Why is it raining on this side of the Equator?
Trip Start
Jul 24, 2007
1
24
50
Trip End
Nov 11, 2007
Whitianga,
New Zealand
Monday, October 1, 2007
It was all sunny and good when we arrived at our first stop which was Cathedral Cove, one of the free guided walks. It took nearly an hour to hike down to the cove it was like 3 bays round from where flea parked the coach which meant walking up and down the cliff faces - it was quite a walk ending with loads and loads of steps which are of course okay going down and absolutely F**king horrible coming up!
Cathedral Cove is a really pretty bay with a huge hole in the cliff which leads through to another beach, its pretty secluded because you can only get there by foot or Kayak and the town that its in only has a population of 4000 but in the summer its a bit of a tourist hotspot and I can imagine it being like a beach in spain but today we pretty much had it to ourselves
so me and Katie and our new friend, Emma from Ireland actually spotted the rain coming - its weird the weather here, actually its worse that the UK and it changes so quickly but the rain does move over the sea in blankets and thankfully we spotted it and started walking back before it actually got to us
Walk to Catherdral Cove
. I had a deluded idea that New Zealand is always hot but its not and as I have no winter clothes I think some purchases might be in order especially for the south island - I dunno where I get my idea (perhaps they are just fantasies) from because the south island of New Zealand may well be in the South Pacific but it is as close to the South Pole as you can get so at the end of winter and beginning of spring of course its gonna be cold! Having said that its a pretty good time to come especially if you're gonna be doing a tour like the one with the Kiwi Experience because in the summer months it gets pretty busy and you have to really be organised and decide in advance when you wanna be where because the buses fill up really quickly as does the accommodation in some places.
Kiwi Experience seem like a pretty groovy tour company though - there are others (Stray, Magic, Tiniki) but I heard about Kiwi through a guy in the Cook Islands and he couldn't speak highly enough and thats a pretty good recommendation. Although they organise things to do for you and make certain compulsory stops during the day you can pretty much hop on and hop off where ever you like and their bus passes last for a year. They also arrange the accommodation for you and they recommend a backpackers to stay although you can stay where ever you like - they'll drop you off and pick you up and you usually get pretty big discounts on the activities at the places which is great when you're on a tight budget
Walk to Cathedral Cove
.They also produce a really handy little brochure which tells you exactly what you're gonna be doing on which legs of the journey, where there is to stay, what activities are on offer and how much they cost and they book everything for you from the bus if you want them too or you can do it all yourself. They seem to be really popular and I think the main reason for that is because public transport to quite a lot of the places you wanna see if a bit hit and miss or non existant and in most cases quite expensive. The other way to travel NZ is in a campervan which would have been great but as I'm on my own it would have been quite expensive and very lonely but an option for the next visit maybe.... the positive of this is that most of the people travelling on Kiwi are travelling solo so you meet so many people - naturally some of them are absolute idiots but some of them are great.
So even though it was absolutely tipping down with rain the majority vote said that we should still go to hotwater beach after all its not every day that you get to walk on a beach, dig a hole and get to a natural hot spring! Its quite weird, we didn't dig or roll about in bikinis cos it was cold but other people had dug holes and we're laying in them - you can actually feel the warmth as you walk across the sand where the spring is and you can let you're feet sink in and feel the warm water which is weird with the freezing cold sea washing round your ankles - cool place
Tonight we're staying in a place called Mercury Bay which is on the Coromandel Peninsular. The girls we shared a room with at ACB decided that they would all wake up about 2am this morning (well some of them only came in at that time) and cause a riot and bring in loads of guys who snored! so i'm really lacking in sleep and am now gonna crash - just as well really because the rain really has set in for the evening so don't think we'd be walking into town for drinks!!
Comments
hey you!!
it's really great to see a picture of you on here! i got all excited, i really laughed when i saw it, you look really well and look like you're really enjoying yourself! now gonna read the rest...xxx