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After 29 weeks traveling and 18 countries visited I am onto my last…New Zealand. Here we joined the 'Stray' bus - an organized hop on hop off bus traveling down from Auckland to Queenstown. Well Nicki joined the bus in Auckland, I had a job interview in Sydney so had to fly into Hamilton and the adventure began from there….
If I was to tell you to meet the bus at its first evening point in Hahei that I had to get an airport shuttle, a bus to Thames, a bus to Whitianga, a ferry, a golf buggy and a taxi would you believe me? Well it sure happened and apparently driving by car takes 2 hours so I definitely got off the beaten track! I think Charley Boorman would have been proud of my Hamilton to Hahei by any means J Well I made it there safe and sound (much to Nicki's constant worry and texts bless her) and met the first group on the Stray bus. Because it is a hop on hop off bus you can have different people on the bus each day depending on whether they want to stay at that particular place for a day or too. The first part of the North Island we had predominantly the same group so it was nice to be able to get to know people and have a laugh. The highlight of Hahei (after I huffed and puffed to get there!) is the hot water beach - where volcanic activity is so intense you can dig holes on the beach when the tide is out and sit in your very own hot water bath! The activity is so intense that due to crazy digging by boys in our group our bath was scolding hot and sadly I couldn't bear to burn the skin off my legs to sit in it! But it was cool to sit outside by the waves and be nice and toasty.
The next morning we headed to the surfing town of Raglan, a place where if there is good surf on that particular day then school is out and the kids can go surfing. Nice eh! Jack Johnson has a holiday home here too. We walked down towards the beach and around the small town before heading to our hostel right in the rainforest. I was still pretty exhausted from my trip over so went for a nap, woke up with a few bites and just assumed it was the mosquitoes. Later on I went to bed, scratched for half the night and woke up in the morning to find my whole body covered in bites…bed bug bites! God it was so painful and itchy, my legs were red raw. I felt really bad though as when I told our guide he went up and spoke to the owner - she felt terrible it had happened and they were going to have to gut the whole room, not just my bed. Whoopsie…but then again they deserve it after the bites I got!
The next stop on our travels was Waitomo, famous for glowworms and caving. What with tonsillitis and bug bites we took the grandma trip and headed through the caves on a boat so that we could get up close and personal with the little glowworms. They were amazing; when you shone the light on them they just looked like stringy white things but once the lights were off it was like a starry night in there. That evening we headed to Uncle Boys cultural show in Maketu. We got to stay with a Maori family, ate traditional food, watched them perform dances and then got taught one ourselves. The girls and boys got split separately so that we could battle each other once we had perfected it - the boys did the Hakka, where they had to be as terrifying as possible and stick their tongues out in weird and wonderful ways, and we did a dance using some strange beanbag on string. Was a great experience though - nice to meet the local tribe and get some culture (still love the aboriginals though!).
Rotorua - my first adventurous activity in New Zealand…zorbing. For those of you who don't know (more than likely mum and dad!) Zorbing is when you climb inside an inflatable ball and get pushed down a hill. But I thought I'd whip my bikini out and get them to put water inside and then get pushed down a hill! It was such fun, over so quickly but a bit of a scream fest while your rolling down J Rotorua is famous for its volcanic activity too and there are loads of geysers in the town so it smelt a lot like eggs niiiice! But that also means more hot water pools so we walked about 10 minutes from our hostel and chilled out in pools right beside a cold lake, which was very refreshing when it got too hot! I just sat with half my body in the hot and half in the cold. Not just a hat rack my friend!
Now the next day was one tough tough cookie….we completed the Tongariro Crossing walk which is rated as one of the world's best one day walks. The scenery was used for the Lord of the Rings films and is mountainous, rocky, steep, green, black, and a whole range of other colors. At the beginning the weather was really sunny and pretty warm but once we reached the top 6 hours later, yes 6 hours later, it was one huge snow blizzard!!! The wind was whipping the snow into our faces it was so painful and it was so cold you could barely breathe. So I thought this was the top, and I have a great picture of me with my hands in the air like 'yes, wooh I made it', but no I got it wrong and realized that it wasn't the real top and that we had another hour to go in this awful weather! But finally we made it right to the top of the crossing and got brilliant views of the surrounding area. To top it off when we got back to the activity centre we were handed a beer for our hard work, now that I like!
Our final day in the North Island was in Wellington. I woke up to find that I could actually walk after the 9 hour hike so after the drive into the city Nicki and I headed to the Te Papa museum to check out the gross giant squid they have on show and sat in a house and felt what it is like when an earthquake hits. It was probably the best museum I have ever been to and I don't even like museums! Pretty cool!
I wonder what the South Island will bring….
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