at 7:30 am, completely weighed down with snacks and water as if we were heading out to the north face of Everest. The weather report was a little ropey, but we'd seen the clouds clear up nicely the day before so we were quite optimistic... famous last words...
It was pretty easy going to start with, just a gentle slope up some really nice terrain, and the sun was making the right noises about breaking through the clouds.
The easy going start quickly turned into the start of the uphill slog. It was around this time we overheard some people saying that the volcano area had been used - yep, you guessed it - in Lord of the Rings for some of the Mount Doom bits. So there were quite a few people joking about climbing up Mount Doom, and one group in particular were taking it so seriously ('Listen guys, its now or never to turn back, as once we climb this bit there's no coming back...') we started to feel a bit nervous. We could see on our handout from the hostel that the profile of the walk was pretty much straight up from there, with a really long downhill at the end, so we got our heads down and started up the side of the mountain.
Its time for a quick side note - at this point we'd be remiss if we didn't mention a slightly wacky NZ form of sustainance - Scroggin. We were baffled by this phrase at the start of the NZ journey, we'd seen a couple things mentioning it but had no clue what it meant. But it turned out to be their word for trail mix, or whatever we call that in England. Like a high-carb snack for when you are walking. Anyway, having found out there was a special word for it - and having found huge scroggin dispensers in the nearby supermarket - we were completely loaded with the stuff. By the time we'd hit the hilly bits we were so wired on peanuts, dried fruit and chocolate covered raisins we were zooming passed everyone else. Maybe not such a good idea right at the start of the walk, but hey, it was tasty...!
Anyway, back to the mission in hand - it was all going so well until we were about halfway up - then either we broke through the clouds, or the clouds came down to break us...
.. and it all went a little bit sideways from there :
You could barely see 15 metres, and sadly this walk is all about the views of things that are more than 15 metres away. Aparently there was an active volcano crater, several brightly coloured volcanic lakes, and all sorts of Lord of the Rings-style scenes of barren landscapes out there somewhere.
Right at the top we crossed the freezing level and started to a few scattered snowy/icey bits, and that also transformed the cloudy mist from an annoyance into a face-freezing blizzard. We were not best pleased at this stage =)
And not to be outdone...
From the top there were a few pretty steep bits to slide down, followed by three hours of gradual downhill slog. We were pretty happy to break back through the freezing level, then through the cloud level, and by the end it was pretty warm and dry again. But after 21 cold and wet kilometres both of us were pretty fed up with it - and I was totally knackered - so we were very glad to ge the bus home for a nice hot shower. Looking back on this we are really glad we did it, but its such a shame about the weather as it could have been an amazing trip. (Advice to anyone heading this way - leave a spare day in your plans so that if needs be you can wait to do the crossing... the bus service we had were really cool as if by the time they'd driven you all the way to the start and the weather was still rubbish, they'd take you back and give you tickets for the next day instead.)
The next morning was pretty horrific, both of us (ok well me especially) were crying out in pain with every step. The rest of the people in our hostel were also in varying states of brokenness which made us feel a bit better. But with limited time to cram everything in, it was straight back on the road (thank god for automatic cars!) heading for Waitomo - home of the famous black water rafting.
The drive was fairly straight forwards, and the hostels were all bluring into one by this point... but thats not really why you make the trip over to Waitomo. The whole area is littered with caves, and the main underground river runs for miles. They've made various attractions - caving, walking, more glow worm spotting for the more mild-mannered travellers - but the main event for most people is the black water (underground) rafting. This is a tamer version of white water rafting, but you do it underground in narrow tunnels sat on car inner tubes... sounds great eh? :)
We booked in a combined day of crazy activities - first you abseil down 20 metres or so into the cave, then you go walking up the underground river and do some caving. Then you stop in a huge underground cavern and do some glowworm spotting, followed by the rafting. Once you've gone far enough down river, you grab the tubes and hike back upstream before climbing the wall of the cave you abseiled down to get out again. A pretty average day by New Zealand standards then.
There were some nice easy walks around the place to do to try and stretch our achy legs, and caves were everywhere :
Our crazy mission started at 10am the next day, and started pretty mundanely with a bus ride followed by changing into the gear. We ended up with all sorts of crazy stuff - a full wetsuit as the water is freezing and we'd be getting pretty wet, a crazy pair of cloth trousers (to stop the eels from biting?!), a climbing harness with caving rack for the abseil and climb, a hard hat with a torch so we could see in the cave, and finally a pair of lovely white wellies. There were 6 people in the group, plus the guide, and we all looked like total loons walking around in all the gear.
