New Zealand: North Island

The 12-hour overnight flight from Santiago was smooth and fun-filled, although a little uncomfortable and generally sleepless. Arriving at 4am, we took the shuttle-bus from the airport, strangely accompanied by the two 'Mummies' from the Halloween party in Cusco. The hostel we had booked sat in darkness and we were slightly concerned that we'd be left to sit out the remainder of the night on the doorstep. Fortunately the owner woke to our knocking and invited us to use the lounge sofa's until the office opened at 8am. Happy for the undisturbed horizontal sleep we crashed out for what would hopefully be a good few hours.

This was not to be. We woke at 6:30am to find one of the hostel residents (a speccy lad with a gormless sort of look plastered all over his face) sitting in the armchair looking blandly at our dishevelled forms. I tried some polite conversation, suggesting that the people here rise very early and asking if he was off on a trip, at which I got a shrug and a grunt in return. Soon after, a guy who also declined to involve himself in any conversation arrived to use the internet terminal, and we knew that our sleeping time was well and truly up. As we sat contemplating whether to find ourselves another hostel, Campbell the owner arrived to inform us that our room wouldn't be ready for another few hours. He did however give us the grand tour - Internet: two quid an hour, Laundry: four quid to wash and dry, the Kitchen: tea and coffee isn't supplied, and we could hire a duvet should we require one for a reasonable three quid. Welcome to New Zealand; a country that certainly seems to know where its backpacker bread is buttered, and where nothing comes for free, but if it does, it's probably crap. We were back in the civilised world, and our pockets were about to bear the brunt...

Auckland is New Zealand's biggest city, so much so that more people live here than in the entire south island. The whole city is surrounded by water and is the largest polynesian city meaning that it has a unique blend of cultures living within it's boundaries, with many asian's and indonesian's settling here. Our hostel was situated in the trendy Ponsonby area of town with it's variety of bars and restaurants. Finally something we'd managed to get right.

With our first couple of days being downtrodden by some reverse culture shock and some cracking jet-lag, we lethargically wandered the streets around the city centre and the harbour under the ever-present watchful gaze of the looming Sky Tower, and into the less frantic districts on the outskirts of the city such as Parnell. During the evening's we ate out with a nice German couple, Kirsten and Serge, who were beacon's of light amongst the strange array of fairly unsociable characters at our hostel.

Our first New Zealand trip was to be to the north of the country and the pleasant town of Paihia; gateway to the picturesque 144-strong Bay of Islands. We are slightly ashamed to admit that we copped out a little on our mode of transport for the NZ tour, opting to a take a pass with the Magic bus company, which would essentially see us follow a set route of touristy towns and attractions, with a driver guide who would drop us off and collect us from our chosen accommodation as and when we felt like leaving. Ten weeks of self-organised travel, numerous recommendations from other travellers, and the prospect of driving ourselves through most of Australia was enough to tempt us into the ease of buying a pass that would cover both islands over the next month.

Our debut driver was a bit of nut named Colin, who regaled us with a mixture of ridiculous and interestingly comedic stories during our journey to the north, teasing any unwitting Aussies on the way (a national passtime it would seem). During our journey through the northern sub-tropical rain-forest, with it's giant Kauri tree residing in it's midst, and our onward path to the beautiful coastlines that could be seen as we entered the northern shores, Colin would make the odd swerve in an effort to squash any possums or 'tree destroyers' that happen to be crossing the road, causing disgust amongst a few of the ladies on board, and laughter from a few of the lads, but he was making no apologies.

That evening, we were entertained by way of our first Oceanic barbeque with a few of our bus companions, making a good night of it with a select few: Steve, Tess and Kevin.

With a raging hangover, the thought of doing anything the next morning didn't massively appeal, so the speedboat tour we had booked to take us out to the islands and the 'Hole in the Rock' (as exciting as the name would suggest) was a massive result, especially considering that it didn't turn out to be as exhilerating as it may have been billed. We did however catch sight of a family of whales swimming in the bay which was an unexpected bonus, and the saving grace of a rather cold and expensive experience.

