The Final Countdown

So here we are, it's the final countdown. No I'm not talking about the long standing television anagrams game made popular by the late Richard Whiteley's "loud" ties or Carol Vordoman's impressive derrière in a pair of leather trousers, I am of course talking about something as silly as a supermarket. In New Zealand Countdown is what all the Aussies would know as Woolworths and what the Brits would call Tesco. Confused yet?

What I'm trying to say in a roundabout way is that this is the final instalment of this blog (from abroad anyway) that has detailed our epic travels over the last 9 months. So make yourselves a cuppa, or crack open a beer if it's that time of day, sit back and enjoy the last 3 weeks of our adventure!

Making the opposite journey to the eventful one that started our time in New Zealand, we found ourselves back in Auckland. With a couple of days to spare before the arrival of our friend Siobhan and the beginning of our next camper van rental, we arranged to meet and stay with a couple of my parents friends who emigrated out to New Zealand around 6 years ago. Rob and Shelia used to live in Deal like ourselves, living on the road around the corner from my parents having worked with Dad down in the port at Dover.

We had a great couple of days getting to know Rob and Sheila, and got to see many of the local haunts around the Albany area where they now live. A well appreciated beer in Browns Bay was a great way to mark our first day there, with an amazingly good hot chocolate and a slice of cake doing a similar job on the second day. It is a great little area in which they live and we can easily see why they made the choice to live here permanently.

The following morning a bright and early start was required to go and meet our friend Siobhan from the airport where we would then pick up the camper van that would be home for the next 15 days. We met Siobhan while Vicky and her were both attending Surrey University and we have been good friends ever since. She even put in an appearance as a bridesmaid at our wedding.

With the paperwork completed we set off in our new camper van (a 3 berth one this time obviously so quite a lot larger than the previous one) and started to make our way south towards Waitomo where there are some quite well known glow worm caves. One of the sights there known as the “Mangapohue Nautral Bridge” was absolutely littered with the glow worms, and provoked an interesting decision; leave your head torch switched off so you could see them better or leave it switched on so you could actually see where you are going in the dark!

Making our way further down the island, New Plymouth would be our next destination. The popular coastline area is very pleasing on the eye and has a pinnacle that you are able to climb to get a better view out across the town and the ocean. The climb was slightly harder than we had imagined as we presumed the steps would take us all the way to the summit, but in fact a scramble over rocks was required to climb the last third. The views from the top were worth it even if getting back down was a little tricky!

Making our way down from the Pinnacle. You can even see our van in the car park quite some way below!

Much alike the south island there are numerous places to pull over at the side of the road for a "scenic lookout" and on most days it would be inevitable that we would stop and take photographs at at least a few of these. It is nice being able to get out of the car and go off exploring through the fields and bushes knowing that there isn't really anything in New Zealand that can kill you (I am of course talking about snakes and spiders that were commonplace in Australia. I am not trying to say that literally nothing can kill you, so I wouldn't advise walking out into the middle of State Highway 1 blindfolded while trying to juggle a handful of kiwi fruit!).

It was during one of these stops on the following day that our friend and travel buddy Walter Bear went missing in action. While journeying along the Forgotten World Highway we stopped at the crest of a hill and climbed over into some sheep fields to take some photos of the valleys below. However when I went to take his photo the following day at the Mt. Tongariro crossing he was tragically no longer in his pouch in my camera bag. We were all very sad to learn of his disappearance, but unfortunately we had driven just too far to warrant backtracking to try and find him. It is of small consolation that he will now be permanently residing in one of the most beautiful countries in the world. For the sake of him being a 5 inch tall teddy bear we will miss him dearly.

The view from the point where Walter went his own way

As I have already mentioned, we spent the following day hiking the Mt. Tongariro crossing. The volcano itself had actually erupted just less than 2 weeks before we arrived (mostly ash and gas rather than lava) and so the crossing was only open to the half way point by the Emerald Lake. We therefore decided to make a return journey to the point of the closure (normally you are able to walk the entire crossing and catch a shuttle back to the start to get back to your car). 

