NZ - North Island

Arriving into NZ we arrived to find our hostel (ultra cool and modern I must add) directly above one of the busiest bars/clubs in Auckland. Going from the tranquility of Fiji was certainly going to be different.

Over the next few days Rich and I spent mostly checking out the sites of Auckland, which could have actually been achieved in less than 1 hour - the Skytower. Apart from that Auckland is quite a hole. Rich knew a former work colleague and took us to a huge indoor climbing wall where I somehow managed to get myself tangled upside down. The drawbacks from climbing is its impossible to open a can of beer afterwards!

Had a few cool nights out in town too, particularly the night of the Wallabies vs Blacks Rugby game. Watched the game in an Irish Puband after the deafening win over the Wallabies we headed to the notorious K-Road for a few bars. Well they were all empty - and even for a Saturday night at 10pm I had to question their business sense. So we asked some locals for a bit of insider knowledge as to where was busy! Firstly the girls of the group would not stop taking the piss out of our accents. But after a brief talk we discovered the bars only get busy after 12am and stay open until 8am. The girls nonetheless invited us to a private party to a bar which did have people in, and celebrating their boyfriends birthday.

After chatting for a while to the people at the party, one of the girls (Brylee) we originally spoke to offered us a lift toa place called Tauranga, along with a week of accommodation! Happy Days! Not to refuse the randomness we jumped at the offer. Besides it was FREE!

So the next day as planned we met Brylee at her Moms place. Needless to say her mum was not too happy with the situation, and didn't really make any efforts to hide this. Her joking threats and death stare was pretty scary (many a true word said in jest), but we knew we we're serial killers so its okay.....right?

Arriving at the flat we met Brylee's other flat mates Crystal and Matt. The cool bunch. Brylee is a blond, promo girl, photographer extraordinaire and a complete party animal! Crystal is a sardonic brunette and somewhat upset at the mo as she is going through a rough break up. Matt is a twenty something surfer dude, completely laid back, with no high and mighty ideas on self image or material possessions. So laid back that within 2 hours of meeting him he offered us his car (see photo - you really need to!). Its a hysterical car which young people give the thumbs up to, while old people sneer.

Deciding to get our bearings we climbed the local mountain Mount Maunganui. A short but steep climb over looking the Bay of Plenty. Again see attached picture if like.

Spent that evening cooking a storm for our hosts, well a university speciality Rich knew of , tuna pasta. The guys made us feel so at home, for a while I felt like I had known these guys years! We are even being added to the star rewards system on the fridge door. If you do something good in the house you get a star. For our culinary and cleaning efforts it appears we get a couple of stars!

The following day we took a road trip to Rotura with Crystal, in an attempt to cheer her up. It worked, whilst we didn't go to the mud baths as planned (too expensive) we did see a buried village and Rich managed to get a run in with the local bill! The policeman gave up after the conversation as follows (Please make sure you have seen a picture of the car before reading on):

{Whilst opening his ticket book}

"Did you paint the car because you didn't think the smoke was drawing enough attention to yourself?"

"No officer, It's not actually my car, I'm borrowing it" Rich replied.

"Do you have a licence?"

"Yes, but it's in Ohakune with a friend, we are picking it up later?"

"Do you mean Owakune?"

"yeah that's it"

"Is it NZ licence?"

"No we are travelling from the UK"

"Do you have an Address?"

"We are kinda staying with these guys at the mo for a few days"

{shaking his head}

"Have a nice day....Oh and put some air in your tires!"

I guess the paperwork was just all too much. For once we were allglad of bureaucracy! We drove out of Sulphur smelling Rotura to the buried village (buried by mud in June 1886).

Before moving on Matt managed to let some of his mates in a place called Taupo know we are on our way and suggested we stop by.....

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Taupo and the best things in life are free....

