After 9 months in Australia it was time to move on, I was not tremendously happy with this fact but seeing as I was only due to spend 3 – 4 Months in Oz I had done pretty well, Plus I had to be home before Sept 17th and we were already in June so off to New Zealand I went. Kev, Ian and Adam came to see me off at the Airport and I found out I had been upgraded to business class. I really looked the part in my Jack Daniels Tee shirt and shorts but soon got chatting to a guy from New Zealand who had been in Brisbane on business and was going home for the weekend before going back to Australia. On arrival at Auckland Airport I realised that I did not have a clue what to do next, I was used to turning up to a new town and finding loads of people offering their hostels but there was none of that here. I asked at Tourist information and they pointed me to a board with a selection of hostels so I decided on a hostel, gave them a call and awaited my transfer. The hostel was fairly standard but was in a great location in central Auckland. The next day I went to see about transport around New Zealand and realised that I would only really have time to go around the North Island in the 2 weeks I was in the country, I was a little disappointed by this but booked a trip with one of the companies. I had heard a lot about the Kiwi experience but opted for the Kiwi Packer instead. With hind sight I should have booked the experience. Our bus was really good but was quite a bit smaller than the experience so when you got to a new town there were not a great deal of people getting off. One of the benefits was that they dropped you off at a hostel so you didn’t have to worry about finding somewhere to stay and it turns out that our bus and the experience use the same hostels so you get the chance to meet up with people on the other tours. My first major stop was Rotorua.
This is best known for being an area of geothermic activity so the whole place smells of sulphur all of the time. While I was here I went to see a cultural show so I could get a background on the Maori origins. Unlike Australia, New Zealand has a good relationship with its indigenous population and are proud to show their heritage. The show itself was really just ceremonial dance and celebration of life but was quite fascinating and told you the meanings of their actions. I also visited the thermal spas. This wasn’t a treatment place, more of an area where you can see the natural springs, the bubbling mud and the geysers and has the largest concentration of thermal activity in Rotorua. I was quite fascinated and kept going back to the Prince of Wales feathers. This is a geyser that erupts every 20 minutes or so and has 3 jets of steam to create the illusion of the feathers themselves.
I think the weather added to the atmosphere, With it being winter the weather was a little gloomy and there was a real chill in the air, this made the steaming pools much more productive and the steam was laying over the ground in patches like a fog, reducing visibility and making you feel like you were on the set of an old horror movie. It was in Rotorua that I realised (Again) that it is a small world, particularly when you are travelling. I was sat in the TV lounge and I glanced back towards the kitchen and saw someone walk from one section, across the aisle and then back and I was sure I knew them but dismissed the thought as I didn’t know anyone that was in New Zealand but when I saw them again I had to put my mind to rest. I only needed to pop my head around the kitchen door to have my suspicions confirmed. Shirley burst into a huge smile and said “Blackie, what are you doing here”? It had been quite a few months since I had last seen Shirley in Brisbane so we had a lot of catching up to do. It turns out that she was on the Kiwi Experience bus and was going in the same direction as I was but she was heading to the South Island as well. Never the less we managed to arrange to sort of travel together for a while. We would catch separate buses on the same day and would end up in the same hostel in the next town. A few days later we were in Taupo, this was the day of my 26th birthday and I wanted to celebrate by doing the Taupo Bungee
jump. I failed. I knew as soon as I walked towards the platform and saw someone going off the end that I’d never be able to do it but I stood there with the rope around my legs and looked down and my legs refused to move. I would get to the edge and bend my knees ready for the “Leap of Faith” but nothing would happen. The odd thing is that I wasn’t scared of doing it, I just could not get myself to do it. The guys who were running the Bungee tried to coax me by telling me people had jumped off without the ropes and survived and that it wasn’t that high but they then decided that my survival instinct must be too strong and I happily let them remove the ropes. I have thought it over many times and I did think that I’d regret not doing the jump as time went by but I still to this day cannot imagine being able to do it and feel that if I was in that situation again I would still walk away. On the evening of my birthday Shirley decided to cook me a meal before we went out for a few drinks in one of the local bars. By the time we got to the bar the news had spread that it was a special day and I found it almost impossible to buy a drink. I was treated like a king that day and the highlight was being sat at a table while the barman bought over a cocktail with a sprig of parsley in the top, I counted to 3 and blew the top of the drink and the barman removed the parsley so it looked like I had blown out a candle. It was a pretty good night considering it was a birthday spent in the company of mostly strangers and I was as far away from home as possible. I still remember how weird it felt walking back to the hostel in June kicking a block of ice down the street and skidding on the frozen pavements. One of the things I realised about New Zealand was how quickly the weather can change. I remember being sat in a McDonalds, looking out at the view and thinking “When I finish this burger I am going to take a picture of that”. It was a view across a lake with a snow capped mountain and the sun gleaming off the top and I am describing this to you because I never got the chance to take the picture. By the time I had finished my meal the mountain had been totally engulfed by clouds as a huge snow storm had blown in on the other side of the lake. Next stop was the capital city, we found ourselves in windy Wellington and the temperature had really plummeted by the time we got there. The city is well known for the strong winds they get as they are located right at the bottom of the North Island and it is used as the gateway to the South island.
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| The Beehive in Wellington. |
I think it is fair to say that we only had a brief tourist experience in Wellington, we saw the Beehive ( the parliament building) and had a little tour of the city but that was about it. After a day or 2 Shirley went off to explore the Southern island and I headed back to Auckland to get ready for the next stage of my travels. Do you remember me telling you how small the world is when you are travelling? When I got to Auckland I checked back into the same hostel as I had stayed in when I arrived, I dropped my bags off in the room and decided it was time to eat so intended to go for an explore an a snack. I popped into the reception area and found Adam sat on the sofa while they sorted out a room for him. After a quick chat with the lady on reception we dropped his pack in the same room as mine and off we went, both still amazed at the coincidence that we’d arrived in the same hostel in Auckland on the same day. The original plan was that he would arrive in New Zealand just a few days after me and due to the timings I would miss his arrival and he would be travelling when I arrived back in Auckland. He had decided to put his flight back for a while but it was still a huge coincidence that we were there at the same time. I really enjoyed the last few days in NZ. It was really good to spend some time in the city with someone I knew and we had a few decent nights out before it was time for me to move on. Before I left we tried to synchronise our flights. We had worked out that Adams flight from New Zealand to Hawaii was landing in Fiji first. My next destination was Fiji so it didn’t take much arranging for Adam to land in Fiji and for me to get onto the same plane.
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