They say when you choose one road to travel on, you forgo a 100 others. Maybe more. Be that as it may, I'm pretty glad I picked the NZ road. My only regret is that I didn't think of traveling on it for longer. No worries...I'll be back and with some luck, in the summer :)
It smells of considerable irony - for a person who will gladly follow the summer anywhere, I have spent this year's Northern Hemisphere winter in Poland and am beginning the Southern Hemisphere winter in NZ and Australia. I'm not really trying to follow the winter, it has chosen to accompany me wherever I am. I'll probably spend the next three years (or more) trying to shake it off.
Three weeks in NZ have been just enough to cover the North Island. Barely. One may wonder what it is about this little country that demands so much time...but finding out on your own time should be pretty rewarding. In the last three weeks, I have
- taken a hop on-hop off bus tour around the North Island on the Stray bus. The other big ones are Magic and Kiwi. Stray is supposedly for older travelers, offers more cultural insights and goes off the beaten track often. Some fun (and odd) Stray traditions include mooning (or showing other not so appropriate parts of yourself) to Kiwi buses and jumping out to kiss the lollipop man - that's the guy who holds up the stop and go signs at road construction sites.
- hugged a 500 year old (kauri) tree wishing for good weather. As anyone who knows me well enough will attest, this is seriously needed in my life.
- watched orcas trying to look for food while we stand on boats and gawp at them; also watched dolphins playing 100m off the beach while we stand on the sand and gawp at them. If you're here in the summer, you're more likely to go for a swim with the dolphins (probably not the orcas though, I hear they're not really like the Willy who was free)
- gone boogie boarding down a massive sand dune...not once, not twice but THREE times. As anyone who has run up that dune once will tell you, that is no mean feat. I counted it as my workout for the day. If only I could have such a fun workout every day...
- completed a 500 piece and a 1000 piece puzzle in two different towns. The latter, I stayed up until 6am in the morning to finish...and our bus left at 7am. I was pretty tired that day.
- watched the meeting of the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea at the northernmost tip of NZ.
- jumped off a plane at 15,000 feet. Some may call that crazy...I do too. See separate post for feelings on this jump.
- summitted a volcano...Rangitoto. It's only one of the 49 that Auckland is built on so not much to crow about but lava rock does a cool island make.
- cooked dozens of meals including many based on baked beans in tomato sauce. Turns out I really like baked beans.
- visited a hot water beach and tried to dig a hot water hole in it - "tried" being the operative word. Again, this is something to try in the summer...where the heat source is, it's REALLY hot but it's pretty damn cold when you're digging around it, trying to build a sand wall to protect your 'tub' against the waves.
- watched gorgeous sunsets, trekked miles of unbelievably beautiful coastline, spotted more than a dozen rainbows...every view is a postcard and I hope I've captured some of those postcards in my photos. After years of traveling and buying postcards everywhere I go, NZ is one place I haven't bought a single postcard. None of them could do it justice enough.
- abseiled down dark caves and waterfalls, crawled through tunnels, seen stalactites and glow worms (which are actually glow maggots...and it's their poop that glows, sorry to disillusion anyone) and climbed a pretty cool underwater natural wall...all at Waitomo. Don't miss it if you're on the North Island.
- Zorbed down a hill...watch youtube for an example of this and check wiki for descriptions, but if you do the Zydro (w/ water option), it's like being in a cushioned washing machine, rolling down a hill. Pretty darn awesome.
- stayed overnight at a Marae (a Maori meeting house), eaten a not-so-traditional dinner, learned the Poi (the women's dance) and watched the guys do the Haka.
- stayed a few days in Rotorua, which smells of a chemistry lab (with a broken bottle of hydrogen sulphide), where the ground steams anywhere it can, where rhinocerous-grey mud spurts up with energy and thermal baths reside. If you stop there, stay at the YHA - it may be a hostel with "no soul" but it's definitely clean, cheap and has great facilities. You can always find some soul nearby.
- jumped in a natural hot mud swimming hole that had a warning about not putting your head in for fear of contracting meningitis due to water entering nasal passages. That sign definitely gave this little excursion an unwanted element of danger.
- seen a 4m long colossal squid at the country's National Museum in Wellington...apparently some fisherman just stumbled upon it while fishing.
- read tons and tons of books...still going strong on that.
I'm sure I've missed out on some stuff...but that's a pretty strong NZ activity resume :)
Some additional trivia - NZ has a population of 4 million people, one-third of whom live in Auckland and three-quarters of whom are on the North Island. Given the vast empty spaces I saw everywhere I went, I can hardly imagine how uninhabited South Island must be. It's apparently like a different country...in geography, history and climate. Some summer...
Next stop - Cairns, Australia. NZ may have gone a long way in displacing Australia in my heart, but I'm still pretty excited about getting there. Especially given the fact that it's so much warmer a few latitudes up...fingers crossed.
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