new zealand: the north island
it has been rather surreal being reacquainted with new zealand over the past 3 weeks, and some of the differences between here and south america have been more startling than i’d anticipated. the people, the culture, the architecture, and even the complete absence of stray dogs is completely different to the world to which i was becoming increasingly accustomed.
just wandering around a supermarket, for example, is overwhelming. everything is presented with such care - the vegetables and fish are gently sprayed with a constant supply of water so as to maintain their glossy appearance, and the fruit is stacked as though arranged by someone with ocd. and i´ve never seen such beautifully stacked carrots.
as i had been told to anticipate, i have been finding that i notice every little fragment of mundane day-to-day conversation that comes with being back in an english-speaking country. i overheard a man snapping at his wife ‘you’ve got a bag like a big bucket, so you can’t find a damned thing’, whilst his wife looked for her mobile so that they could call the complaints hotline on the back of a can of deodorant. it’s also made me realise how boring a lot of my conversations must be to overhear.
other novelties we’ve been enjoying since our arrival in the antipodes have included the plethora of free, well-signposted public toilets, members of the general public returning smiles and even saying hello, and the vast array of road signs, telling drivers to visit this café and that museum, to stop at this picnic spot in 400 metres on the left or that lookout point 200 metres on the right, to ‘merge like a zip’ with the impending traffic or that ‘if you drink then drive, you’re a bloody idiot’. i like that the nz police campaigns use the word ‘bloody’.
all of this information makes driving a bit more interesting. i think they could do more with the idea, though, and tell a story over the course of 150km, with each sentence being spread across 5 or so signs in digestible, bite-size chunks of rich, creamery butter. i think i may have become sidetracked during that last sentence, as there is a half-hour infomercial on kitchen knives on tv at the moment - which brings me on to my next point.
this abundance of road signs, written in the imperative, ties in with the larger feeling of being constantly targeted for some sort of sale at all times. the radio shouts at you to buy 4 pieces of chicken for 20.99, while the television beckons you to head down to 'the warehouse', where everyone gets a bargain, apparently (and it turns out it’s true - i’ve been). i suppose this isn’t anything particularly out of the ordinary, but after latin america - where either i wasn’t being sold anything or i was just blissfully unaware - it feels something of a constant bombardment.
the camping facilities here have been better than a lot of the amenities in the youth hostels that we were using in south america. we’ve been staying in a combination of department of conservation campsites, which are often in the middle of nowhere (but very cheap), family campsites, which have common rooms akin to that of a family living room, and camping in the spare space at backpackers’ accommodation, which has no associated comments at this juncture.
owen has kindly lent us his mum’s old car - a 1995 peugeot 306 with an antisocially enthusiastic exhaust - and we’ve been lucky enough to be able to find someone who’s prepared to drive it back up to auckland for us (thereby foregoing the need for us to drive back to auckland ourselves, and then back to christchurch to get to australia). the wily old girl exudes something of a bestial rage when it comes to accelerating, braking, steering or, well, anything - but i think i’m beginning to tame her, and our fantastically good fortune in obtaining a car for such minimal cost overrides its otherwise irritating characteristics, such as the doors not staying open by themselves, the ac coming on automatically on its own terms without us noticing, and the clutch appearing only to go all the way up or all the way down and nothing in between.
i was thrown in the deep end somewhat by having to drive across auckland to owen’s place at 7 in the morning after a 13-hour flight and a 4-month absence from driving. but i’m back in the swing of driving again now, and driving over 600 miles in the first 4 days also helped. i also think that i’m pretty much used to new zealand roads again now (that is, the ‘give way to the right when turning’ rule, and the complete lack of cars anywhere, ever - the latter rule thereby making the former rule redundant). the new zealand road network really is driving heaven for anyone who likes a good road trip.
sally and i have invested in our second property together in preparation for the ensuing 6 weeks of camping. sally named our new home ‘64a school lane’, and we moved in shortly after, with a celebratory plastic cup of tea to get us started. we stocked up on food supplies - most of which being of the trusty tinned-can variety - and were ready to be on our way.
in our first few days we explored the northern-most stretch of the north island, during which time we could feasibly have been the only people in the world. we stopped at kawakawa to christen the very pretty hundertwasser toilets, created by austrian ecoartist albert hundertwasser. here, the ornate hotchpotch of tile-work and windows created from recycled green bottles made for what was quite probably the most pleasant jimmy of my life.
after kawakawa we drove a while longer, taking in the rolling green hills and odd-looking trees before stopping in kerikeri for a spot of lunch. we remarked how everything is much dearer here than we had expected, and that free wifi is very difficult to find. in fact, free internet is only to be found in mcdonald’s (where hotmail is blocked) and the town libraries. clearly, we’d been spoilt in south america in that regard.
we left kerikeri with satisfied tums and headed further north to the karikari peninsula, wondering along the way if the place names would become a little more adventurous. they certainly did, and after visiting a staircase carved out of the trunk of a colossal kauri tree (enticingly signposted), we reached cape reinga, right at the northern tip of the north island, where the tasman sea and pacific ocean collide.
