Month: May 2008

New convoy

The age of the Jucy camper has come to an end. The Chaser has done us well through the South Island and up most of the North Island with such luxuries as a bathroom and heated water, as well as not needing to change gear as we tootle along. But such luxuries come at a price, so we’ve swapped to a Britz camper. Gone is the bathroom, but in is the upstairs bedroom (which I’ll break if I go near), alfresco dining (folding outside table), and a grill of all things! As we marvelled at the clever design it’s odd to think that: a) we’ve been in the same type of van since we left Sydney, and each interior design feels huge compared to the last, and b) we’ll have spent 5 months living in the back of a van by the time we’re done.
So with our new van we zoomed up (it’s petrol instead of diesel and moves somewhat for a van) the imaginatively named Northland peninsula north of Auckland to meet Cat and re-establish the convoy, ready to continue our tour. Oh, we’ve also been reunited with our passports and India is on, woohoo!

One big train set

There’s a few things you could say about the Driving Creek Railway, like it’s the only narrow guage railway in New Zealand, or the owner is committed to being eco-friendly, but basically this is one man’s rather large train set. Started as a way to get clay down from the hill, the line meanders then reverses a few times up the steep hillside until it reaches the Eyefull Tower view point at 173 metres high. It was only reluctantly opened to the public about 10 years ago, well if you had such a big toy, would you share it?
We also stopped off to see some Kauri, New Zealands second tallest trees. Doesn’t sound impressive when it’s put like that, but they are the largest by volume, and that’s what really counts in my book. The relatively young 600 year old trees we saw were a mere 2 metres across, and given that they can live to 4000 years old, these monsters can get to some impressive sizes. What a shame someone thought it was a good idea to chop most of them down.

That summer holiday feeling

Last night we arrived in the Coromandel Peninsula on the east coast and lucked out by finding THE best campsite. To paint a picture it was right on the beach (imagine being lulled to sleep by the sound of the waves and morning strolls / jogs by the shore), the facilities were uber clean, but best of all there was an awesome TV room where Cat and I enjoyed CSI on a large flat screen TV whilst lounging on a leather sofa each. Ah bliss! (and I had peace to geek out with the Wi-Fi, check the map page! – Si)
After a morning beach walk we made our way further up the peninsula and found ourselves another idyllic beach for lunch. The sun was shining, the sea was beckoning, we had that summer holiday feeling and frolicked around like kids (check out Si on the rope swing).
Eventually, when we were able to drag ourselves away from the fun and frolics we hiked to Cathedral Cove, a beach with spectacularly eroded cliffs and a huge rock archway. We ran through the arch and dodged the waves to get to yet another beautiful beach. It has been a bit of a beach-tastic day! This particular beach boasted views of several stranded arches not that dissimilar to the Twelve Apostles on the Great Ocean road in Australia.
The guidebook informed us that there was only one thing round these parts that could top Cathedral Cove and that was Hot Water beach. We had been waiting all day for the appropriate low tide time of 6pm to enjoy this little treat. Apparently there is a hot spring under the sand so the idea is that you dig yourself a little pond to sit in and enjoy the hot bubbling water with the occasional sea wave to cool it down. Sounded easy enough. Our first path to the designated area was unfortunately blocked by some rather unsurmountable rocks with ferocious waves crashing on to them, after a bit of a soaking we gave up on that path and drove round the corner to the much easier more direct route. All we had to do from here was walk along the beach to the correct spot and dig. Finding the exact spot proved a little difficult however. In one spot Cat and I were pretty sure that the sea lapping at our feet wasn’t as cold as it should be but a little digging with our toes proved fruitless and we had to admit defeat, especially since the tide did not seem low as promised. We later questioned the lady at the campsite who informed us that this natural phenomenon was not working at the moment. Right!

Shearing capital of the World

I’m sure the Aussies might have something to say about Te Kuiti’s self-prolaimed title of sheep shearing capital of the world. However, we’ve learnt that the Kiwis are good at forgetting other parts of the world, the “most easterly point” and “see the sunrise first” claims of East Cape conveniently forget about Fiji and Siberia that straddle the international date line. Te Kuiti does have a quite impressive 7 metre tall statue of a sheap shearer, which must be hard to match.
Our journey today took us to a remnant forest of kahikatea, New Zealands tallest tree. Most have been chopped down to make butter boxes which is a shame as their moss covered buttress roots make for an enchanted forest feel. There was also a stop at Karangahake, an old gold mining town, topped off by the 1km disused railway tunnel walk, that’s a long way to go in the dark!

