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So here starts the mammoth New Zealand blog! Where do we start.....? How about right at the beginning...
First of all we have to say how much we have absolutely loved our time in NZ. It is such a beautiful country, we have made many friends and done a lot of exciting, adrenaline fueled activities including thrown ourselves off a few things in Queenstown! We were very sad to leave the country but here is our story so far......(feel free to shut down half way through! it will go on a bit but we want to remember every detail ourselves when we get home and, as each day was jam-packed, so the blog will go on....!)
Wed 15 April
We arrived into Auckland at around 4 am on Wednesday 15th April. We flew over the date line from Santiago so we missed out totally on 14th April. The flight was 13 hours but we all had our own TV where we could choose what we wanted to watch and there were so many films we both wanted to see that we decided to try not to sleep so we could fit them all in. I watched 4 films before my pupils felt stretched to the max and Rob managed 3. Once we arrived we taxi'd it straight to our hostel, Base in the centre of Auckland, took a sleeping pill and zonked out for a few hours.
We spent half the first day in bed and the rest of it talking to the lady at the travel desk at our hostel about campervan companies and the Kiwi Experience. We wanted to make the most of our stay in NZ and wanted to make sure we could visit as many places as possible for as little cost as possible. Originally we thought hiring a campervan would be the best way to explore as we would be on our own time and be able to go where we wanted when we wanted. However, we also knew all about the Kiwi Experience tours and they had been recommended to us by friends. That day was the last day of an offer that Kiwi Ex had on where if you pay for the Southern Round-up (the trip which takes you around the South Island), you got the North Island trip for free. This was a saving of nearly 50% so an excellent deal. The campervan companies also had great deals on, but we discussed it a bit between ourselves and thought it was a good idea to do the Kiwi Ex as we would be able to relax a bit more rather than having to drive ourselves around, plus we knew we would meet a lot more people so we wouldn't get sick of each other's company too quickly! So we booked up for the 23 day tour to start the following Saturday.
That first night we had a wander down to the harbour and had a nice meal - the last of our splash outs before we started our trip and had to eat noodles for the next 3 weeks! Auckland is NZ's largest city. We liked that we could walk around feeling more safe than we did in South America, and it was cool to be able to communicate with people again rather than speaking Spanglish and hoping to be understood! Funny though that in the first restaurant we ate at the waitress was from Argentina so we managed to speak a little bit more Spanish with her.
On the Thursday we did a free tour around Auckland provided by the Kiwi Experience to get a bit of a taster of what what to expect. The driver, Dallas, was cool and full of interesting information (and actually quite cute! ;-p). We stopped at a couple of scenic viewpoints and did a couple of walks, ate fish and chips for lunch at the top of a hill with a stunning view of Auckland. It gave us an idea of what to expect from our Kiwi Experience. The rest of the day was spent searching the bookshops for a World of Warcraft book for Rob, getting our disposable camera developed from Rio Carnival, eventually! Later that evening we went to the Globe bar which was the bar directly under our hostel. They were doing a free Dominos pizza night and all we had to do was by a beer and we could help ourselves to the pizza. We decided that would be good enough stodge for our planned night out! We found a few bars on K Street but they were pretty quiet as it was a Thursday night. Still we managed to get a few vodkas in and a couple of games of pool before heading back for munchies at the kebab shop and back to the hostel.
The Friday morning was a write-off! We stayed in bed for the majority of it, recovering. When we eventually emerged from our pit, we caught the bus up to Parnell Village which is a posh and expensive area of Auckland with lots of cafes and boutique shops. It was a nice sunny day so we decided to walk back to Queen Street where our hostel was and went to see a film. Was very hard trying to keep awake in the cinema while watching The Wrestler. It was a good film, but the movement of the camcorder-like filming made me feel quite ill! I had to keep looking away from the screen. That kind of film doesn't mix with a sore hangover head! We had a nice healthy Subway salad for tea and crashed in bed early in preparation for the start of our Kiwi Ex on the Saturday morning.
Kiwi Experience - Day 1
We were ready for a good sleep and it was going well......until we were rudely awoken at 4.30 am by the fire alarms going off! The recorded announcement over the tannoy kept repeating for us to wait for further instructions but no-one really knew what we were supposed to do as no further instructions came. We had a look outside the room and people were milling about in the corridor so we went out and decided to follow them down the stairs. We ended up having to evacuate and stand out in the cold for about half an hour while the fire engines pulled up and checked inside. Some lads had obviously just returned from the pub not long before the alarm went off and decided to come out in their boxers, to everyone's amusement! The club next door to the hostel was still in full swing and people were leaning out of the windows watching the commotion in the street below. It was a new experience, but not much fun to be woken up by that before our early morning start!
