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| Road Block: Welcome to New Zealand! |
Fresh off the plane in Auckland we started looking into how we’d get around the country. We had holiday/work visas and 9 weeks to see as much as of New Zealand as we could, starting on the north island, and flying out of Christchurch (South Island) in early July. Most travelers saw New Zealand by one of four ways: hitching, buses, renting / buying a car or a campervan. Although hitching is incredibly common and relatively safe in NZ, we ruled it out. Buses proved to be about as costly as renting a car and buying a vehicle would prove too stressful as we’d need to sell it in Christchurch in the peak of winter. So we were left with renting a campervan or car. In order to get the most out of the NZ experience, we planned to rent a campervan, with the intent to rotating between sleeping in paid campsites and on the side of the road (this is common place in NZ). When we were about to sign on the dotted line for our VW 14’ campervan, kitchen and bedding included, miscellaneous hidden fees started to appear. The renters wouldn’t budge on the absurd fees, so we walked out the door to spite them and quickly negotiated deal with our hostel owner (using our recently acquired bartering skills). Shortly we were off in a Nissan Sunny sedan for $14 NZ dollars per day (approx. $11 Can/US).
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| Cape Reinga |
At our first stop we were welcomed into the unique work
culture of New Zealand. We arrived at
the Bay of Islands, paid for a night’s accommodation and asked the managers if
they needed any help. A few days later
we working for accommodation, free laundry and discounted internet. For two and half hours a day we would do
winter maintenance for the hostel (power washing the walls, painting, bike
repairs) or regular housekeeping along with other travelers. We met some good people and saved on
accommodation costs. As we traveled the
country we did this in three different locations for a total of four weeks and
saved about $1000.
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| Ice picks? Check |
At the northern most point on the North Island lies Cape
Reinga, considered a holy spot by the Mauri (indigenous New Zealanders) people
and Martin Eager. It is where the Tasman
Sea and Pacific Ocean join and create a whirlpool of colliding waves. We made it there on a blustery morning, after
driving 90 km up the peninsula in which it is based. It is marked by a lone lighthouse and
spectacular views of coastline and never ending ocean.
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| Hi-ho, hi-ho, its off to work we go! |
We then turned around and went south making our way to the
smelly city of Rotorua. Dominated by hot
springs and thermal activity the city smelled of rotten eggs, yet had easy
access to some of the nicest spas in the world.
The climate also allowed for some of the tallest trees in the world and
fantastic city parks. A redwood forest
was established with California redwoods roughly a hundred years ago, but due
to the climate the trees have grown at twice the rate they do in California,
making for some impressive views in the forest.
When hiking through one of the forests, we were able to get an aerial
view of the city and spy into the geyser park.
We hung around for a few minutes and watched impressive eruptions
without paying for the helicopter pilot.
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| Most certainly a Great Walk |
Spread throughout New Zealand are many highly regarded
hikes, amongst them are 9 ‘great walks’. By word of recommendation and everything we
read we made our way to Lake Taupo and intended to do the Tongariro Crossing,
which was considered to be NZ’s best one day hike. The town is picturesque to say the least, a
gorgeous lake with the backdrop of the most impressive mountain in the North Island. When we arrived we found out that winter
conditions had just set in, making it so the only way to do the hike with a
guide and gear. While thinking through
the monetary obligation of doing the hike Katy said ‘This is probably the only
chance you’ll ever get to have me wear crampons’, making the decision all that
much easier. The next morning we were picked up well before
dawn by a bus carrying crampons, ice picks and winter gear, and were fitted for
the hike as we drove a few hours to the mountains. As the sun started to rise the driver pointed
out the snow-capped mountains and said “that’s our star: Mount Doom Lord of the
Rings”. The hike itself started freezing
cold but quickly warmed up as we got going.
It was a journey between a few gorgeous mountains and through varying
conditions, rock, wind, snow and sun. We
lucked out with the weather, the entire day we barely saw a single cloud. After we finished the 19.4km hike we were
rewarded with fresh hot fries and then headed back home for the day. We slept well that night.
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| Norman |
We found ourselves working again in Picton, a small harbor
town at the very top of the South island.
When working we had the pleasure of serving up hot fudge pudding every
night, constant exposure to a warm fire and free internet, some of the
amenities we had missed thus far. But
the delight of Picton was a sheep we found when we were out for a hike. A nearby farm had a handful of sheep that
backed onto a park. When passing by the
farm, we looked over at the sheep, most of which ignored us, when one looked up
and ran over to the fence to see us. He
ran along the fence when we started to walk away, and finally would cry out
when we left. Of course we made several
return visits and named him Norman.