More hiding mountains

Mount Taranaki is supposedly an almost perfect cone shaped volcano, made more impressive as it stands alone on flat coastal land. That’s also the reason it’s normally covered in clouds, and as the tourist information lady said: if you see it, photograph it as it’ll be gone again soon.
We were going to do some walks around the mountain, but just counted ourselves lucky that we did manage to catch half of the mountain peeking out from behind a cloud for a few seconds. As you’d expect, when we were about 75km up the road taking sunset photos the mountain was there in the background in it’s full glory without a cloud to be seen!

Going nowhere, fast.

After the jetboat taster a couple of days back, we were back for more at the Whanganui River today. The air was cold and a mist hung over the river gorge, meaning that it was a bit nippy as we zoomed about 50km up the river in the jetboat. Where we were going? Nowhere, or to be precise the bridge to nowhere, built when the Kiwis were trying to convert the land to farms, and the bridge was completed just as the farmers were leaving. So since the 1930’s the bridge has been sitting there not being used, and without a road at either end – literally the bridge to nowhere.
With the farms long gone, the forest is returning to nature, mostly fern trees with their big umbrella leaves filling the steep hillside (not sure why anyone thought it would be a good idea to farm there!). Just as we returned to the boat the rain set in, not too bad on shore, but with the jetboat hurtling down the river each drop was like a needle to the face – good job we had raincoats!

Mount Ruapehu

Sometimes plans don’t work out, and today we had to resort to plan c. We were planning on doing the Tongariro Crossing, said to be the finest one day hike in New Zealand, crossing between two not-so-dormant volcanoes. We were a bit dubious about attempting the 16km trek anyway, but as we visited the information centre yesterday and saw that alpine conditions were in effect, (meaning ice picks were required) we decided to give it a miss. There was also the possibility of rain, so that sealed the deal.
This is New Zealand though, always lots to do, so plan b was to catch a scenic flight over the three volcanoes and see them that way. Unfortunately as we woke this morning, the cloud cover was so low you could almost touch it. Instead we took the scenic route around the national park, the mountains still hiding behind clouds. Eventually we were far enough south to get out of the cloud cover and see Mount Ruapehu, New Zealands tallest volcano, in all it’s glory (apart from the power cables obscuring the view…).
The volcano had erupted 8 months ago, and had a large eruption in 1996, so quite an active one! The 1996 eruption threw out 5 to 15 metre boulders (that must be like a house flying at you!) along with hot ash and other debris. The volcano is currently under alert as there is increased activity in the crater, meaning a possible eruption could occur. There was also a map indicating where lava flows and water from the crater lake would go if an eruption occurred. Came in quite useful for us when picking a campsite!

Riding the rapids

Those Aratiatia rapids from yesterday were way too good to only visit once, but this time we added one more ingredient: speed. There have been ample opportunities for jetboat riding, however this one is special as it’s the only jetboat that goes over rapids, along with going airborne and sinking a few boats in the rapids over the years. Small mercy is that we don’t go over the rapids we were looking at yesterday, and instead head downstream. Twisting, spinning and coming within a knats whiskers of things sticking out of the river, we hurtled down to some other rapids. The river was five times higher than normal, which meant lots of water churning, and waves to ride as we went up and down, getting airbourne and soaked quite a few times. So, putting an 8 litre Chevvy engine in the back of a small speed boat makes for just about the best mode of transport, ever.

Lady Knox is a geyser!

