Pratting Around the World

Auckland

New zealand is full of little towns so it was nice to get to auckland – new zealand’s biggest city by far. Auckland had a lot of cool bars, cool little areas and nice parks to chill out in. it reminded me of sydney.

ah, i guess it reminded me a little of sydney, but a bit more accessable. and the hostel we stayed in was a lot nicer than any sydney crap hostel. besides that, there’s not that much to say. i went to a few of the best NZ fashion designer’s store and wasn’t very inspired. I think you go to NZ for the amazing landscapes and nature-y stuff, not for the city life.

the sky tower

auckland did have some really cool parks, would have been a dream as a child. yeah, there playgrounds were awesome. i couldn’t resist trying out this huge zipline, even though my bum almost dragged on the ground.

this giant blue face is from the auckland national art gallery. the gallery was nice, but small. this enormous head was one of my favorites (if that’s any indication about the gallery) and is a modern maori painting.

we stayed in a crazy motel for a couple of nights. the owner created one-of-a-kind rooms out of a plane, train and ship. he’d also made a hobbit home (new zealand really exploits the fact that the lord of the rings films were made there) The front of the plane was booked so we made do with the tail of the plane.

my everlasting impression of new zealand.

I had been looking for some friendly sheep and finally found some little cuddlers who could be wooed with clover. I also had some delicious lamb when hudson took me out to one of the best restaurants in Auckland.

Coromandel Peninsula

New zealand’s best beaches are generally on the cormomandel peninsula. So, we decided to have 5 days relaxing in a nice beach town, Tairua.

we stayed at this great guest house. the owner had a garden in the back and fed us fresh rasberries and veg. and he had a fat cat. the town was tiny, and although it only had a shit grocery (called 4 square, the worst grocery ever and best indicator we’d hit a tiny town), Tairua did have an excellent icecream place. it served homemade icecream on waffles and crepes. i wish i was eating one right now.

It hadn’t been all that hot in new zealand so we were both surprised to get a little sunburnt.

weird rock.

We went to a  beach called cathedral cove. It was an insane walk to get there, but the cove was beautiful: there were caves and a natural bridge as well as as cliffs and a waterfall. the cliff below is crazy with those trees hanging off it.

Some of the caves were about 100 feet out in the water. The water was absolutely freezing, but after kelly gave me a bit of stick i had to man up and explore. even i (kelly) manned up enough to swim (wade) out to one of the caves (below).

hot water beach – 2 hours either side of low tide you can dig your own spa pool. hot water escapes from two fissures to the surface.

i was so surprised that just inches into the sand it was so hot. some places could actually burn you. playing around in the hot water and sand was fun, but it was hard to get the pools very deep. well, it looked hard. i didn’t do much digging.

we walked by this bridge and a bunch of kids were jumping off so hudson joined in. the kids were actually there as a fieldtrip. the teachers were in the water too. not very educational, but super fun.

tewhakarewarewatangaoteopetauaawahiao – Rotorua

this wasn’t drunk typing. someone actually named a village this.

Whaka (in short) is a living thermal village in rotorua.The village is full of pools and lakes of boiling water and mud pools (unfortunately too hot to bathe in)  The 70 villagers make use of all the geothermal energy that is under the ground.  The villagers use the heat to cook in a hangi, which is a box under the ground where the food is placed.

A mudpool, kelly thought it was chocolate and got excited

actually, i got excited because slathering myself in that stuff was a lot cheaper (free!) than going to a $100 mud bath in one of the nearby spas.

this corn was really tasty and had just been boiled in one of the pools

it was really funny to see one of the maori ladies just roll up and yang a big bag o’ corn out of a boiling hole in the ground. cooking would be so much easier if I could just drop my food on the ground and then come back a few minutes later.

kelly – cook…..ha

Hangi food

This geyser erupts up to 20 times a day. It can erupt up to 18 metres in the air. As soon as the water hits the air it turns to steam

The village, although it stunk, was  interesting to see. Our tour guide had lived there all her life and was really informative about village life. We also got to experience a traditional maori concert which consisted of songs, dances and the haka (a war dance). The best part was when a local elementary school got up on stage and sung and then did the haka. It was good to see that the old culture was still being taught. When colonization was taking place the govt tried to stop the teaching of the maori language in the school in favour of english; this has now been amended so both languages are taught. (Those Brits, thinking they can control the world). yeah, damn brits with their fish&chips in every country.

