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During the drive up from Franz Josef to Nelson we experienced so many changes in weather. One minute it would be bright sunshine, the next minute heavy rain, then back to sunshine five minutes later. It was crazy, however it did mean that we saw some of the brightest and most defined rainbows we'd ever seen. When we actually arrived in Nelson it was quite sunny, and there were actually people sunbathing on the beach and swimming in the sea. We had two full days in Nelson; the first was spent looking around the small town (although it claimed to be the 9th largest city in New Zealand), and the second day we visited the Abel Tasman National Park. There were lots of restaurants and cafes in and around the town and we ate out all the time we were there. The food was fantastic.
Our day at the National Park started early, with the bus departing Nelson at 7:15am. We tried to get a later bus but found out that there only two buses that did the route each day, both leaving at the same time. The bus took us to Marahau, and from there we got on a water taxi (a 14-seater powerboat) that took us to Bark Bay in the middle of the park. Some people on the boat were doing a one day walk (as we were), however others were there to do kayaking or 3-5 day treks through the entire park. The water taxi ride was a tour in itself with the captain pointing out various features of the coastline and showing us lots of wildlife. As we got close to Barks Bay he said that he had some bad news for us - the boat couldn't dock at the bay, so he would get close to the beach, and we would have to jump off and wade to land. The water was freezing! When we got to the beach we washed our feet (in cold water) got our shoes back on, then started the 4 hour walk south to Anchorage. The park was beautiful with lots of mountains, streams and waterfalls, along with some strange looking trees and flowers. The walk was fairly easy so we could just take our time and enjoy the surroundings. At one point on the walk there is a long swing bridge and although it swang around quite a bit, it looked fairly safe. We left the main path at one point so we could visit Cleopatra's pool. The pool is a natural formation consisting of several small waterfalls going into a river. It was very difficult to get to and I had to step carefully on half submerged stones to cross the river so I could get a good photo. I almost fell in a couple of times and got my feet wet on the way back but it was worth it. When we finished our walk at Anchorage beach we had a couple of hours to kill before the boat came to pick us up, so we had a picnic and Charlene collected some shells. I don't know what she does.with them all!
The next day we left Nelson, getting the bus back to Picton then the ferry back to Wellington on the North Island. We spent a night in Welly and then got another bus north to Taranaki to spend some time with my friends, Brent and Debs, on their dairy farm.
I last saw Brent and his wife Deborah six years ago in London. I worked with Brent in my first year of teaching and remember being impressed when he showed me photos of where he came from. Since then Brent and Debs returned home to New Zealand, set up a big dairy farm and have three wonderful children; Liam (4), Oliver (2) and Nicola (1). When the bus arrived in Hawera, Brent and Liam were there to greet us and took us to their home nearby. Their farm was huge and their home is situated on a hill overlooking all the paddocks. Also from their home we had a great view of Mount Taranaki - a massive snow capped solitary mountain. I remembered seeing it in the photos Brent had shown me, and it was fantastic to finally see it for real. Once we had settled in and met the rest of the family, Brent took us on a tour of the farm. The farm is a dairy farm and Brent has a herd of nearly 400 cows. First of all we saw the area where the cows are milked twice daily. We then went on quadbikes and explored the rest of the farm. We ended up going to the paddock where all the cows were feeding and got to see them all up close. Brent identified "Helen" who is a particularly friendly cow, and we got the chance to pat her. He then allowed the cows to go into a different paddock, and as the herd went past us we could literally feel the ground moving. I would have been quite worried if Brent wasn't there! After racing around a bit more of the farm we returned to the house. That evening Brent and Debs took us out for a meal at a restaurant near the foot of the mountain. We had fantastic food and wine. It was so kind of them to take us there, it was such a nice night.
The next day Brent took us back down to the farm for some activities. First of all we got the chance to drive a tractor. It's much harder than it looks - there are so many controls! It was great fun though. We then went for a bit of target practice with Brent's new toy - a semi automatic shotgun. Brent set up the target (a big yellow bucket) and I took a shot. I was a bit unprepared for how powerful and loud the gun was and totally missed the target. Charlene had a go after me and also missed. Brent then stepped up and blew a big hole in the side of the bucket. We went up close and saw the amount of damage. I then took a couple more shots (from a much closer range) and actually hit the bucket. I was so pleased! Our next experience of the day was milking the cows. I'd seen BBC period dramas where a milkmaid in a clean white dress would pull up a little stool to the side of a cow and happily milk away. It wasn't like that. The milking area was a big long shed with a trench in the middle. There were about 20 cows each side of the trench all backed up to the trench. Hanging above the trench were the milking pumps. To milk a cow we had to attach the pumps to the udders and press a button to make a vaccuum so they would stick on. It wasn't easy but we both managed it. It took us a while though, although Brent managed it in seconds. Charlene was very lucky though as while she was attaching the pumps, a cow two along from her decided to go to the toilet. It could have been very messy for her! Milking was a great experience and I'm so pleased that we got to have a go at it. After we had finished and got cleaned up, Brent took us to a nearby lake for a walk. The lake is in a large fenced nature reserve and it was absolutely beautiful. I think we were the only ones there. While we were walking Brent did the teacher bit and told us all about the trees and plants. When we finished walking all the way around the lake, we went back home and Debs cooked a delicious roast chicken dinner.
