There are two main requirements to watch a
sunrise:
- An unhindered view of the horizon
- An ability to look in the right direction, namely, the East
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| Julia sporting her brand new Thermos can :) |
We awoke that 4th morning in NZ
refreshed and as snug as bugs in sheepskin rugs. Our bed is surprisingly comfortable, if a
little on the "cosy" side. So waking up at
6.30am wasn’t SUCH a chore. Up we popped
and prepared our thermos flasks of tea and coffee, ready for a quick trip to
the beach to watch the sunrise. How very
romantic.
Unfortunately we were not able to fulfill
the two main requirements for sunrise spectating. No siree.
First off, we didn’t know the way to the beach. Then when we arrived at a golf course and
thought “ah scr*w it let’s watch from here”, we realized we were on the West
coast and so staring out to see the sun would be rising BEHIND us. Epic fail! The final nail in the coffin was the fact
that the sky was almost totally overcast on the horizon. Above our heads the sky was clear, but on the
horizon clouds stubbornly loitered and ruined what could have been a great sunrise.
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| The long and winding road |
Still, we had a nice start to what was to
be a fairly harsh day of driving. We
were going to drive about 8 hours south……..or just north of 500km.
We drove and we drove, then drove some
more. Julia owned her Co-Pilot role and
I just pointed Babette and pressed the pedal down as far as I dared. We were on the way to Waitomo. It was Easter Friday and the roads were
apparently going to be jammed.
Super! Still, on the bright
side, if you’re going to get caught in a traffic jam, you might as well be
sitting in an armchair, with a fridge, bed and toilet behind you J
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| Mmmmm, smoked salmon sandwiches |
Around lunchtime we pulled off the road and
watched the waves and sand from Babette’s little steps as we knocked back a
couple of lovely sandwiches Julia had prepared.
Then back into the cockpit and away.
We hit Auckland and Lo, it came to pass that on the 4th
hour of travel South, the Saroians did come upon a Jam to end all Jams. In fact we came upon a few jams, each one due
to a junction in the road that we were NOT going down. There is, I have decided, nothing more
galling than being stuck in a traffic jam caused by a bunch of people going
somewhere completely different! Grrr.
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| Auckland from the bridge |
Still, another thing I learned, was that as
one of the Co-Pilot’s key responsibilities is that of keeping the Driver in a
fit state to drive, Driver can ask for a massage if his shoulders ache. I wanted to say “demand”, but we all know
Julia and how ridiculous that would sound.
So I asked; without a murmur she arose and duly jabbed her elbows and
knuckles into my aching shoulders.
Sweet.
She took over the Driver role for a
while…..and proved another point. I am a
crap co-pilot (small C and small P in my case).
While she toiled through this morass of slow moving automobiles, I
slouched off to the back of the van and bed.
Tough at the top my friends!
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| Sat down to supper with scrabble |
We arrived in Waitomo at around 5.30pm and
boy oh boy were we ready for dinner and bed.
We booked ourselves onto a great trip for the next day (the reason for
us being in the area) and set about bringing together an Armenian Easter Dinner.
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| A happy Armenian :) |
To the heathens out there, this consists of
rice, cuckoo (which is basically a herby, spiced omelet) and cooked smoked
fish, in this case salmon. To say I was
chuffed would be a massive understatement.
It always means so much to uphold the few traditions we hang onto as
foreigners, especially from my father now he is gone and Julia always makes
every effort to accommodate this. So as
we sat down in Babette to this traditional meal on Easter Friday I was
literally beside myself in happiness. In
New Zealand, with my wife, celebrating Easter old school style and having the
time of my life.
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| That's Julia down there (green trousers) |
Next day we packed up the van, went through
the checklist and headed off to the caving HQ.
Waitomo is a region that has over 300 mapped caves and the locals have
set up a load of tours to take professional gawkers like ourselves through them
in the most enjoyable manner. We were driven out to remote farmland where the mouth to our particular cave is,
we donned our wetsuits and kicked off with a 27m abseil deep into NZ’s
countryside.
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| A bit "toit" in there! |
Down here there was a small stream running
through the cave system. Normally, when
there hasn’t been a drought, the stream is more of a river. However “normally” doesn’t seem to apply to
our holidays, so the river was a stream and we didn’t quite have the adrenalin
fueled tubing trip we’d hoped for. On
the flip side, this did mean we meandered our way down the pitch black tunnels
staring up in wonder at the quite marvelous light display put on by the local
worms. Jean Michel Jarre eat your heart
out. The sweet sound of the water
rushing through the cavern, the soft twinkle of the lights above us, it was
heavenly.  |
| No she isn't stuck! |
We tried a bit of squeezing through
rocks….more to keep us amused then out of any real need and then made our way
back to the entrance of the cave for the final ascent……a climb up the rock face
that we had abseiled down on the way in.
It looked pretty steep and slippery, but as my hat suggests, we Mountain
Goat owned that rock face and were up it like, well, Mountain Goats (yes that
is a capital M and capital G).
Back to Caving HQ, picked up the photos and
out onto the road again, pausing slightly to look at the damage I had done to
someone’s post box earlier that morning.
I was still getting the hang of reversing into places I couldn’t see
with a van I didn’t know.
