New Zealand is a lot of fun. It has everything, good weather, mountains, beaches, abundant resources, waterfalls, good food, wine, good roads (mostly), and wonderful people.
We've been here for a few days now and have moved around the country, with more spots to come. I thought I would review the last few days in a daily travel log format:
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But first, a couple stories -
The time zone thing is really messing with our heads. We are now in New Zealand time, which is 21 hours AHEAD of Oregon. When we travel we are almost always behind Oregon time. This feels strange.
So as I write this, it's 9:00 at night here, and 11:00 at night Yesterday in Oregon. That's pretty weird. All day Monday here was Sunday at home. To put it another way, the Super Bowl is Sunday at home and Monday afternoon here ...
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Another amusing event happened today when we went to visit the House of Parliament. It's a rather unusual building, and when you lay eyes on it ... it's not terribly attractive. The buildings nearby are what you might imagine a historic government building to be, but the "real" House ... well they call it the Bee Hive.
So with some time on our hands, we decide to take a tour of it. Unfortunately, the tour doesn't start for half an hour but there's plenty of room, so we wander around the grounds and come back. But the tour is now full. We can't go on it. Oh well, we didn't really care that much.
But it gets a little weird as we try to leave. We walk over to the exit and the guard says "hold on, where's your bar code?"
I answer: "We don't have a bar code, the tour is full so we're just gonna leave"
He say: "you're not leaving through here!"
I look at him and look at the sign that says Exit.
I explain: "The lady told us the tour is full so they didn't give us a tour sticker"
And the guard says in a serious tone "I'd like to see you try to leave here without a bar code!"
What? It was like a bizarre challenge. It's almost like he said "I'd like to see you knock this chip off my shoulder!" The dude needs some customer training.
We looked at him for a few seconds, in kind of a stand-off. I didn't quite understand the system here. You need a bar code to leave?
He pointed back at the tour desk. So we walked over and asked the lady and she said "Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to give you an exit bar code!"
We made our way out under the watchful eye of the guard. I felt like saying "It's okay, we didn't want to see your
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Friday Jan 25th: Unfortunately, this day doesn't exist. Or rather, we traveled across the International Date Line and lost a day when we left Tahiti on Thursday, and landed in Auckland New Zealand on Saturday morning.
It was only a five hour flight, and the clock somehow clicked over another full day. Still not exactly sure how that works.
So ... not too much to report on a day that didn't happen. And we're not gonna get it back, it's gone forever.
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Saturday Jan 26th: We were lucky that when we got to our hotel very early (9:30 AM), they were able to accommodate us and we were able to catch up on our sleep.
Then we set out to explore Auckland, New Zealand's biggest city. It's an amazing place and is booming right now with population growth and building everywhere. Fiona had to get some grooming things done, hair and nails, so I set out on my own to dig around.
There are a lot of things to see and do in Auckland, and I was able to wander around and get oriented - the harbor, the parks, downtown, etc. It's kind of a cross between Great Britain and the USA, with it's own way of doing things.
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| Seems like everywhere we've been there are fashion photos going on, in this one, she was dressed kinda like a vampire. |
When I met back up with Fiona, we had a nice afternoon wandering around some more.
It's kind of how we get used to a place, just wander around with a map and a purpose.
We found the oldest pub in town and enjoyed a nice meal of authentic fish and chips. Then we visited a terrific book store and scored a couple more books to read. Traveling like we do, we need to keep some books on hand at all times.
I took a bunch of pictures. I use my iPhone for all my picture taking, and there are ample opportunities around every corner. We also made travel arrangements for the days ahead, and located the bus station for our next leg.
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Sunday Jan 27th: We had decided the day before to take a morning walking tour of Auckland, but frankly, we had already seen most of the things they wanted to show us. Oh well, it was still fairly interesting.
After that tour, we got on a ferry to ride out to a nearby island Waiheke, some distance across the bay. It was a bracing day with clouds and wind, but very fresh.
We landed on the island and took a bus to the nearest beach, where we walked on the beach, had a look around, and enjoyed the holiday atmosphere.
It was a three day weekend of some sort and the place was crowded with people from the city. After we had lunch at a sidewalk cafe, we checked out property listings at a couple real estate offices. We were interested in the price of property mostly because there were a lot of nice houses on the island, and we confirmed our suspicion that they were very expensive.
Riding back on the boat was a little more interesting because the wind picked up. Apparently it's windy in New Zealand a lot of the time. This was our fourth boat trip of this journey, when you're in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, you end up on a lot of boats.
We returned to our hotel later that evening and packed for an early morning departure to the next stop, a National Park in the center of North New Zealand.
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Monday Jan 28th: We took the early morning bus to the park and arrived at our hotel in a place called "National Park".
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| This is what we look like sometimes, walking to our destination, pulling our bags along. |
That was the name of the town, not very original. It was a nice village a long way from most places. We went for a hike in the warm afternoon sunshine.
After dinner we turned in, and the next morning we had arranged for a shuttle to take us up to the real National Park - Tongariro. It was a pretty spectacular place and we went on a fairly long hike to a waterfall, and looked around the lodge and stuff.
The afternoon was filled with a hairy bus ride through the mountains down to Wellington, where we find ourselves tonight. The bus got to Nat Park late and was overheating in the New Zealand heat. So the driver was trying to make up time in order to meet the next bus on time.
It was a four hour trip over winding steep mountain curves, and well ... he wasn't a very good driver, and it scared the crap out of us. And we had chosen to sit in the front row of the bus, so we could see every dangerous twist and turn. White knuckled all the way. But we made it.
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Wednesday Jan 30th: Now in Wellington, we set out early to make it a full day. This is the capital of NZ and it's a cool city. We toured the active waterfront and took a cable car up to the top of the hill where there was a big Botanical Park.
We also toured the House of Parliament, which was rather disappointing (see above). We walked all over town and had lunch on the rather off beat Cuba Street pedestrian area. There was a big fabulous museum. Then watched the dragon boats and kids jumping into the sea.
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