Back in Auckland for just one night, where we somehow managed to choose the noisiest, dirtiest hostel of our trip so far, we were then driven south by Mungu, a nice enough Maori chap with some kebab-like body odour issues. He took us for a quick birds-eye view of Auckland from Mount Eden, and then in the direction of Wiatomo on the western side of the north island. Rarely do you visit a place where the view of the underground is more spectacular than what you can see above it. Despite

Waitomo's position in the lush green countryside, most people come here to visit the vast network of underground caves in the area and it's millions-upon-millions of Glow-worm inhabitants.

Here we chose to take the Cave-Rafting excursion, a great trip where the eight person group sit within inflatable tyres and float through the subterranean rivers, over small waterfalls and down a gushing slide in pitch darkness. Any fears we may have had about having to sqeeze through near-impossible cracks in the rocks were quickly alleviated when our thirty-stone guide arrived. Sitting in the darkness some five hundred metres below the surface on rubber rings is a fairly strange experience, and our guides were quite talented at letting off loud bombs at opportune quiet moments to scare the hell out of everybody.

Continuing on, we arrived in Rotorua that evening to be welcomed at our chosen accommodation by a mixture of fifteen cheery looking down-syndromer's - not a problem obviously, but testament to our on-going knack at choosing a hostel. One of the younger girls took quite a liking to me, which made a nice change to solely receiving Sarah's affections, while a couple of others had the habit of strolling the corridors in the middle of the night in their undies, much to the detriment of their hard-working carers and a few of the more miserable guests.

Rotorua is the thermal heartland on the volcanic central north island. Built upon a steaming underground cauldron caused by a break between two giant underground tectonic plates, the whole village is permanantly on the boil with wispy steam curling it's way into the sky from vents in the front lawns and curbside gratings. This is also the spiritual home of the Maori people, the original inhabitants of the lands before Captain Cook discovered and claimed it as part of the British empire in April of 1770. This then seemed like the perfect place to check out a tradition Maori show.

On entering the village, the host of the welcoming tribe issues a challenge of peace, in which the warrior will go through some intimidatory gestures and strange looking facial expressions. Despite this being generally quite amusing, visitors are asked to remain straight faced as a mark of respect. Next the 'Powhiri' is performed, a welcome dance and chant before we were invited into the inner court.

Once inside, the Maori's performed a number of traditional dances and songs, including their most famous number 'The Haka', a war dance which the national rugby team perform before a game to intimidate the opposing side. Finally, we were all led into the dining area where the food was served, straight from an authentic underground earth oven called a 'Hungi'. Beers of course accompanied the delicious food and after some other small performances the night was over. It was here that we also bumped into Steve, one of the lad's we met in Paihia, and he decided to tag along with us for the coach the next day.

Next on the route was a visit to the Thermal Wonderland, the central hub of geothermal activity in the area, where you can walk amongst some hot and cold colourful natural pools and view the somewhat staged eruption of the Lady Know Geyser, caused when one of the staff unimpressively throw's a bag of caustic soda into it.

Next was Taupo, a town beside a lake of the same name, whose surface area amazingly covers more than the whole of Singapore. It didn't seem like a country so tiny could hold such a body of water, but I'm told this irrelevant fact is true.

Here, we checked into what can only be described as sub-standard accommodation, and whisked ourselves off the natural spa for a quick dip in it's therapeutic waters. Not the first thermal pool we've visited, but probably the most naturally scenic. Now that I had my drinking partner in Steve, this was to be the start of a succession of nights where beer would almost definitely make an appearance... and so we went out with a couple of other girls to an Irish bar in the town centre and watched some rugby. All jolly nice.

We were off again the next day however, to our final north island town and New Zealand's capital, Wellington. Here we once again caught up with Tom and Lisa from our South American adventures, and the girl we met in Santiago called Claire who lived in the area.

After a fairly heavy first reunion night on the beer, Claire took us all out in the car the following day for a drive around the bays, but bad weather conditions meant that we soon returned to the safety of the numerous bars in the city. Not exactly a cultured experience, but a nice one all the same and all efforts to go and see the apparently fantastic exhibition covering New Zealand's short, yet colourful history were quickly thwarted by our yeasty liquid friend.

To be perfectly honest, we weren't massively impressed with our first twelve days in the land of the long white cloud; although it was possible that the heightened cost of everything compared to what we had been used to for three months was enough to dampen our views. It was time to wipe the slate clean so to speak, and many people had emphasised that the south island generally holds much more for the curious traveller, and so we left for our early morning ferry with renewed hope...

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