marie_d

Photos for this section of the trip begin here.

I left Rotorua and headed south, spending most of a day driving some 325 km (200 miles) to Palmerston North. I took a break in Taupo, another town along a round, volcanic-crater lake. I wished I could have spent a bit more time in Taupo, but I needed to push south.

I had pretty much nothing else planned for the trip down, except I'd be going past Tongariro National Park, which has three large mountains in it (two of which featured in the Lord of the Rings movies) and I was really looking forward to the seeing them looming up from the flat plains of the east. Unfortunately, the mountains were all hidden in clouds, so I only caught a glimpse of their bases.

The area just south of the mountains was dry and deserty, with a lot of scrub brush, probably the most un-New Zealand-like environment I saw. It is quite parallel to Oregon; the west side of the island up to the mountains captures all the moisture coming from the ocean and then the east is much drier.

I arrived in Palmerston North and it was after I arrived at the hostel there that I started to have the flu-like symptoms I had for the next few days, which I wrote about when I was travelling. It was not a fun time, especially when you want to enjoy where you are and you have plans to travel, but you just can't.

From Palmerston North I drove to Wellington, the capitol of New Zealand, at the southern tip of the North Island. I first went downtown and spent a little bit of time at Te Papa, the highly-regarded national museum. Unfortunately I didn't see much since my stomach was feeling horrible. I do remember the exhibits on volcanoes and earthquakes that reminded me of similar exhibits at OMSI. I then headed to the east side of the city to find the house of my former co-worker's sister, where I'd be spending the night. Wellington reminded me a lot of San Francisco or Seattle, a lot of hills nestled next to water. My co-worker's sister lived in a gorgeous house on a hill with an absolutely impossible driveway. I stupidly tried to get up it, but only succeeded in burning the tires and still didn't get up the hill, so I had to roll back down. After dinner, their family and I all piled in their car and they took me on a drive around their area, pointing out Peter Jackson's house on the way. It was a beautiful area, but I was feeling so miserable that I don't remember it as well as I might have.

The next morning I turned in my North Island car and caught the ferry to Picton, on the South Island, where I got my South Island car. I don't remember much about the ferry ride, though the entry into Queen Charlotte Sound would have been wonderful. I didn't take one photo on the crossing, I just tried to sleep and feel ok. Once I got my other car, I headed to my co-worker's parents' house, just east of Picton and facing the sound. The views from their house were astounding.

I mostly took it easy at their house, though we did go just below the hill from their house to see an old Maori fortress. I was suppose to leave the next day to head south along the west side of the island, but there was no way I could have spent hours driving. So I asked if I could stay one more night at their house and I changed my plans so that I made the shorter drive down the east side of the island. It meant missing out on the glaciers and Mt Cook and Milford Sound, but there were some memorable parts to the east coast that I wouldn't have seen otherwise.

Heading south from Picton, the first main town is Blenheim, which is in one of NZ's key wine regions. Normally the area gets a lot of sun, but it started raining as I left Picton and it never let up for the rest of the day. It's for the best then that I spent most of the day driving, so I was warm and dry in the car. Not too far after Blenheim the road met up with the ocean and I was so excited to be driving along the Pacific. Sure, it's a corner of the Pacific very far away from the Oregon Coast, but it was the ocean! The gray, rainy day certainly made me feel like I could have been in Oregon. At one point I pulled into a rest stop and was looking out at some rocks in the water and it was awhile before I realized that there were seals hanging out on the rocks. They were mostly napping through the rain.

In the afternoon I got to the town of Kaikoura where I stayed for two nights in a convent that is now a B&B, making it the second renovated convent I'd stayed in (the other being a hostel in Melbourne). With my stomach still acting up, I wanted a room of my own, and I highly recommend this B&B. My room was cozy, with a large bathroom, breakfast is included, and the owners were so friendly. It was a great place to recuperate for a couple of days.

Kaikoura was also a lovely little town. They attract a lot of visitors who go on the many sea life tours available. Also there is a peninsula to the east of town where there is a seal colony and you can do a couple of walks in the area. The Lonely Planet described Kaikoura as being between the ocean and a range of mountains that rise up right behind the town, but when I arrived the mountains were completely obscured. Fortunately they made an appearance the next evening.

The day after I arrived, I checked out the seal colony and then decided to drive inland on a highway that was meant to go into some mountains and eventually past a skifield. I thought I'd head towards that and hopefully see some mountains, since it was still really gray, though the rain had stopped. I didn't make it as far as the skifield, which was about 55 km (34 miles) away, because the road was so twisty and slow it took about half an hour to go just 40 km and I was getting a bit tired of all the turns. But it was a beautiful drive past farms (a lot of sheep) and over rivers (usually on one-lane bridges) and it was quiet out there. At one point I saw a deer up ahead and only as I got closer and saw there were many more deer with it did I realize it was a deer farm. I'm used to deer being wild...

