After 3 slow hours on the ferry (unluckily sat next to the noisy children's play area) we arrived in the capital city of Wellington. We picked up our new car - a very tiny Toyota Corolla and headed into the city to see the sights. Our first stop was unsuccessful- £3 for 30 minutes parking and we thought that our car had broken down as it wouldn't restart! It turned out that you have to put your foot down extra far on the clutch as a safety feature, sounded a bid odd to us but nevertheless we motored on to a cheaper carpark and a look around the Te Papa museum and local area. We had planned to stay for a night but the hostels and parking were so expensive that we decided to have a quick lookout over the harbour city from Victoria mountain and then head north for a cheaper nights sleep. Also, we have realised by now that Australasia landscapes have much more to offer than the cities. We made it up to Paraparaumu (a bit of a mouthful) and managed to get some discounted accommodation in another nautical themed hostel.
We spent most of the next day driving north to Whakapapa (another Maori name) in the heart of the Tongariro national park, famed as Mordor in the Lord of the Rings trilogy - the region we wished to walk in the following day. We seemed to be doing well with the end of season discounted accommodation again, so we checked into a bargain room which for the first time in ages had an ensuite, kettle and tv! No midnight toilet runs around a pitch black campground for us that night. As we had booked our transfer to the start of the 20 km volcano walk for 7am the following morning we settled into the room and watched some old reruns of Come Dine With Me with a glass of wine in hand - this was bliss!!
Having planned to do the walk when looking through the guidebook originally, we had almost forgotten about this section of the country (containing NZs first and the worlds 4th oldest national park) until all the backpackers we had bumped into travelling in the opposite direction to us kept raving about the Tongeriro Alpine Crossing. The more we looked into the trek the more exciting the walk sounded as you journey through a live volcanic mountain range filled with smoking crevices and mineral infused neon coloured lakes. The day lived up to its billing, commonly known as the best one-day walk in the country - we had a great day and found it fascinating walking through the landscape which showed the scars of large lava flows and rock debris from previous eruptions. This created a surreal moon like mountain surface where very little vegetation survived, an ideal location for lord of the rings. As we set off so early we completed the walk quicker than the time we had booked our return pickup for so we spent an afternoon catching up on some sleep in the autumn afternoon sunshine - not a bad day!!
We spent another night in the ski chalet and left early the next morning to Taupo to arrange our skydive. As we arrived in the skydiving centre they said that they had immediate availability- no time for us to back out! We chose to do a jump at 15,000 feet which is the highest you can jump from. We were both really excited and not nervous at all when we got into the plane and strapped to our tandem instructors. The tiny plane took off and we had a great scenic flight up over the largest lake in NZ (apparently bigger than Singapore) with views of the mountains and volcanos beyond. At 12,000 feet the door to the plane opened and the first set of jumpers exited while we continued further up having to put on oxygen masks for the last section. The time came and we slid forward and with our feet dangling over the edge of the plane we started our plummet back towards the earth. It was surprisingly cold and noisy but then again we were travelling at over 200 km an hour! We had a free fall of over a minute with lots of spins and the occasional scream before our instructors pulled out the parachute. This section was equally exciting as we got to glide around taking in the sights for about 5 minutes and even got to fly the parachutes ourselves. As soon as we landed back on solid ground Gwenno wanted to go again straight away! We paid up for our jump getting a t-shirt and video ( will try to upload soon) and were told that if we wanted to go again that we could jump for half price. This is the cheapest place in the world to skydive safely anyway so at half price it was too good to turn down so we 'jumped at the chance' and signed up for another the next day! We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Taupo and gearing up for our next jump. The following morning we headed to see the local volcanic activity at 'Craters of the Moon' a park with lots of bubbling mud pools, steaming crevices and sulphur smells. We then went to a honey bee farm for a look at the bees and a taste of the honey, had a quick look at Hukka falls and then returned to Taupo for a walk along the lake edge and watched some planes taking off and skydivers jumping out. By this time it was our turn to head back to the airport for our second jump. Gwenno was really excited and Ben was getting more and more apprehensive as it got closer. We had different instructors for the second jump and Ben managed to get strapped to a crazy German that held 6 world records for skydiving and had some devil horns on his helmet! Because we had come back for our second go our instructors were a bit more adventurous with us and taught us how to do a few acrobatics in the air! This was really good fun and we both enjoyed it even more as we knew what to expect and could just enjoy the feeling of falling through the air. The sky was also much clearer and we managed to see the Tasman Sea and plenty of peaks over the clouds. Later that evening we met up with Heather and Jimmy ( friends from Uni) again and went for a few drinks and a pub quiz.
