New Zealand - (mostly) The North Island

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Well, I'm pleased to report that we did get to see some whales on our trip in Kaikoura. Braving the sea sickness warnings and increasing swell, we headed out in our Whalewatch boat with about 50 others. There are several boats out at once and they are all in contact with each other to help spot the whales. The whales dive for about 40-60 minutes and then come to the surface to digest their food and take in some air for about 5-10 minutes, so when one is spotted all of the boats dash madly to try to get there before it dives again. We missed the first few by a matter of seconds but eventually we managed to get two really good viewings of sperm whales and the tail end of one (so to speak).

I have to admit we were both clutching our sea sickness bags tightly during the trip but fortunately we were able to return them unused at the end of the trip. The people on the afternoon trips may not have been so lucky as the sea was getting really choppy. Oh well, more food for the whales (sorry).

We then drove on up to stay for a few days in Motueka, near the Abel Tasman National Park, on the north coast of the South Island, staying in The Laughing Kiwi backpackers (quite nice). We took a guided "taxi" (small speed boat) trip from Marahau to Tonga Bay with Marahau Water Taxis, checking out the nice sandy beaches and seal colony on the way. Really beautiful area. We then gave ourselves four hours to walk back along a scenic coastal track to Torrent Bay where we had arranged to be picked up by the last boat of the day. We were told it was a good four hour walk so we didn't hang around. Things were going well until the half way point when we realised that the beach we had to cross was completely cut off by the tide which took another 45 minutes to go out before we could cross. We realised this after we had spent 20 minutes clambouring over rocks thinking that we could make it across  That made the last hilly section a bit of a mad dash in the hot sun, but we made it with time to spare so the day ended well. I think we lost about half a stone each as well! 

We spent the next day driving around to the other side of the Park where we did some more walking and did a nice walk to Wainui Falls.

We drove back over to Picton where we caught the 3.5 hour Bluebridge ferry to Wellington, in the North Island. Wellington is known as NZ's windy city and it did a good job of living up to it's reputation. We stayed in a central YHA and spent a couple of days looking around the city and stumbled across a free blues concert in the botanical gardens. Apparently there is one every night in the summer, although hats, gloves, scarfs, thermals and blankets are recommended. For anyone heading there in the near future, to save some embarrassment you should know that the cable car is pulled along on the ground, not in the air. The guy at the ticket office couldn't understand why we were concerned about how windy it was before we bought our ticket. Oops.

From there we headed up to Turangi where we had planned to do NZ's best one day walk, the Tongariro Crossing, which takes in volcanoes, steaming craters, emerald lakes. The day we arrived there were people returning from the walk (in the rain) who said that it had been terrible and like walking through a wet cloud for 8 hours with no views whatseover. We got up at 6.15am the next morning and were greeted with even worse weather so we decided to give it a miss with our limited wet weather gear. We did an alternative two hour walk at Whakapapa to check out some waterfalls - and got completely drenched anyway. Are you sensing a walking and waterfalls theme here? On the plus side, it was a 2 hour soaking rather than an 8 hour soaking so it could have been worse. Extreme Backpackers in Turangi gets the thumbs up, and has a climbing wall next door that you can use for $10.

We drove the short trip up to Lake Taupo (NZ's largest lake created by the biggest volcanic eruption in the last 5000 years) where we spent a couple of days checking out the cool geothermal activity - steaming stinky pools that smell of rotten eggs.  We also had a look at Huka Falls and the Huka Prawn Park. We did a tour of the prawn farm, met Sean the Prawn, fed the baby prawns (aaaah) and had a go at trying to catch their parents to eat them. We did a very good job of feeding (if not catching) them. To be honest I was a bit relieved we were unsuccessful as these things were huge and the guy next to us kept getting bitten by their pincers. Some of them can grow up to 60 cm - now that's a King Prawn!

From Taupo we headed up to Rotura, the rotten egg capital of the world. We spent an interesting couple of hours checking out some more steaming stinky (and colourful) pools, craters and caves at Wai o Tapu geothermal park. We stayed at a nice hostel called Funky Green Voyager (another good one). Apparently you get used to the smell - or maybe your sense of smell just gives up after a while.

From there we had a pleasant, if uneventful day in Whakatane, on the North Coast and a day exploring the Coromandel Peninsula and Hot Water Beach where you can turn up armed with a shovel (or rent one) and dig some holes in the sand so that they fill up with hot spring water. There are some really nice beaches up in this area. Hehai was also really nice. We stayed at On the Beach Backpackers in Whitianga which was another good choice.

A quick gripe about NZ television. They mainly show British and US dramas but cram them with an unbelievable number of adverts which makes them almost unbearable to watch. Towards the end of a film you will get 5 minutes of film followed by 5 minutes of adverts. An average of 22 minutes per hour apparently. Not good. I guess we shouldn't be watching TV anyway!

Also a quick word about driving in NZ. The roads are fine, if a bit windy at times - unavoidable around the mountains unless they adopt Naomi's suggestion of blasting through them (tough being a passenger when I'm driving) -  but the Kiwis drive like nutters. Overtaking is carried out as and when required regardless of whether anything is coming in the opposite direction and a lot of the towns have so many boy racers that it would make Weston-Super-Mare blush. Sadly,  crosses by the side of the road are a really common sight. 

A quick driving tip to the tourist - make sure that you stop completely at STOP signs. If you are going 1mph over a STOP sign, even in a quiet backstreet with great visibility in both directions and nothing coming, you may get pulled over... and fined. That's all I'm going to say on that one.

New Zealand has about 4 million people and 40 million sheep. As Naomi put it one day, if the sheep ever turned violent, the people of NZ would be in big trouble. Someone else has obviously had the same idea as we've just seen a trailer for a film coming out soon in NZ called 'Black Sheep', where the sheep do exactly that. Looks quite funny although I doubt it will be appearing in too many UK cinemas. 

We are now in Auckland, sorting out some vital holiday admin before we head out to Tahiti and then S. America. It was a bit of a shock seeing 3 lanes of traffic after a month of single carriageways. Fortunately Naomi's navigation skills are now pretty good so we managed to find our hostel, Bamber House first time! I would definitely recommend this place - less than 30 minutes walk from the centre and it has a pool!   Auckland is OK, although not anywhere near the top of our list most attractive cities.