Category: new zealand

departing national park

upon a fairly late waking up (9am), we checked out at 10, had breakfast in their kitchen anyway (more french toast and i even had oatmeal this time – ‘date delicious’. i mostly thought otherwise but finished the oatmeal anyway.), and departed for the very long drive to wellington and our highest rated hostel 25 minutes north of wellington.

the drive was as usually scenic and thus boring in terms of writing. pretty sky, pretty mountains, pretty ocean (actually tasman sea), pretty beach, pretty rocks, pretty hills, pretty trees, pretty sheep. we’ve seen a lot of constructions, and the road was very challenging as we were moving out of the mountains.

speaking of the mountains, mt. ruapehu decided to be kind and showed its magnificent height and face and ice covered peaks on the morning of our departure. it was a fantastic view and i’ve taken far too many photographs of it as usual.

guesthouse by the tasmanian sea

arrival to our hostel (highest rated backpackers hostel in new zealand – 96%) was fantastic. the place is a wooden house on the shore of the ocean, and our extra special room had the lookout onto the ocean. it was definitely worth the exta 5 dollars we’ve each paid, as the view was spectacular at all times. however while the house, being extremely pretty, and the room, being well cared for, and the view, all were awesome, what really made this hostel remarkable is the people.

the owners, john and helen, are a couple that seem to absolutely adore everyone that comes to visit them. it really does feel like you are visiting, as opposed to staying in their house – you feel like a guest, and that’s how they address you in their cute little signs around the place – “to all our guests, please leave the bathroom prepared for the next person”. its such a nice way imho to write signs.

the entire hostel is just mindblowingly high quality building. besides it being a super old 1940’s wooden house that is apparently a local historical landmark, the owners obviously put thought and love and money into all aspects of the stay. the kitchen has a 6 stove gas burner, and each toilet has its own mini sink. there is soap and shampoo (first hostel with that), and even hairdriers in each shower. the showers are amazing, with awesomely hot water, and the even the toilets have this kitchy cute “transparent plastic embedded with shells and sea stars” seats.

the kitchen is huge, and besides the stove has a freezer, a thoughtful stack of plastic boxes to put your food inside, and an insane amount of cutlery for all intents and purposes. there was even a 2 book edition of backpacker’s recips – 2 notebooks, one totally filled and one on the way there, with recipes from previous guests of the house for cheap/tasty/intersting (pick 2?) meals. i really wished we had time to stay and enjoy all this, and try cooking something.

i could go on about the hostel forever, but instead let me just say that the next morning we gave the owners one of our canadian souvenirs – a thermometer with a canadian penny – that they very happily and thankfully accepted. it was the first souvenir we gave. i’m 100% intent on coming back to this place, and hopefully meeting both of the owners again.

windy welly

when we were checking in, besides givng an interesting introduction to the house, the city in which it is located, and history of wellington (capital of NZ, and the nearby big city which most backpackers in this hostel aim to visit), john also asked us about our time constraints and drew up a nice walk in wellington that we had the time and energy to take. he highlighted interesting parts, recommended places to stop (free museum, pretty building, modern building, old building, super-ugly building :) ), with a sense of humor and understanding. after this nice introduction, oleg and i loaded our stuff into our room, and departed for the windy welly.

windy welly is the locals’ nickname for wellington as it is a very windy city. this proved to be true as we observed a girl struggle into marlyn monroe-sque poses in the battle with the wind. other than that, it wasn’t as bad as chicago (now THATS the windy city).

wellington felt in a way like a mix of ottawa and toronto, except … backwards. (since all the driving is still done on the lefthand side). ottawa because almost no one realizes wellingont is the capital and most people think that it is auckland (come to think of it – same thing with amsterdam and de haag. what do i have for countries with confusing capital locations?), and thus the downtown has mostly banks and government agencies. toronto because the people are very very stylish, the city is very modern looking, and general atmosphere of downtown reminded me of TO strongly.

we had coffee in a local cafe where the girl had blond hair and a proper mohawk. she was really cute and now i want to cut my hair like hers cause it was just AWESOME. yes, i’m still on a trip about my hair being so short :P you’d be too, its so awesome!

the walk was fun, but i got tired fairly soon as i caught a cold and generally felt very sick and tired. on the way back we filled up with gas and groceries, and evening was spent on awesome steak, awesome garlic mashed potatoes, and awesome wine (i totally spent almost all of the wine. as in, drank it.)

after dinner i watched some ocean waves, another firefly episode and finally some dreams.