new zealand had certainly been the land of the long white cloud up to this point, providing distinctly long and cloudy times for our first few days, and testing my recently-made assertion that ‘visiting a place purely for the weather is rubbish’. but as we turned to head back south from new zealand’s northernmost strip of land, the sun made a welcome return, and i confidently renewed my earlier assertion.
our last stop before heading back to auckland was an unintentional one - we only went there because we passed a road sign directing us to ‘GIANT SAND DUNES 400M ON THE RIGHT’ and felt that really we had no say in the matter. the dunes certainly were giant, and i swear i nearly stopped living as i clambered pathetically up one of the most smug-looking ones. after we crossed over the first dune, the trees behind us and the ocean in front of us became completely obscured by massive sand dunes bordering us on all sides. the wind here was ferocious enough as it was, without the skin-removing wall of flying sand punishing us too. but WITH the skin-removing wall of flying sand, it was, well, even more ferocious.
after the most thorough, natural exfoliation of my life so far, we began our trudge back to the car. we passed a couple of german chaps who had taken to bodyboards on the steep dunes, and i smiled and nodded in a ‘i-approve-of-your-sandboarding-antics-but-not-enough-to-think-of-some-sort-of-comment’ fashion. one of the men asked if i wanted to have a go, and moments later i found myself hurtling face-first down a 50-metre (at a guess) sand dune into a wall of, well, more sand. sally assures me that i wasn’t going particularly fast, but i´m fairly sure i reached lightspeed at one point. perhaps it just seemed faster to me because my nose was practically touching the sand on the way down.
on the drive back down to civilisation we stopped at ninety mile beach. this is truly one of the most remarkable beaches i’ve ever seen - and i´ve been to bournemouth. the beach is flat and unending (it’s easy to see how it got its name, even if it’s more like 90 kilometres than miles) - so flat, in fact, that the beach disappears into hazy nothingness whether you’re looking up or down its width, and the waves crash into themselves countless times before reaching the beach and then finally receding. and the noise! that sound of ceaseless, crashing waves; one after the other, for 90 kilometres up the coast - it’s something else.
we returned to the bay of islands - which were too rainy to be enjoyed properly during our prior visit - and stayed in the small (population: circa 1000) town of paihia, with the hopes of doing some sort of boat tour of the bay and its constituent islands. the next day we went on a boat trip of the bay, with the hopes of seeing some sort of dolphins somersaulting out of the water, often into one another, either for our enjoyment or theirs (with it being difficult to tell at times), and then to see a big hole in an even bigger rock. fortuitously, this was exactly what happened on our boat trip.
the dolphins were beyond impressive, and i couldn’t believe - despite having seen countless hollywood scenes of dolphins swimming in front of boats - how fast they were able to swim under the bow of our huge, inconspicuous, yellow and black catamaran. it’s all fun to them. they remind me of the hoards of cubans who had nothing to do but loiter in the streets and outside shops for the amusement of tourists - except, of course, that the cubans wouldn´t leap out of the water or swim in front of ships.
we got to see the big hole in the big rock, but alas the tides were much too choppy for us to be able to pass through it, which is what the other 70% of the daily boat trips do. we stopped at one of the islands shortly after circling the holy holey rock, and went on a short walk up a big green hill dotted with fluffy sheep. we also visited the tiny (population: circa 600) town of russell - across the bay from paihia - with its sickeningly pretty white picket fences, white wooden shack-houses and children's storybook-like policeman's house (which housed the only policeman in town and therefore accounted for the entire russell constabulary.
the idea of a large city in new zealand is something of a foreign concept to me, so it was with a mote of skepticism that i stepped off the birkenhead ferry and onto the platform of auckland’s city centre for the first time. for a while i was surprised, and spent the first half hour or so walking into people whilst my neck was craned up at the many impressive, modern skyscrapers. but as the neckache wore off, so did my surprise, and i left the city feeling that its illusion of grandeur was as transparent as the glass towers that encompass it. perhaps it was after perusing the city’s continuous sprawl from the sky tower that i was able to see that the downtown part of the city didn’t actually stretch so far. but even amidst the tall buildings, it felt as though there’s not much there and that there’s not a lot going on. sort of like a big, clumsy giant.
the skytower, then, is like a giant needle in a haystack of impressively large but generally uninteresting buildings and, in my opinion, it’s therefore the saving grace of the city. from here, one can gaze 328 metres over the city’s suburban expanse as it sprawls about the 50 volcanoes that make up its land mass, and wonder whether companies such as mcdonalds and subway would bother plastering their company logo on their otherwise unseen roofs if a huge tower full of tourists didn’t happen to be looming over them.
i left auckland feeling glad that i´d finally had the chance to visit, but, conversely, that i wouldn’t have been particularly bothered if i had never been in the first place. it’s located in a wonderful setting, and from a distance, the cluster of skyscrapers aspiring to the height of the sky tower is quite a compelling view. but i think i’d rather keep it that way - at a distance.
our next stop was the coromandel peninsula. we found some incredible isolated beaches here, but the most quirky of them was anything but. prior to our visit to hot water beach, i had imagined that it would be only myself, sally, and perhaps one or two other curious travelers who would be digging valiantly through unspoilt sand in search for the volcanically-heated thermal waters that give the beach its name rather literal name. as we rounded the jagged cliffs, however, a huge gaggle of tourists emerged, packed into a space of little more than 10 square metres, with large, abandoned holes scattered in the surrounding sand.