The village was full of these little statues. Each statue represents one of the villager’s ancestors. they looked like baby totem poles. i love totem poles.

A group of the villagers performing the haka. The men stick their tongues out to mean war whilst the women bulge their eyes. a front tongue means agression and a side tongue means welcome (kind of like emoticons).

Kelly’s impression of a maori tattoo ( in mud)

one word: sloth.

hey you guyyyyyyyyssssssssss

Rotorua and around

Huka falls. this water fall was so powerful; i just wanted to jump right in.

The hastings farmers market – loads of chillis/fruits and cheeses to try. Tried some wheatgrass after the lady told me it would make me feel like a king. Didnt quite feel like that. Kelly told me its great for hangovers.

totem poles are so cool.

Rotorua museum – an interesting insight into the history of rotorua. There used to be some amazing terrraces (pink and white), which were filled with hot water. this was before a volcano erupted in 1886. People came from all over the world to see these terraces and maori people started a tourism industry to help themselves out. They would charge an entrance fee and a boat fee. 

i agree with hudson, there was some interesting history here. then we went into the basement, where the old spas are and where people came “to take the cure.” the whole thing was very creepy. (creepy bath below).

The museum used to be a rehabilitation centre. The hot water was funnelled into the baths for the people to bathe. They were also able to have mud baths here. These sketchy baths were in the basement, would have been a perfect setting for a horror movie.

this museum was cool in that you could fumble around in the unfinished basement and then climb up onto the roof. hardhats were provided. great views from the roof. you can notice hudson soaking in all the history for later blogging purposes.

West coast south island

At one point Kelly seemed so in awe of the views that she shouted at me to pull over at the side of beautiful lake wanaka. It didnt take long to realise the real reason she wanted me to pull over.

it’s true. i love ponies. and i never pee on the side of the road if that’s what your dirty mind was thinking.

Kelly loves her ponies as i’d already found out after numerous petting experiences. She decided to give the ponies a treat and sacrificed half a bag of cookies to make the ponies happy. they really chomped them down.

random rock sculptures that went on for about a km or so.

New Zealand’s west coast is home to two massive glaciers: fox and franz josef. You can climb on the glaciers but we left our crampons at home.

Fox glacier – used to be a lot bigger

we got close to the glacier and you could actually see it melting and hear the ice cracking. the melting drops sounded like continuous rain coming off the glacier’s edges.

yeah, hudson wouldn’t let me climb up the glaciers and i was pretty bummed. but then i climed up to one – you really could hear the thing cracking every few minutes and a giant chunk fell of nearby. also,the water melting off the glacier sounded like constant rain, that’s how fast the poor glacier was melting.

Franz josef glacier

Hokitika is the home of the new zealand green stone aka jade. i really wanted a jade necklace, but after going to loads of jewelry stores everything looked the same. a few stores have on-site jewellers which was cool to see. i bought some stones from one of these places and the guy let me go back and use the equipment to polish up my stones. i thought it was pretty special, but the jewellers are able to do all sorts of intricate carvings. wouldn’t it be fun to be a jeweller?

Punakaiki is visited frequently by tourists en route to picton. It is famous for its pancake rocks. i (kelly) thought the rocks were really going to look like stacks of pancakes. lonely planey lied. the rock formations were amazing even if not tasty looking.

the rocks and cliffs created huge whirl pools below. actually, the water in the pools carved out the cliffs and rocks. anyways, the water looked so much fun, but you would definitely get crushed to deah against the rocks if you jumped in. boo.

