New Zealand---first few days

I found a hostel that has internet, so I thought I'd blog a little about New Zealand before I start forgetting things. So...I got here okay! Yay! And the 13-hour flight wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Since it left at 9:00 p.m. I was actually able to sleep for several hours, so that helped. I hope I'll be as lucky on the way back.

We got into Auckland at 4:30 a.m. I couldn't check into my hostel until 4:00 p.m. That was actually good, in a way, because I probably would have gone straight to sleep if I could have. This forced me to adjust. The plan for New Zealand is that there are no plans: I'm just going to go where the wind blows me, doing what looks interesting at the time. The hostel in Auckland was the only one I booked in advance. (When I get to Australia in a few weeks things will be more planned.)

I took the ferry out to an island called Rangitoto. The island is uninhabited, probably a nature preserve or something. It's so cool that Auckland runs a special ferry to this island four times a day, even during the winter months, so that a handful of people can go hiking if they feel like it. Rangitoto Island is an extinct volcano (of course) and is covered in light lava rocks. If I had paid better attention in Geology, I probably would have known what kinds of rocks they were. Pumice or something? Anyway, there was a trail that led to the top of the volcano and then about twelve miles of trails around the island. I hiked all day, which was wonderful! Every time I stopped hiking I would get cold, so I had to keep going. This picture shows Auckland from Rangitoto Island.

After catching the ferry back, I spent a little bit of time wandering around Auckland. I would have spent more time, but it was cold! Not the sub-zero kind of cold we have in Spokane, but a humid, penetrating sort of cold. It was also wet and windy. The wind hasn't let up since I got here, but I'm adjusting. Auckland was beautiful and very clean, but was also a bit generic. It seemed like every other large city in the whole world. I could even forget I was in another country if it wasn't for the fact that everyone was so exceptionally friendly and seemingly delighted by the fact that someone from abroad was visiting their city. That attitude hasn't stopped since I got here either; everywhere I've been, the New Zealanders have been thrilled that I was here. One other traveler I met said it makes him worried that he'll get used to everyone here being so friendly and liking him so much, and then he'll go back to his own country and be depressed that nobody is talking to him.

I checked in to my hostel in Auckland, and the first person I met was from Pocatello. When I told him I had grown up in Blackfoot, he asked me if I had gone to Blackfoot or Snake River High School. I was thinking, "Dude, we're in New Zealand! You're not supposed to know about Snake River!" The next person I met was from Boise. She introduced me to her friend who was going to school at Gonzaga, and who lived about two miles away from me in Spokane. I was getting a bit disgusted...I came to New Zealand to meet NEW people, not people I could meet going grocery shopping in my hometown. Luckily things changed after that, and I don't think I've met any Americans at all since then.

I left Auckland the next day. I'm sure there was much more to see, but I wanted to go somewhere that felt a little less generic. I took a bus to Hamilton and then decided to go to Raglan, but the bus to Raglan didn't leave for another five hours. Wandering around Hamilton, I found a beautiful walking path along the river. These pictures don't do it justice (NONE of the pictures do justice to ANY of these places).







I can't remember why I decided to go to Raglan; there must have been something intriguing in the guidebook. I'm so glad I went there, though. It's been my favorite place so far. It's a hippie town, and it reminded me of coastal Oregon and northern California. Everything was vegetarian and organic and healthy, and most of the people weren't wearing shoes. I'm sure there was a shop somewhere selling healing crystals and incense; it was that kind of place. It's also a surfing mecca (why is it that surfing seems to go hand-in-hand with a granola lifestyle?). The hostel had free surfboard rentals, but I didn't take them up on it. Maybe next time. The hostel was right on the beach (this picture is the view from the patio), and was huge and comfortable. There was a guy from Argentina who was checking in at the same time I was, and we ended up hanging out together for the rest of the time I was there. He's a mechanical engineering student doing an internship in Raglan, designing wave pools. I, on the other hand, did my internship for the Department of Energy in a lab in Idaho. Life isn't fair.