The next day I headed on south towards Christchurch, which is the largest city on the South Island. Maybe it was because I wasn't there long, but it didn't leave the best impression on me. For one, I hated driving around the city, I remember it felt like ages to get back to the highway to carry on farther south. And I just didn't connect with the city, there's not much about it that stuck in my mind. I'll continue in the next part about the next town I stayed in, which was a much nicer place.

Click here to go to the photos from this part of the trip.

I stayed for two nights in a great hostel in Rotorua and I became quite accustomed to, and even fond of (in a weird way), the sulfur smell. The day after I arrived though I drove an hour and a half further northeast to the town of Whakatane on the wide Bay of Plenty to go on a boat in search of dolphins. I was the only observer in the group of about 15 people on the boat, all the rest were wetsuited up in the hopes of being able to swim with the dolphins. We met Doug, the captain of the boat (though with his Kiwi accent, his name sounded more like Dag), and a girl who would help out the people who'd be going in the water. The boat was much smaller and more basic than I thought it'd be, but it was powerful, as we found out when we headed out of the harbour and out to sea. It was a gray, wet day and we had some big waves to fight through to break out into the open water. Doug waited for the right moment and then suddenly we were going full throttle at the waves, like a plane trying to take off. It was a much bumpier ride though. We would come over the top of a wave, go airbourne, and then slam down into the bottom of the swell. It was like a wild, unnerving roller coaster ride and I was completely unprepared for it. I gripped a bar in front of me as tightly as I could and was unable to keep from squealing just about every time we lost contact with the surface of the water. I must have had such a look of absolute fear on my face. I eventually relaxed a bit (in very relative terms), though I was shaking from the adrenaline and fear. We got out into the open water and I could tell after awhile that we were getting no closer to the island offshore that Doug had planned to head towards. He eventually told us that we weren't going to the island; he had spotted a bunch of birds in the distance and the birds usually meant dolphins (the birds try to grab fish from of the dolphins). A short while later we were spotting fins in the distance and soon a pod was swimming with us, the dolphins right alongside the boat.

The next couple of hours followed a pattern: we would spot the pod of dolphins, speed over to catch up with them, pass them, stop, throw some people in the water in the hopes of them getting the swimming experience, have the dolphins all pass by in no time, grab the swimmers out of the water, and then go off to find the pod again. So the whole "swimming with dolphins" thing didn't really happen for our group, which is too bad, but even boating along with them was amazing. It was all exhausting though, especially since every time we stopped, I got queasy from the roll of the sea. I really had to keep my eyes on shore or I would have been sick, I'm sure. I was lucky, others on the boat did get sick, but fortunately Doug was very sympathetic about it and understood that not everyone has their sea legs.

Since I wasn't going to be swimming, Doug said I could sit out on the bow of the boat so I could get an even better view of the dolphins. I sat out there for quite some time, getting rather wet and cold, but it was worth it to see the dolphins darting around in front of the boat when we caught up with the pod. It was a bit freaky though to be out there when we were moving. There were times when we would hit a swell and the boat would drop from beneath me, I was pretty much suddenly standing up, and then I had to tense up my legs to stop from smacking down too hard when I met up with the boat again. Needless to say, I was sore for days in my knees and back and bum. I don't even remember how I managed to take some photos while I was out there, since I was gripping the boat railing with one hand and had the strap of my camera bag wrapped a few times around my other hand. I stupidly only took one video, but at least it was a good one. It's probably my favourite video of my entire trip (you can see a young dolphin a couple of times. It's amazing how they can keep up with the adults, but I guess it's a matter of survival):

Doug finally decided we'd chased the dolphins around long enough and we then headed to the nearby island where he said there was calm water, so those of us with unhappy tummies could finally settle down. It was lovely over there, the sun even started to come out (leaving me with a sunburnt face), and we saw other wildlife, like seals and nesting birds. We stopped for awhile, and Doug and the girl passed around snacks and warm drinks and everyone felt a lot better. We headed back into Whakatane, and after all of the stress I was starving, so I got some fish and chips next to the harbour. Doug boated past, probably on the way to dock the boat, and he saw me and gave a friendly wave.

