Around The North Island in 40 days.
While not quite as impressive as around the world in 80 days, New Zealand's northern island is deceptively big and its landscape beautifully varied. Since I last posted, I've finished my exploration of the south island's Abel Tasman nature reserve and it's stunning Marlborough Sounds, crossed the Cook Strait to the north Island and continued to zigzag my way up from the vibrant capital city of Wellington at the bottom to the single lonely lighthouse on Cape Reinga at the top. Forty days later and I'm sitting on the balcony of a small farm house south of Auckland airport, enjoying the 24°C heat and counting down my final 24 hours before I fly tomorrow. Not a bad setting to have to sit and write this post judging by the reports of cold and snow from you lot back in the UK!
So from the beginning and trying to be brief again, I abandoned my winter working worries in Nelson and began with a boat trip up the the Abel Tasman National Park coastline with a friend from the hostel and was dropped off on the golden sands of Barks bay midway along the coastal great walk. When I say we were dropped off, I truly mean it as the boat is run aground on a fine golden sandy beach where you disembark and are abandoned in utter tranquility. Blue sky, sun, sea and even a seal playing in the crystal clear water nearby greeted my first day of true travelling again and I could not have been more happy.
The coastal walkway is classed as one of New Zealand's "great walks" and as such, is exceptionally well maintained as it circumnavigates the hills, cliffs and beaches along the route. Two days later, and one comfortable enough night in a spartanly clad hut in Anchorage bay, we left the national park and what must be one of my favourite spots on the south island. For anyone planning a trip in NZ, it is well worth doing!
Two more days later, and I was boarding a ferry in Picton to cross the Cook Straight and leave the south island once and for all. Ten and a half months on the south island was perhaps a little excessive but I cannot express my love of it and the relaxed, hobby filled lifestyle more. I spent three days in the capital city of Wellington and it is incredibly contrasting to any other capital city I have visited. Unlike London or Paris maybe, all the buildings are modern while the mirrored glass of only a handful of skyscrapers look down over the harbour and bustling city below. This lack of old Victorian buildings, ancient sculptures and historical shop windows that I am so used to in European cities is actually quite bizarre and definitely makes Wellington stand out from other capitals around the world. Don't get me wrong, there is still history in this city, as the incredible Te Papa museum and picturesque botanical gardens can attribute to, but the city is just so young!
This youth is by no means a bad thing though as I discovered with the city's pioneering Zealandia nature reserve; the only place I have ever known to have a 500 year plan! Who in the modern world has a 500 year plan?!
Approaching Zealandia is like approaching Jurassic park with large custom built walls encompassing 225 hectares of native bush providing a specially designed refuge for previously endangered native wildlife including birds like the Kiwi but also ancient lizard like species called Tuatara.
With the theme tune stuck in your head on repeat you can spend the day exploring these tracks and even do a night tour where I was lucky enough to see a Kiwi (I was so happy!)!! Just two decades into this 500 year plan has seen the local bird populations boom and spill out into Wellington and the surrounding landscape, really testifying to the value of these havens from cats, possums and other introduced predators.
Conservation preach over, and I spent the next few days driving up to and exploring Mt Taranaki, a lone volcano standing stark in an otherwise flat farming landscape on the west coast. Unfortunately luck was not with me for my time here and one day I spent two full hours sat at the top of a nearby hill waiting for a particular photo of the volcano. Sadly the volcano seemed somewhat camera shy that day and refused to come out from behind the rolling white clouds that this land was originally named after by the Māori settlers.
From there I travelled inland along the "forgotten highway", into the lava planes of the Tongoriro National park aka Mordor to LOTR fans. While here I was able to smash out the supposedly 7-8hr Tongoriro Alpine Crossing in 5.5 hrs with a few new friends and passed right beneath Mt Doom. Active volcanoes are pretty damn cool it seems, and alongside the stunning scenery previously viewed by Frodo and his crew, you can also feel the heat through the ground on some points of the crossing!
From there I ended up fleeing the bad weather and after spending a night in Taupo, I drove deep into Te Urewera forest to check out another one of the great hike. Te Urewera forest it turns out translates from Māori into "The Burnt Penis" forest after an old story in which a man slept too close to his camp fire and rolled over in his sleep in the night. Why you'd name the whole forest after this event I don't know but each to their own hey! haha
After my hike getting thoroughly rained off in burnt penis forest, I spent about a week absorbing as much of the cultural Māori side of NZ as possible in Rotorua. As a geothermally active area, it boasts hot springs and spas all over the place, geysers and magnificent redwood forests, however also comes with the ever present sulphurous eggy fumes as an unfortunate side effect. One of the highlights of my stay here was the Mitai Māori village evening in which I and some friends were able to learn a bit more about Māori culture over a traditional three course Hangi meal (like a BBQ) and witness a Haka and other native songs first hand. A pretty awesome experience and also recommended to anyone passing through the area!
My final weeks on the road then had me cutting up to Mt Maunganui and around the Coromandel checking out various beaches, waterfalls and gorges along the way.
The most impressive of which was probably the Hot and Cold water beach in which you can dig in the sand to find geothermally heated water which you can then mix with the colder seawater to find the perfect temperature in your little spa. The scene I imagine must look like something out of an Attenborough documentary like Planet Earth as groups of people dig holes and fight for the best ones.
I then checked out the Northland, including the Waipu and Abbey caves which you can enter for free, yet more beaches and islands in the case of the bay of islands and other some cultural sites of importance. The Waiatangi treaty grounds are one such site of historical significance and was a great place to explore and see the masterfully carved Waka (canoes) first hand.
Another absolute highlight of the north land was the 90 mile beach. This beach is notorious in NZ because you can drive on it! What an an awesome thing to do! Just endless sand to drive on, the sea and waves on your left, the biggest sand dunes you've ever seen towering up on your right and in my case, little to nothing else driving on the sand for the entire span! Incredible! Thank god I'd bought a 4WD car though as at one end you have to drive out through a river/ stream (something I had not anticipated). When I say 'drive out through', I do not mean just passing through from one bank to the other. I mean full on driving up this shallow river, zigzagging from shallower spot to shallower spot with water flying up on all sides and your windscreen wipers on full tilt as you pray that your car doesn't stop! Oh my days it was fun yet absolutely terrifying at the same time (there is no signal in these areas if you get stuck so you're buggered until someone else comes. What a day!
That took me all the way to the Cape Reinga at the top of NZ, where there is nothing but a solitary lighthouse looking out over the point where the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean meet. Now I always assumed that seas and oceans were just marked out by lines on a map but here you can actually see where the two bodies of water meet causing a startling colour change and some treacherous looking currents! Pretty damn awesome to be honest.
To conclude my travels in NZ I visited Tane Mahuta, the biggest and oldest Kauri tree in existence, that I had been recommended as a must see before I left. A tree's a tree though right? How good can it be - turns out extremely! Oh my giddy aunt this thing is HUGE! Utterly magnificent! Estimated to be between 1,250 and 2,500 years, this thing has a girth of 13.8 meters and a height of 51.5 meters! If you're like me then those will just be numbers on a page but when you see this thing in real life it is out of this world big.
So that's it! My final weeks I spent selling my car, closing my bank account and woofing on farms south of Auckland while I prepped for my flight. This time in 48hrs I will hopefully be in a hostel in Hanoi, Vietnam, planning my trip around there for a month. Sorry this one was so long but there was so much to tell!
I hope everyone's enjoying gearing up for Xmas! I will miss the festivities but it would have been mad not to check out more of this side of the world while I am over here!
All the best!
Tom
Ps. I will post more pictures on the photography tab too as I could not fit them all on here.
Tom