waking up

after staying up late with the expectations that the weather would not cooperate, of course the weather cooperated and oleg had the dubious pleasure of witnessing what an enraged sleepy person can say in the first moments of the day. after a few uncomfortable moments (i think mostly for me as i was alone in the room at the time), and a breakfast of yet more french toast, we departed on a 2 hour return hike through the mountains, titled teranaki falls, as those are the waterfalls that we’d have the pleasure of seeing. besides generally enjoying mountains and wanting to hike a little, another cool thing about this mountain in particular is that it was playing the role of mordor in LOTR. can you recognize it? :D

hiking

the preparation for the hike deserves a specific mention on its own as we weren’t sure how fast the weather could turn, and how difficult the hike would end up being. thus i packed the following things:

camera bag + contents

backpack with:

• small light tripod (oleg’s)
• advil
• long sleeve shirt
• sweater
• scarf (that could multifunction as many other things)
• glasses + container for contacts prefilled with the solution for storage (in case i had to store one or both)
• compass + thermometer (that my dad gave me before i left)
• spare socks

what i ended up using out of the backpack?

tripod (for shooting the waterfalls)

i guess that was better then having to use any of the other stuff, that would imply problems. the sun was shining, and the dark rainy clouds of yesterday have moved away to open up a whole world of warmth, and pleasant trails. my running shoes were totally unsuited for hiking in general, but thankfully it was an easy trail and thus we had no problems.

weather and the rest of the day

amazingly enough we got perfectly lucky with the weather. as we were completing the hike, the rain started, and as we left the park to drive back to the hostel, the clouds parted just enough to show the beautiful peak of the snow covered ruapehu (which was used in LOTR for the snowy mountains scene) right as we arrived to the hostel. perfect!

of course after that piece of luck we didn’t care about the weather anymore, thus it started pouring down and being generally windy and cold. i was feeling kind of sick, so the day was spent inside, enjoying my computer, quiet time, and hot tea.

thermal wonderland

after waking up earlier than oleg for the first time so far, i went and uploaded all the photographs that i had. hope you guys enjoyed them!
breakfast was some toasted bread with melted cheese and tomatoes. it all came out kinda half assed cause we were in a hurry, and the bread was totally wrong for toasting. note to ya’ll backpackers – don’t try to be creative. stick to the basics and you’ll be fine. :) sliced bread is a good idea. butter is good and useful and at some point you’ll need to buy salt and sugar (unless you stick to above 80% rated hostels, which at times might be impossible due to fullness or simply lack of such places).

regardless of the uninteresting breakfast we left for our thermal wonderland, which is a huge park full of various geothermal pools that were all created with one sole purpose – making olya choke. i sincerely believe that at some point i just stopped breathing air from the outside and just started using the reserves that saved up between my bones and such. regardless of the suffering (i swear, looking at some of the photos makes me smeel sulfur again, and as i’m writing this 3 days later i can still recall the smells effortlessly while writing about it), the beauty of the park did not disappoint.

what did disappoint was the high advertised geiser that erupts daily at 10:15 thanks to some chemical tinkering (pouring soap into it essentially makes it explode). when you come here avoid the geiser – i shot a video of the whole procedure and it was entirely boring. the uselessness of this experience was made up by us picking up a scottish guy whose ‘mates’ left him at the place and went to play golf as they’ve been to the wonderland before. he ended up needring a ride from the wonderland to the geiser (its about a 5 minute drive but too long of a walk). talking to him was an amusing experience as it reminded me of david, who lived on my floor in maastricht – he was scottish too.

the thermal wonderland was at times boring, at times very pretty, and at times just incredibly weird (think bright radioactive yellow green pool of something, that’s named devil’s ink bowl and looks absolutely deathly, about 2 meters away from you). however one thing was constantly present, is, well, the smell.

hanging out at taupo

after the wonder of the sulfur stench filling the air getting into mountains and lakes was a joy. for me at last, as i wasn’t driving – oleg had his share of fun twists and turns with the german made holden astra.

taupo itself is a “big” city, meaning that we managed to get lost in all 5 streets crossing the main one under my skillful navigation. after a bit of walking we found the take out pizza place we were looking for and found out that its closed before 5 (time was around 2:30pm). since everything else in sight on all 5 streets was faaar too expensive, we ended up eating pizza hut for lunch, under rain.

it is the rain that was the sign of trouble to come. the forecast unfortunately was that all day today, and all day tomorrow it will be raining, windy, gusty, dark, grey, gloomy and the exact opposite of the weather we needed to hike through the mountain range in national park.

arrival to national park

after a few more hours of driving, we arrived to the rainy, windy national park backpackers. this hostel is remarkable for its rock climbing hall, and the view of the 2 volcanoes off the front door step. except i felt tired and sick, and it was raining and cloudy, so i wasn’t up for climbing, and the volcanoes weren’t up for showing their faces.

oleg nevertheless persuaded me to take a lesson for the type of belay that they use (so now i know the ‘real world’ belay type, instead of the gri-gri which is almost fully automatic. this one is really easy and awesome and basic and requires full attention, but very effective, and cheap.), and climb with him. i did two (or three?) very easy climbs before my foot let me know i had enough. i belayed oleg for the next few climbs until he became exhausted, and then enjoyed an insane amount of firefly episodes.