it turned out that everyone knew about hot water beach, of course, and that everyone wanted to find the hot water. i immediately realised that my anticipation had been unrealistic, and soon found myself queuing - yes, queuing - to dip my toes in the warm sea water. after a bit of awkward waiting, we got our chance to experience it for ourselves. the water was insanely hot in places - it was literally impossible to stand on some parts of the sand for more than a split second, such was the heat. and yet, a couple of centimeters to one side of that same spot, the water would be stone cold. a lot of mixing had to be done, and sally and i soon set to work moving the sandy water around to run our sand bath to a reasonable temperature. once that had been achieved, we enjoyed warning newcomers as to the extreme heat of certain spots, and enjoyed even more the transition from skeptical smirk to surprised shriek as they went to sit there anyway.
once in rotorua we looked around the village of whakarewarewa, where we watched a disappointingly timid geyser and an undisappointingly exciting maori culture show. we visited the beautiful redwood forest - a 110-year-old gathering of trees as large as 6 metres in circumference - and then took the gondola up to an impressive lookout point over lake rotorua, where i decided to do some luging down the excellent luge tracks. i enjoyed it so much that i could have done it all over again. so i did - another 4 times, in fact, becoming momentarily airborne on a number of occasions.
from rotorua we drove across to napier on the east coast. napier is celebrated as being the ‘art deco’ city of new zealand, but i really didn’t think that the architecture was much to write home about - not that i often write home about buildings. i think i may have been expecting a series of new york chrysler buildings, which may go some way in diagnosing the root of my disappointment, but instead i got a couple of ford garages with little twiddly bits on the roofs that are supposedly intended to allude to some 1920s heyday.
otherwise, the town was nice enough, and the backpackers in which we were camping proved to be a peaceful enough spot to make some progress with my composing. we did run into some misfortune here, however, and this too may explain why i don’t have the fondest memories of my time in napier.
it was a mild summer’s evening, and sally and i decided to go for an appropriately summery evening drive. we were pootling along at a snail’s pace, as we often do when deep in conversation, when we came to an intersection at a main highway. i remarked to sally that there was a police car waiting conspicuously at the side of the road, no doubt to catch out speeding cars. coincidentally, as we turned onto the highway, i saw in my rearview mirror that the police car was no longer on the side of the road, but now driving a fair distance behind us. moments later, the police car was right on our tail, and lo and behold, on came his blue and red lights.
i knew i couldn’t possibly have been speeding, so i was quite perplexed as to what reason the policeman could have had to pull me over. he eventually came to my window, and asked why i hadn’t stopped at the stop sign. my mind instantly flicked back a few seconds, and i replied instinctively, ‘i did, didn’t i?’. apparently i hadn’t, and within a couple of minutes i found myself with a $150 fine for, sure enough, ‘failing to stop at a stop sign’.
only moments before, sally and i had been reminiscing our favourite travelling moments whilst sharing a portion of fish and chips on the not particularly sandy beach of hawke’s bay. and then, in an instant, all of our meticulously careful planning so as to minimise expenditure had been undone. the officer explained that they had a ‘zero-tolerance policy’ for not stopping at stop signs, and although i had broken that law, i still couldn’t help but feel a little hard-done-by. after all, i hadn’t intentionally driven through the stop sign, and i hadn’t realised that one literally has to come to a complete halt before proceeding, even when it is plain to see for a good few kilometers in either direction - as was the case at this time - that there is no on-coming traffic.
the officer wasn’t brusque or impolite or condescending - in fact he was quite friendly. but it was this friendliness and the swiftness and efficiency with which i had been dealt that meant i was left by the side of the road feeling as though i had just been robbed. still, the law’s the law, and i definitely won’t be making that mistake again.
the fuel gauge in the peugeot is somewhat (read: wholly) unreliable, and it caught me out during our drive from napier to taupo. i thought that we had over a quarter of a tank left, which should have been plenty to get us to the next petrol station. one steep hill later, however, the needle suddenly plummeted, and on came the orange warning light. it flickered on and off for a few minutes, as it decided whether we really did have petrol or not. by the time it had settled down and decided resolutely that we were in fact distinctly low on petrol, it became apparent that there were in fact no petrol stations between napier and taupo. to cut the story of a very long, edge-of-the-seat, hour-and-a-half journey short, we drove 150km on the orange light, and somehow made it to taupo in time to refuel. i think we only made it by driving no faster than 80kph in 100kph zones, unless we were descending a steep hill, in which case i put it in neutral and let gravity get us up to 100. on our way out of taupo two days later, we would see the ‘no petrol stations for 150km’ sign that would have been so useful before.
taupo was another unremarkable town, but the huge lake and the huka falls that drain into it are undeniably spectacular. we hung around long enough to try out the lake’s own hot water beach - which was more akin to how i’d imagined the one in the coromandel to be - and then were on our way to the tongariro national park.
