New Zealand

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.

This will have to be a quick update since the cafe I'm in is about to close... I've not really been up to much in the past few days anyway, just carrying on driving down the coast. I'm now in Dunedin, the last stop I have in New Zealand before I go back to Australia on Monday. New Zealand has been amazing, I only scratched the surface and that was memorable in itself. Almost every drive was so scenic from forests to beaches to deserts to one sheep-dotted hill after another, and many times a few of these landscapes next to each other. I felt I really missed the big mountains, either behind cloud or because I had to miss out on the West Coast, but there was so much else that was gorgeous. Tomorrow I'll see more wonderful views because I'll be taking a train up a river gorge which should be beautiful. I really like Dunedin and the drive here was lovely, very hilly with the ocean popping into the background at times. Dunedin actually has the world's steepest street, beating out San Francisco. Fortunately I am now rid of my little car with its dodgy parking brake and I just have to hoof it up the hills.

A couple of nights ago I stayed in Christchurch, which I was not impressed with. It also was a very frustrating city to drive around and frankly I was glad to leave it. I wasn't impressed with the area it's in either, Canterbury, it's mostly just flat farmland. Last night I was in a little town called Oamaru which was on the ocean and had its own share of hills. I stayed there because there is a blue penguin colony and you can watch them come ashore at night. You can also do this on an island near Melbourne and it's a big day trip thing to take, but it's 2 hours away and a bit expensive with a tour company driving you there, so I never went. Now I got to see the same little guys for a much cheaper price. They were very cute, they're the smallest penguins, hardly a foot tall.

As this will be my last post from NZ, a couple of memories: the small airplane that flew in right above me as I was driving and freaked me out; I thought a large truck was trying to pass me at first. The pickup truck I was driving behind for I don't know how long before I realized there was a cow riding in the back of it (don't worry, I wasn't blind, there was a piece of corrugated iron blocking most of the cow from my view). A couple of hawks or eagles, some large bird, flying almost right in front of my car, swooping in on something along the road. There were one or two sheep and the occasional cow. A ton of very friendly people who were always keen to help me.... It's a lovely little place here and I'll definitely be back. And I know I haven't told the stories yet about the dolphin trip and the Maori dinner, but they'll have to wait until later.

It has been a very rough past few days for me. On Friday evening, I think I started to come down with the flu. I got to the hostel I was staying at, unpacked the car, and just felt exhausted, so I took a nap. I woke up feeling miserable, I felt warm, but also had chills, and I ached everywhere. So I took some ibuprofen to keep away the aches. I probably took a bit too much though, and often without food, and so about a day later my stomach felt horrible as well. I wasn't throwing up, but I had really bad stomach cramps. By now I was in Wellington staying with the sister of Angela, my friend in Auckland, so that was good, I was in a more comfortable place than a hostel. But I had to take the ferry the next day to the South Island and I was not looking forward to traveling anywhere, let alone on a boat. Fortunately I made it through the travels that day, I only had 2 short car trips and the ferry ride is 3 hours, but the water wasn't too rough and I could just rest. I then stayed with Angela's parents near Picton, who live in this amazing house with unbelievable views of Queen Charlotte Sound. I wish I could have enjoyed being there a bit more because by the time I arrived I was feeling horrible. They took good care of me though and let me stay a second night because I wasn't up to driving 6+ hours to the West Coast like I had planned. Instead of heading off to Greymouth on the coast, I visited the doctor to get checked out. She figures I inflammed my stomach with the ibuprofen, so learn that lesson, kids. Take paracetamol instead or eat food with ibuprofen or you will be in stomach pain hell. I got some medicine to help heal my stomach and the doctor outlined a diet for me for the next few days, working my way from liquids to mashed bananas to rice and mashed potatoes. Supposedly within 2-3 days I should be back on normal food. What is so hard though is that I actually have an appetite, unlike when you have a stomach bug and can't even think about food, but I really can't eat much or my tummy protests. Half a banana and it's all grumbling about it. So I'm not turned off by the idea of food, it even smells good, but I can't actually eat it. Yeah, this is probably my own personal hell. I'm in this seaside town and they specialize in crayfish and other seafood dishes, but I can't try it, even though it sounds good. It's so frustrating! But I don't want to be ill again....

Since I stayed in Picton for an extra day, it kind of screwed up my plans for the South Island. I was going to drive down the West Coast, past Mt Cook (tallest mtn in NZ), and to the Fiordland area in the SW and see Milford Sound, which is supposed to be astoundingly beautiful. But it's a very long drive and I needed each day that I had to make it without needing to drive 7-8 hours or more a day. I can't do that now, esp since I'm still not 100%, so I've modified my plans to where I drive down the East Coast, via Christchurch, to Dunedin, where I return my car. You can do that in only a couple of days and since I have quite a few days before needing to be in Dunedin I can take my time. So I am now staying in a town only a couple of hours from Picton called Kaikoura, which is known for its whale and dolphin watching. There's supposed to be some lovely mountains just to the west, but I wouldn't know because it's a miserable gray day and it's been raining since I left Picton. This is supposed to be the sunnier coast. Never mind, the clouds hanging in the hills was kind of pretty and the ocean manages to be a bit blue-green, despite the gray (Oregon's coast doesn't do that). And I was sort of happy to realize I'd be driving along the Pacific! Like, the same ocean I know, way, way far away from Oregon, but it's still the Pacific. =) I stopped and watched some seals on some rocks near the highway today, that was cool. Also I shelled out for a more proper room in a B&B instead of a hostel so I can be more comfortable for a couple of nights till I really feel better. I'm in a wonderful place in a former convent (I also stayed in a hostel in Melbourne that was a former convent; maybe I should see how many convents I can stay in), so definitely happy there. Yeah, not what I imagined I'd be doing and I'm sad to miss out on the scenery of the West Coast, but sickness has a way of screwing things up that way and the new route should still have some good things to see.

I did have one day of adventure before getting sick, I went dolphin watching and to a Maori dinner, but those stories will have to wait for another time since I should go now.