The land way down under – New Zealand
Saturday, February 17th, 2007We left Australia February 6th on, strangely enough, an Argentina airline. The plane was an A340, the only plane we’ve flown on that had 4 engines. The flight was uneventful, and we landed in Auckland around 3pm.
At first, we had mixed feelings about NZ – we had been doing some reading about it and realized that NZ has no native land mammals. This was not good news, as we tend to form our plans around where to find wildlife. Being in Australia had ‘spoiled’ us, as we had been seeing new species of animals nearly every day it seemed. But, once we got past this fact, and found that we just had to look a little harder for interesting creatures and places, we found we started running out of time!
When most people think of New Zealand, they have a picture conjured up in their minds of beautiful scenery – much like that in the Lord of the Rings. NZ certainly is full of spectacular scenery (and sheep!!), and since the filming of Lord of the Rings tourism has soared dramatically. Entire books exist on touring all the places where the filming took place. However, with this increase in tourism, prices have also soared, and there is not much one can do or see without shelling out a lot of money. This poses a problem for us as 1) we don’t have very much money and 2) we hate tours.
The first place on our list was Waitomo caves – and of course there is no seeing them without a tour (didn’t I just say we hate tours???). So, after browsing the endless tour brochures, we settled on the cheapest one. The bonus of this tour in our eyes was that David Attenborough -the nature guru- had been through this particular cave which we figured must count for something!
The Waitomo Caves are known for their numerous gloworms, and although we had seen them in Australia, we couldn’t bypass this large tourist attraction. There were numerous other adventure tours – abseiling, black water rafting, etc etc – all out of our price range, so our tour was a driving/walking/boat ride tour. This is a good place to mention that NZ must be the adventure capital of the world! It seems any extreme sport that exists, they have it here. Zorbing, abseiling, white water rafting, black water rafting, caving, helicopter rides, bungee jumping, sky diving, parasailing, diving, etc. You name it, it’s here.
Anyways, back to our cave tour. It consisted of 2 caves; the 1st was less than average – no really nice formations, but there were a couple of ‘set up’ skeletons of moas. Moas are an extinct flightless bird – related to the cassowarys and emus – that were hunted out by the Maoris (Maoris are the indigenous people of NZ – more on them later). The second cave had a river in it, and we took a short raft ride down it and we were greeted by a light show above us with thousands of glow worms lighting up the cave ceiling above us. If we didn’t know better we’d have thought we were outside looking up at a clear night sky with stars twinkling at us. In total, the tour was pretty good, but not quite our $110.00 worth!
Next stop was Palmerston North to visit our friends Liz, Dave and Kayden who we met in Oz. We were treated like kings, had a bed to sleep in, and they took us to our first kiwi beach (new zealanders are known as ‘kiwis’). New Zealand has both white sand and black sand beaches – just depends on where you are. All of them are equally beautiful though.
We said our goodbyes to the Johnsons, and in doing so they gave us a mobile phone, cooler (aka chilli bin in NZ), and map book with a promise that we’d return on our way back through.
We headed to the south tip of the North Island – Wellington – to catch the ferry to the South Island. Maybe here’s a good spot for a geography lesson…NZ is made up of 2 major islands (the north and south island) and numerous small islands off the coasts. There are no provinces or states, so it is governed as a whole with Wellington as it’s capital. The tip of the North Isle is subtropical, lying at about the same latitude as does Sydney, Australia. The South Isle lies further south than Tasmania, and lies around the same latitude south as we are north at home.
In Wellington we spent the day in the free museum (bonus), then took the ferry to the South Isle the next day. A beautiful, sunny day with plenty of wonderful scenery and the odd dolphin pod splashing about.
After browsing many brochures about kayaking (it’s no wonder much of the islands have been raped of their trees – to produce all the paper for their tourist brochures and land for sheep), we decided to rent our own double (kayak) and explore Abel Tasman National Park with it. This park is known for it’s crystal clear waters and scenery.
We packed the kayak full of our camping equipment and backpacks (surprisingly it all fit) and after a short lesson on ‘paddle strokes and how to use the emergency flares’, we were off. We lucked out – it was a beauty of a day. We stopped at a secluded beach along the way for lunch and a rest, made our way past the seal colony, and after about 4 hours of paddling we reached our destination. Both Jim and I have kayaked in the past, but being canoeists at home, our kayak strokes are less than perfect. Needless to say, our shoulders and arms were sore at the end…although we fared much better than another couple we had met…they had to camp out even before they got halfway due to lack of strength and oncoming winds…
We snorkelled (yup it was cold) and beachcombed, and hiked the 18km back out over two days. After tending to our numerous blisters, we were on the road again to find a less populated place.