we headed to tongariro with the intention of surmounting the renowned alpine trail crossing, but our plan was thwarted by bad weather, which meant that the conditions were alas too treacherous for us to go. but we did manage to get an excellent view of tongariro, ruapehu and ngaurahoe - the latter of which cameoed as mount doom in the lord of the rings trilogy - on our drive into the national park.
the next day we sallied forth to new plymouth, where we were to stay with sally’s aunt and uncle for the next few days. this was a welcome respite from 2 weeks of often-unluxurious camping, the crux of which had occurred the night before when it transpired that we’d been sleeping in a puddle.
what a difference it can make to be shown around a place rather than to explore for oneself. don’t get me wrong - i have been enjoying exploring the north island, especially at our own pace and on our own terms since we have had owen’s car. but after a while it feels as though we’re only visiting the outer shell of each town, not stopping long enough to get to know anyone there, and moving on to the next place and doing the same thing many times in a row.
our rate of travel in south america was so much more leisurely than this, spending up to a week in some places (iquique, buenos aires, mendoza, bariloche, santiago) rather than a mere day or two. towns do have a tendency to blur into one when you’re moving this quickly, when there are no distinguishing features such as people to tell one town from the other - and knowing someone who lives in a place you’re visiting means that you’re suddenly privy to all of the best-kept secrets that one would otherwise have insufficient time or know-how to find.
another thing is the difference it makes to be a passenger rather than a driver. we have covered a huge amount of road in the past few weeks - more than 2000 miles, in fact - and viewing a country from behind the wheel of a car, rather than being able to gaze pensively out of a side window, makes a big difference to me.
it is with these points in mind that our visit to new plymouth was probably my most enjoyed time on the north island. we ate excellent food, walked on beautiful beaches, saw good music, and, perhaps most importantly, had new people to talk to.
we went to the arthouse cinema in town to see a superb film called ‘last paradise’ - an inspiring and thought-provoking documentary based loosely on the theme of enjoying nature without impacting negatively on it. the theatre was a wonderful hotchpotch of different sofas - some old and bedraggled, some shiny leather, some slightly questionable zebra skin - and there was a small bar to one side that sold coffee and cakes and other delights that you wouldn’t otherwise find in your usual chain cinema.
other highlights during our time in new plymouth included a walk around mt taranaki, taking part in a pub quiz, and befriending jan and maurice’s little dog, gemma.
wellington was our last stop on the north island before heading south over the cook strait. here at last was the big city feel that i’d been looking for in auckland but never found. there is so much more to do in wellington than in other towns, and i could quite easily imagine myself settling there without wondering how on earth i’d pass the time (aside from the obvious exploration of the great outdoors). the whole place has a lot more character than other settlements we’ve visited on the north island, from the colourful, tightknit, wood-shack-style housing that lines the many hills, to the little red cable cars that trundle up and down towards the beautiful botanical gardens above.
wellington lived up to its windy reputation on the evening of our arrival - so much so that we finally caved and stayed in a hostel for a couple of nights, rather than our trusty second property. the next two days, however, were absolutely beautiful and, save for the unexpected morning chill, it was warm and sunny throughout, with some low pressure coming in from the east. apparently wellington isn’t often like that, so i think we were lucky.
the te papa museum has to be one of the finest museums in the world, and the experiences of learning interactively about plate tectonics and taking part in a simulated earthquake are made all the more enjoyable because they are free. te papa houses the largest-known colossal squid. the video documenting its capture was very interesting, but i was confused as to why - if the specimen was as beautiful as they kept saying it was - they had to kill it rather than let it go.
there is also a large interactive video wall thing on the first floor of the museum in which users can, with the use of some sort of wand-like object, graffiti images and distort and ‘animate’ pre-existing photos of unknown people and places as is their wont. at least, i thought that they were pre-existing images of unknown people and places. i went to rekindle my schoolboy days of drawing a moustache and unfeminine eyebrows on a picture of what i had assumed was some random preset lady. little did i know that the random preset lady was in fact not only present in the museum at that exact moment, but also standing directly behind me, somehow having only moments before ingeniously uploaded a photo of herself onto the wall. with more or less precise synchronicity, the lady shrieked ‘hey! who did that!?’ just as sally awkwardly called out my name. i swiftly stowed my wand, performing a quick expelliarmus charm on the tangible form of the annotated lady before doing so, and sally and i promptly left the arena of the interactive wall.
i think one of the things i enjoyed most about wellington was that it has been the only place so far to remind me of the new zealand that i knew from my time here before. and since christchurch is reportedly unrecognisable now, i think wellington may well be the closest i get to enjoying that sense of familiarity and nostalgia that up to now has been strangely absent.
although it may seem a bit over-romantic to say it, there is a smell in the air, a particular quality to the hubbub - surprisingly tranquil for a city of its size - that smacks of christchurch to me. even the hostel in which we were staying had the same aroma as my place in addington - though this was most likely due to the damp carpet and curtains that also plagued 21 poulson street. i wonder if that house is still standing.
i leave the north island now with mixed feelings. i loved northland, new plymouth and wellington, but i found a lot of the rest of the island to be a lot less enchanting than that which used to be my back yard - that is, the canterbury plains, the port hills and, of course, the southern alps - or at least how i remember it to have been. in a few days’ time i’ll be able to decide if my memory serves me correctly!
