New Zealand 2017 #1

Hello fellow travellers (and armchair travellers).  It has been a while but the Bill and Bobbie travel blog is back in action.

We have been travelling in New Zealand since April 19. We have been receiving beautiful, thoughtful email from friends Ian and Kathy Aikenhead about their travels in Europe including Krakow, Budapest, Vienna, and Prague to name a few exotic cities.  So we thought we’d better sit down and write a few words about New Zealand.

Silver Medal

We travelled to Auckland initially to attend the World Masters Games where Bobbie competed in pool and open water swimming.  Four friends from Yamba, Dubbo and Jane and Helmut and Jan, and friends Virginia and Malcolm from Sydney also participated in the swimming events.  The games were huge, with 28,000 competitors from all over world descending on Auckland for 10 days. Needless to say, accommodation was at a premium and athletes were everywhere.  The best Bobbie did in the pool was a 4th in the 200 metre breast stroke, but she got a silver medal in the 5 kilometre open water swim.  This was a painful exercise as the water was 19 degrees centigrade, and after two hours without a wetsuit she was near hypothermia.  Mutterings were heard that this was about the stupidest thing she had ever done, but perhaps the memory will fade.


Auckland is a bustling city with major new train lines and stations being built right in the downtown.  It has a beautiful setting on a narrow peninsula with water on both sides.  There are massive marinas full of yachts and motor boats.  The city has frequent and trying traffic jams, perhaps as it is constrained by the narrow piece of land it occupies.  We stayed north of the city at Orewa, and the new Northern Express Bus service, modern double decker buses on dedicated bus right-of ways was comfortable and reliable.  Bill was enthusiastic about the USB ports on the buses that charged his phablet as we rode.

New Zealand allows parallel imports of used Japanese vehicles, and the range and types of car are mind-blowing.  Model names seldom seen outside of Japan abound, making you wonder how they provide a network of spare parts and mechanics for such a diversity of vehicles.

Waka

On Bobbie’s days off from competition, we visited the Art Gallery, the Skytower, and the Maritime Museum.  The Art Gallery is a beautiful modern building on the corner of downtown Albert Park, and the Orienteering competition from the Masters Games was taking place in the park while we were there.  The gallery introduced us to a lot of New Zealand artists who were unfamiliar, but the collection was uneven with one room full of 19th century oils (I assume the original collection) and most others with much more modern work.

The Maritime Museum was a tour de force and I saw more boats and learned more about New Zealand boat design, racing, and history than thought possible.  We sailed on a replica Waka, a traditional south pacific boat similar to those that the early Maori may have used to travel across the Pacific to New Zealand.  Beautiful craft and very comfortable to sail in.

Puhoi

We also had a lovely dinner and overnight stay with Kiwis Martyn and Margaret Smith at their home in the historic town of Puhoi north of Auckland.  They prepared a beautiful vegetarian dinner for us, and showed us the sights of Puhoi before returning us to the city.

After the games finished we headed north in a small rental camper van.  We drove along a coast of beautiful white sand beaches with cool, clear blue green water.  Most of the beaches were gently sloping and often in scenic protected bays.  We took a ferry to Russell, formerly the capital of New Zealand, an old-fashioned town with decorative white federation style frame buildings.  We’re convinced Russell has an ordinance that frame buildings must be painted brilliant white and immaculately maintained.  This coastal tourist town reminded me of Niagara-on-the-Lake in Canada with the perfection of the streetscape.

Cape Reinga

We made our way to Cape Reinga, the northernmost point of New Zealand.  The waters off Cape Reinga where the Pacific Ocean and Tasman sea meet are spectacular.  A shallow area there ensures permanently crashing waves and foam.  The sharp cliffs and distance vistas of beaches and headlands are stunning, and you understand why the Maori consider this a sacred spot.

We camped at a sparkling white crescent beach at nearby Spirits Bay. The roads up the coast were typical of what we came to realize dominate New Zealand;  winding, narrow, twisty, steep and spectacular.  It seems impossible to join two points in New Zealand with a straight line.  And the nature of the terrain, weather and geothermal activity mean landslips and damaged roads are common.  It is unlikely that anyone employed in road maintenance is ever out of work.