The next morning it was time to move on again and we made our way over to Mangatautari which is an 'ecological island'; basically a volcano with a huge fence around with all introduced pests such as rats and possums eradicated within. This gives the indigenous birds such as the kiwi a chance to breed and raise their young without getting eaten. It was a public holiday so it was quite busy which didn't help with the bird spotting but we did manage to see the very rare Takahe which looks a little bit like a prehistoric blue turkey with no wings! We then drove to Waitomo and checked into another odd hostel with some very questionable residents! The next morning we got up early in order to go on the 'Black Abyss' tour. This involves getting into a very snug wetsuit and abseiling vertically 35m into a big hole in the ground followed by a zip line further into the cave system. At this point we were all given a hot drink to warm up before being given a tractor tyre inner tube and told to jump into the freezing underground river and meander down a narrow limestone tunnel. We saw plenty of glow worms and not much else! We then abandoned the inner tubes and had to swim upstream passing through some very tight tunnels and getting freezing cold, literally the coldest we have ever been! We continued walking up the tunnels and eventually got to the final climb up some vertical passages as well as scaling a few waterfalls. At this point we were too cold to feel the cold and we were pleased when we emerged at a small hole in the ground after about 3 hours underground. We both really enjoyed the experience- especially the complimentary soup and bagels at the end! We then headed up to Auckland and found a nice enough hostel in the Mt Eden district and caught up with some sleep as the cold water and unusual activity really took it out of us. The next morning we headed north from the city towards 'Northland'. The roads were very windy and we spent a lot longer in the car than we had anticipated. We took an unplanned drive into Bayleys Beach where we stopped for a quick sandwich. The beach is an official highway but the Toyota Carolla has a tiny engine so we thought it was best to stick to the Tarmac! We carried on and stopped at Waipoua forest to see some of the oldest trees in the world and the largest in NZ, some 2000 year old Kauri with 17m girths! After this the weather closed in and we needed to get further north so we continued on with our mammoth drive and managed to get to the small hamlet of Ahipara in time for a Friday supper of fish and chips.
The next morning we continued on our drive quite early in order to get to Cape Reinga before the tour buses. We managed to make it there and see the lighthouse with only us and another couple there. It was a really peaceful spot and we could see straight away why it was such an important place to the Maori people. Interestingly this northern point is where the Tasmin sea and the Pacific ocean meet with a tremendous crash of waves that created a frothy channel as far as the eye can see. As we left the tour buses started to arrive and we made our way back south. We made a few stops on the way including running down some giant sand dunes on 90 mile beach but unfortunately we spent far too long in the car as the distance we needed to cover was too great! We eventually pulled into Whangarei for the night planning to get up early and climb the Mount Manaia volcano. Yet again we found that it's best to not make plans as when we woke in the morning the weather had turned and there was fog everywhere! We decided to give up and head back to Auckland to return the car and run a few errands before going to India.
The next day was our final day in New Zealand so we decided to see what Auckland had to offer. We didn't want to get any more cash out of the bank to avoid any charges so we had an interesting day of seeing what we could do for free ( not much as it turns out!) and eating odd combinations of food from what we had left- a clear winner was the nutella on crackers, this may be a new staple in our diets when we return!
We spent the night at Aukland airport which was comfortable enough but a little busy and noisy. This didn't really matter anyway as we were up at 4 am ready for our flight to Chandigargh in India via Brisbane, Singapore and Mumbai!