New Zealand: Moving at the Speed of Cow

We ended up spending three nights in Hastings, mostly because the caravan park gave us a good deal (pay for two nights, stay for three – believe us, it makes a difference!). The park was pretty nice and let us borrow DVDs for free (sounds so simple, but it is a goldmine for us travellers!) and we got free internet. While there we had our first New Zealand fish ‘n chips from a small shop run by a fisherman, and WOW, were they yummy! $10 for two huge pieces of tarakihi fish and a giant scoop of chips (fries).

Next we drove to Gisborne and camped at a caravan park right on the beach. Too bad the weather was about 10 degrees and windy and rainy. Needless to say, we only stayed a night. The next morning we headed north along a highway that hugged the eastern peninsula coast. Not 20 minutes into our trip did we encounter a traffic jam. Not a vehicular traffic jam, however, but a COW traffic jam! There were at least 30 or 40 cows trotting down the middle of the highway. So we slowed down for Craig to pet one out the window and encourage them to move out of our way. Finally they parted and we continued on our way, looking forward to a sheep traffic jam one day.

The scenery on the drive was beautiful, since we had a rare sunny day. The drive was comparable to the Great Ocean Road in Australia, but way less busy. We crashed in the small town of Opotoki that night since we’d had enough driving that day. In little towns like that in the middle of winter caravan parks are not busy, so we had the entire park to ourselves. That is, except for a rooster named Rusty who stood outside our van and woke us up at 5am. Seriously.

Here are some shots from our drive along the east coast:

We decided to head back to Rotorua, the sulphur town, to try and see a bit more of it. We found a pamphlet that came with our van for a caravan park that promised a beach right on Lake Rotorua where you could dig your own hot tub that would then fill with natural, hot spring water. There were even pictures of kids doing it on the brochure. Well. In reality, the beach was TINY and had two holes someone had dug who knows how long ago, full of foamy, stagnant, luke-warm water. This was one of the most expensive caravan parks we have stayed at, and it was also one of the most disappointing. The one good thing was that the park had hangi ovens to cook in, which are Maori ovens that use natural steam from hot springs to cook food in. We made up a batch of pizza dough, and then wrapped whole sausages in the dough with cheese and tomato sauce, and cooked them in the hangi. Yum!

Here we are, making friends with the locals:

Andrea is set to begin supply teaching in Auckland starting July 27, so we are aiming to be back in the city the weekend before then. We are making our way north, stopping at our favourite places on the way. For the next few days we will be in Mount Maunganui, doing some tramping, and relaxing before returning to the working world.

Spelunk It!

We heard from Canadian Dan the day after we wrote our last update, and found out him and his friend were embarking on a two week whirlwind tour of New Zealand. We drove about an hour to Rotorua, a fairly big town (very big for New Zealand standards – 70,000 people), to meet up with them. Rotorua is a hotbed of geothermal activity. It has random hot springs, geysers, and hot pools all around it. This means it also has a deliciously eggy smell – Lonely Planet lovingly refers to it as “Sulphur City” and Kiwis call it “RotoVegas” because of how touristy the area is. This is the place to zorb (get thrown down a hill in a clear plastic bubble), and it also has skydiving and bungee jumping, though not of the calibre of Queenstown in the south island. Not to mention lots of “cultural experiences”, though some seem a tad more commercialized than others.

Even though we stayed two nights in Rotorua, the four of us (Craig, Andrea, Dan, and his pal) elected to drive west to the Waitomo Caves for what turned out to be an incredible day trip. This town has a network of hundreds of underground caves (many with underground streams) that you can do all sorts of things in, from mild walks where you stay dry to multi-hour adventures where you get wet. Guess which one we chose?

Together we did a five-hour adventure tour that involved donning a wetsuit (thick, but not quite thick enough to keep out the chill), helmet, headlamp, and boots. Our tour began with a 40 m abseil down into the caves, then a zipline in the pitch black across an underground river. From there we jumped into the river on tubes and did some “black water rafting” (so-called because it is so dark down there) where we turned off our headlamps and watched the millions of glow worms that inhabit the caves down there. It was truly a sight to see, and we had to keep reminding ourselves we were staring at glowing larvae poop and not stars.

To make our way out we spelunked through sometimes ankle-deep, sometimes waist-deep, streams that were sometimes calm, sometimes raging. We also scaled a few waterfalls while we were at it. Because, you know, why not? We finally made it, cold, dripping, and grinning ear to ear into the sunshine. The water in the caves was about 10 degrees Celsius, so by the end we were not feeling our toes or fingers very much, but hot showers and soup fixed all that.

