Wellington and the North Island
Trip Start
Nov 01, 2005
1
32
41
Trip End
Jul 28, 2006
Wellington, New Zealand
Sunday, June 18, 2006
So part 2 of our New Zealand blog was loaded up at Picton, where the ferry docks to connect the north and south islands. Quiet and consequently pleasant place, maybe because it is getting on towards winter here and tourist and holidaymaker numbers are much lower than summertime. Guess it could be heaving during summer. Found a café with wifi as well so we were able to do a bit more north island research on the internet as we passed time waiting for our ferry to dock. We also found time to visit what remains of an old ship called the Edwin Fox, 9th oldest ship in the world, at the town's maritime Museum. She's a huge old girl, made almost exclusively from teak and saul wood, in India in 1853 and now in dry dock being conserved for all to see. We were amazed to see that the hull was clad in copper sheet, apparently quite a common practice but one neither of us had seen nor heard of before
01 Daisy Elizabeth
. Well worth a visit if you're ever passing by this way. We dropped the hire car off at the depot and were driven the short distance to the ferry, not particularly relishing the thought of lugging our rather large and heavy bags on, around and off it at the other end of our crossing. How quaint we thought as we saw airport style trolleys and wondered if we could take them on board. Then we saw 'baggage check-in', "is this for tour groups?" we enquired, "no", and we were beckoned over to the counter and with our large heavy bags checked in we boarded, ready for the 3 hour journey. Apparently our bags could be retrieved once we had embarked at Wellington. With a hoot of the horn the ferry was cast off and we were on our way, sad to leave the south island as we had really enjoyed our four weeks there. As we looked back we saw that Picton wasn't actually as small as we had thought, in fact quite a large part of it appears to have spread over into the next bay. That's one of the things we like about New Zealand, you never really knew what's round the next bend. Mentioning bends, it seems to take ages for the ferry to twist and turn it's way out from Picton, through Queen Charlotte Sound, to the open seas of the Cook Strait. Then no sooner you're there on the high seas and Wellington appears on the far shore (sea wasn't actually high at all, in fact it was thankfully as flat as a mill pond. They do apparently experience huge swells sometimes across the straits). Docking at Wellington happened quickly and low and behold there was a room with a baggage carousel around which trundled our bags, how efficient eh
02 Daisy awake
!So here we were in Wellington, New Zealand's capital, on the north island. First task was to find our new hire car. We were a bit nervous, as the instructions were that one of two things would happen. Firstly that someone would be waiting for us with a name board and take us to our car. The second and most likely was that we should find the car ourselves in the car park! Of course the second option was the one we ended up with so what clues were we given. It was a brown Nissan that should have our name on a piece of paper in the windscreen, number 177 somewhere on it and the key would be under the driver's foot mat. It's all an irrational fear of the unknown. Where's the car park, how big is it, how many car will there be to check out, are brown Nissans popular on the north island, will our name be visible from a long distance or will it be there at all, could we be hunting around the car park for ages for a car that isn't actually there? The list could go on and on. Anyway we needn't have worried as we found the car within less than a minute. Can't help thinking that in the UK the car would have been nicked within seconds of being left unlocked with the key under the mat.
So off we go, straight into the centre of the capital city, well prepared as ever, without a clue where we wanted to go and with nowhere booked to stay that evening and no food to eat
03 On the Ferry
. Survival instincts take over, shelter is found at Bella Vista motel, running water available, excellent, now for food, should we go hunting for super markets? Nah lovely Chinese food at a restaurant within 100m so that was that all sorted. It's tough living off your wits.Spent a good amount of time in Wellington's Te Papa Museum, which has a variety of different themed displays that cater for all ages and ranges of knowledge. Chris got a bit of a shock when she unknowingly wandered into an earthquake simulation room, took her most of the remainder of the day to recover! Of course we shouldn't really forget that NZ is a part of the world where earth quakes, geothermal activity and the likes are quite frequent. In fact they draw a significant proportion of the country's power requirements from geothermal sources. Eventually, having stocked up with food supplies, we set off up country to explore. There is quite some rivalry between north and south islanders and of course the latter had given us the impression that most of the interest for us would be on their island. Consequently we weren't sure what to expect although we are pretty sure by now that we must be of the 'glass being half full' brigade, having been able to find good things to see or do everywhere we've been so far.