just wandering around a supermarket, for example, is overwhelming. everything is presented with such care - the vegetables and fish are gently sprayed with a constant supply of water so as to maintain their glossy appearance, and the fruit is stacked as though arranged by someone with ocd. and i´ve never seen such beautifully stacked carrots.
as i had been told to anticipate, i have been finding that i notice every little fragment of mundane day-to-day conversation that comes with being back in an english-speaking country. i overheard a man snapping at his wife ‘you’ve got a bag like a big bucket, so you can’t find a damned thing’, whilst his wife looked for her mobile so that they could call the complaints hotline on the back of a can of deodorant. it’s also made me realise how boring a lot of my conversations must be to overhear.
other novelties we’ve been enjoying since our arrival in the antipodes have included the plethora of free, well-signposted public toilets, members of the general public returning smiles and even saying hello, and the vast array of road signs, telling drivers to visit this café and that museum, to stop at this picnic spot in 400 metres on the left or that lookout point 200 metres on the right, to ‘merge like a zip’ with the impending traffic or that ‘if you drink then drive, you’re a bloody idiot’. i like that the nz police campaigns use the word ‘bloody’.
all of this information makes driving a bit more interesting. i think they could do more with the idea, though, and tell a story over the course of 150km, with each sentence being spread across 5 or so signs in digestible, bite-size chunks of rich, creamery butter. i think i may have become sidetracked during that last sentence, as there is a half-hour infomercial on kitchen knives on tv at the moment - which brings me on to my next point.
this abundance of road signs, written in the imperative, ties in with the larger feeling of being constantly targeted for some sort of sale at all times. the radio shouts at you to buy 4 pieces of chicken for 20.99, while the television beckons you to head down to 'the warehouse', where everyone gets a bargain, apparently (and it turns out it’s true - i’ve been). i suppose this isn’t anything particularly out of the ordinary, but after latin america - where either i wasn’t being sold anything or i was just blissfully unaware - it feels something of a constant bombardment.
the camping facilities here have been better than a lot of the amenities in the youth hostels that we were using in south america. we’ve been staying in a combination of department of conservation campsites, which are often in the middle of nowhere (but very cheap), family campsites, which have common rooms akin to that of a family living room, and camping in the spare space at backpackers’ accommodation, which has no associated comments at this juncture.
owen has kindly lent us his mum’s old car - a 1995 peugeot 306 with an antisocially enthusiastic exhaust - and we’ve been lucky enough to be able to find someone who’s prepared to drive it back up to auckland for us (thereby foregoing the need for us to drive back to auckland ourselves, and then back to christchurch to get to australia). the wily old girl exudes something of a bestial rage when it comes to accelerating, braking, steering or, well, anything - but i think i’m beginning to tame her, and our fantastically good fortune in obtaining a car for such minimal cost overrides its otherwise irritating characteristics, such as the doors not staying open by themselves, the ac coming on automatically on its own terms without us noticing, and the clutch appearing only to go all the way up or all the way down and nothing in between.
i was thrown in the deep end somewhat by having to drive across auckland to owen’s place at 7 in the morning after a 13-hour flight and a 4-month absence from driving. but i’m back in the swing of driving again now, and driving over 600 miles in the first 4 days also helped. i also think that i’m pretty much used to new zealand roads again now (that is, the ‘give way to the right when turning’ rule, and the complete lack of cars anywhere, ever - the latter rule thereby making the former rule redundant). the new zealand road network really is driving heaven for anyone who likes a good road trip.
sally and i have invested in our second property together in preparation for the ensuing 6 weeks of camping. sally named our new home ‘64a school lane’, and we moved in shortly after, with a celebratory plastic cup of tea to get us started. we stocked up on food supplies - most of which being of the trusty tinned-can variety - and were ready to be on our way.
in our first few days we explored the northern-most stretch of the north island, during which time we could feasibly have been the only people in the world. we stopped at kawakawa to christen the very pretty hundertwasser toilets, created by austrian ecoartist albert hundertwasser. here, the ornate hotchpotch of tile-work and windows created from recycled green bottles made for what was quite probably the most pleasant jimmy of my life.
after kawakawa we drove a while longer, taking in the rolling green hills and odd-looking trees before stopping in kerikeri for a spot of lunch. we remarked how everything is much dearer here than we had expected, and that free wifi is very difficult to find. in fact, free internet is only to be found in mcdonald’s (where hotmail is blocked) and the town libraries. clearly, we’d been spoilt in south america in that regard.
we left kerikeri with satisfied tums and headed further north to the karikari peninsula, wondering along the way if the place names would become a little more adventurous. they certainly did, and after visiting a staircase carved out of the trunk of a colossal kauri tree (enticingly signposted), we reached cape reinga, right at the northern tip of the north island, where the tasman sea and pacific ocean collide.
new zealand had certainly been the land of the long white cloud up to this point, providing distinctly long and cloudy times for our first few days, and testing my recently-made assertion that ‘visiting a place purely for the weather is rubbish’. but as we turned to head back south from new zealand’s northernmost strip of land, the sun made a welcome return, and i confidently renewed my earlier assertion.
