Foreigners, not

Well, we've been in New Zealand now for five days, and it's been heaven.  For a start everyone over here seems to pronounce "kilometre" correctly (ie killer meter) and the street signs, notices on walls and articles in papers all seem to be spelt correctly and the apostrophes are even in the correct places!

We were told New Zealand was like Australia, but just twenty years ago, and they are right.  Although today we drove through a few towns that were probably Australia FIFTY years ago!  The place we have seen so far is very rural.  However we have seen a few pockets of native bush.  Crikey, when NZ was settled there must have been a rampant effort all up to clear the land.  Of what we've seen so far, there are mainly cleared areas used for agriculture or forestry, with occasional bits of bush.  Nothing like the East Coast of Australia anyway where there are huge expanses of native uncleared vegetation.

The places we have stayed in so far are day 1, Auckland, where we landed and had the afternoon/evening.  We went up to SkyTower, which is shown here from the YHA room itself.  Not a bad view (click on the pic for a bigger image). We acclimatised ourselves on Day 1 and got slightly used ti thi uccunt.  Random vowels abound.

On Day Toe (that's how they pronounce it) we headed north and stopped at Paihia.  We saw some magnificent bits of coastline on the way.  The shot on the right here is where we had lunch.  It is an absolutely magic location, but is also home to New Zealand's sole oil refinery.  Over to the right you can see the storage tanks and the incoming ships, and in the background the unspoiled bits!!!!  They need petrol, I suppose, but maybe the refinery could have been better placed.  Speaking of petrol, it's quite different.  The oil companies set a price and it seems all the servo's stick to it.  When we arrived it was $NZD1.77.9 everywhere.  But two days later Shell and Mobil put it up to $1.80.9 and BP and Caltex to $1.82.9 so we bombed out there.  Also, it's weird.  You pull up in a servo and start putting petrol into the car, and they come out and grab the hose off you and finish it off.  We've only been to ONE self-serve station so far, and I'm not used to it  (as I was saying, Australia, but twenty years ago).

Day Three saw us at Paihia in the morning where we went on a Bay of Islands cruise all day.  The cruise was called the "Cream Trip" and goes around visiting all the islands making a few deliveries and allowing us all to swim with the dolphins if we want to.

The pic on the left is the "Hole in the Rock", which we actually did sail through in our reasonably large twin hulled cruiser.  You can't go through on all days when the swll is big, but we were lucky.  The boat ONLY JUST fitted.  The captain, who was Dutch but with a combo Dutch/Kiwi accent was quite a talented seaman, and he slipped through without a problem at all.

In the evening we travelled further North to Ahipara which is the most northerly YHA hostel in NZ.  Next day (Day 5) we started by travelling North to Cape Reinga, which is as far as you can drive in NZ (not exactly the most northerly point, but close.  It's also the most westerly point, so I suppose it's as close to Australia as we're going to get for another week and a half.

Here's the view north from the northern tip of NZ:


The maoris reckon that all the souls travel north upon dieing right up the northern tip of the country and beyond.  After all, they originally came from islands around Hawaii, so it is only natural for them to return.  Sheesh, we got bored on the three hour plane trip over from Sydney - imagine canoeing here from Hawaii...

Day 5 saw us drive for a huge distance, as once we had hit Cape Reinga we came down the highway, back through Auckland and actually made it to Hamilton.  The YHA at Hamilton was full, and we didn't think we'd make it as far south as we did so we hadn't booked.  But we did, so we stayed in a cheap motel on the north side of Hamilton.  Day Six wasn't quite as exciting, as we toured around Hamilton and it was not as interesting as the North.  However along the way we did see this interesting animal constructed from corrugated iron!  The things they do.  So many drivers were stopping for photos, the shops were doing a roaring trade.

Day 6 we've seen the largest tree of some species I can't remember (walked for miles to get there and back) and walked around a thermal springs field.  We are now at the YHA in Taupo, almost at the geographic centre of New Zealand.  Haven't got photos for today as they are on the camera still up in the room.

We took 40-odd photos on Day one.  On Day 2, 130, Day 3, 180 Day 4 only 110, Day 5 a mere 67 and today I haven't looked but it's possibly going to be three hundred.

Anyway, I have eight minutes of internet access left.  It's been a good catch up, we are nearly halfway there already.   Bye for now