We were up and out again a few hours later and dragged our bags around the corner onto Queen Street to be met by a big green Kiwi bus. We shoved our bags underneath the coach, met our driver Kane, and grabbed a seat. Once the bus was full up, we stopped at the Kiwi Ex office for some final paperwork and a coffee and muffin. The cafe Kane recommended were giving out free muffins when you bought a hot drink so Rob ordered a coffee and I got a hot chocolate, we picked our free muffins, stood there for a few minutes waiting to pay, then realised the girl serving was ignoring us and kept serving all the people behind us. I hovered around a bit longer with the money in my hand but she just kept looking at us and then looking away and serving the others, so we thought she must have taken a liking to us for some reason and decided to give us free drinks as well as free muffins, so we just walked out and jumped back on the bus! Jammy! lol
Kane gave all our yellow Kiwi tickets out to us at the start of the trip but he decided to give everyone somebody else's ticket to begin with as he had an idea as a bit of an icebreaker. Once we set off, he told us that we had to get out of our seats and go and find the rightful owner of the ticket we had in our hand and ask them two questions; 1. were they a green, red or orange light (relating to their marital status), and 2. if they were a scruncher or a folder (relating to their toilet roll habits!). It was chaos when everyone started getting up from their seat, a lot of pushing and shoving and climbing over seats to find the person named on your ticket. But it was definitely a good icebreaker and got everyone talking. Rob had the easiest job of all, sitting in the window seat with, what are the chances, a ticket with MY name on it!
Our first stop was at the top of Maungawhau (Mount Eden) which had fantastic 360 degree views of Auckland city. We then stopped for a few minutes further down the road to view a couple of Kuati trees which were 250 years old, take some photos and some hugged the trees which apparently everyone does when they stop there. We also stopped at a beautiful place called Cathedral Cove. We did a 45 minute walk down to a beach where there was a huge archway in the caves which was used for the scenery in one of the Narnia films. It was a tough walk back up but we got talking to loads of the other people on the bus which was cool.
We arrived at Turtle Cove Backpackers in Mercury Bay, our hostel for our first night on tour. It was a small family run hostel and was quite cosy. They made a meal for us on the night time of spaghetti bolognese and a veg option too, for a small cost. It was lush! It was to be our first experience of dorms so we were a little worried about what to expect. We both, without each other knowing, were looking at one couple and hoping that we weren't going to get put in a room with them as they seemed really young and hyper and we hadn't really spoken to them at any point during that day. Typically that's who we ended up with in a 4 bed dorm as they were a mixed couple who weren't in a relationship so they put like with like. They were only young, 18 and 19, but we got talking to them in the room they seemed friendly enough, if a little wrapped up in each other, so we thought the share would work out fine.
After our meal, Kane took us on the bus to the thermal baths not far from the hostel. It had been set up by one man and had taken him 20 years to complete. It was gorgeous, really cosy little place. It had little caves built in with pretend gloworms which lit up bright in the low light, lots of plants around the pool edges and a little rope bridge to walk over to access the pools. We were given a wrist band when we checked in where we paid a few dollars to order drinks while we were in the warm pool and the waitresses would bring them out to us. We didn't want to leave! Unfortunately they cut our time short though as we paid a lower rate being with the Kiwi bus, but the fab showers, hairdryers and straighteners in the changing rooms made up for it!
