Ah New Zealand. The place that seems like it was designed specifically for us with the snow capped mountains, beautiful beaches and roaring rivers. New Zealand has been at the top of our list of places to go for a while and our trip was designed to hit New Zealand at the right time of year (their summer).
We arrived in Auckland after a long night of traveling from Bali. Our friend, Becca, who has been living in Auckland for the past two years, provided us with a ride from the airport, an awesome place to stay and a lot of great advice about what to see and do in the area. Our first day in town we went to watch Becca's softball tournament, which was fitting since we met Becca playing softball in San Francisco. Softball in NZ is pretty popular and the most interesting part about it is that it is even more popular for guys. They don't really have baseball so all the guys grow up playing fast pitch softball (presumably as well as cricket and rugby).
After the tournament we drove out to Piha beach, which is out on the west coast of Auckland. We did a cool hike to Glen Esk falls and then walked along the black sand beaches in Piha. Being summer in Auckland there is light until 9pm, which is really great for making the most of the day.
The next day we took a ferry out to Waiheke Island, which is about a 40 minute boat ride from Auckland Harbor. Waiheke Island is known for their wine, and as we have been known to like wine as well, it was a good match. We visited Mudbrick Winery, which is a beautiful vineyard up on a hill above the coast. The wine was pretty good, but I think we've become spoiled after spending so much time in Napa. We decided that one winery was probably enough since one of us was already buzzed and we wanted to head to the beach. We caught a bus to the other side of the island and took a nice walk along the beach, before heading back to meet Becca and go on a sculpture walk that had been set up on the island. There were a bunch of really cool sculptures along the coast line and the setting sun provided amazing lighting.
Our Auckland exploration continued the next day by doing the coast to coast walk, which starts in the Auckland Harbor (Pacific Ocean) zig zags across town and ends up at the coast on the other side of town (Tasman Sea). Our favorite parts were hiking up the Volcanos (Mt. Eden and One Tree Hill) and getting the great views of the city from the top. We also got to see a lot of stuff that wasn't technically on the route, since we made a lot of wrong turns trying to navigate the route. All told we ended up adding a few extra miles to an already very long day. After some serious failure in navigating Auckland's public transit system that involved no one having ever heard of the bus that we needed, we caught a train back across town.
We had another adventure out to an island, visiting Rangitoto. Rangitoto is a volcanic island that resembles a mini version of a Hawaiian Island. There were some really cool lava caves that we were able to navigate and the summit and the coast line trails provided beautiful views.
We took a two day trip to Waitomo and Rotorua, which are a couple hours south of Auckland. We were able to get cheap bus tickets on Naked Bus (not as exciting as it sounds) that worked out great for getting from place to place. First we went to Waitomo, which has the famous glow worm caves. All the glow worms look like bright blue stars on the roof of the caves, really neat to see. We also did another cave tour where we got to explore deeper into the cave system and see all of the Stalagmites/tites/lites. We caught our bus to Rotarua for the night and woke up the next day ready to raft the Kaituna River.
One of the first things we do when we go anywhere is to Google wherever we are going + white water rafting. One of the first things that came up when performing this exercise with New Zealand was the Kaituna River and its 7 meter waterfall. For those of you that are not fluent in the metric systems that's over 20 feet. It is the tallest commercially rafted waterfall in the world and something that we figured we had to do. The falls definitely lived up to the hype, as you will definitely be able to see from the expressions on Gina's face. The rest of the trip was cool too as there were some smaller falls and drops and lots of good places to surf in the waves.
After the trip we had some time to walk around Rotarua, which is know for its geothermal activity and geysers. It was a cool place, but would be hard to live there as the smell of sulphur is pretty overpowering. We made our way back to Auckland, where the next day we headed down to New Plymouth with Becca to do a backpacking trip around Mt. Taranaki.
Mt. Taranaki is a volcano that rises up 8,000 feet just a few miles from the coast. We did the Pouakai circuit which makes a loop on the west side of the mountain. We traversed through dense forest, swamps, lava cliffs and high ridge lines. The terrain was really cool because it was always changing and there were great views of the mountain and all the way to the coast. One thing that is different about backpacking (actually the first thing that is different is that they call it tramping, which makes it sound a little scandalous) is that you stay in huts that are built along the trail. The huts are basically a couple of big bunk rooms with mattresses and a big communal kitchen/dinning room. It really lightens the load since you don't need to bring a tent or a camping pad. The downside is that you have to share the hut with however many people happen to be there. In our case it was 13, but the hut can sleep up to 32, which would be crazy since you can pretty much hear anything happening in any part of the hut.
We did a pretty long day the first day so that we could do a side trip to a waterfall the next day and then explore New Plymouth a little bit. We walked along the water and made a quick stop at a brewery before heading back.
Our last day in Auckland we spent most of the day doing laundry, fixing stuff with superglue and planning our route through the South Island. We will be traveling in a camper van and we are very excited to return to our camper van lifestyle that we grew accustomed to on our road trip across the US.
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ReplyDeleteGood times guys, I love seeing what you're up to!
ReplyDeleteI hope u have accident insurance!!
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