We set off the next morning to find the surfing beach, with vague directions from a surfer dude at the hostel. We never did manage to find the beach the guy was talking about, but we had an awesome walk around the bluffs overlooking the coast. We passed a sign that told us that today's fire danger was "Very High," which we had to laugh about because everything was WET. There were standing pools of water everywhere, the ground was muddy, and there was no way to even light a fire, let alone accidently burn up a few acres. "Fire Danger!" became our joke for the rest of the day. Anyway, I loved the town and the beaches. When I grow up I want to move to Raglan.

After Raglan I went back to Hamilton and caught a bus to Rotorua. Rotorua was fascinating but bizarre. It's a geologic hot spot and has the distinctive Yellowstone-y rotten egg smell all over the town. It's also like Yellowstone in that it has volcanic activity all over the place: mud pots, hot springs, geysers, etc. So there are schools and grocery stores and stoplights like a regular town... and it doesn't seem to bother anyone that the mud boils and the lake steams and geysers periodically blow off a little water. There are signs saying to stay on the sidewalks, not because you'll get hit by a car but because there's thermal activity in the area and you wouldn't want to get boiled to death. This was the first place that I felt warm, toasty warm. If I got cold, I could just go stand next to the nearby mud pot and warm right up.


Rotorua also has the distinction of being one of the few places in the world where you can go zorbing. I wanted to do this ever since I saw it on The Amazing Race. They put you in this big plastic ball and roll you down the hill! I don't have any pictures of ME doing this because they wanted to charge me $25 for the pictures, but just picture me inside one of these balls rolling downhill. It was awesome!






So then I caught a bus to Taupo. Lake Taupo is the largest lake in New Zealand, the size of Singapore. It's actually the crater of a huge volcano which, when it erupted thousands of years ago, was seen as far away as China. Or so my bus driver told me, and I have no reason to doubt his reliability. I spent a few hours wandering around the lake and would have hiked some more, but the wind was strong and incessant. So I hung out with people at the hostel instead.




The main reason I went to Taupo was to go bungee jumping! I knew I wanted to go bungee jumping in New Zealand, since the Kiwis invented it. There was a brochure in Auckland Airport that had a picture of bungee jumping into the river in Taupo. (It was similar to this picture--you can see the platform sticking out from the top of the cliff.) It was so pretty that I decided that town was where I would jump off a cliff, of my own free will and choice, with a little rope tied to my ankle. I took the plunge this morning. I think the whole thing would have been easier if I could have just walked onto the platform and jumped off, like you do with the high dive in the swimming pool. But instead I had to go onto the platform and sit there for about five minutes while they strapped me up and got everything ready, and I had nothing to do except look down. It was 47 meters, so around 150 feet, which I know is not the highest bungee jump in the world, but it seemed plenty high to me. They showed me the video afterward (I didn't know I was being videoed) and as the operators were going about their business on the platform, I just kept looking down and moaning, "Oh my gosh..." and covering my face with my hands. So then, after they got everything ready, I had to walk forward to the edge of the platform and put my toes on the very edge. And then I had to unclench my hands from their death grip on the railing of the platform and put them above my head, like I was going to swan dive (which I guess I was). That was the hardest part: just standing on the edge and letting go of the railing. I almost chickened out then, but I knew I'd be so mad at myself later if I didn't go through with it. Then the lady yelled, "Three, two, one, BUNGEE!" and I jumped off. I actually got so close to the water that my fingers got wet. The whole thing was over so fast that it was hard to say whether it was actually fun or not, but an hour later I was still trembling, so it must have been pretty cool. I didn't buy the pictures they took, since they cost about as much as the bungee jump itself, but I got this nifty certificate.

That was this morning, and afterwards I got on a bus to Napier. I came to Napier because it has a hostel called Archie's Bunker, and I loved the name so much that I had to stay there. Napier is gorgeous, like everywhere else. It's right on the beach, but it's a calm beach without big waves (it's on the east coast and Raglan was on the west coast). The weather has also been beautiful today, the first sunny day since I got here. (I'm not complaining; I knew it was going to be the dead of winter. But seeing the sun is nice.) I walked and walked and walked along the beach and had it mostly to myself. I love the offseason. Tomorrow I'm going on a tour of the town and then I'll hop on the bus and go somewhere else, probably Wellington. I think I'll keep heading south until I see snow and then go back north again.