On our third day in Taranaki, Brent and Debs took us to see New Plymouth (the biggest city in the Taranaki region). Brent took us to see a new bridge from which we had a great view of the city and coastline. The bridge had an interesting design which kind of looked like a mix between a wave and a whale's skeleton (it's hard to describe but it looked cool). From there we went to see a bit more of the coastline before heading to a vineyard for lunch. In the afternoon we walked around a big park which had nice lakes, a waterfall, a water wheel and pretty trees and plants. That evening, Brent and I built a barbeque ready for a meal the following night. The barbeque was massive. We thought it would take us about half an hour, but due to really terrible instructions it ended up taking about 3 hours. It was fun putting it up though - I love doing stuff like that.
For our last day in Taranaki we visited the Tawhiti museum near Hawera. The museum contained exhibits which showed pretty much all of the history of the Taranaki region. It was really amazing. Lots of the exhibits contained handmade life size manequins with various pieces of equipment or vehicles that were used at different times in history. The most impressive bits in the museum were the display cabinets that showed scenes from the past with hundreds of tiny handmade models. There was an incredible amount of detail and so much work must have gone into them. Even more amazing was that they were all made by one person. After we spent an hour walking around the museum we went to another building to see the "Whalers and Traders" exhibit. The main part of the exhibit is a boat ride showing how the whalers and traders settled and worked in the region. The last part of the museum is a big building which has lots of vehicles from the last hundred years on display. After we'd had a good look around we returned to Brent's home for a barbeque. Thankfully the barbeque we had constructed the previous night worked, and we had a great steak dinner. The steaks were massive! Sadly when dinner was finished it was time to leave Brent and his family and go to New Plymouth for the night. We had a very early bus the next day so we had booked a hostel close to the bus station. We'd had an incredible time on the farm, and Brent and Debs made us feel so welcome and looked after us so well. I hope we will be able to return the favour when they next visit England. Thanks Brent, Debs, Liam, Oliver and Nicola for making our time in Taranaki so memorable.
The next morning we had a bus journey to Rotorua where we stayed for the next four nights. We got there at lunchtime and so spent the afternoon getting our bearings around town and booking our tours. The I-Sites in New Zealand always make things so simple and within 20 minutes we were booked on 3 tours (one per day). Our first full day in Rotorua was a Sunday and our tour for the day was to visit a Maori village and have dinner there. As it was in the evening, we had all day to souvenir shop and to look around the Sunday market by the side of the lake. When it came time to do the tour we went to the Maori Tamaki Centre to be picked up and taken to the village. Sat in the centre I was getting a bit aprehensive about the evening. Would it be too cheesy and silly? Would they go over the top with the spirituality? I'm happy to say now that they pitched the evening just right. On the way to the village, a chief of our bus tribe was selected - a newlywed Texan volunteered for the role and proceeded to tell us some of his life story over the microphone while other Texans whooped and cheered. When we reached the village, the chiefs from the five buses stood infront of the rest of us (about 120 people) while Maori warriors greeted us in their own unique way; eyes bulging and tongues sticking out while they moved around pointing spears at us and yelling. The Maoris made an offering to us of a fern tree leaf. After this, one of our chiefs made an offering to the Maoris, they accepted and then invited us into their village with a smile. We then walked around their village and were shown games, craft skills and houses by the Maori men and women. They weren't pretending that it was how they lived now, rather showing us how it was. I got selected with a few other guys to learn a Haka style Maori dance. We attracted quite a crowd! We were then taken to see the unearthing of our dinner which was called a Hangi. Basically hot rocks are put underground, and then meat is put on top, then veg on top of that. It is all buried for 4 hours and then unearthed with a great plume of smoke. There was so much food! While they prepared the food we were treated to a Maori show consisting of dance, singing, instrument playing, and tales of Maori history. It was very entertaining and was a good mix of interesting stuff and humour. After the show it was time for dinner. It was a buffet, so we loaded up our plates with chicken, lamb, fish, potatoes and veg and were thoroughly stuffed afterwards. When we finished we were serenaded by the bus drivers and then shown the Haka dance that the All Blacks Rugby team do at the start of their matches. With that the evening was drawn to a close and we got back on our buses, congratulated our chiefs on a job well done, and taken back to our hotels. It was a great evening.