our last stop before heading back to auckland was an unintentional one - we only went there because we passed a road sign directing us to ‘GIANT SAND DUNES 400M ON THE RIGHT’ and felt that really we had no say in the matter. the dunes certainly were giant, and i swear i nearly stopped living as i clambered pathetically up one of the most smug-looking ones. after we crossed over the first dune, the trees behind us and the ocean in front of us became completely obscured by massive sand dunes bordering us on all sides. the wind here was ferocious enough as it was, without the skin-removing wall of flying sand punishing us too. but WITH the skin-removing wall of flying sand, it was, well, even more ferocious.
after the most thorough, natural exfoliation of my life so far, we began our trudge back to the car. we passed a couple of german chaps who had taken to bodyboards on the steep dunes, and i smiled and nodded in a ‘i-approve-of-your-sandboarding-antics-but-not-enough-to-think-of-some-sort-of-comment’ fashion. one of the men asked if i wanted to have a go, and moments later i found myself hurtling face-first down a 50-metre (at a guess) sand dune into a wall of, well, more sand. sally assures me that i wasn’t going particularly fast, but i´m fairly sure i reached lightspeed at one point. perhaps it just seemed faster to me because my nose was practically touching the sand on the way down.
on the drive back down to civilisation we stopped at ninety mile beach. this is truly one of the most remarkable beaches i’ve ever seen - and i´ve been to bournemouth. the beach is flat and unending (it’s easy to see how it got its name, even if it’s more like 90 kilometres than miles) - so flat, in fact, that the beach disappears into hazy nothingness whether you’re looking up or down its width, and the waves crash into themselves countless times before reaching the beach and then finally receding. and the noise! that sound of ceaseless, crashing waves; one after the other, for 90 kilometres up the coast - it’s something else.
we returned to the bay of islands - which were too rainy to be enjoyed properly during our prior visit - and stayed in the small (population: circa 1000) town of paihia, with the hopes of doing some sort of boat tour of the bay and its constituent islands. the next day we went on a boat trip of the bay, with the hopes of seeing some sort of dolphins somersaulting out of the water, often into one another, either for our enjoyment or theirs (with it being difficult to tell at times), and then to see a big hole in an even bigger rock. fortuitously, this was exactly what happened on our boat trip.
the dolphins were beyond impressive, and i couldn’t believe - despite having seen countless hollywood scenes of dolphins swimming in front of boats - how fast they were able to swim under the bow of our huge, inconspicuous, yellow and black catamaran. it’s all fun to them. they remind me of the hoards of cubans who had nothing to do but loiter in the streets and outside shops for the amusement of tourists - except, of course, that the cubans wouldn´t leap out of the water or swim in front of ships.
we got to see the big hole in the big rock, but alas the tides were much too choppy for us to be able to pass through it, which is what the other 70% of the daily boat trips do. we stopped at one of the islands shortly after circling the holy holey rock, and went on a short walk up a big green hill dotted with fluffy sheep. we also visited the tiny (population: circa 600) town of russell - across the bay from paihia - with its sickeningly pretty white picket fences, white wooden shack-houses and children's storybook-like policeman's house (which housed the only policeman in town and therefore accounted for the entire russell constabulary.
the idea of a large city in new zealand is something of a foreign concept to me, so it was with a mote of skepticism that i stepped off the birkenhead ferry and onto the platform of auckland’s city centre for the first time. for a while i was surprised, and spent the first half hour or so walking into people whilst my neck was craned up at the many impressive, modern skyscrapers. but as the neckache wore off, so did my surprise, and i left the city feeling that its illusion of grandeur was as transparent as the glass towers that encompass it. perhaps it was after perusing the city’s continuous sprawl from the sky tower that i was able to see that the downtown part of the city didn’t actually stretch so far. but even amidst the tall buildings, it felt as though there’s not much there and that there’s not a lot going on. sort of like a big, clumsy giant.
the skytower, then, is like a giant needle in a haystack of impressively large but generally uninteresting buildings and, in my opinion, it’s therefore the saving grace of the city. from here, one can gaze 328 metres over the city’s suburban expanse as it sprawls about the 50 volcanoes that make up its land mass, and wonder whether companies such as mcdonalds and subway would bother plastering their company logo on their otherwise unseen roofs if a huge tower full of tourists didn’t happen to be looming over them.
i left auckland feeling glad that i´d finally had the chance to visit, but, conversely, that i wouldn’t have been particularly bothered if i had never been in the first place. it’s located in a wonderful setting, and from a distance, the cluster of skyscrapers aspiring to the height of the sky tower is quite a compelling view. but i think i’d rather keep it that way - at a distance.
our next stop was the coromandel peninsula. we found some incredible isolated beaches here, but the most quirky of them was anything but. prior to our visit to hot water beach, i had imagined that it would be only myself, sally, and perhaps one or two other curious travelers who would be digging valiantly through unspoilt sand in search for the volcanically-heated thermal waters that give the beach its name rather literal name. as we rounded the jagged cliffs, however, a huge gaggle of tourists emerged, packed into a space of little more than 10 square metres, with large, abandoned holes scattered in the surrounding sand.
