What is Deb up to?

So lots of people had told me: ‘spend most of your time in the south island’ or that they were not even going to bother going to the north island. But i am really glad I went, to me it was just as interesting and beautiful as the south island.

I suppose it was a bit of a shock to begin in Wellington, just because of the number of people and the pace of life. Both greater than the south island. I really liked wellington, despite it being every bit as windy as people had forewarned and despite staying in the biggest hostel ever – it was clean and had everything you’d need but as with most large hostels, it was impersonal, had little character and was a difficult place to meet people. I wandered around town and spent at least 4 hours in Te Papa museum. The areas covering the Waitangi treaty and Maori culture were fascinating. I could have spent days there.
That evening I went out with a Swedish friend I’d travelled with in the south island, it’s always good to see a familiar face in a big city.

After lots of fruitless agonising over the form of transport i was going to take on the north island, I (with some trepidation) opted for the magic bus, they pick you up at your hostel and drop you off outside the next one. It is technically cheating but I didn’t have long to see the north island and I tired of wandering far with my backpack.

So it was ok really, I met some interesting people at least. The first day we travelled to Napier and stayed in the old prison building which had witnessed several hangings. It was atmospheric. Napier is quite a pretty town.

This is me ‘in prison’:

Then we headed up to Lake Taupo which is a crater from a huge eruption in 181AD. The resulting clouds were seen from Eastern Europe. We decided to walk the Tongariro Crossing, a 17km long, 2000m high walk across a volcano. It was one of my favourite moments of my trip so far. It was hard going and my feet were in tatters at the end (I had to walk the final 4kms in my sandals) but it was just awe-inspiring. It felt how i imagine mars to be. There were volcanic lakes as green as anything i’d ever seen, smoke billowing from the ground that we walked on and we had to slide down pumice-rubble slopes. The air was really cold at the highest points.

In Maori legends mountains could not only move, they could also fall in love. Apparently Mount Tongariro and Taranaki where best friends. Tongariro fell in love with Mount Pihanga.  Taranaki tried to take Pihanga away from Tongariro but she refused to leave. One day Tongariro found out what Taranaki had planned and got so angry he exploded. Taranaki was frightened of Tongariro’s anger and ran away to the west coast of the island. He never returned.

From the top of the crater you can see Taranaki.

It took 7 hours to complete the walk. It was tough and I felt really pleased with myself. The following evening I met a 62 year old scotsman who had done the walk AND climbed the peak of Ngarahoe in 6 hours.

The following day we travelled to Rotorua, lake Taopo it sits on an area of high volcanic activity. Scattered around the town are steam-spewing, sulphur-stinking holes in the ground. It is a really interesting town.

Rotorua also has a big Maori population. I went to a pretend Maori village. When we arrived the ‘warriors’ appeared at the village gates. They were pretty frightening. We went inside the village and they sang and danced and we ate huge amounts of food. Despite being obviously and unavoidably commercial, it was a great night.

After that I travelled up to Aukland and went to The Big Day Out with a friend. It was good to party with the local people. A bit extravagant I suppose for a backpacker…

Then Karin and I hired a car and drove up to Cape Reinga, the northernmost point of New Zealand where the Tasman and The Pacific oceans meet.

On the way back down we saw 90 mile beach and some HUGE trees.

 

We floated through awesome gloworm caves where I learnt that gloworms emerge from their cocoons as flies with no mouth. So they die from hunger. How sad.

Then it was back to Wellington where i did my SECOND peice of Karaoke singing. Then back to the south island via beautiful Kaikora and the seal colonies.

Was odd to be back in Christchurch where my New Zealand adventure began 6 weeks before.

 

Since then I have been in Sydney where my mum has joined me for a month of travelling. We’ve already seen and done a lot. But I’ll save that for the next post…

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 7th, 2006 at 4:20 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.