Category: New Zealand

A quick catch-up post

Yes.. I am crap at keeping these things up to date!  So here is a very brief run through of the last few days.

Tues 2nd Dec
Arrive Auckland about noon, have a boozy lunch, caught the tour bus for the circular tour, fall asleep.

Weds 3rd Dec
Busy day, wandering around Auckland.  Up the SkyTower (hence the photo of the fella in the air in an earlier post), the Auckland Museum, catching the ferry over to Devonport for an early dinner

Thurs 4th
RNZB Guest Artist Shannon Dawson as Kitri's father, Act I Photo by Maarten HollPicked up the hire car, a rather battered Toyota Corolla 1.8l Auto, which isn’t like the UK Corollas, it’s probably closer to a cross between the UK Avensis and the Corolla.  A trip to the Auckland Botanical Gardens, then the evening spent watching the truly excellent Royal New Zealand Ballet.  More info/piccys:
http://www.nzballet.org.nz/season/don-quixote-2008

Fri 5th Dec
KauriLong drive from Auckland to our next stop, the Bay of Islands.  We are staying in a town called Harura Falls, which is on the outskirts of Paihia, in a B&B called Crisdon Castle.  We drove up the West coast (Tasman Sea), through the Kauri forests, where we saw the ancient and huge (as in 13 metres wide trunk type of huge) Kauri trees.  Gift shops all over the place seem to sell 101 things made from the wood, it’s impressive there are any left at all.  We got to the B&B around 6pm, where we were met by our hostess Donna, who informed us we had been upgraded.  Rather than the one bed apartment we had booked, we have a three bedroom detached house!  The view from the house is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/orionesque/3087074239/

The town of Paihia is tiny, a few restaurants, dozens of motels and lots of people selling the same half-dozen or so different boat trips, scenic flights, parasails and trip on crazy fast boats.

Sat 6th Dec
Chillout day, huge breakfast, followed by a wander about Paihia town/village/hamlet buying a hat.  Took the ferry boat over to the township of Russell, where more eating and drinking was involved (are you sensing a theme here?).

Sun 7th Dec
My birthday.. yay.. turned the rather senior age of 30.  Yes.. I am looking at cardigans, slippers and smoking jackets in a whole new light.
We drove to Kawakawa, steam-trains and weird toilets etc (see the other post).  In the evening we went on a river cruise dinner boat type thing.  Not at all what were expect (not that I am sure what that was exactly), but was a really fun night with plenty of white wine (yay! what a suprise), and meeting and chatting to new folk from all over the globe.

Kawakawa, Bay of Islands Vintage Railway

Today we travelled from our base in Harura Falls, Pahia in the Bay of Islands to the town of Kawakawa.

Kawakawa is the home of the Bay of Islands Vintage Railway. This is a volunteer type railway, that operates Fri-Sun about 4 trips a day. They have one steam locomotive “Gabriel”, that chugs up the line for a few Kilometres before plodding back. What is fun about this line is that it runs right up the high street of Kawakawa.

BOI-VR running down the main street of Kawakawa

Kawakawa is also famous, rather dubiously, for it’s public toilets.  Designed by the Austian painter, architect, and all round groovy type of fella Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who lived his last years in the town

Arrival in Auckland

We landed in Auckland Airport dead on time from our trip over from Seoul.  We were pretty much first off the plane, and first through security.  I think we did from aeroplane to meeting Bart, our host in about 6 minutes.

We flew with Air Korea on their “Prestige” class, which is basically their term for business class.  Wow!  Was truly another world.  After doing long haul cattle class to the US and South Africa, this was really a joy in comparison. Fantastic, attentive, service, great food and even better wine (our quote of the holiday so far is the Purser(is that the word for the head cabin crew guy?) as he poured us a glass of champagne “Krug Sir?  The finest Champagne in the world… we’ve opened the bottle just for you.. so it’s all yours… enjoy!”).

We are staying for 3 nights at the Ascot Parnell – http://www.ascotparnell.com/ The website doesn’t really do the place justice, it’s beautiful, stylish and the views are stunning.

Today, being jet-lagged to buggery and not really knowing what planet we are on (hence writing this post at erm.. 3.45am local time) we just went for a wander in to the “village” of Parnell and grabbed lunch at Iguacu – http://www.iguacu.co.nz/ then took the touristy bus, that did a circular route around the city to try and vaguely orientate ourselves.  Crashed out at about 4pm and slept through til about 3am’ish.  I know I should of tried to stay awake till later, but I was fighting a losing battle with my eyes that were informing me that sleep was the only option!

I think the plan is that later err today (what day is it?!) we will wander down to the port and grab a ferry over the water to Devonport for more chilled out wandering around and lunching then another early night.. I am determined to try and stay up late today.. until at least 7pm!

In Auckland there seems to be a pretty decent public transport network, including a bus service called “The Link” which is big circular route, so we may use that to pop into the Auckland Museum and get a taster of the history, which as far as I can tell is the Europeans arriving, giving the Maori’s guns and letting them shoot each other, then joining in later to help with the slaughter… yay for Europeans! 😛

No photos today, doubt that either of us were looking overly photogenic, more like pale and pastey Brits looking like they’d been up for 72 hours or so.

Righty.. it’s gone 4am so that will do for now!

6 Days to go…

Only 6 days now, until we fly off to New Zealand.

We will be there for about 6 weeks, spending Christmas in Christchurch, and New Year in Dunedin.

The rough itinery is below.  I will try to use this blog to keep people updated where we are, and post pics etc.

Our route:

Auckland
Bay of Islands
Thames
Lake Taupo
Napier
Wellington
Blenheim
Kaikoura
Christchurch
Omarua
Dunedin
Te Anau
Queenstown
Waiheke Island
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