Jonty’s Birthday ’til the end of NZ 12-20th June

The coromandel peninsula is stunning. White beaches, clear water and a nice climate. Jonty had been claiming for days that it never rains on his birthday and sure enough, we awoke to sunshine and a shorts and t-shirt day! We then experienced a crazy conference call from the Taylors, it was a bit like being round the dinner table at christmas apart from the fact that it ended with “Nefar…has gone!” We headed straight for a beach and launched the aerobie around. After an ice cream we headed to Cathedral Cove. This beach has an impressive arch/cave that links two beaches. We had a good stroll and then bumped into one of our mates from the glacier (again!) we have now bumped into him 3 times even though we are travelling in opposite directions. We then had a short drive stopping off at a few other beaches before we camped up for the night and received a few more birthday greetings before bed time- a great day.

Disaster! We’ve broken our camera! Enough said. 

Our next stop was Northland, we drove straight through the busy roads of Auckland until we reached the bay of islands. Pretty. We had the chance to go on a boat cruise to see the islands and dolphins but we declined the offer and headed for some 40 metre high sand dunes instead. We encountered 2 beach-bum Maoris who rented boogie boards from their van. After a quick demonstration of which way up to use the board we left them to start our climb up the sand, (very hard on the calves-not the cow variety!) The view from the top showed the sand dunes heading on for miles and it looked a long, steep slope down. The only other advice they had given us was to keep our mouths closed, but typical Jonty, he smiled all the way down and had sand all over his teeth!! Jonty has discovered Lou loves speed and whilst pretending to be really scared at the top actually flew past him on the way down and kept going way after he had stopped.  We had several goes trying differing techniques before we attempted the double. The two of us on one board. Our first attempt ended in us being thrown and flipped 20 metres down the dune, both now covered in sand and eating the stuff! But we mastered it. The whole dune surfing experience was one of the highlights of New Zealand for us, we abosolutely loved it and having broken our second watch of the trip, totally overran the hour’s hire we had of the boards. The Maoris, being typical of the Kiwis we’ve met, were chilled out, not even slightly bothered and just glad that we’d had a good time!

On our return to Auckland we had a look at 90 mile beach. Pretty long, but actually only 90 km!

We drove through the rainforest to Lindsey and Sid’s house. Although technically Auckland, it is an actual rainforest. We had good fun finding it and a nice stay with the whole family who were there visiting-which was funny as we haven’t seen them in the UK for ages!!

Then a sad day. We had to return the camper van. It had been our home for the last 53 days and smelt like it too! Jimma, a friend from Uni who now lives here, picked us up and took us to the city for a 4 day stay and a few beers on the town.

Auckland is massive a population of 1.2 million, it has the footprint of greater London. We viewed it from Mount Eden, one of the ancient volcanoes in the city, and from the sky tower, the giant concrete mass, that looms above it.

With Jimma and Gemma (both sound the same with a Kiwi accent) we visited a black volcanic sand beach, made famous by the film ‘The Piano’ which neither if us have seen. We also bought some beach stuff for Fiji and had a great evening at ‘Clip and Climb.’ You put on a harness and clamber up the rock climbing walls of varying degrees of fun and difficulty. This included a giant slide where you had to hold onto a set of handlebars and be hoisted up for as long as you could maintain your grip. Then you dropped and slid down in until you were thrown into a crash mat wall at the end. (The video from our new and improved camera is hilarious!) It was a good stay with them. 

Packing our bags to get to Fiji is going to be interesting. But the warm weather will be heaven.

Taupo, Waitomo and Rotorua 6th – 11th June

Taupo is a relatively big town on the shores of Lake Taupo which is the size of Essex. It is known as the outdoor adventure capital of the north island, but as we had already done the majority of our activities in the south island, we did not linger for long. Here we visited some rapids that are controlled by a dam. Three times a day the dam opens to allow the rapids to ‘come alive.’ It was an impressive sight seeing the small trickle of water turn into a strong current and a high water level, creating the rapids.  After this, we viewed the Huka falls, worth a look, but we won’t bore you with any more photos of waterfalls!!

From Taupo, we headed to Waitomo where there are infamous glow worm caves and the chance to do black water rafting. This is not as exciting as white water rafting, but was really enjoyable and something we had never done before. We donned wetsuits and picked up a rubber tyre which you floated on. We initially walked through the caves before jumping into the river below off a waterfall and then floated along in the pitch black admiring the glow worms overhead. An enjoyable day.

After this we drove back across to Rotorua. This region is full of volcanic activity and so there are natural hot springs and geysers everywhere. It smells! (Largely due to the sulphur coming out of the numerous hot pools.) We spent our first day there in an oversized hamster ball, rolling down a 200 metre hill. This is known as Zorbing. You climb into the ball, they throw some hot water in for good measure and then you try to run for as long as you can, (in our case about 3 seconds) before you then elbow each other in the head and back and slide upside down, back to front, all the way to the bottom. The best way to describe it is probably like being inside a washing machine with you as the clothes!! It was a lot of fun!

To dry off we ventured up to the top of a hill in the Rotorua gondola for some more luging. It was Jonty’s chance to gain vengeance from Queenstown, but to no avail-he lost the races 5-0!! He even reverted to cheating by trying to ram me off the side of the track!! Here, there was a choice of 3 really good tracks ranging between 1-2km long. The advanced one was very quick with some extremely sharp turns. Another great activity.

In the evening we drove to find a camping spot and was flagged down by a kiwi-version of Hagrid. He told us of a natural hot water pool just under a bridge, which they had just vacated for us. So we parked up and climbed in. The water was a perfect temperature, especially as it was freezing outside! We sat alone drinking a cold beer watching the stars come out- ahh….

The next day we visited Wai-o-tapu thermal wonderland! It contained hot pools of a variety of colours (the artists palette as it said in the brochure!) and a nice walk around the smelly site! Jonty was really impressed by the colours. The piece-de resistance was the lady knox geyser (not to be pronounced geezer apparently!) this erupts daily at 10:15 and shoots water 10 metres into the air. A pleasant morning.

We are now off to explore some more beaches.

South to North. 29th May to 5th June.

Whilst in the Marlborough Sounds we ventured along to the Queen Charlotte Track for 2 days. 1 to amble safely along the track and the other to try and throw ourselves over the edge of it on our mountain bikes! This was scary, yet exciting when going downhill, but also very hard work going uphill. At the end of our 4 hour cycle we were rewarded with a water taxi back to our starting point, (this only took 15 minutes!) The sounds are very pretty and we enjoyed taking in the views at a slower pace on our hike. We also enjoyed drinking the wine we had bought on our earlier wineries tour-apparently they sell it in Sainsbury’s. Brilliant!

The next day we boarded our ferry to the North Island, this promised to be a scenic trip, however we couldn’t see a thing because of the rain! Nevermind. Wellington is known as the windy city and they weren’t wrong! We spent a day in the capital before heading up to Carterton where we stayed with the old Canvey-ites The Kirkhams. They gave us a most friendly greeting, especially as we came mid-house move and we felt very much at home. We spent 3 enjoyable days with them and it felt as if we were at home doing ‘normal’ things.  Carterton is in the Wairarapa region, a flat plain surrounded by mountains. We borrowed the Kirkham’s bikes and had a nice flat ride to a couple of nearby towns. This was on the Queen’s (unofficial) birthday, which is a Bank Holiday in NZ and the Kiwis all celebrate it.

Back in the campervan we headed towards Taupo…