Now we do appreciate that we are both coming up to significant birthdays around the end of 2006 and will then have clocked up 100 years between us but there are still many things we have yet to experience
04 Chris out walking
. One experience we can now tick off happened within twenty minutes of arriving in New Plymouth. They have a quaint way of making tourists and visitors feel welcome by making a fifteen minute parking area in front of the tourist info centre and enforcing it with strict efficiency. All we went in for was to find info on local motels for our night's stay and we returned to the car after, OK admittedly twenty one minutes, to find a ticket being slapped on the windscreen of what was obviously a tourist's hire car. Some of the staff in the info centre were a bit half baked and were probably in on the money making scam for the local council. Can you tell we weren't too pleased by this new experience! We wrote to the local council as well to tell them of our dissatisfaction with the whole arrangement and left our email address for a reply. Guess what we're about to leave NZ two weeks later and no reply yet. Well that's that off our chests, had to be said. Actually New Plymouth is a nice place but do beware off the 'job's-worth' traffic wardens (sorry, started again) good beaches, surf, town centre, walks, etc. Very close to Mt Taranaki/Egmont volcanos where we spent an enjoyable couple of hours walking one of the many tracks.From New Plymouth we headed into the centre of the main part of the north island to Taupo Township on the shores of Lake Taupo and close to three more volcanoes. It seems as though wherever you are on the north island you're never too far from some volcano or geothermal activity so we duly explored. We had a geothermal day when we explored two sites, namely Orakei Korako Cave and Thermal Park and Craters of the Moon Charitable Trust. Both were equally fascinating and a bit scary as steam and hot water/mud hissed and bubbled up all around you. We don't think the photos we've taken really do justice to the scale of these places and the extent of the activity
05 Mount Taranki
. Of course stinkographs aren't available yet either! Our day at the volcanoes didn't end up quite as planned but was still enjoyed. We had hoped to go to the crater rim on Mt Ruapehu but unfortunately the chairlifts, which are a vital part of this trip, were closed for maintenance. They close for 5/6 days between the end of summer and start of winter seasons and yep, you guessed it, we had chosen one of those days. We still managed to put together some of the smaller tracks and had a good walk and views although undoubtedly less spectacular than the crater rim. We extended our stay at Taupo by one more night to allow us to walk the riverside track from Aratiatia Dam to the Haka Falls and back on the Waikato River, which flows from the Lake Taupo. Both dam and falls are spectacular. The sluice gates on the dam are closed and then opened at set times during the day. The valley on the down-stream side of the dam goes from empty to a full, foaming, frothy mass of water within just a few minutes. Huge boulders in the valley just disappear from sight under the torrent of water. "Awesome" to quote some of the young folk standing beside us. The walk up and along the riverside took almost 2 hours, passing through a variety of terrain and views. The peace and quiet being punctuated by the occasional jet boat, whizzing up and down the river that gave us an inkling of our proximity to the river when it was out of site. Half way along, we were able to see one of the geothermal energy sites on the far bank with pure white steam hissing from many pipes and valves
06 bathing beauty
. Just a couple of hundred metres along the track and we were back in the quiet until step by step the sound of the approaching falls got louder and louder. Lake Taupo is a huge expanse of water with, of course, an even larger catchment area for rainwater fall. The sum of these combined waters forces its way through the narrow Huka Falls, which at not far off one hundred metres long but only twenty feet wide means quite a commotion. There is a small, single vehicle sized concrete bridge spanning the falls where you can stand and watch the water rushing past beneath you. The bridge vibrates as you stand on it and that combined with the immense volume and speed of water passing below made us move on fairly quickly. Brief stop for lunch then back on the track back towards the car. Paul had a tense time towards the end of the track but he needn't have worried. He hadn't lost the car keys, he'd just left them in the boot lock of the car and they were still dangling there when we returned 4 hour later to the car park. Now how likely is that to have been the outcome at most UK tourist attraction car parks? Feeling blessed and somehow protected we returned to our motel. Taupo was a great location, popular with Kiwi's as well as tourists and we were sad to leave especially as we'd found the newly opened Beechtree Motel, with all mod cons, including double Jacuzzi bath and free unlimited Internet access