Today has been an action packed day, it must have been as we’ve all broken our daily photo taking record: Cat with 227, Caroline on 238, and me on a whopping 308, bringing my total to over 12,000. I pity the fool who contemplates a slide show of our trip!
We’d camped at the thermal pools of Waikite, lots of outdoor pools fed from the “boiling river”, although we didn’t think that was literal, a short walk put us straight. The spa is fed from a massive pool about 4 metres across of fiercely boiling water, at some points it boiled so hard it looked like it was going to erupt into a geyser, not something to stand near! Testimony to the fact that the earth’s crust is very thin round these parts.
That only whet our apetites for the thermal wonderland that is Wai-o-Tapo, and first treat was the Lady Knox geyser, promising to erupt at 10.15am. As we’d read our guide book, we knew that the ranger triggers the geyser, but I swear some people were standing with camera ready, checking their watches… The wait also gave me the time to come up with that gem of a blog title, ah, simple things!
The ranger dropped soap powder into the mouth of the geyser, and within seconds foam was billowing from the top. A few seconds later and water was spurting out, giving us our second shower of the day. The rest of the park was as a wonderland as advertised, craters, pools and rocks in a kaleidoscope of colours, all bubbling away and steaming. The champagne pool fizzed as it boiled, and the rim of the pool was bright orange, before dropping off deep to the bottom of the extinct volcano. The final pool was an odd luminescent yellow-green, like some big vat of lime shower gel. Suplhur is very smelly, but can make some crazy colours! At the exit, the mud pools plopped away merrily, occasionally a mini mud eruption would occur in the middle of the lake, and hats off to Caroline who snapped one of the bigger plops mid flow.
With all the thermal pools we’ve visited, it was time for a change to plain old water, and so we stopped for lunch at Aratiatia dam. Now, as you’ve come to expect, this is not an ordinary dam, at 2pm the sirens wailed and the floodgates opened, literally. 80,000 litres of water a second gushed out, and gradually the river level rose. The Aratiatia rapids downstream changed from a trickle to a raging torrent. Even more bizzarre is that the river is turned on just for the spectators to see what the rapids are like in full flow, no other reason. Compare that to Australia, or most other countries for that matter, I can’t imagine they’d use water quite like that! After half an hour the river is turned off again, until the next time.
Further upstream is the Huka Falls, a paltry 10 metre drop, but impressive due to the sheer amount of water flowing, varying depending on the amount of rain, but on the order of 1 tonne per second. It’s easy to see why they can turn the Aratiatia rapids on, the dam would probably overflow if they didn’t!
As dusk was fast approaching there was just enough time to fit in one more visit, this time to Craters of the Moon. The whole landscape was covered in steam rising from various vents, from impossibly small holes to ponds, all billowing white vapour. In many ways similar to what we’ve been looking at for the past two days, but concentrated into one area without trees, and the low light levels added to the atmospheric feeling.
All together it’s been a fine day, and we’ve managed to squeeze quite a lot in, no wonder so many photos were taken!

Rotorua, or is it Queenstown?

The rain was lashing down, but we stuck to the schedule and went to the thermal reserve of Te Puia. Mud pools were happily plopping, and geysers gushing (probably, there was a lot of steam obscuring the view but there were a lot of whooshing noises), and the ever present eggy smell was more than abundant. In fact the whole hill, and indeed the rest of Rotorua was gently puffing steam, a quite surreal view! The ticket also included a cultural show from the Maoris, the highlight being the Haka, where warriors slap their chests, recite some scary words, stick out their tongues and bulge their eyes in a uniquely Maori way. It’s meant to scare any opponents before a battle, and I reckon it probably would’ve worked a few times.
The sun was starting to peek through the clouds, just in time as we were off to the luge, as recommended by Pete. Seeing there was some other ride called the Skyswing at the top of the hill as well, we eagerly bought tickets, and were up the gondola in no time. The Skyswing looked so innocent, a nice little cage suspended by cables that would somehow do a swing. Laughing off the suggestion the ride was scarier than bungies and skydives, we climbed in and were strapped in, twice. That’s when the little seed of doubt was sown, the cage winched the three of us up, tilting so we were face down and we had no option but to trust the harness. At the top there was one thing left to do, come down, and I had control over that with a release cord. With a couple of screaming girls next to me, I gave the cord a tug and we were off, 150km in 2 seconds.
The ride was definitely scarier than it looked, helped by the cage pushing you down the free fall, and swinging out over nothing but a long drop down to Rotorua. At least I know my adrenalin glands still work.
That wasn’t even the reason we were up the hill, the luge beckoned, and true to Pete’s word it was great fun. Sitting on a little black tray with wheels we careered down a concrete track, screeching around corners on two wheels (me!) and over kerbs (Caroline!), although some of us took it a bit too easy (Cat!).
We caught the gondola back down the hill with Caroline renewing her vow to retire from these danger sports, we’ve all heard that one before! 😉