We set out fully laden with food drink and clothes for what would be between a 7 or 8 hour hike, knowing of course that the peak would be a similar hight to that of Ben Nevis which I climbed back in 2009. The track runs right past Mt. Ngauruhoe which is famously used as "Mount Doom" in the Lord of the Rings films. It's snow capped peak looked spectacular against the bright blue sky that the day had brought. As we neared the highest point of our journey, The Red Crater, the conditions became more difficult to navigate as we were encountering both loose ground as well as snow and ice. As we conquered the peak and gazed down on the Emerald Lake beneath us a small flurry of snow fell, although the ground would largely remain warm (we were stood on an active volcano after all!). To stand there and take it all in was truly incredible.

Mt Ngaurohoe or "Mt Doom" heading up into the clouds

Getting down off of the peak proved equally as difficult as getting up it, but after descending a reasonable distance you could feel the temperature getting warmer again and the terrain becoming friendlier to our tired legs. It's always important however to stay focussed until the very end of these things, as accidents are more common on the way down with people thinking that all of the hard work is already done. I saw this happen to 2 people on Ben Nevis who weren't concentrating enough on the way down, and one of them now bears a nice scar across her forehead.

The following day saw us travel to the town of Taupo which is situated at the top of the great lake bearing the same name. We made our way slightly north of the town to visit the Huka Falls, a waterfall sequence that has an impressive flow rate of 62,000 gallons per second! The falls were a lot flatter than we had imagined (the elevation wasn't very high at all) and they appeared like a section of extremely intense rapids. None of the photos that we took could really do the falls justice. I wouldn't say that they were the most spectacular falls I have ever seen, but I would say that they were the most fascinating to watch. There was something so intriguing about the power, depth and the noise of the water as well as observing the changes in the colour of the water as it mixed with the oxygen in the air.

Huka Falls. You really have to be there to appreciate them though

To cap off the day we managed to get ourselves tickets to see the new James Bond film Skyfall at the cinema in Taupo. 

Rotarua, an area known for is geysers and geothermal activity, would be our destination for the following day and it was for exactly those reasons that we decided to make the stop there. We began our morning by going to visit the Lady Knox Geyser, which is advertised as erupting at 10.15am daily. The way that the park guarantees this happening is by dropping an environmentally friendly soap substitute into the top of the geyser, which breaks the surface tension of a cool layer of water that until that point holds back the boiling water below. The geyser there can reach around 10 meters in height. The geyser was reported to have been found by some prison inmates that had been employed for scrub clearing in the area. They decided to use the geothermal pool that they found to wash their clothes (as the prison had only cold water), but when they mixed the soap powder in with their clothes.....WHOOOSH! their clothes were blasted into the air by the release of the geyser!

The rest of the geothermal park in Rotarua was really interesting to walk around, as long as you were able to overcome the overpowering stench of sulphur that hung in the air. The various pools that are available to view there have a range of minerals mixed in with them that cause them to become a range of interesting colours. We found out that the town had suffered 2 earthquakes in the previous week before we arrived, but they were not huge and the people here are just used to them in the way that a Brit is used to it raining.

In the geothermal park

That evening we had booked to go to a Maori cultural evening and learn a little more about what life is like in a traditional Maori village. We learnt about all of the rituals that a tribe will go through to welcome visitors to their land, before being treated to about an hours performance of local music and dance. Toward the end Vicky and Siobhan volunteered to go up on stage and learn how to swing a poy (soft ball on a long string that is used in many of their dances), before I jumped up on stage to learn how to perform the haka (the Maori war dance that you will see the All Blacks rugby team perform every time before they play). Think I will need a little more practice before anybody finds my haka intimidating!

