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| Lou and I in Hamilton Gardens |
Gah! I meant to finish this off sooner, but ah well, I've finally gotten round to it... ish. I think I'll condense 4 adventures into one wall of text. Happy reading!
Lou!
The weekend following my adventures in Whirinaki, I elected to spend some time with the lovely Louise who happens to be a friend from Cardiff. She was a lovely guide and showed me around Hamilton gardens, Port Waikato and various members of her family. It's nice to have a connection with home, and I'll certainly be back in Tuakau!
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| Stunning |
Mordor
And then... more tramping! 11 of us did the famous Tongariro crossing, which passes between mounts Tongariro and Ngauruhoe (otherwise known as Mt Doom). And indeed, this is where various scenes from the Lord of the Rings were filmed. Dave and I hitchhiked down, while the nine others drove. We actually beat the conventional travelers to Turangi - a town close to the start of the track - proving the efficacy of kiwi hitching. The first day was Liam's birthday, and we celebrated in style by doing the 5 hour tramp in terrible visibility, piercing rain and blustery wind. We truly felt that we had conquered mordor by the end, with Haylee and I bringing up the rear - no one died! On the way back, however views were stunning. On the first day we had completely passed by towering mountains and blue lakes and thermal springs without realising - survival was more important than beauty. We even conquered mount Ngauruhoe in a hail storm!
North
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| Jono and his home (oh and Clement) |
The weather liked us the following three day labour weekend and so we took full advantage and drove up north. If you've looked at a map of New Zealand, you'll be aware that the northern bit is a long skinny bit with just 1 road. On the first night, we had the hospitality of Jono's family in Whangarei who hosted all 12 of us and showed us some pretty stunning scenery. I hadn't actually heard much about northland and so I was pleasantly surprised! I suppose the message is that New Zealand is just beautiful.
The following day was a full day of driving, taking us via Paihia to the tippidy-top of the island called Cape Reinga. The cape is actually very biologically interesting as it's soil is quite unique in its hostility meaning that there are a lot of unusual plant species found there. Save for the tourists, Cape Reinga was very peaceful. We camped a few km down the road that night at Spirit's Bay, had drinks on the beach, made the most hilarious attempt at dinner and crashed in our tents.
The following morning I woke up while most people were still asleep and decided to take a wee wander to a peninsula where I got to watch dolphins play for about half an hour! That made me very happy. We then started our amble back to Auckland to complete our final week of study, but not without visiting the sand dunes and the oldest Kauri tree in New Zealand.
Coromandel
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| On of the campsites |
My most recent adventure took place right before the start of my final exams, because screw studying. A corsican girl who doesn't want her life on the internet and I went to "where kiwi's go on holiday". We hitched to the Cormandel peninsula there without much plan apart from to camp where we landed! On the way, we found a hitchhiking buddy by the name of Freddy and travelled with him up to Thames.
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| Cathedral Cove |
We enjoyed the scenery, did a bit of tramping and swapped philosophies. The final night, however was the best. Hot water beach is an interesting beach on the east coast of the Coromandel where a certain area of the beach is 'heated', but is only accessible at low tide - one of our rides had informed us that low tide was at 1am. Excited by this prospect, we set up camp by the beach and waited... and waited and waited, until my companion woke me up at around 12 and we ran to the hot pools. About 20 people were already there and had dug pools of various degrees of scalding in the sand. We stole the best one and looked up at the full moon and bright stars for who knows how long. Unfortunately I didn't really get any pictures of this. We headed back the following day to study for finals.
... and now for something completely different
So exams are done, and I've said TTFN to Auckland. I hitchhiked yesterday to the town of Napier to seek my fortune in fruitpicking and got a job at 10am today picking kiwi fruit - hope I get to eat some! I start in the morning. I've got lots more adventures planned in New Zealand, Australia, Oklahoma and possibly somewhere else. I don't have to be back in school until March 2nd, so yeah... lots of things will be done.
Sweet as bro!