So first up was the abseil, and thanks to our rock climbing antics in Thailand this was pretty straight forwards. (Unforunately we don't have any photos of us in action as it was the classic rip off of having to pay for a CD of mostly blurred photos the guide had taken afterwards. But that wont stop us from ripping off photos from google though eh...) This is a picture of the cave entrance from the bottom, the abseil happens on the far left, and the climb back up by the ropes on the right.
We hadn't quite realised how cold it was going to be down there, and the water level was pretty high thanks to the recent rain. Our wellies were pretty much continually full as you had to walk in the river for quite a lot of the way. After everyone made it down we grabbed our inner tubes and headed up stream. There were some little bits of caving to do - both Alex and I aren't partically fond of small enclosed spaces, especially after the Cu Chi Tunnels trip in Vietnam - so we chickened out of the harder bits. The trek up stream to see the glowworm cave was well worth it; after lying down on a sandy bank we all turned out our lights. Straight away you could see glow worms all over the roof, but after five minutes of acclimatisation you could see millions of the buggers - absolutely amazing.
But all of that was a bit of a sideshow, as finally we'd trekked far enough up stream to hit the inner tubes. With our lights off we cruised down stream, and then sped up through some really fast bits too. This was really increadible fun - and just a tiny bit scary at the same time - we were so far underground, with all that rock around and the fast flowing river, it was all pretty exciting stuff.
The trek back upstream was a killer however - lugging the tubes back through the faster bits was a real mission. We were all quite relieved to make it back to the starting cave, but then we had to face the 20 metre climb to get out! The wall was very simple compared to the stuff we'd done in Ko Phi Phi, but its still pretty hard work climbing on wet rock in wellington boots. Everyone made it up, and for the second time that week we were knackered and desparately in need of a hot shower.
The relentless pace of drive-sightsee-drive was starting to take its toll by this stage, but we only had one more destination on the north island before we reached Auckland - possibly the worlds smelliest city, Rotorua.
Built around an area of huge geothermal activity, the entire place stinks of eggy sulphur joy, all day and all night. You can't escape the smell, it follows you everywhere and tries to overwhelm you when you least expect it. You wake up in the middle of the night thinking something has gone seriously wrong with your digestive system, but then you remember where you were and go back to sleep against.
Ok enough about the smell... against all odds Rotorua is a major tourist destination, with lots of thermal spa style pampering options, and some quite famous geysers and mud pools to take a look at. After our knackering few days, first stop was clearly going to be the spa :
Now I'll be honest and admit that sitting in a boiling hot pool of stinking water isn't one of my top ten ways to unwind, but Alex really enjoyed it. The views across the (stinking, sulphurous) lake were pretty good though.
The next day we were up early to visit the impressively titled "Wai-O-Tapu Geothermal Wonderland". It was a bit of strange one as the place was open all day, but everyone going there rushes in at 10:30 on the dot, as this is when they 'induce' their main attraction, the Lady Knox geyser.
Its all very impressive but with quite a bit of smoke and mirrors - the chap pops by and drops 300 grams of soap powder into the top of it to make it go. Otherwise it erupts on its own every couple of days, but by the sound of things they've been rudely awaking it every day now for the last eighty years or so.
After a few minute of watching it go, the assembled masses pile back to the main park to walk around the remarkable assortment of craters, cauldrons and other crazy geothermal sites.
Having been a little baffled by Rotorua's appeal so far, we were really taken aback by amazing sights in Wai-O-Tapu. Its completely unique in terms of things we've seen so far on the trip, the colours (yeah, smells too) and bizarre formations caused by the geothermal activity have to been seen to be believed. They have built a really nice walking path through the different parts, and the whole experience was really great.
It took a few hours to walk around the full site, which left us with a few hours to kill in the afternoon, so we headed up in another gondala (the twin to the one in Queenstown it turns out) to take in the views over the town and the lake.
Being identical in every way to the one in Queenstown, there was also a luge track, so we couldn't resist hurtling down the side of the hill a few times... great fun and great views at the same time, all great fun.
That was it for Rotorua, and pretty much it for New Zealand. The next day we did the final leg of the drive, dropping the car off in Auckland and settling in for a quiet 24-hour flying visit. We took in most of the city but didn't really get up to much, I think we'd been put off doing anything by everyone saying it was a bit rubbish! To be honest we were totally shattered by this point and enjoyed a bit of a rest for a day.
So another country down, and only two more to go - we headed off to Auckland airport the next day a little reluctant to leave New Zealand, but also quite content that we'd packed in so many amazing days as we travelled across the islands. It was a great balance of scenery, chilled out people, great drives and lots of adventure - we can't recommend it enough.
So next stop America... our flight took us from Auckland to Los Angeles direct, and managed to land before it took off, thanks to the wonderful magic of crossing the international date line. It was the start of a strange few days that's for sure, but that story will have to wait for our next update =)
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