Happy New Year! Apologies for our tardiness in updating you, the mythical reader of our ramblings, about our time in New Zealand. We have no reasonable excuse, except that we've been busy growing our backlog of other tales. Thirty hours after leaving our *cough* wonderful hotel in Hanoi we did the only sensible thing and picked-up our converted LWB VW LT35 van and set-out to familiarise ourselves with this beautiful machine by driving for four hours to Waitomo. The drive to Waitomo was an event in itself. Pretty soon we were surrounded by lush green countryside - a welcome tonic after the busy metropolis we'd left over a day earlier.
Waitomo is famous for its caves, in particular 'Glow Worm Cave' which is so named for the most obvious of reasons. Having reached our camp site, we decided to rise early and investigate. Unfortunately, the lack of sleep had rather caught-up with us the following day and we weren't good for much except catching-up with our laundry. We contemplated staying another day but determined that, having recently visited a fabulous cave complex in Halong Bay that we'd rather move-on. And so the next morning we departed and headed for New Plymouth on the West coast.
In 2008 (I think) New Plymouth was voted the best small city in the world to live in. It's main selling point is that it's literally right on the beach.
As a result, everyone seems to own a boat or at the very least a fishing rod. Now, what I would say is that the definition of 'City' in New Zealand is rather different to ours. If I was so inclined, I'm sure that I could find some data and produce an informative comparison. For fear of being referred to as "Statto" I shall instead offer the view that New Plymouth appears to be no larger than, say, Abergavenny back home.
Our trip to the town, I mean city, was marred by drunken yoofs throwing a bottle at the camper as we settled-down to bed. Rather than unleashing Kung-Fu Kate on the aggressors, we jumped-up from bed and drove-off round the corner. You can't do that in a hotel room. This was our first night sleeping at the roadside and perhaps helped to influence later decisions - more on this to follow.
New Plymouth effectively signals the start of the Surf Highway which parallels the coast heading South towards Wanganui.
What's great about this road is that, when travelling South at least, if you look to your right you will tend to see another 'Gnarly Break Duuude' while if you look to the left, you can see more rolling and tumbling farmland - and in the middle, often right by the road, you get this strange confluence of tropical-looking trees and temporate grassland. Just inland (South-East) of Wanganui is Palmerstone North. This was our next overnight stop. I was quite keen on Palmerstone North. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, it seemed to house a disproportionately high number of 'Speed Shops,' specialist car builders and restorers. I saw more Hot Rods in one day mooching about here than I've seen in the UK in 31 years. The second reason for my fondness is that Palmerstone North houses the New Zealand Rugby Museum. This quaint, small building, which is about to be replaced prior to the World Cup in September, houses a number of really interesting exhibits. None of these were of more interest to me than the couple of pieces of memorabilia that related to the 1963 game between Newport and the All Blacks at Rodney Parade.
I'm proud to say that my Dad played in this game and was on the winning side.
From Palmerstone North we headed to the southern tip of the North Island, to the capital Wellington. We drove straight to the centre of the City and somehow managed to find a parking space large enough to take the 6.6metre long van. We then visited the National Museum, Te Papa Tongarewa and spent most of our time there looking at the exhibits in the 'Natural World' area.
We then took a walk by the waterfront to the questionably modern civic centre and then in to town.
After a little while we decided that we should probably try to find a campsite close to the harbour to aid us in catching the ferry that we'd booked to get to the South Island the following morning. We found somewhere where the positive aspects included the fact that it was on the bus route while the negative aspects included that it was on the flight-path! Rather than having to go to the trouble of parking the van again that evening, we utilised the bus to get us back into the city for a beer and some food. The evening turned-out to be an Irish-Italian affair. Not surprisingly an Irish bar provided a beer before we found a tiny pizzaria with only a few tables. Once we'd drunk, eaten and bought Kate a cardigan (not necessarily in that order) we headed back to our runway marker to get our heads down.
We were up early to catch the Interislander ferry. We continued to be lucky with the glorious weather and were able to take some good pictures along the route to Picton.
From Picton, we drove for a couple of hours or so towards the former whaleing settlement of Kaikoura. On route we had our first encounter with New Zealand Fur Seals, finding a large colony visible from the road. There would be a much closer encounter to follow.
At Kaikoura itself we found that we were outside whale-watching season, so bought a walking guide for a couple of dollars that gave a running commentary around the 11.7km route.
Highlights here included seeing a juvenile shag, that's a sea bird before you snigger; probably more notable was the seal lying so close to the path that Kate almost fell over it - amazing.
More great sights followed - the guide was possibly the best NZ$2 we'd spent to date.
