April 15 – April 20, 2016
Auckland, New Zealand
I arrived in Auckland, New Zealand on April 15th. I must say it felt good to be in an English speaking country again. I took the bus from the Airport to the Mt. Eden area where my hostel was. I spent the first day being pretty lazy and figuring out what I wanted to do during my time in New Zealand. Ideally, I would have liked to see the North and South islands but since I only had two weeks before I needed to be in Japan I decided to focus on the North island since I was already there. While in Mt. Eden, I did the short hike up Mr. Eden. Mt. Eden is a sleepy volcano with a pretty crater that has grown green. The top of this mountain also gives you great views of Auckland…which is just a city in NZ…nothing special.
I did also finally get to eat some good western food. I had a yummy pastry stuffed with some delicious savory stuffing…and some honest to goodness earl grey tea…with honey…yay! Oh and I found my new favorite ginger beer…Bundaberg. The next day I rented a car (that you drive on the wrong side of the road!) and got on the road to Otorohanga.
Otorohanga and Waitomo Caves, New Zealand
Auckland was not what I expected of New Zealand but as soon I got out of Auckland in my fancy ride it was exactly what I expected. Rolling lush green hills with cows, sheep, horses hanging out on farms. Otorohanga is only a two hour drive from Auckland but I took it super slow because it was raining, the roads are super curvy and I was driving on the wrong side of the road. NZ is full of holiday parks because most people rent a camper van and drive all over NZ. I stayed at a holiday park in Otorohanga. It’s only a short distance away from Auckland but it was completely different. The area seemed to be in complete darkness. I had a little cabin on a huge plot of green. For dinner I just had to drive a bit further to the main street (seemed like the only commercial street in town) and I had the choice of Indian, Thai and Japanese. I found that they have this same mix of food options (in addition to western food of course) in every little town, no matter how small which was awesome! I only speak of North island of course. In the morning I woke to a cute cow outside my cabin.
I got up early to head to Waitomo Caves. I was originally just going to walk around the caves but I had heard so many amazing things about the tours I decided to do one even though it was a bit pricey. And it was totally worth it. I did the black water caving tour which required us to walk, float, climb through the caves suited up in full body wet suits, water shoes and hard hats…sexy. The water was very cold, the cave was very dark and the glow worms were magnificent. The whole experience was magical. Afterwards, we were offered bagels and soup…the bagels were nothing like home but they were adequate I guess. Note: I didn’t take the caving pictures below.
Afterwards, I went to Otorohanga to ship some stuff home and go to the Kiwi Reserve. I actually got to see 4 cute little kiwis! Unfortunately, the birds are nocturnal so everything was dark and hard to photograph :-(. I tried though. There were also other cute birds there that are native to NZ. After birdyville I decided to see if I could make it to the coast before I headed to Rotorua. I wanted to see the sunset but the roads were super curvy so I was driving too slowly to get there in time. Since it was getting dark, I decided to stop at another attraction on the way, the Mangapohue Natural bridge. This structure was created because the cave system that used to be there collapsed leaving behind a land bridge. To my delight, because this used to be a cave, it had glow worms all over it. As I walked through the darkness of the remaining cave at twilight the glow worms lit up like constellations in the sky. It was completely unreal. I tried taking pictures but they don’t quite capture the brilliance of the glow worms. Oh well…they’ll live on in my memory and in postcards 🙂
Rotorua, New Zealand
After the glow worm adventure, I headed to Rotorua. Rotorua is probably the most touristy town that I went to in NZ but it was still quite nice. This town is along the Thermal Explorer highway and the whole surrounding area is basically a bubbling, spewing, smoking, cauldron of doom 🙂 and it smells like rotten eggs.The first day I went to the Waimangu Volcanic Valley and the next day I explored Wai-O-Tapu. Both days the sun was shining, there was a slight chill in the air and I was walking around among amazing lush green valleys with hot steam rising from everywhere, mud bubbling and strangely colored lakes/ ponds. I mean it’s no Yellowstone Park, but it was pretty awesome.
Part 2 of NZ coming soon…maybe.
nomadshak 