After the rude awakening by the fire alarm the night before we were ready for a good sleep that night. Unfortunately though as we half expected, we were again woken up at some ridiculous hour by the couple in our room arriving back from the pub with three of the other young ones who they had made friends with that evening. They were making so much noise outside the hostel that they woke a few of the other guests up as well. We tried to stick our earplugs back in and ignore it, but were disturbed again by another blinkin fire alarm sounding! We were thinking, not again after last night and that it was obviously just those kids messing around so we didn't bother getting out of bed. A few minutes later though our door burst open and one of the workers from the hostel shouted at us to get out of the building. I jumped off the top bunk and opened the door where I saw smoke all through the passageway so I told Rob he needed to get up as there was definitely something not right. We all evacuated and stood out in the cold for the second night running. We saw the young ones who had been out drinking and they were laughing and carrying on. Then one of them started apologising to everyone and saying that it was their fault, that they had been playing with the fire extinguishers and one had gone off and caused the smoke. They were told to go and tell the owners who were rushing about scared for their lives. The poor old couple were really panicking thinking that there was a fire somewhere and they were calling the fire department. When the lads confessed the owner was really pissed off and told them they had to pack their bags and get out of the hostel. They told Kane that they weren't welcome there and they then had to call the fire department to say it was a false alarm. Everyone was really annoyed at being woken up but the young ones still thought it was hilarious and were taking photos of each other thinking it was something funny to tell all their friends back home. The only funny thing about the whole situation was some local lad who had obviously been walking back from the pub passed the hotel when he decided to tell everyone he was a fireman and proceeded to run into the building waving an imaginery hose and shouting that he was going to put the fire out! It didn't impress the owners! Anyway, after what seemed like an age, we were allowed back in and the lads responsible apologised again to the owners and they were also allowed back in, much to the disappointment of the rest of us!
Kiwi Experience - Day 2
The next day we were up early and back on the bus. We stopped for a break along the way where we did a long walk through a very dark cave tunnel. Kane told us not to take photos or use torches or anything so that it was pitch black when we walked through, we had to hold our arms out to the sides so that we could feel our way along. It was quite eerie. We stopped again later on for lunch in a little town which is nick-named Hobbiton. They have a few Lord of the Rings tributes including a statue of Gollem and a little hobbit chair. The also have the funniest signs on the walls of the public toilets with a picture of someone standing on the toilet seats and squatting with a big line drawn through it. These signs were apparently put up by the council for the benfit of the Asian visitors who have very different toilet habits to ours and the Kiwi's alike! Funny.
Our final stop for the night was in Rotorua where we visited a thermal park with boiling hot mud pools which are heated naturally to around 90 degrees Celsius, and geysers which are rocks that produce natural boiling hot water fountains. The photo attached to this blog is of this park. The steam coming from them is amazing to see. Because of the sulphur produced in these geysers and mud pools, the town of Rotorua really smells, like rotten eggs, and the locals have nick-named it Rottenrua because of it.
Later that day we checked into the Base hostel and got a group of us together in a 10 bed dorm, the biggest we have stayed in yet. It was cool though, we had gotten to know the others that we were staying with so it gave us chance to get to know each other better. That night we had tickets to go to a traditional Mauri theme night. We got picked up at around 6 pm by one of the organisers who got us warmed up on the bus by getting us to choose one of our guys to be the chief of our tribe and chanting some Mauri sayings. The chosen chief was to take part in a challenge with the big chief once we arrived at the Mauri village to prove to them that we (his tribe) had come in peace. The big chief and his warriors were grunting and shouting at all these other guys who were chosen as chiefs from 5 different bus loads and they had to keep a straight face and we weren't allowed to make any noise either. Quite intimidating for them but very entertaining for us! Afterwards it was a bit more relaxed and we had time to look around the village and talk to the Mauri people about their traditional way of life. We then watched a concert where they sung traditional songs and performed dances. The meal afterwards was amazing! There was so much food we couldn't quite believe it and all stuffed our faces so much our stomachs hurt! When you're backpackers a meal like that only comes around once in a blue moon so we made the most of it. It was an excellent night and a great way to learn about the Mauri culture. We finished the night off with a few beers at the Base bar next to the hostel and a few card games, about 12 of us squashed round a big round table trying to keep out of the rain!
Kiwi Experience - Day 3
We left Rotorua for our next stop in Waitomo. On the way we had a couple of stop offs, one at a little farm where some people paid to watch a farm show. Although the majority of us felt like we were being pushed to spend money on things every day and didnt particularly want to get off the bus in the pouring rain to watch a few sheep running about an arena, so we decided not to pay for the show. Kane got a bit stroppy about this, we think he felt a bit miffed that we werent prepared to pay for something that would tell us a bit about his herritage, but as backpackers we felt that we had spent a whole load of money so far, only a few days into the trip, that we didnt want to be forced to do something we weren't all that fussed on doing. He decided to turn the mic on and made it screech so that people would get off the bus! So we all ended up in the coffee shop instead and let him get on with his strop!
We then went to an activities centre (yet more money!) where some people did a swoop (where you get strapped into a sleeping bag type thing and pulled up to a crane and let go so you swing like a pendulum). It looked loads of fun, but I've done one of those already a few years ago with Laura in Falaraki so we were saving our money for new adrenaline rushes.
