New Zealand Holidays

Here is an example of someone who is really excited about his trip (me), and you, a Computer freak who thinks now, 'Not another Holiday Web site'.
Well, this is my NZ Story: The trip kicked off on 17/12/1999 in Auckland, where we hired this super motorhome de luxe. The vehicle itself was far bigger than a VW-Beatle, had a fully functional kitchen with a leaking gas stove, 1 Bedroom and a lounge with two seats and view through the front window. Good enough for people like us, who know how to shit in the bush.

From Auckland we headed down south, without really knowing where to go. We heard about the thermal areas, and thought we'll keep an eye open on our way and found this place Rotourua, which is probably the most famous part of NZ. There are hot springs, boiling mud pools and a Maori village where it smells of sulfa. The village is now used to shake some money out of the tourists, and is actually quiet interesting. There are stories where people fell in those hot pools and died in the boiling hot water.

Rotourua, Thermal Village. Hot pools everywhere, no swimming, I wonder why?!

Also interesting how the food is cooked in natural steam-cookers, which is basically a box that covers a hot pool. The Maoris stuff their food in this box, and cook it in the steam of the hot springs. Hot lakes and geysers surround Rotourua, and walking there can be a bit spooky.
From here the trip went on past Lake Taupo, the largest Lake in NZ, and well worth seeing, down to Wellington, where we got ripped off with the Ferry-Ticket to the South Island. We know now that it pays to book the ferry in advance. In the meantime we decided to invest in a book on New Zealand, which was not a bad idea. After reading a bit, we didn't have to worry any more, how to kill the time until the end of our holidays. NZ$ 257 is the price you pay to ship a car and 2 adults over to the South Island. (Back was cheaper, we booked in advance). The ferry trip is very well worth it's money. It takes a comfortable 3 hours and goes through a beautiful sounds and fjords. Pickton is the place where the ferry lands. A quiet little town, very nice. From here we traveled down the east coast until we reached Kaikoura. By now we knew that Milford Sound was not a Techno Band, but one of NZ's Highlights, and we already found it on our map. It's pretty far south and on the West coast. Well after traveling the East Coast for a while we had enough of looking at a beautiful coastline, with aqua blue water and seal colonies, and decided to take the Lewis Pass across the Spencer Mountains and the Victoria Range. This was a good decision, because the scenery was absolutely brilliant. Half way through we met a few sand flies, and thought we make friends with them, maybe they have mercy with us. But those bastards won't stop before they have sucked the last drop of blood from you! The first big town on the west coast was Gerymouth. Down south from here are nice beaches and lakes where we camped. The cool Tasman Sea is ideal for a wake-up swim in the morning. This prepared us to our trip to the Franz Josef Glacier. A huge mass of ice coming from Mt. Cook (NZ's highest Mountain 3764m) down to a mear 300m above sea level. The viewing platform is well within reach of the car park and offers a great view. We thought, let's go closer, because it looked like a 10 min. walk. It turned out that the lookout was approx. 3-4 km (= 1h walk) from the glaciers mouth. The effort was really worth it! Disregarding all safety barriers, we went really close to the glacier's mouth and could hear the ice cracking as the glacier progressed, while the cold thermal winds were blowing around us. An exciting experience! Not far from there is Fox Glacier, which was even more exciting. Really close again we heard a thunder which was obviously a huge block of ice breaking off a wall and crashing down. (Now it was time to see what everybody along the way spoke about: Queenstown, a little town at Lake Waikatipu, which isn't exactly the highlight for those who come to see nature. I know that many people will hate me for writing this. Queenstown is more a commercial place in a very nice location, but tortured by the tourism industry. Everything was expensive, and crowded, so we traveled on to Te Anau, where we celebrated Christmas Eve on top of a mountain (freezing cold!!!)	Franz Josef Glacier, looks like a short walk to the glacier's mouth, huh? (Mouth is that black spot in the centre)
	Here we are after walking for an hour. Still 200-300m away from the mouth...
	Fantail Falls at Fox Glacier.

Milford Sound (part of it).

From Te Anau the road winds through beautiful valleys along many lakes down to Milford sound, where we took a little cruise along the fjord right out into the open Tasman See. Wow!! was all we could say about those high mountains which rose out of the water up to some 1700m. Seeing it was Christmas Day, nature had a little present for us: Sunshine for the whole day. We learned that it rains a lot down there. In fact it is one of the wettest places on earth.
It is also a place for seals, and I must say, if I was a seal, I would choose a nice rock here too.
Well that was it with the south island, we thought. Flipping through our book, there wasn't really that much more to see. Too early to go home, we had another 17 days to kill. So back north 'cause despite the sunshine it was still jumper weather.

Seal colony at Milford Sound.(The brown spots on the rock).

