The Adventures of Jim & Rhonda

Well, we’re here in New Zealand and let me tell ya, the weather is NOT the same as Fiji!! We arrived in Auckland on 6 Sep. and headed downtown to our hostel, the Fat Camel. Even though we had reserved a double we got a twin with no windows which was similiar to a jail cell. We quickly dumped our bags and headed out for a late lunch. We went to Occidental Belgian Cafe, which I’d read about in Lonely Planet and was only 3 blocks from the hostel where we had our first really good beer in almost two weeks. One downfall of lovely Fiji, the total crap beer they have there!

After a good lunch we headed down to the waterfront to a bar called Minus 5 our friends Krista & Guy had told us about. It’s a 1 room bar located in a freezer so everything is ice, the furniture, the sculptures, and even the glasses. It was a total tourist trap costing way more than we should have spent to put on hats & gloves and freeze for 30min while having a vodka cocktail but hey, ya only live once right?? We weren’t allowed to bring in our camera but for another hefty charge they took photos and we’ll email them next time we’re online.

By this time we had walked all around the main of downtown which is quite similiar to Seattle waterfront but somewhat shabbier, and had both decided we were not thrilled with Auckland (nice but just another big city) and were certainly not hostel fans. With that idea we decided to see if our Maui campervan was ready 1 day early so we could blow dodge. After chilling out for a bit we did have an enjoyable evening wandering about some pedestrian street areas and ending the night with a glass of wine and hummus plate before hitting the sack. I slept great but unfortunately JIm was awake listening to some of our fellow hostelers having a domestic dispute… we’re glad we left the land of the hostels!

We were able to pick up our van early so headed out of Auckland. There were lots of sights along the way but due to our late start we decided to head directly to Rotorua to get a campsite before it got fully dark. It’s such a small country the drive only took about 3hrs and was fantastically gorgeous. It was a great combo between rural Oregon and small town England….LOTS of cows, sheep, and stud farms.

We’re now happily esconsed in our campervan and spent most of today wandering about Rotorua. It was sunny for the most part but around 50degrees or so, as I said, definitely NOT Fiji temps! The entire region is on a geo-thermal plane which is why it’s referred to as Sulfur City, with everywhere sort of having that rotten egg smell. But, the town is cute, people friendly, and a great start off for our month here. All of the campgrounds, hotels, and most peoples houses in town seem to have mineral hot spring spas & pools which we’ll be taking advantage of before dinner tonight.

Tomorrow we’re off to visit a Maori cultural/ geyser area and then driving to Waitomo to see the glow worm caves and spend the night.  We originally thought we’d go on and spend the night by Lake Taupo but are now thinking we’ll stay in Waitomo so we can go on a night walk and do some glowworm spotting then as well.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 8th, 2007 at 12:25 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.