When we arrived in Waitomo, me, Rob and 6 others were chosen to be the first group to go blackwater rafting. We were kitted out in wetsuits, still wet from the previous group, not easy to squeeze into! And set off to the caves to begin our 5 hour trip. Firstly we had a little abseiling practice on a wet slippery hill. It had been raining most of the day so it was really cold too. Id never done abseiling before but found it easy enough, Rob had done it years ago during a cub-scout trip so he was quite confident and, after abseiling down into a dark cave, was given a thumbs up by one of the guides who said he was the best he'd ever seen! Well done Robbie!
After the initial abseil we did some caving and trudged around with only the light from our helmets to guide the way. We saw some amazing stalactites and stalagmites and also some gloworms which we were told were maggots that secrete a green glowing gunge to attract the bugs they feed on. Nice! They were really quite pretty though down there in the dark caves. After a few minutes walking about in the caves we came to a zipwire which we had to attach ourselves to and then swing down the wire in total darkness with our lights turned off. That was quite scary not being able to see where we were flying off too. One of the guides kept whacking a huge rubber ring off the cave walls when someone was on the zipwire and it made a really loud bang which put the s***s up everyone else waiting for their turn!
The caves were freezing so we had a little stop where we were given hot chocolate and flapjack. Although I was so desperate for the toilet at this point I couldnt even drink any hot chocolate! We were then made to jump off one of the ledges into the river down below. It was quite a long drop down and we had to hold on to one of the black rubber rafting rings and land sitting in the middle of it in the water. The water was so so cold it took our breath away. The rest of the trip, about 2 hours, was spent in the cold river - part of it floating along in the rubber rings and part trudging through the waist deep water not being able to see the rocks on the bottom. It was absolutely freezing! Our feet were so numb they felt like big club feet and as the ground was so uneven I kept tripping up and falling into the water which made it all seep down the top of my wetsuit and make me even more cold! We also had to climb up a couple of waterfalls which was really testing for us. One of which was reached by crawling through a tiny tunnel which was really claustrophobic. The walls were really wet and slippery but we all managed it without slipping off so there were no injuries!
At the end of the trip we were welcomed back with hot showers, tomato soup and toasted bagels. And we definitely earned them! This trip was one of the best so far.
The hostel that night was good. As we were the last to check in due to our rafting trip, the only rooms left were twin rooms so we had our own space for the night which was good. We got the best room too as some of the others in our group had a mouse in their room!
Kiwi Experience - Day 4
The next morning we had to wait for another group to do the blackwater rafting so Kane took us to a little spot where we did a half an hour walk through some caves and along a muddy tree-lined pathway. He then took us to a little rabbit farm where they breed angora rabbits for their fur. He said this was worth going too only to see the look on peoples faces when they demonstrate how they shave the rabbits. When we got there they already had one rabbit stretched out on this table with his paws clipped in devices at either end. It did look really funny I have to admit! Everyone was cooing over this poor rabbit but we were assured that it didnt hurt the rabbits and that they liked being sheared! It was quite funny to watch once they turned the shaver on, the lads especially thought it was hillarious. We were able to stroke the rabbit afterwards so everyone queued up around the table to have a go. It was the strangest thing - so many people dying to know what a hairless rabbit feels like! They also brought out another pre-shaved rabbit and had to sit it by the fan to keep cool. They do this for the rabbits' welfare as they have too much fur and cant keep themselves groomed very well and it can cause them to overheat and die. But they also make scarves, gloves, hats and jumpers from the wool which were lush and soft and warm, but really expensive.
We later had another stop at a place called Huka Falls which were really pretty waterfalls where the water was so bright and blue it looked like it had blue dye in it. It was beautiful.
We checked into Base at Taupo that night where we got another twin room due to them running out of dorms. Did we mind, they asked, of course not! As long as its for the same price! It was manky like, but at least it was a private room. We got a big group together that night and went along to the Irish pub round the corner for the pub quiz. It was really hard so we didnt win unfortunately! We were competing against a load of other groups, half of them from our bus, but we got about half of them right which wasnt too bad considering.
Kiwi Experience - Day 5
We had a bit of a lazy day on the Wednesday, recovering from a bit too much to drink the night before, and finished it off with an all you can eat buffet at pizza hut to say bye to some of the group who were staying on in Taupo the next day.
Phew! I can hear you saying that too! That was the account of our first week. Another 3 blogs to come to cover the other 3 weeks we spent in NZ!
To be continued.......
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