Maori cultural evening

We finished our evening there by gathering in the food hall for a meal that was cooked in the traditional “hangi” way (a hole dug in the floor where the food is placed for it to be cooked by the temperature of the Earth, which in these geothermal areas is pretty hot!). After some amazing food we went back down to the most active area of the settlement which is home to the tallest geyser in the Southern Hemisphere, measuring around 20 meters at it's full height, and sat while the sun went down.

The next day we made our way up into the Corromandel area where we wanted to do a bit of walking, swimming and bathing, in a natural phenomenon known as “Hot Water Beach”. For 2 hours either side of the low tide you are able to dig holes in the sand on the beach that then fill from the bottom upwards with geothermally heated water to make a mini hot spa on the beach. Tide times dictated that we were unable to dig on the beach during the daytime, but with a low tide forecast for midnight we decided to head back down for a bit of stargazing from a hot pool. The water does get surprisingly hot, and so you do have to be careful where and how far you dig as 75C water (the maximum water temperature recorded there) would literally cook you to death. The stargazing would have also gone better if it were not for the copious amount of steam pouring out of the hot water pools and blocking our view!

We spent a further day or so driving around the coastline of the Corromandel with the intention of doing a hike across “The Pinnacles” mountain range. Vicky pulling a muscle in her leg put pay to that idea though and we decided instead to start making our way back around in the direction of Auckland to head on up to the Northlands. 

Me, Vicky and Siobhan at Stingray Bay, just around the coast from Hot Water Beach

Whangerei proved to be a very interesting and charming place to be, and after camping there one night we spent several hours the next day wandering around a local craft and farmers market trying not to spend all of the remaining money that we had left! Keri Keri in the Bay of Islands (where our friend Siobhan will be staying and working for a while) also looked to be well worth some time out of anybody's schedule.

Our main target in the Northlands was to reach Cape Reinga, the highest point of the North Island. Having already been to Bluff in the South Island we have now visited both extremes of the country. We had heard many stories about how beautiful the area was up there, and it is well known for being the point where the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea meet (on some days there is a distinct line between the two). However on the day that we visited you were barely able to see your hand in front of your face for the fog that had rolled in. For the most part you were only able to hear the ocean rather than see it, which I would imaging was even more gutting for the coach loads of people who had paid for a tour to go and see it. We couldn't help but chuckle as we watched the coaches arriving just as we were making our way out (evil I know).

We've seen sunnier days!

So with our rental on the van coming towards it's end we slowly started our way back toward Auckland stopping off at Keri Keri to deposit Siobhan for her stay there.

We had 4 remaining nights before our flight when we arrived back in Auckland, and so we decided to book ourselves into a hostel for one last time. Unfortunately it won't be troubling any of our favourite hostels at the top of our imaginary leader board, but it didn't quite rank as the worst either. We took the time to do some of the things that we hadn't had time to do in Auckland previously; to go up the city's Sky Tower (the tallest structure in the southern hemisphere), visit the city museum, catch a boat to Rangitoto (the most recently formed island through a volcanic eruption that took place 600 years ago), see the Hobbit at the IMAX and also to do a bit of Christmas shopping. We had bought most people's presents by June this year (super organised I know!) but we hadn't yet bought anything for each other.

Our final evening we spent meeting with Zelda, one of Vicky's former colleagues from back home, who emigrated out to New Zealand in January. We sat and had a good chat and a laugh over dinner and a few drinks before we could put off the final packing no longer.

It seems strange that our journey has now reached it's end, but to be fair we are both definitely ready to head home. There is only so long we could go on living out of bags and being on the move all of the time, and Christmas seems a really appropriate time to call it a day. 

I'm sure there will be a final contribution to this blog from back in the UK, but as for our time abroad we hope you have enjoyed reading about our adventures and sharing in a little bit of our slightly strange day to day lives. We've been stunned by the number of people reading the blog from all over the world, and so the final thing me to do is to wish each and every one of you a very Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!