We had been told by several people that the road to Oparara (north-west) was one much less travelled and very scenic. However, strangely enough no one mentioned how bad the bugs were. The road certainly was scenic, and passed through some great forest walks. Most notable were the 2 caves that we didn’t need to pay a guide to go through! We donned our headlamps and explored the dark abyss alone. It was here where we found our 1st cave wetas – wetas are insects that look similar to a cricket crossed with a grasshopper. We also found huge egg sacs of cave spiders suspended from the ceiling; quarter-sized in diameter, dangling by a thin strand of silk. Thank goodness they weren’t hatching out when we were there…
Our campsite we came upon was beautiful – on a beach facing the west, and we looked forward to enjoying a nice sunset. That was up until we stepped out of the car. The blackflies (called sandflies here, but they are definetly just like our blackflies) were incessant, attacking any bare skin with a vengence. After a very short walk on the beach, we set the tent up spending the rest of the time in there, escaping the devouring appetites of the blackflies. They rivaled the flies in Australia, only these ones bite!!
The good thing was, after a couple hours of darkness, the blackflies went to bed. We were able to go for a night walk, in hopes of finding the elusive nocturnal kiwi. Kiwis are an endemic, flightless bird in NZ. There are a few different species, but on the whole, they are not doing well due to predation by introduced pests such as the possum, stoats, fishers, cats and dogs. These birds are kind of the national icon for NZ, though most New Zealanders have not seen them in the wild. On our night walk we did hear a kiwi in the distance (they make very strange noises), but the only thing we saw was a curious possum.
Needless to say, we only spent one night at this campsite. When we awoke we quickly took the tent down (we are pretty darn good at this now since we’ve been doing it for so long) and bid farewell to the evil insects.
Heading south we found a boardwalk that took us out to a platform where we could view New Zealand Fur seals. On the way up the walk, we spotted an interesting spider on the handrail that we stopped to investigate. He was very pretty, and I decided to take a picture of him. I got my camera up pretty close to him, and he was poised to take me on, but I thought nothing of it…that is until suddenly through my lens he shot up at me, landed on the lens and all my childhood fears came rushing back….and ‘BOOM’ down went the camera onto the wooden walkway. Geez, my camera has taken a real beating on this trip – it still works fine, but now it is quite difficult to thread the filter onto the lens as it was dented a fair bit in the fall.
Onto the glaciers of NZ…the two most famous (and most accessible) glaciers are the Fox and Franz glaciers. We were driving along a seemingly deserted road, when suddenly we came upon hordes of people, and realised we must be at the next tourist destination. This phenomenom tends to happen quite a bit in New Zealand. You can drive miles without seeing anyone, then suddenly the number of people is overwhelming because there is something to look at. I guess that is what happens when a country is small and nearly everywhere is accessible with a car. Unfortunately, because of this many things get exploited.
The Queenstown area on the south island is quite well know for it’s scenery, and when we reached this town we were again quite overwhelmed by how busy it was. We camped out of town, on a beautiful lake surrounded by sheep. It has not been unusual to camp surrounded by sheep and cows, not to mention waking up to the occasional rooster at 4am. We actually skipped the fiordlands – this is usually the favorite thing that people talk about when visiting NZ. We had browsed the tour brochures, and found that everything was REALLY expensive, and that all the pictures were similar to those of what we had seen in Alaska, minus the wildlife. So, good or bad, we missed it. We were actually happy to leave the busy metropolis of the area.
The drive south to Invercargill from Queenstown was pretty scenic – we came across some of the ‘bluest’ lakes and skies we have seen. We actually really liked the town of Invercargill – it is the southern most town in NZ. It has some nice buildings, a great park in the centre of town, and it was really good weather when we were here. We ended up staying 2 nights exploring around. It was here that we came across the Tuatara – a creature that resembles an iguana, but actually is not a lizard. We saw a live exhibit of them at the museum, as it is very difficult to see them in the wild as they only exist in sanctuaries or on outlying islands of NZ. Once again, they are not doing very well due to predation of introduced species.
We highly recommend seeing the movie, ‘The World’s Fastest Indian’, as it is about a fellow from Invercargill who still holds some of the fastest speed records on the salt flats in Utah, USA. He did it all with a homemade bike – it truly is amazing. Our friends the Johnsons rented it for us one night, and we are really glad we got to see it. It is worth the rental we think!
More to come soon!
Kristin