The road to Cape Reinga had some very interesting lookouts.  One described how the bare hilltops were a result of Maori burning practices to control vegetation.  The small terraces or ridges on the hillsides that we saw everywhere are also ancient Maori work.  They reminded us of nothing so much as the Inca terraces in Peru.  A nearby hill was the site of an ancient “Pa” a fortified hill that housed over 2000 people.  Remains of sweet potato were found in the terraces, which suggests possible links to South America.

Sand Dune

We also visited a massive area of sand dunes at Te-Paki Stream.  They stretched for miles behind the beach and looked for all the world like the Sahara Desert.  You could rent sand boards to go sliding down the monster dunes, but we declined.  Apparently a good decision, as some travellers who did try it said it took days to shake the sand out of their clothes.

 We headed back south and stopped at Matakohe, a tiny town north of Auckland famous for its Kauri Museum.  Kauri is a beautiful native New Zealand wood that was widely used for ship building, construction, and furniture. The gum from the tree comes in many colours from black to golden and is prized as it is like amber.  Originally used in paints, varnishes and manufacturing, the gum is now carved into beautiful ornaments and jewellery. We spent half a day in the massive museum, and would have spent more but we were overwhelmed by the intertwining of New Zealand history and the Kauri tree.

Kauri gum objects

Bypassing Auckland to head south we turned east to the Coromandel Peninsula.  This is another spectacular hilly area studded with beaches and coastal tourist towns.  It is also a very important dairy cattle area.  When we last visited New Zealand about 25 years ago, sheep were the main farm animal you saw.  From an airplane, New Zealand looked like a billiard table spotted with lint, so omnipresent were the sheep.  Now dairy cattle are everywhere, and sheep seem to be the poor cousins.

We stayed overnight in Thames and visited the local market in the morning.  Sourdough bread, freshly baked cakes and pastry, new season apples and mandarins filled our shopping bags before we headed off.  The tourist towns of the Coromandel are what we like about New Zealand.  The beaches on the west coast are rocky and the towns are full of tiny, old fashioned beach cottages or “bachs” as the Kiwis call them.  The monster modern beach houses that are taking over the coast in Australia are far less in evidence here.

The caravan parks are also full of tiny and often very old but well maintained and obviously well-loved caravans.  The very narrow, winding and hilly roads must make towing big caravans difficult, and good thing.  Australians seem to be towing ever bigger caravans, and the plethora of tiny vans in New Zealand is charming.  The caravan designs are also different.  Australian vans seem to have few windows and aim to keep the world out.  New Zealand vans have huge windows, often on both ends and sides so you can see right through the van or sit in a sort of sunroom at one end.

Hot Water Beach bath

We stayed at Hot Water Beach in the Coromandel.  This beach has geothermal springs underneath the sand that are exposed at low tide.  You can take a shovel and dig a personal spa bath in the sand, controlling the heat by directing the flows of hot and cold water to make the perfect temperature sand spa.  This is an amusing activity, and is very popular with tourists and locals.  Get in early with your shovel for the best spot.

Continuing with the geothermal theme, we travelled to Rotorua, New Zealand central for hot springs, with steamy, sulphur spouting land and every type of spa.  We walked around the downtown area to a geothermally active bird refuge called Sulphur Bay. Sulphur mounds and steaming ground dominated a landscape that appeared more like the moon than the green New Zealand we had seen so far.  Apparently, Rotorua suffers tiny earthquakes every day, the area is so volcanically active.

We camped southwest of Rotorua at the Waikite Valley Thermal Pools.  Here a boiling water spring feeds a spa with a series of varying temperature pools, set in a natural surround near the spring.  A constant fog of steam hangs over the whole site, and you can soak to your heart’s content in the spas.  We found them very relaxing after a 2 hour hike up nearby Rainbow Mountain, a track that is a shared mountain bike/hiking track.  It was a moderate hike, but a grade 4 mountain bike ride up, and not one I would have liked to try.

We are moving on to Napier, the art deco town of New Zealand and the wine area near Hastings.  More about them in the next blog.