Queenstown

Queenstown is a town built up around a beautiful lake and mountains, and is located in central-ish south island. queenstown was my favorite city in new zealand because of the scenery and just because the town itself is cool. it’s very modern for NZ and has a quirky vibe, kind of like asheville, NC.

queenstown is also the capital of extreme sports; we didn’t get too extreme though, sticking mostly to swimming, mountain hiking, luging and climbing. we did go to the first bungee jump site ever, but the steep price just didn’t seem worth the jump.

the views were so beautiful in all directions, and the drives were swervy and fun. there were lots of nice places to stay; i finally managed to haggle one chalet place down into our budget. the view from our private deck was amazing.

this shot below is from the top of the main mountain in queenstown. we hiked up this monster and it was quite a bitch. i think most people definitely take the lift, because the path to the top wasn’t really market at all.

it looks like we’re about to do something cool, but really we’re about to go luging. at the bottom of the mountain i thought luging meant Cool Runnings  style, but i was mistaken.

still is was fun and the hard course made me scream a couple times.

on the way down the mountain, we decided to bush-whack it. i thought i found a path, but really it was just a thick mass of trees. hudson was falling all over the place and seemed kind of annoyed until we came across this random treehouse.

there were a couple ropes hanging down from this 75ft high treehouse with crazy stairs that led nowhere. hudson actually managed to climg nearly to the top. what a hero.

hiking, the free extreme sport

this is a shack; hudson can elaborate about it’s rich history b/c i don’t remember specifics.

Arrowhead is a small town, just outside queenstown. In the 19th century it was a big goldmining hub. Alot of chinese people came over to mine the gold. The general plan of these people was to work hard and save up for 5 years then return home to buy a farm.

An old chinese settlement

Milford Sound – Te Anau

Milford sound is a fjord on the south west coast of new zealand and is the biggest tourist destination in the country. We stayed in Te Anau, which is where all tours start to Milford. We then began the spectacular 80 mile drive to Milford Sound. It rains about 7 metres a year, so there were hundreds of waterfalls to see as well as snow everywhere.    

It was raining when we went, which is actually a good thing because the water falls and rapids are really strong during rainfall.

the water falls and rapids looked like so much fun; water park designers should go to NZ for inspiration. Unfortunately the rapids and falls are too strong even for expert rafters.

because of the snow on the mountains, the weather was crazy. being fiarly warm when we started, Hudson wore shorts, but as soon as we got near the falls or snow, the temperature dropped dramatically.

Flip flops and shorts were not the ideal clothing for the trip

After the drive, there is a ferry journey into the sound. Due to both our recent experiences on boats and the dodgy weather, we weren’t brave enough to jump aboard. The drive itself still had some fantastic scenery.

swinging bridges sound like they are going to be so much fun. but really they are just normal bridges that sway a little. at least they look cool.

Banks peninsula

the east coast has an abundance of seal colonies on the east coast. kelly was desperate to stop and pet them. i’ll admit, they’re pretty cute when they’re young but they absolutely reek. we got quite close but the big fat ones had a pretty intimidating growl.

these fatties really stunk. i don’t know how they can stand hanging around their own nasty stench all day.

the banks peninsula was formed by two volcanic eruptions.  The middle of the harbour is the original crater.

the place we stayed was a great little cottage just outside akaroa. Akaroa is a lovely little town to walk around. As we found out, all of NZ is pretty much lovely little towns, but Akaroa was one of my faves.

view from the top of one of the many mountains around akaroa. New Zealand isn’t very populated, so most of the time we were the only ones around. there were so many mountains and pretty lakes; it made for great scenery and crazy driving.

the water was freezing but we had fun jumping off the pier. the lakes were also an amazing shade of blue – the deep azure color doesn’t really come across in the photos.

new zealand is full of sheep, about ten times as many sheep as people. kelly loved the lambs and is desperate for me to get her one for xmas

New Zealand – the start of south island

We flew into Wellington to visit some of my relatives and then started out on our road trip. The first stage involved a ferry journey across the cook strait. We had been told that this was an easy 3 hour trip. This was a complete lie as the ferry was all over the shop, and yet again, we both struggled.

We did get to enjoy some of the scenery as the last hour involves a journey through the Marlborough sounds.

Once we arrived we stayed in a little town called picton. Our first night  was a real shock; the hostel was amazing and after staying in sydney for 2 weeks, was a welcome surprise.

The coffin door was a nice touch

The Queen charlotte walk is a spectacular 50 mile walk through the sounds, with amazing views of the fjords. After walking the first 100 metres, we decided that one 2 mile+ hike is enough for this trip.