Amazingly, that same evening (after the 1 1/2 hour drive back to Rotorua, and despite being so exhausted) I went to a Maori dinner called a hangi. I imagine it's quite similar to going to a hula show in Hawaii, it's a way for tourists to learn a bit about the native culture of New Zealand. There's the dinner, but also performances and explanations about traditional weapons and customs. It was on the edge of town, so a bus drove around Rotorua to pick people up. As I waited for the bus, I ended up chatting with a fellow traveller, a guy from Canada. I had guessed he was also waiting to go to the hangi, and we ended up hanging out the rest of the evening. It was always good when travelling alone to have a break from being on your own. The bus showed up, driven by a guy with a rather cheesy sense of humour who was asking us all where we were from and such. He ended up being the host of our group for the dinner; there was another group in another room and we ate separately, but came together for the performances. As we settled into the dining room and had drinks, the host found out what countries were represented by our group. There were 18 different nationalities there and he named us the Tribe of Many Nations. What was also pretty cool was that for each country, he was able to say a few phrases in that country's language, usually "How are you?" with a few other words or phrases thrown in. Amonsgt others, he did French, Spanish, Afrikaans, Dutch (the phrase he threw out then was "dank u voor de bloemen", heh), Japanese, and the one that impressed me, Hungarian. I think even the Hungarians were impressed. I heard the host later tell someone that a guy from Texas was there once and said that if he could learn a few words and phrases in the 80 or so major languages in the world, the Texan would fly him to the US and get him on Letterman. He knows about 40 or 50 now, and that's taken 7-8 years, so it wouldn't take much more to get to 80.

Before we went to see the performances and enter the Maoris' home, we needed a tribe leader to accept their offering and show we were there in peace. An Australian ended up being our leader and representing us when we met up with the Maori tribe. We then headed towards where the performances would take place, which took us on a beautiful walk through a forest. There was a spring there with the clearest water, and then we lined up along the sides of the stream that ran from the spring and watched some of the Maori men arrive on canoe.

We then entered the performance area and the offerings were given, first to our tribe chief, then the other group's chief.

They did a couple of hakas, a traditional dance with a lot of intimidating postures and shouting. Women did a poi dance, which uses balls on strings which are swung around very fast. Then we had dinner and another walk through the forest looking for glowworms, before being taken back to Rotorua.

I'm going to break up the New Zealand story into parts, otherwise it will just be too long. So, part 1...

In early December, my proper travelling started and I left Melbourne behind to spend 2 weeks in New Zealand. Two weeks is barely enough time to scratch the surface, but that's how my plans worked out. I got to see and do some amazing things, so it was still a very memorable trip.

Click here to go to the photos from this part of the trip.

New Zealand is full of unbelievable scenery and wonderful, friendly people. Some people say it's a bit old fashioned there, and it can be, but you can't fault good ol' friendliness and warm natures. New Zealand is made up of two main islands, the North and South Islands. The North Island is more populated and it also has more Maoris, the indigenous people who are similar to people from South Pacific Islands. The country is just a tiny bit larger than Oregon and has only a tiny bit more people. I was often reminded of Oregon when I was there, especially since NZ is part of the Ring of Fire like Oregon is and has been influenced in similar ways by earthquakes and volcanoes. The climate is quite similar, especially on the South Island where it is wet and cool on the west side of the island, but much drier on the east side, due to mountains that catch a lot of the moisture. There are definitely differences though, such as the fern-filled rainforests in the north, and unique animals, such as their iconic kiwi bird.

I flew from Melbourne to Auckland, the largest city in NZ (though not the capital, that's Wellington), where I stayed for a couple of days with a former co-worker of mine and her husband. After Melbourne, Auckland felt rather small. It seemed to miss the vibrancy that Melbourne has. So it was a little disappointing, but it's a beautiful city, surrounded by a lot of water. We went to the Auckland Museum and I started getting more closely acquainted with Maori culture and New Zealand history. The next day we drove to Piha Beach west of Auckland. It's in an area popular with surfers and it's actually a black sand beach, since the rock there is volcanic. It was a quiet, gray day when we were there. Still beautiful though, especially the drive there through thick vegetation, including a lot of fern trees. It looked prehistoric...

Piha Beach

I left Auckland and started my drive south, the beginning of many hours on my own in the car. Fortunately I had tons of CDs of NZ music to listen to, thanks to my co-worker's husband. My first destination was Waitomo Caves, which consisted of a few different caves you could visit. There were also adventure tours you could do, which is very typical of New Zealand. It is the country that invented bungee jumping, after all. These adventures were pretty tame by comparison, things like abseiling down into a cave and then going blackwater rafting. I would have liked to have tried it out actually, but it was bit out of my price range. Instead I did a couple of the normal tours, visiting two different caves. The first, called Aranui, was my favourite, but that was partly because we were a small group of only 6 and we had a wonderful guide who had been working in the caves for about 30 years, so he knew all there was to know about them. The cave is filled with limestone formations. They take some insane number of years to add on just one centimeter of limestone, so it boggles the mind to think how long it's taken a stalactite that's meters long to form.