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| The glow-worm milky way |
We were now on our way down to Lake
Taupo. This is kind of in the middle of
the North Island and home to some pretty miraculously beautiful scener…..one
second. I promised not to say this
didn’t I? Sorry.
The drive down was through some very windy
(and I mean particularly windy) mountain roads that opened up vistas onto some
very New Zealand like countryside. On
the way Julia had a heart-stopping moment as I slammed on the brakes and jumped
out of the car. Bear in mind that roads
out here are single lane, so anyone behind us was going to find it difficult to
pass. Running in front of Babette to
get to Julia’s side, the on-coming traffic stared in wonder and probably a
little confusion as I grinned like a berk at the goat that had escaped onto the
grassy verge.
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| Look at the horns on that one! Just like my hat.....he says trying to avert your eyes from his dubious belt |
What I had forgotten was that I was driving
with my belt undone. Needless to say,
this merely added to the strange looks; there I was standing next to a farm
animal, belt undone, with a very satisfied look on my face. Moving on swiftly!
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| The Eagle has Landed in NZ |
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| Lake Taupo at Sunset |
We arrived in Taupo and it’s a big
lake. I mean huge. Of course it is very beautiful, everything
out here is. Almost boring really; but that’s
the good thing about beauty…..it doesn’t get boring. The first camp-site we tried was full, thank
goodness, because it looked like a Faustian nightmare….if Dante had been here before, one of the
nine circles of hell would have been a cross between this campsite and an
antipodean Butlins.
We drove on to another site and parked up
next to a lovely couple who had owned their site for 13 years. THIRTEEN YEARS people!!! Who DOES that! If you could see me typing this blog, you’d
see me shaking my head in wonder. The
menu that evening was a hamburger extravangaza and though night was falling, I
was intent on getting my hamburger fix.
Our Beef night on TASTE23 included some of Julia’s hamburgers and the
general consensus was “they’re quite good”, so I was not going to let darkness
and an unusual camping grill come between me and burger heaven.
Once again we were up early and on the road as fast as could be. We didn't have a long drive, only about an hour down to the south side of Lake Taupo, to the town of Turangi. This was where we were to meet up with a group of lovely people to go whitewater kayaking. Oooooh yeah! It had been far too long since my last attempt at injuring myself and Julia and I were chomping at the bit to get into some white water.
As I mentioned, NZ has suffered a drought in recent months and so a lot of the rivers are too low to raft in a "meaningful" way.....which is a euphemism for "they're fine if you want a Grade 2/3 experience, but we're after the adrenalin of a Grade 5". So in the absence of being able to ratchet up the danger on the Grading, we decided to increase the risk by making the boat smaller! Wow. This is VERY cool. Not sure if I prefer white water kayaking or rafting now.
I took a while to get a handle on it.....aside from being a mite heavier than most others in the group (ok ok ALL of the group!), I seemed intent on finding every rock in the river. So I was frequently "grounding" myself and getting stuck. Or I was frequently getting turned around in the middle of a particularly nasty/dangerous/fast/unstable part of the river. Or I was coming within a gnat's whisker of falling out of the boat. Or.....well, you get the picture already. Here are a couple of videos to further enlighten you on the experience. You'll notice my supreme control of the kayak, how I appear to "own" the river, how even when going backwards I am moving forwards and how sometimes I don't even need to hold onto the paddle with both hands. I even show disdain for the river bank and attempt....oh just watch the videos.
Our guides (and yes, the rest of the group) were in stitches most of the time at my attempts to descend the rapids and couldn't quite believe how I managed to stay in the raft. I put it down to incredible poise, balance and massive core strength. Anyone that was watching would have said blind luck and stubbornness. Make of it what you will, it didn't look pretty, but it was incredibly good fun.
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| The backdrop to our kayaking trip was insane |
After this kayaking madness we went back to base for cocktails.....no, we didn't, but I wish we had. Instead it was lemonade, hot dogs and hot showers, a very close second to cocktails.
Our stop for the night was at Himatangi Beach. Kind of like 90 Mile Beach (in that it is very very long), but it's a dark sand beach and between the dark sand and the slightly less salubrious environs, you could tell this wasn't the Cote D'Azur of NZ. However the camp site owners were really lovely and we parked up quickly and headed out to see the beach. It was wonderful to stroll along as the sun set, taking photos and splashing in the surf.
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| Bondi Beach this is not! |
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| Werner Nerpel would NOT approve of construction techniques out here! |
During the night we were rudely awoken by an air raid siren. Wow. Let me tell you here and now it is a VERY freaky thing to happen. There is a reason why this noise is used to warn of impending danger and call people to action...because it is just one of the most disturbing and uncomfortable noises to hear. Of course we had no idea what was going on....was their an earthquake coming? Surely not in the North Island. Was their a tsunami coming? Was North Korea kick-starting a nuclear fireworks display? Nope.....someone was calling the local fire service into action. Apparently in NZ, the emergency services are called into action using the air raid siren.
By the time we managed to get back to bed, calm in the knowledge Babette was not going to be swept out to sea, we had a hard time getting back to sleep.
Luckily we hadn't a long drive ahead of us tomorrow. Just a short-ish hop to Wellington.....but it would be Easter Monday and everyone would be on the roads.....
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