From Rotorua we drove to Taupo, where we spend our coldest night yet – there was frost in the morning. Apparently Kiwis are a bit confused about the definition of a “waterfall”, as we did a 6 km round-trip hike to a supposed waterfall, only to find the banks of the river narrowed to form rapids with a slight change in elevation. Regardless, it got us up and moving bright and early in the morning.

Yesterday and today we have been exploring the Napier and Hastings region, known as the Hawke’s Bay wine region. Today we visited a few local wineries for tastings, including Mission Estate, the largest and oldest winery in New Zealand. We may explore a bit more tomorrow, or we may take off up the east coast. The weather has been sunny for the past two days, which means we are due for some rain. Usually our plans are weather-dependent, especially when it comes to tramps.

Here are some pictures from our adventure in the Waitomo Caves. Enjoy!

New Zealand: It's Like Scotland, But Farther!

Since we last blogged, we've done plenty of maxing and relaxing, shooting some b-ball outside of the school. We stayed three nights in a tiny community called Miranda where we had a huge hot mineral pool (not just a small hot tub) where we stayed in until the slightly eggy smell made us get out. On our last night the caravan park turned into some sort of retirement community, as caravan after caravan rolled in, full of the grey-haired nomads. Up until then, we enjoyed chatting with people in the pool from America, Poland, and South Africa. Even though this is our "early retirement", we decided it was a good time to move on.


Our next destination was the slightly bigger beachside town of Waihi Beach, only about an hour down the highway. On our way we stopped at Karangahake Gorge, which offered many different hiking trails through an old mining area. Long sections of the hike were through pitch-black mining shacks where you had to crouch to avoid the low ceiling. We carried a torch (that's a flashlight for you non-Kiwis) to light our way, although it did not stop Craig from making wild animal and spooky noises to try and scare Andrea. It's these kind of adventurous and slightly dangerous hikes you just can't find in overprotective Canada, so we are taking full advantage of every opportunity!


Luckily we found our way out of the labrynth of tunnels and made it to Waihi Beach unscathed. This was a cute community right on the beach (as many places are here) with a population of 1700 that just about quadruples in the summertime. The caravan park we stayed at here was incredible - it had a gym (with great new equipment!), a hot tub, a heated pool, satellite tv and movies in the common room, and pet eels. Even though it is the low season, we finally met some fellow (YOUNG) backpackers. Because of all these reasons we ended up staying there six nights. During the day we did some hiking and beach walks. Every night we hung out with Erik and Bjorn, two Dutchmen who were just finishing a year around Australia and New Zealand in a campervan and were on their way to Southeast Asia. Many hands of cards were played over many bottles of beer and wine. As true Canadian ambassadors, we introduced the sport of shakey face to our new Dutch friends. For those of you who are not familiar with this national sport, it is when you shake your face back and forth very fast and someone takes a picture while your face is mid-shake, making for very entertaining snaps.

After six nights, though, it was time to carry on. Right now we are listening to the soothing sound of the ocean in our campervan, as we are camped only a few metres from the beach in Mount Maunganui, right beside Tauranga. This is the biggest town we've been to in awhile, with a population over 17,000. It is also a town with a LOT of money. Because the beach stretches the entire length of the town, it is lined with amazing mansions that have incredible views. Here is a picture of last night's sunset from the beach at the end of our campsite:

Today we hiked "The Mount", a dormant volcano at the northern tip of the town. It was only about an hour-long hike but it gave a great panoramic view of both towns from the top. Here we are at the top. You may notice Craig's sideburns snuck into this picture as well:

Some of the more observant people reading this blog may have noticed a stuffed beaver that sometimes appears in our pictures. Burley the Beaver, as he is known by the grade 3/4 class at Port Stanley Public School, has come along for the ride with us. He is getting his picture taken with as many different animals, in as many different situations, as he can. Here is Burley with some donkeys. There were four white donkeys that were all brothers at a caravan park we stayed at, named: Hee-Haw, Slow-Mo, Kick-Back, and Sir Chews A Lot. Funnily enough, they all talked like Eddie Murphy.

We just found out a friend we met in Australia from Vancouver is arriving in Auckland tomorrow, so hopefully we can meet up with him somehow in the next couple of weeks. As always, we have no idea where we will go next. Thus is the life of a couple of gypsies like us.