Stalactites in Aranui Cave

In Aranui Cave

The other cave featured glowworms, which are larvae of bugs that hang sticky strings down to catch other bugs in, then they pull the bug up and eat it. But they glow as well to help catch the bug. This cave had a river in it and we were pulled on a boat through the dark where the glowworms were. The ceiling was full of these glowing blue points of light, like a lot of blue stars. It was absolutely beautiful and we were very quiet because noise makes the worms dim their light, so there was only the sound of the boat a bit and distant dripping water. The tour was marred though by a school group that joined us, a bunch of jaded teenagers who hated being there.

From the caves, I drove to the northeast, towards Rotorua. On the way I drove through a lot of green countryside, filled with sheep-dotted hills. And I stopped at the Orakei Korako thermal area, which I wrote about before in this post. Below are some videos of the thermal features.

Steamy (be glad this isn't in Smell-o-vision, because it was also stinky)

The mud pools (turn up the sound for optimal enjoyment)

Yeah, more mud pools. This one made a particularly slobbery noise, thanks to a bubbling hole at the back to the left.

In part two: the stories of seeing dolphins and going to a Maori dinner.

I've already posted about these two short trips that I took at the end of November and beginning of December, to get out and see some of the amazing nature in Victoria, only hours from Melbourne. I have photos now as well though, which are here.

The day trip to Wilsons Prom was not nearly enough to truly explore the park. I was meant to go on a 3 day trip with two nights of camping, but the tour company cancelled the camping part on me, which was really disappointing. Still, it was an amazing day, we saw lots of wildlife, and I realized how out of shape I was after the first walk to a viewpoint.

I then spent 3 days on the Great Ocean Road, which was all just so beautiful: the ocean, forests, farmland... The main places I visited which the photos show were the nature area at Cape Otway, the most southern point of this part of the coast, with a lighthouse; the Otway Fly Tree Top Walk, which was a pathway suspended amongst a forest, so you had a totally different view of the trees and wildlife; and the western end of the Great Ocean Road, with the famous Twelve Apostles, as well as other formations and blowholes carved from the sandstone that makes up that area.

Some videos...

Walking along the tree top path. You can hear some of the clanging and other weird noises it made as it swayed around. Not for those with a fear of heights, or of clanging, swaying things...

Even bouncier! This is a part of the path that sticks out from the rest. You can see how it bounces around and the guy has a hard time walking straight (at least I think that's the walkway's fault).

The view from the tower that is the highest part of the walk. You can hear some clanging as someone goes down the stairs.

There's not a whole lot I can add to what I've already said about Melbourne. I loved it instantly. On my first morning there, by the time I had walked just a few blocks from my hostel, I felt at home. It reminded me of Portland, though busier and with people speaking in a funny accent. It was what I expected, whatever that was, I just know I wasn't disappointed. And I fell in love with it more the longer I was there.

One of my favorite places in the city was Federation Square. The square is relatively new and everything I had read about it talked about its controversial architecture and whether it fit in with the rest of the city. So before I went there I had the feeling that Melburnians hated the square. Once I was actually there, I didn't have that feeling at all. It felt like the cultural center of the city and so much went on there. The square has a few cafes with outdoor tables, a permanent stage, a huge TV screen, and a lot of space for events, activites, or, on quiet days, just hanging out. There were many times I popped over to Fed Square to see what might be up over there, because there usually was something. It seemed like every weekend there was an ethnic celebration: one week Indian, the next Turkish, one evening a Chinese children's celebration with lanterns and traditional dances. And if nothing happened to be going on, it was enough to pass some time sitting on the warm tiles, reading or people-watching. I thought it was a brilliant place, and I spent my last evening in Melbourne there, watching the final of the Australian Open on the big screen with hundreds of other people who had stuffed into the square to watch as well, while the sun set in front of us next to the city skyline. Talk about making it hard to leave...

I posted some photos before, while I was in Melbourne, but of course I took many more. You can go to my Melbourne album to see the new, and the old, photos I have put online. I ws going to keep them separate, but then you don't get the whole story. I was going to take advantage of Flickr now allowing videos to be uploaded, but all I get when I try to upload a video is a frozen browser. So the videos are included below instead (I hope they work! If not, try again later...).

I tried to take some everyday scene types of photos, especially of some of the beautiful buildings in Melbourne and some of the places I visited most. One day I also walked around part of Ascot Vale, not the area around where I lived, but the area my bus passed through before stopping at the train station, and I took photos of some houses, many of which are typical of Melbourne, or maybe of Australia in general. Some though wouldn't look out of place in Portland. They are in this separate album.

Koalas at the Melbourne Zoo:

Little penguins at the zoo:

Mollydog on the porch (She wasn't being very exciting, though I was trying to get her to run around. She can be a jumpy, excited dog, but it just wasn't happening):