07 On the Patio
. Needs must and so on the advise of one of the locals we decided to visit the caves on route to Hamilton, which was to be our next stop. Now we've been in caves before so stalagmites and tites don't impress us so much these days, and we were a bit sceptical about whether it would be a waste of time and money. There are always organ pipes and often a cathedral cave and animals of all shapes and sizes to be found in the calcite deposits. But wow, what made these caves so special were the tiny glow worms who live in the caves, as you glide along in an open boat on an underground river, in complete silence and darkness the worms look like a million stars twinkling in the sky. Just magical and silencing even the sceptical Westwoods.Hamilton our next destination, not particularly for any purpose other than to get tickets for the All Blacks' test against Ireland for the following Saturday evening. Found the stadium but no tickets available from there, had to find a sports shop in the city centre. Drive around a bit, find the shop, park up, buy tickets, standing only available, but not to worry, back to the car and off to find a motel. We thought we'd stay for a few nights and use it as a base to explore out from. How wrong we were, 4 nights including Saturday? "No chance" we were told, all motels/hotels, etc in and around the city had been booked up solidly within a few days of the date and venue for the rugby test being announced
08 Geothermal area
. We needed to go to Auckland the following day to sort out some of our onward flight details so we thought perhaps the more sophisticated search facilities at their info centre would be able to find us some accommodation in Hamilton for Saturday night. To cut a long story short we ended up staying at the last motel vacancy in a town called Raglan on the west coast about 50km from Hamilton and that was as near as we could get. That is indeed a reflection of the esteem the All Blacks hold in these parts and the popularity of rugby in general.Raglan turned out to be a nice place, good surf apparently but quite quiet and sleepy when we were there, probably the time of year again. No wifi, in fact there only seemed to be the video shop with Internet access at all. We managed a small walk to Bridal Veil Falls whilst there, but not much more activity. Saturday morning and afternoon it rained like stink so that gave us the opportunity to do some blog writing before setting off to Hamilton for something to eat followed by the big match.
Well its all history now, and the records will show the All Blacks beat the Irish yet again by quite a reasonable margin 34 - 23. However had the snapshot of history been taken ¾ way through the game it would have looked much different
09 Paul, Diamond Geyser
. After letting in a silly try in the first seconds of the game the Irish matched the ABs, took the lead and held it up to the final quarter. Ultimately it was the ABs strength and endurance to keep the work rate up for the full 80 minutes that won them the game. We had an absolutely brilliant time, standing in the green end of Waikato Stadium with both AB and Irish supporters, some a trifle merry to say the least but all good-natured. We'd managed to street park quite close to the stadium so managed a quick get-away as well, back to Raglan.After a good chat with the motel owner about NZ, his son, our sons, our stay, etc (they're really keen that you should make the most of your visit to NZ and go home with a good impression) we checked out and headed back along state highway 23 and eventually 22 to Auckland for our final night. The link road between SH22 and 23 is quite entertaining as it twists and turns its way over the coastal mountain ranges. For two stretches the tarmac disappears and you are left with just a noisy gravel track that clatters and jolts the poor old car about. Auckland's suburbs duly arrived and we dropped our bags at our final motel and our trusty hire car back at their depot. Early night we thought to ourselves as we made arrangements for a 3am wake-up call and 3.30 shuttle bus transport for our 6 something flight. What made us check the airline tickets we're not sure but it was good that we did because they were actually for 6.25PM. We're so glad we hadn't arrived at the airport at 4am to find that out. Much better to be at the motel and have the opportunity to catch up with clothes washing and ironing, blog writing and uploading, etc, etc. or so we thought. Take advantage of these unplanned moments we thought......... That was until 8.30am that morning, Paul was just lathered up in the shower, when the lights flickered for a few moments and then all the electricity went off completely. Can't be for long we thought, wrong yet again. The power eventually returned at gone 1pm - best laid plans eh! Apparently all Auckland district was without power so we have to wait and see what the state of play is at the airport................................................................