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| Seal pup day care |
Norman’s fun loving personality was only rivaled by our next
stop just outside Kaikoura. We drove
several hours out of our way to find a small marker on the side of the road and
pulled off. We followed a path next to a
small stream that led up to a pool and a waterfall; it was unofficial daycare
for seal pups. Every day the seal mums
would leave their pups to play by themselves in this pool, while the parents
went to the ocean to feed. When we
walked up to the pool, dozens of pups were doing backflips in the pools,
swimming up the steam, waddling through the woods. As we got up to the pool several of the pups
became curious and approached us, we had to stomp around and pretend to be
aggressive in order to keep them from continuing to follow us.
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| I'm cold, don't mess with me! |
Katy’s claim that Tongariro Crossing would be the only place
she’d wear crampons was short lived when we found ourselves at Fox Glacier
setting out on a glacier hike. This time
the gear proved more essential as we spent about 5 hours walking on ice
exploring crevasses and a gigantic slow-moving river of ice. The pace of the hike was too slow for us and
by the end of the day we were completely numb from standing on a sheet of ice,
but the views were out of this world.
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| Scared yet? |
It was becoming the
norm that every day we would explore a new place in New Zealand and be blown
away by another natural phenomenon, when we went to Milford Sound, this was no
exception. Two days before we went to
the sound, the area got a large snow dump leaving the entire park covered in
untouched fresh white snow. We boarded a
coach bus early in the morning, listened to the incredibly knowledgeable driver
(Josh) as we drove into the largest national park in New Zealand. We drove through several hours of steep
inclines winding between dramatic mountains and ended in a bay where we boarded
a boat. The tour of the sound brought us
next to permanent waterfalls hundreds of feet high, perfect rainbows, seals and
we were lucky enough to find a pod of dolphins.
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| Fox Glacier |
Having seen dolphins, seals, alpine parrots (Kia), possums,
fantails (birds) we set off to the furthest we would travel south in an effort
to see penguins. We found ourselves in a
sleepy hipster town called Oamaru which was home to yellow eyed and blue
penguins. Before we arrived in Oamaru we
read up on how and where to see penguins; the challenge with seeing penguins is
that they scare very easily, anytime people are near their territory they
become nervous and won’t come home. When
we arrived at the penguin colony, we walked past several signs reading ‘Do not
approach the beach after 3pm’on our way to the hidden view point. The first thing we saw was a tourist sitting
on the beach in a bright blue jacket. Will
immediately heads down to the beach and explains the rules to the tourist,
meanwhile convincing him that Will was a government employee and pulled him off
the beach. A little while later a
spotting is made and a single penguin swims up to the beach comes out of the
surf and waddles home into its nest.
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| Mirror Lake - On the way to Milford Sound |
Later that night we checked into our hostel and met a rather
loopy but fun owner. She was clearly a
(former) hippie who decided to drive us around in the middle of the night until
we saw enough penguins. She took us down
all the back roads and explained how the penguins walk into the bars late at
night in the right season, she then found a bird lying in the rocks to show us,
but she still wasn’t content. She drove
over to the commercial penguin operation and told us about how the owners had
destroyed the penguin territory when building their ‘big show’, and hadn’t
followed through with their promise to keep the doors open at night so the
locals could watch. Instead she brought
us to ‘the big show’, hopped the fence and swung the gate open for us to
enter. Inside we got another glimpse at a
small blue eyed penguin that was coming home for day.
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| Milford Sound |
Our last stop in New Zealand was the earthquake shattered Christchurch. Every person we had met while traveling said the same thing: don’t go to Christchurch unless you have to. We didn’t spend much time there, but we saw the downtown had been reduced to rubble while other streets were perfectly fine, and then a few buildings were condemned and fenced off to the public. Since the first earthquake hit in September of 2010, 11,322 aftershocks had occurred. Because it wouldn’t be right to spend time in New Zealand in the winter without skiing, Will went off for one day to a ski hill and Katy had ‘Day of Katy’. Katy went shopping and more importantly had a day without Will around, of course it wouldn’t be complete without a 4.9 earthquake while in the mall. The ski field Will found was typical of the country, lots of personality, low on technology. It was a mountain with serious elevation and nothing but three T-bars (aka no ski lifts). After 9 weeks in fall to winter conditions in May, June and July, we boarded a plane for Fiji to thaw out on the way home.
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| Penguins Crossing! |