After reading in our book, and we found out that we missed the Pancake Rocks and the Coastline along the Paparoa National Park. So we had to stop there on our way back. Past Graymouth, the coastline became really rugged and picturesque. Huge Rocks were dotted in the sea and another 20-30km a sign indicated that we were on the right track to Paparoa National Park, with the Pancake Rocks as it's main attraction. Where all the tourist buses stop, is a walking track that complies with all health and safety regulations. Without climbing over Rocks or walking on slippery walking tracks, we reached the area where limestone in layers forms a weird looking part of the coastline. The super safe walking track leads further to more dramatic sights, where the wild sea works on the erosion of Rocks and has formed blowholes and a pool where huge waves crash and splash water and spray high up into the air. A short drive further took us to more coves and some more natural walking tracks. I nearly got washed off a rock by a huge wave when climbing in a little bay. I lost some blood, but recovered quickly from the large wound on my knee.

Paparoa National Park

New year was approaching and we still didn't know where we should celebrate the y2k bug. So it took us to Nelson, the 'Sunshine Capital of the south Island'. What??? It rained!! New Years Eve was literally washed out. A tiny little firework and a bottle of champagne indicated to us, it is 2000 now. It was so great, I don't even want to talk about it anymore.

Serious Knee injury after risking my life. Tough guys like me don't cry, they get over it.

Guess what this is...
Hint: It's inside.

Tired of the rain we made our way to the North Island and headed for the Waitomo Caves. We thought, at least we won't get wet in there! Of course we had to join a tour, as noone trusted that we could walk through a cave on our own. Ok, some $20 is the price per person. When the Maori Tour guide told us that an average of 1200 people a day visited the cave, my mathematical instinct told me that they make more than 7Mio Bucks a year with that cave!! What a rip off!!! Naive as we are, we even said "Thank you" to the tour guide. He should have to thank us!! Anyway, we punished them by not buying anything, when the only way out went through the crowded souvenir shop. I hate to say this, but the Glow Worm cave is very impressive. Other caves around do not have the glow worms, but they are just as impressive, because they are very old. Stalagmites and their partners the stalactites are absolutely stunning.

We heard from other people about Coromandel which is a peninsula on the North-East coast. So what were we waiting for? From Hamilton leads the highway No. 26 straight to the East coast. There it changed to 25 and took us all around Coromandel, which turned out to be pretty mountainous. The roads were that windy that I got car sick from my own driving.

Hot Water Pools at Mercury Bay (Coromandel). Digging in the sand will be rewarded with hot water.

We eventually found Mercury Bay, a cute little bay where they have thermal springs on the beach. To make it easy, they called this beach 'Hot Water Beach'. The beach itself looks more like a construction site, as people dig holes in the sand, which then fill up with hot water. Even the sand is hot.
The highway then went past Coromandel City, which is located on the West side of the peninsula. I am not going to say anything about this town, you might start to think I hate towns and cities.

A long drive then took us to Waiwera a place north of Auckland. 'Thermal pools' it said on our map. Wow, we thought, let's go for a swim there! 'Thermal pools' it said signs, along the way, which lead straight to a great big commercial swim bath with thousands of people all bathing in the same water. Nothing like what we thought what thermal pools were. So we gave that at miss and headed towards the Kauri Coast, which is on the west side. The Waipoua forest has some Kauri trees, which, as we learned grow very old and have an excellent wood. Unfortunately in earlier years they had a Kauri rush here where they recklessly chopped down some 96% of those magnificent trees of which most were more than 2000 years old. Big money and little thinking ruined huge areas all along the coastline. Lucky, they left Tana Mahutu for the tourists. This is the largest Kauri tree alive in the world, and only a baby compared to the trees there used to be!!

We slowly got sick of traveling and thought, what was this a holiday or a sight seeing race? We decided it was a holiday and stayed at a very nice little backpackers in Omapere, at the mouth of Hokianga Harbour. The hosts Rob and his wife (don't remember her name) got most pleasure, just watching their guests getting on so well when making each others acquaintance by a glass of wine on their little patio. Really nice, we felt like home!!
A couple of days there and we headed for the Bay of Islands, where we did what everybody does and took a boat cruise along the Island. The captain was great! He had a story about every island and their people. Russel, a historic little town was a nice place to have a romantic dinner by the sea

.By now we had already forgotten what day it was, and did not even worry about it anymore. The coast with all it's little bays and villages was to nice to think about time or the end of our holidays. So we spent some time there, before we had to face reality. It was soon unavoidable, and we had to go back to Auckland, where our flight went back to Australia. Auckland is the only city we have really seen, and it reminded us a bit of Sydney, with it's harbor and it's unique inner suburbs.

Bay of Islands

...I wish I was a MAUI Motor Home!

My favorite shot.
(Cathedrale Cove, Mercury Bay)

Now we know how to kill 26 days in New Zealand, and after seeing it all we wouldn't have any problem spending even more time there, because we really haven't seen it all. There is so much more to see, but there is never enough time.

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