On our second full day in Rotorua we visited Hell's Gate geothermal park and spa. It took about 30 minutes to get there on the shuttle bus, and as we got close we could smell the sulphur. Our tour of Hell's Gate started with a walk around the geothermal park. As we walked around we saw lots of pools bubbling and steaming, while the strong smell of sulphur filled the air. It is a very strange place and you can kind of see how the place earnt it's ominous name. The park was actually named by George Bernard Shaw. He also named all the separate pools in the area calling them things like "The Devil's Cauldron", "The Inferno" and "Sodom and Gomorrah". Walking around it reminded me just how active our planet is - something that is easy to forget coming from such an inactive country as England. After our walk we were invited to do some traditional wood carving. We were first taught how to carve by a Maori guy, then we carved a Maori symbol into a block of wood. Our teacher then varnished our blocks and gave them to us to take home. I think they looked very good in the end, even if I do say so myself! The next thing we did at Hell's Gate was to have a mud bath and bathe in the sulphur water pools. Apparently they have fantastic healing qualities and the Rotorua mud is much sought after by medical establishments. Back in the day Maori warriors bathed in the pools to heal their battle wounds. I didn't have any battle wounds to heal, but it was very nice just relaxing in the warm waters.
The next day we spent some of the morning wandering around the Government Gardens. If you removed the palm trees you would have thought you were in England. People were playing bowls and croquet on the lawns while the sound of a jazz band was coming from an old fashioned looking terracota building. At the back of the gardens is a huge Elizabethan style house which is a museum of the history of Rotorua. It all looked rather splendid. In the afternoon we had our final tour which was to Hobbiton. As I am sure everyone is aware the 'Lord of the Rings' films were shot in New Zealand. The films begin with scenes at a village called The Shire which is where the Hobbits come from. The scenes were shot on a farm about an hour from Rotorua near Matamata. We were quite lucky that we were able to visit it as they have just finished filming two new Hobbit films due out in the next couple of years, so the sets only just reopened a few weeks ago. It was funny seeing the village with all the Hobbit houses and buildings, and it was interesting to hear about the lengths the film makers went to to create Hobbiton. The area was very picturesque. Our guide pointed out where certain scenes were filmed and quoted lines from the film. Our tour group seemed very into the films and very excited by the place. The guide told us that some people who visit go a bit over the top. These include;
- A group of people dressed as elves who spoke elvish throughout their visit.
-A very tall man dressed as a hobbit who refused to leave because Hobbiton was his true home.
-A woman with two hobbit dolls that she took around everywhere and dressed differently according to where they were.
-A woman who bought a replica of 'The Ring' costing £10000, hired a helicopter, flew over 'Mount Doom' and dropped it in so she could say she destroyed the "One true ring".
Crazy! Oh well, I guess it keeps people out of trouble. After the tour we went to a sheep shearing demonstration. The farmer was very good at his job and the sheep was sheered in no time at all. It was amazing how still the sheep stayed while he cut 12 months of wool from it. When the sheering was done, they let out some lambs, and Charlene was one of the lucky few who got a chance to bottle feed them. She was so happy, she'd been looking forward to it all day. That was the end of our Hobbiton tour, and our last tour in Rotorua. The next day we left Rotorua and got the bus north to Auckland.
We got to Auckland at lunchtime and after a quick bite to eat, walked down Queen Street which is the main shopping street. It had been a while since we had been in a proper city, so it was quite nice to look around all the shops. The next day we spent some time walking around the Auckland Domain which is the largest park in the city. While we were in the Domain, we visited the Winter Gardens which is an old looking structure consisting of a classical looking courtyard, two greenhouses full of beautiful plants, trees and flowers, and a fernery which as you might have guessed contains lots of different types of fern trees. From there we went to have a look at the museum building (we didn't go in because we'd visited more than enough museums this year). We then spent the afternoon looking around the shops again. There wasn't that much to do in the city especially when you compare it to other places we'd visited in New Zealand.
After our two nights in Auckland we left New Zealand to go on to our final country, Fiji. We really enjoyed New Zealand. We had done so many different activities and seen so many things. It certainly was one of the best places we'd visited this year.
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