it turned out that everyone knew about hot water beach, of course, and that everyone wanted to find the hot water. i immediately realised that my anticipation had been unrealistic, and soon found myself queuing - yes, queuing - to dip my toes in the warm sea water. after a bit of awkward waiting, we got our chance to experience it for ourselves. the water was insanely hot in places - it was literally impossible to stand on some parts of the sand for more than a split second, such was the heat. and yet, a couple of centimeters to one side of that same spot, the water would be stone cold. a lot of mixing had to be done, and sally and i soon set to work moving the sandy water around to run our sand bath to a reasonable temperature. once that had been achieved, we enjoyed warning newcomers as to the extreme heat of certain spots, and enjoyed even more the transition from skeptical smirk to surprised shriek as they went to sit there anyway.
once in rotorua we looked around the village of whakarewarewa, where we watched a disappointingly timid geyser and an undisappointingly exciting maori culture show. we visited the beautiful redwood forest - a 110-year-old gathering of trees as large as 6 metres in circumference - and then took the gondola up to an impressive lookout point over lake rotorua, where i decided to do some luging down the excellent luge tracks. i enjoyed it so much that i could have done it all over again. so i did - another 4 times, in fact, becoming momentarily airborne on a number of occasions.
from rotorua we drove across to napier on the east coast. napier is celebrated as being the ‘art deco’ city of new zealand, but i really didn’t think that the architecture was much to write home about - not that i often write home about buildings. i think i may have been expecting a series of new york chrysler buildings, which may go some way in diagnosing the root of my disappointment, but instead i got a couple of ford garages with little twiddly bits on the roofs that are supposedly intended to allude to some 1920s heyday.
otherwise, the town was nice enough, and the backpackers in which we were camping proved to be a peaceful enough spot to make some progress with my composing. we did run into some misfortune here, however, and this too may explain why i don’t have the fondest memories of my time in napier.
it was a mild summer’s evening, and sally and i decided to go for an appropriately summery evening drive. we were pootling along at a snail’s pace, as we often do when deep in conversation, when we came to an intersection at a main highway. i remarked to sally that there was a police car waiting conspicuously at the side of the road, no doubt to catch out speeding cars. coincidentally, as we turned onto the highway, i saw in my rearview mirror that the police car was no longer on the side of the road, but now driving a fair distance behind us. moments later, the police car was right on our tail, and lo and behold, on came his blue and red lights.
i knew i couldn’t possibly have been speeding, so i was quite perplexed as to what reason the policeman could have had to pull me over. he eventually came to my window, and asked why i hadn’t stopped at the stop sign. my mind instantly flicked back a few seconds, and i replied instinctively, ‘i did, didn’t i?’. apparently i hadn’t, and within a couple of minutes i found myself with a $150 fine for, sure enough, ‘failing to stop at a stop sign’.
only moments before, sally and i had been reminiscing our favourite travelling moments whilst sharing a portion of fish and chips on the not particularly sandy beach of hawke’s bay. and then, in an instant, all of our meticulously careful planning so as to minimise expenditure had been undone. the officer explained that they had a ‘zero-tolerance policy’ for not stopping at stop signs, and although i had broken that law, i still couldn’t help but feel a little hard-done-by. after all, i hadn’t intentionally driven through the stop sign, and i hadn’t realised that one literally has to come to a complete halt before proceeding, even when it is plain to see for a good few kilometers in either direction - as was the case at this time - that there is no on-coming traffic.
the officer wasn’t brusque or impolite or condescending - in fact he was quite friendly. but it was this friendliness and the swiftness and efficiency with which i had been dealt that meant i was left by the side of the road feeling as though i had just been robbed. still, the law’s the law, and i definitely won’t be making that mistake again.
the fuel gauge in the peugeot is somewhat (read: wholly) unreliable, and it caught me out during our drive from napier to taupo. i thought that we had over a quarter of a tank left, which should have been plenty to get us to the next petrol station. one steep hill later, however, the needle suddenly plummeted, and on came the orange warning light. it flickered on and off for a few minutes, as it decided whether we really did have petrol or not. by the time it had settled down and decided resolutely that we were in fact distinctly low on petrol, it became apparent that there were in fact no petrol stations between napier and taupo. to cut the story of a very long, edge-of-the-seat, hour-and-a-half journey short, we drove 150km on the orange light, and somehow made it to taupo in time to refuel. i think we only made it by driving no faster than 80kph in 100kph zones, unless we were descending a steep hill, in which case i put it in neutral and let gravity get us up to 100. on our way out of taupo two days later, we would see the ‘no petrol stations for 150km’ sign that would have been so useful before.
taupo was another unremarkable town, but the huge lake and the huka falls that drain into it are undeniably spectacular. we hung around long enough to try out the lake’s own hot water beach - which was more akin to how i’d imagined the one in the coromandel to be - and then were on our way to the tongariro national park.
we headed to tongariro with the intention of surmounting the renowned alpine trail crossing, but our plan was thwarted by bad weather, which meant that the conditions were alas too treacherous for us to go. but we did manage to get an excellent view of tongariro, ruapehu and ngaurahoe - the latter of which cameoed as mount doom in the lord of the rings trilogy - on our drive into the national park.
