First days

Today I writing my first post on the bus ride back from the Bay of Islands.  This is day three of my Contiki tour and it has been packed so far with some great experiences and some wonderful new friends.

Going back a few days, I arrived in Auckland NZ after an extremely long lot of flights.  Thankfully, much to my surprise I was able to sleep for a majority of the first flight and when I wasn’t sleeping I was wandering around the plane stretching.  I didn’t realize, save for a few days before I left, that the time difference between Vancouver and NZ is really quite nominal.  I know, it’s 21 hours ahead here but I prefer to see it as being only 3 hours behind, so adjusting was really a non-issue.

My first night was relaxing, arrived at the hostel around 7pm and just wanted to clean up and go to bed after a long day of traveling. So really I haven’t seen much of anything in Auckland.  Thankfully, in a month I will be back up there for a few days before my flight to Queensland so no worries.

I met up with the Contiki group on day two after an unintentional tour of the city via inner city link bus.  No thinking about the direction of travel being opposite here I hopped on the bus headed in the completely opposite direction that I needed to head.  Not a big deal though, it runs on a loop it just meant a 5 minute bus ride turned into a 45 minute tour of maybe not the most exciting places in the city.  I do  however now know where the local Vegas style strip club is if anyone needs directions.

Even with my tour of the city I was still early to the meeting point and quickly linked up with a young primary school teacher from England and chatted as we watched a large number of ladies come in slowly.  I say a large number because this tour of mine has about 30 women and only 4 guys not including the coach driver and our tour manager. The average age is probably between 19 and 24 but somehow all us old ladies found each other quickly and have bonded over conversations about our tax returns and vitamin bottles.  Instant ‘mates.’

Auckland to Paihia was like driving on the Hope – Princeton but on steroids.  I cannot believe how winding and narrow these roads are and how absolutely mad crazy the coach drivers are.  Roads that at home would have a speed limit of 60kph are 100kph here.  I can wholeheartedly say I am happy to not be behind the wheel. 

The scenery is really beautiful, similar in some ways to BC but at the same time very different.  The foliage here is strikingly different for start, not to mention the quantity of sheep.  I thought maybe it was a bit of a stereotype that NZ had when everyone referred to the sheep, but it’s true, they are everywhere.

The first night was an easy evening wandering around the small somewhat touristy town and relaxing getting to know the folks we were traveling with.

In the morning, up by 06:00 to get ready for a day excursion up to Cape Reinga to see the farthest accessible by road point north on the islands.  We had the most hilarious and endearing older Kiwi driver that kept everyone entertained for the massive 11 hour day of driving a round trip of over 500km.  The pictures from yesterday are gorgeous.  We got to drive up and down the 90mile beach going 80-100kph on the beach itself through the sea water and o the sandbars.  Our nutter of a driver encouraged everyone to come front to take photos out the big windows and when you did he would grab your camera and take a picture of you meanwhile leaving the steering wheel unattended and swerving terrifyingly close to the deep water or the deep sand. Slamming on the breaks for the seagulls and flying past the people kite fishing on the sand bars, all of it was fantastic.

 

 As you approach the end of the 90mile beach, you see what look like massive snow covered peaks looming in the distance, like the glaciers at home, however as you get closer and closer you quickly realize that it is not snow but in fact mammoth sand dunes.  There is a strange weather pattern going through the north island right now apparently with extremely strong eastern winds blowing and you could see this so well with the sand flying off the tops of the dunes.

We stopped at one of the more moderately sized dunes pulled out the boogie boards and headed up the dune to try our hands at sandboarding.  The walk up was horrible, it was like walking up a snow bank of half packed half loose snow except you have sand blowing at you so hard it is burning your skin.  At the very last face of the dune I wasn’t even able to open my eyes it was blowing so hard.  If you ever want a cheap and free full body microderm abrasion might I suggest this route.  I think I will be finding sand in my nose and ears now for the rest of my trip.  

All that being said, sandboarding was a blast.  I ended up hiking up twice and even knowing it was a miserable feeling at the top the ride down is 100% worth it.  Apparently these boards can get up to 90kph on a good day.  I was not going that fast but it was still pretty awesome.

From there we made our way up to Cape Reinga the point where Tasman and Pacific meet.  An absolutely stunning place that is steeped in lore and history.  I am finding some of the Maori traditions and beliefs similar to that of the Native community in BC.  The history of the culture is fascinating and their language, what I have heard so far, is lovely.  I will post a link to all the beliefs behind Cape Raenga and why it is so important to the culture here.  Basically said it is where they believe people’s spirits begin their journey into the after life.  It is a sacred and extremely spiritual place to them.  I will not able to recount the history as well as the link so feel free to read if you are interested.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Reinga

On the drive back to the motel we stopped for fish and ‘chups’ (kiwi’s don’t believe in pronouncing the letter ‘I’ apparently) and spent the rest of the hour or so watching the gorgeous scenery as it passed.

Something I noticed, in the span of only a few hours I felt like I had driven through the rolling hills of Slovenia, the lush highlands of Scotland, to the beaches of San Sebastian, the Sahara Desert and finally out to the tumultuous coast line of the Maritimes.  The variety on terrain here is mind blowing.  250km was all we traveled away from where we were but every corner brought something new.  I think they might be right in saying that NZ is like the whole world’s beauty and terrain squished into one itty bitty little country.   

Gorgeous, it’s just gorgeous here.

I have fallen a bit short on my pictures yesterday, only took about 200.


Some photos thus far

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151248081775076.803142.529025075&type=1&l=b99f8f37ef