Seeing that the internet facilities in New Zealand have been extremely rare and rather expensive, I decided to do a huge update on our travels in New Zealand now that they have come to an end. I’ll explain what we’ve done with a few photos as well.
To start off, we found that New Zealand is very much like England. The two islands are vastly different but there are some similarities also. The main similarities are the roads… very long drives everyday meant that we were well accustomed to the NZ roads. Mostly they were easy to drive on, but maybe not as good as at home. However, seeing another car/campervan was a rarity and seeing a traffic light even more so! You can literally drive for hundreds of miles and not have to stop once to give way to other traffic - there are basically very few cars here at all.
The scenery of New Zealand is what is vastly different between the two islands with the volcanics in the north and the glacials of the south. The two are stunning in their own way and it’s very hard to say which I prefer. The south very much reminded me of the Lake District in England, but on a much larger scale and with glaciers still here today (in fact, we hiked on one!).
Anyway, back to 18th April 2008…
We landed in Auckland, meeting Helen’s Dad, Graham on the first day. We managed to find a cheap campervan to hire and also met with Helen’s sister, Anna and Anna’s friend, Natalie. That night we had a good meal and sampled the local beer… it was cold… grrr.
Auckland was fun and hot, but we wanted to get out of the city so we headed on up to Paihia in the Bay of Islands. That was stunning. Amazing scenery and our first campsite of the trip was directly on the lake front, somewhat spoiled for our first stop!
After kayaking off an island near Paihia, seeing dolphins and saying goodbye to Anna (she was continuing her travels on to Australia), we headed south past Auckland and on to Cambridge. Linking with Cambridge is a town called Leamington, so it felt like we were in England, just with the whole of the A14 squashed into a bridge linking the two places! It’s a pleasant place and we met with Adam’s relatives there for a cup of tea and lots of chat.
We then headed onto the volcanic area of the north island and into Rotorua. This is a place which absolutely stinks of sulphur due to the amount of geothermal activity going on. In the park there are thermal springs and bubbling mud pools - all very freaky to be honest! In Rotorua we went to Thermal Wonderland where we saw even more amazing geothermal things such as geysers and 70 degrees Celsius pools of water! We also went to a spa where there were geothermal heated pools to relax in - and we did relax, a lot!
Turangi and the Tongariro National Park was the next stop. This is where Mount Doom from the Lord of the Rings is… although we can’t verify that at all because the weather was horrendous whilst we were there, raining loads. Fortunately though that is the only bit of rain we have seen this trip - infact the south island has been amazing for weather with blue skies everyday! We couldn’t have asked for better really.
Our north island visit was ended in the capital city, Wellington where we had a couple of days to wander around the city looking at the botanic gardens, parliament buildings and cathedral (where they have a Coventry cross of nails). Unfortunately we had to say goodbye here to not only the north island but also to our travel buddy, Graham. He headed up to Auckland to fly out.
After a 3 hour ferry crossing we were in the south island where we were met with sunshine and a long drive to Marahau in the Abel Tasman National Park. Here we went on a walk through the park and enjoyed the sun.
The next major stop was the Franz Josef glacier. This was stunning. You could see the glacier from the village which was located about 15 minutes away. The day after we arrived we went on a guided hike onto the glacier which was the best thing we have done on the whole trip for me - it was amazing to actually be on a glacier. They’re very strange things! After our hike we relaxed in the hot tub at the camp site, definitely the most luxurious camp site we have had!
Puzzling World was next on the agenda in Wanaka, where we were baffled by the strange optical illusions. After that we headed onto Queenstown for a relaxing stop.
After this we headed onto Milford Sound which is a long 2 hour drive up into the mountains and then back down again onto the fiords. We went on a cruise of the sound in the day which was amazing. The sights were awesome, we saw a seal and were taken right up to a waterfall which got us just a little bit wet!
Then we went to Dunedin which is in the Otago region. Here there are lots of places to see penguins. We walked along one beach and found a penguin on it’s belly who was too tired to go swimming so it thought it would have a rest. We also saw lots of sea lions and some more penguins coming back from a day fishing, waddling across the beach. These penguins were yellow-eyed penguins but we also saw blue penguins at a blue penguin colony in Oamaru. The yellow-eyed variety are very shy so you have to be very far away before they will attempt to land on the coast, but the blue variety are tame and will walk right past you - infact we had to stop to let two stragglers cross the road whilst we were driving away!
This was the end of our fun in the south island as the rest of the trip was getting back up to Christchurch which is where I am writing this blog entry from now. Christchurch is definitely the city/town which most resembles England that we’ve been to as it has a river flowing through it and a feel about it which is distinctly more like England. Funnily, the two roads either side of the river are called Cambridge Terrace and Oxford Terrace - hehe!
So New Zealand overall was lots of fun - it’s a shame to be leaving, but Australia will be good as well I’m sure where I hope the internet situation will be better so that we can update this blog more often! So keep checking and commenting, please!