the next day we sallied forth to new plymouth, where we were to stay with sally’s aunt and uncle for the next few days. this was a welcome respite from 2 weeks of often-unluxurious camping, the crux of which had occurred the night before when it transpired that we’d been sleeping in a puddle.
what a difference it can make to be shown around a place rather than to explore for oneself. don’t get me wrong - i have been enjoying exploring the north island, especially at our own pace and on our own terms since we have had owen’s car. but after a while it feels as though we’re only visiting the outer shell of each town, not stopping long enough to get to know anyone there, and moving on to the next place and doing the same thing many times in a row.
our rate of travel in south america was so much more leisurely than this, spending up to a week in some places (iquique, buenos aires, mendoza, bariloche, santiago) rather than a mere day or two. towns do have a tendency to blur into one when you’re moving this quickly, when there are no distinguishing features such as people to tell one town from the other - and knowing someone who lives in a place you’re visiting means that you’re suddenly privy to all of the best-kept secrets that one would otherwise have insufficient time or know-how to find.
another thing is the difference it makes to be a passenger rather than a driver. we have covered a huge amount of road in the past few weeks - more than 2000 miles, in fact - and viewing a country from behind the wheel of a car, rather than being able to gaze pensively out of a side window, makes a big difference to me.
it is with these points in mind that our visit to new plymouth was probably my most enjoyed time on the north island. we ate excellent food, walked on beautiful beaches, saw good music, and, perhaps most importantly, had new people to talk to.
we went to the arthouse cinema in town to see a superb film called ‘last paradise’ - an inspiring and thought-provoking documentary based loosely on the theme of enjoying nature without impacting negatively on it. the theatre was a wonderful hotchpotch of different sofas - some old and bedraggled, some shiny leather, some slightly questionable zebra skin - and there was a small bar to one side that sold coffee and cakes and other delights that you wouldn’t otherwise find in your usual chain cinema.
other highlights during our time in new plymouth included a walk around mt taranaki, taking part in a pub quiz, and befriending jan and maurice’s little dog, gemma.
wellington was our last stop on the north island before heading south over the cook strait. here at last was the big city feel that i’d been looking for in auckland but never found. there is so much more to do in wellington than in other towns, and i could quite easily imagine myself settling there without wondering how on earth i’d pass the time (aside from the obvious exploration of the great outdoors). the whole place has a lot more character than other settlements we’ve visited on the north island, from the colourful, tightknit, wood-shack-style housing that lines the many hills, to the little red cable cars that trundle up and down towards the beautiful botanical gardens above.
wellington lived up to its windy reputation on the evening of our arrival - so much so that we finally caved and stayed in a hostel for a couple of nights, rather than our trusty second property. the next two days, however, were absolutely beautiful and, save for the unexpected morning chill, it was warm and sunny throughout, with some low pressure coming in from the east. apparently wellington isn’t often like that, so i think we were lucky.
the te papa museum has to be one of the finest museums in the world, and the experiences of learning interactively about plate tectonics and taking part in a simulated earthquake are made all the more enjoyable because they are free. te papa houses the largest-known colossal squid. the video documenting its capture was very interesting, but i was confused as to why - if the specimen was as beautiful as they kept saying it was - they had to kill it rather than let it go.
there is also a large interactive video wall thing on the first floor of the museum in which users can, with the use of some sort of wand-like object, graffiti images and distort and ‘animate’ pre-existing photos of unknown people and places as is their wont. at least, i thought that they were pre-existing images of unknown people and places. i went to rekindle my schoolboy days of drawing a moustache and unfeminine eyebrows on a picture of what i had assumed was some random preset lady. little did i know that the random preset lady was in fact not only present in the museum at that exact moment, but also standing directly behind me, somehow having only moments before ingeniously uploaded a photo of herself onto the wall. with more or less precise synchronicity, the lady shrieked ‘hey! who did that!?’ just as sally awkwardly called out my name. i swiftly stowed my wand, performing a quick expelliarmus charm on the tangible form of the annotated lady before doing so, and sally and i promptly left the arena of the interactive wall.
i think one of the things i enjoyed most about wellington was that it has been the only place so far to remind me of the new zealand that i knew from my time here before. and since christchurch is reportedly unrecognisable now, i think wellington may well be the closest i get to enjoying that sense of familiarity and nostalgia that up to now has been strangely absent.
although it may seem a bit over-romantic to say it, there is a smell in the air, a particular quality to the hubbub - surprisingly tranquil for a city of its size - that smacks of christchurch to me. even the hostel in which we were staying had the same aroma as my place in addington - though this was most likely due to the damp carpet and curtains that also plagued 21 poulson street. i wonder if that house is still standing.
i leave the north island now with mixed feelings. i loved northland, new plymouth and wellington, but i found a lot of the rest of the island to be a lot less enchanting than that which used to be my back yard - that is, the canterbury plains, the port hills and, of course, the southern alps - or at least how i remember it to have been. in a few days’ time i’ll be able to decide if my memory serves me correctly!