We arrived at the Rainbow Lodge, Taupo at 2am after an unnecessarily long coach journey out of Tauranga. A very bleary, croaky voice told us where to stick our check-in from the out-of-office hours phone. Her recommendation..."sit in a cafe in town"...our recommendation...sneak into the common room, borrow some blankets and sleep on the couch! We even used the wash and breakfast facilities the next morning! As we left passing the, now open reception, we said thanks very much to a very confused receptionist. Pleased we had carried on our free spree we called Matt's friend. Aaron prompty picked us up and drove us to his house which overlooked the huge Lake Taupo (size of Singapore)

Arriving at the house we were greated by Jamie, Michael, Rob and Nico. Jamie was in the midst of cooking a feast fit for 10 people, and after realising his new guests had arrived added what I saw was another packet of bacon, sauages and beef burgers. We were quickly discovering these guys ate like kings each night but burnt it all off doing an immense amount of extreme sports such as kite boarding, off-piste skiing, biking etc at weekends.

The household all live and work as competitive contract engineers for the local thermal power stations, which made good evening banter between the rival companies, each blaming one another for problems at the station.!

We were given free access to one of their cars (another legendary car see picture), internet, and were left free to come and go as we please. Rich and I had to constantly remember where we were, and find this kind of treatment unheard of back home....

Over the next few days we did a lot of hikes and treks, including the famous Mount Tongario (was Mount Doom and the Ork killing fields in Lord of the Rings) and learnt about geothermal and volcanic landscapes. We even trekked for 4 hours to witness one of the local hydroelectric power stations let loose $10 000 worth of water (see picture) as well as a load of hot springs, the Huka waterfalls and a geothermal power station.

Also we took to the road about 35 km north through the Taupo volcanic zone to check out fumaroles (Steam vents), geysers, sinter terraces (gotta see it to believe it), geothermal lakes (colours varying between lime yellow and crimson red) and boiling mud pools (just gross looking)!They all have one thing in common, the eggy stench of hydrogen sulphide!

In return of the guys hospitality we attempted to satisfy their appetite for grease with a good ol' English fry up! We thought 20 sausages, 20 rashers, 20 Tomatoes, 20 hash browns, 14 eggs, 14 pieces of toast,3 packets of mushrooms and a fruit salad for desert was enough to keep them satisfied. However we were gravely mistaken as we caught Nico and Jamie sneaking into the kitchen for some scraps and extra grease intake.

After Taupo we decided to move on waving goodbye to the guys to Ohakune, one of the few remaining active volcanoes which you can ski/board on.

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Ohakune

We arrived in Ohakune just after midnight somehow managing to find Dan's house, a friend from Uni and school, where he was ski instructing for the snow season. To Dan's amusement we told him the stories we had encountered so far and promised he would do his best to do what he could to add to them.

Camped out on his two, two person sofas we made up our make shift beds for the night. Wearing our purchased snow hats (see pic above) we were set for the cold night ahead. Next morning we managed to sleep through the 6am morning rush as Dan and the other flatmates, other ski instructors/lift operators grab food supplies and warm clothes for the day.

Picking up our skiing and boarding equipment we made our way up the mountain to buy our passes. On arriving at the counter, the girl winked at us and started saying how sorry she was about the wait for our season pass, and have a free weeks ski pass as compensation....uh? Did we miss something?  Gleaming from our luck we made our way up the mountains to do a wicked day on the snow.

Arriving back at Dan's house soaked and refreshed after some apres' ski drinks, we met Dan's other flat mates, one of them been the girl who gave us the free pass. She said she immediatly recognised us from the hats we wore to bed and on the slopes. Result!

The rest of the week I did a mixture of skiing and attempted boarding. Rich went back to Taupo to get his certificate to jump out of planes. Do you need a certificate for that? Surely if your mad enough, thats enough!!

Sort of got the hang of boarding, but managed to fall on my arse the same spot over and over again. Rather than pain, it actually I became uncontrollably laughing everytime i fell over.

Had a few nights out including a industry night with all the instructors and lifties from the mountains. The theme was 'P', so everybody had to wear something to do with P. Julie, one of Dan's other flat mates went as Pacman, Dan as Princess (hmm), and others went as payslips, paper bags, pimp etc. etc.

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Wellington

to come!...

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Lianne Visit

to come!...