Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Tuesday 12th October
Proper travelling now - the bus has been almost full all the way round North Island (40+ people). Started off at the Coromandel Peninsula - first stop was Hot Water Beach on the way to our overnight at Hahei. It was sunny enough - just blowing a gale up from Antarctica, so we were stood shivering on the beach in layers of coats. The water was surprisingly hot - too hot in places to stand in for much longer than it took to take a photo. Some other backpackers had dug their own spa pools and were laid in them. Wearing woolly hats...
Took a walk to Cathedral Cove - a very pleasant walk, and the slightly precarious side route to Stingray Bay was worth a detour.
Group barbecue at the backpackers campground - of course with the weather we ended up freezing while sat outside waiting for food. By the time we were eating it was getting dark (no lights under the outside canopy) - only tourists would sit outside in the cold, with no lights, eating barbecue food in the rain...it was good though!
Thursday 14th October
After a couple of days of rain, we got some good weather this morning - perfect for spending a couple of hours underground! We stopped in Waitomo for a couple of hours so we could try the various caving options - I went with the Spellbound tour, which was a walking tour through some stalagmite caves, followed by a boat ride through a glowworm cave. They were both spectacular - walking through the pitch black so our eyes could adjust to be able to see the glowworms - and it was incredible just how many there were in the glowworm cave. Unfortunately most of my photos are of various shades of black...how much more black could it be? The answer - none more black...
And tonight? Cultural night - Stray used to go and stay with a Maori guy called Uncle Boy in Maketu (middle of nowhere on the North coast of Coromandel Peninsula. Kinda...). After a while the number of people got too much for him in his house, so they stopped going. A few years ago he phoned them up and said 'I've built a marae for you next door to my house - do you want to come back?' - which is what they do now. Basically it's a Maori cultural evening - Uncle Boy is very funny and very welcoming. We were welcomed onto the marae by the cultural group with a powhiri (a challenge by a Maori warrior - basically he tries to scare the s*** out of the chief, who is the oldest guy in our group - nearly worked too ;D ). Once that's done, we are accepted as guests - and then everyone greets each other with a hongi (touching of noses). And I mean, everyone...There must have been over fifty of us there, including the cultural group and Uncle Boy and his family, so I ended up with a flat nose :P Very funny though!
The cultural group then did a performance for us with some poi dances and a haka - the guys then went off to learn the haka, while we learnt the poi (catch, catch, swing swing catch...harder than it looks!). I'll try and get the videos of the hakas on here - worth seeing, especially when they guys forget the moves!
More on that later - running out of time on t'interweb!
- comments