we had a late dinner followed by more firefly and sleep, with hope for a better, sunnier tomorrow that would let us hike through the volcanoes. i was very sceptical about it, since i know that if i think that something will happen it usually won’t :)

lights out were late, around 12.

te kuiti to caves

in the morning we left the welcoming hostel at te kuiti, and departed to the waitomo caves. the waitomo caves are famous for two features – glowworms (as kim at te kuiti said “what a nice term for fly larvae”), and stalactites and stalagmites. we took a short tour that covered both attractions with a fairly superficial depth, but enough to comprehend their beauty and uniqueness.

the rock formations were quite interesting, but at best reminded me of the mindblowing caves i’ve seen in israel. maybe it was due to the fact that i was so much younger, but those seemed better. the tour guide however was a very witty and engaging person, delivering all the lines with the proper sense of humor and timing – i.e. the various names for the formations that they have.

the second part of the tour was far more impressive, if only too short. we took a peaceful ride on a boat (that moved by way of ropes that are hung in the cave, and the guide pulls the boat along on them) in an underground river that goes through the caves. thanks to the conditions in such a dark and moist environment the ceilings are covered with glowworms – fly larvae that glows a quiet radioactive green. there are hundreds if not thousands of tiny dots literring the tall ceilings of the caves, creating their own little universe. very quiet and very pretty. given the chance to do over i’d take one longer gloworm tour and cut out the rocks.

caves to rotorua

after the caves we headed to rotorua, which i think i’ve mentioned before. the thing is that as much as i was looking forward to it thanks to the pretty pictures, no one told me how much this town stinks. the town and the surrounding areas just REEK of sulfur (think rotten eggs), so breathing quickly became a challenge.

whats interesting that in the start i didn’t feel the smell at all, while oleg noticed it right away, but when we walked towards their local city park i started choking and gagging right away, while most people around me seemed to be just fine (if a little disgusted with the smell but not dying).

walking around rotorua

the whole sulfur smell comes from geothermal activity in that area, which leads to a lot of “boiling” mudpools, geisers and the like. the local city park has at least 15 little pools (see pictures), with boiling mud (as far as i understand its not really boiling, but is actually releasing carbon dioxide bubbles), and various pools of various size and color gradients. its not that remarkable until you consider that its right in the middle of the city, and the surrounding citizens not only seem to be not surprised or bothered by the smell, but also not concerned with the vast amounts of various activity that’s happening under their feet.

shortly after the pools we escaped towards the lake, which was easier, except for when the wind starts blowing wisps of sulfury smells your way. the town is not that big, so after walking around for a while (and actually acquiring FINALLY a tan on my legs and hands thanks to the warm sun, and a chance to wear shorts and a sleeveless shirt (for the first time)) we headed back to the hostel.

the hostel while generally being pretty boring, big, (while neat we only had one outlet, ouch), and without the atmosphere to chat, had two hugely redeeming features. one of them is a spa that’s powered by a local geothermal spring. after walking around (and having my bathing suit on for we expected some springs where we can ‘chill’ and relax) with no satisfaction and only sulfury fumes we joyfully had a quick 10 minute dip on it. it feels like quite the luxury to relax in nice hot water (even while still having the presence of sulfur it is nice) when you don’t even have your private bathroom and shower.

stayed one night – internet

after a shower we headed out to buy some food. today was a very pleasant steak and potatoes night. we even bought wine, which while was being cheap was not that good, so i think we’ll stick to beer from this point on. cooking went more or less successfully, it was just a pleasure to eat some steak.

the second redeeming feature of this hostel is its cheap internet access – $5 for two hours. whats even more awesome is that their machine crashes and the internet cafe program has a bunch of prompts after restarting that if you just don’t answer, you can get internet for free. we still ended up using almost all of our time before discovering this feature/bug, but this lead to extensive upload of both entries and in the morning, photographs.

update for this entry will come later, as i haven’t written today’s summary yet.

you can read the stories of the past 4 days in the previous 4 posts.

life’s good, the country is superiorly beautiful, but i couldn’t connect to my ftp through IE so no photos for you.

the morning was marked with me not wanting to wake up at any costs, and us departing last from the hostel out of all the people that were staying there. we’ve had some more of those farm fresh eggs for breakfast, some tea, and a desert of lens cleaning (which is mindblowingly difficult to do! help!).

we departed the place around 10:30am, and now it is 4:09pm and we’ve been driving essentially non stop. one stop was made around 12pm for some supplies for the road – water, juice, cheese, crackers, powerbars, grapes (ohmygosh i want more. they are expensive here – $10/kg, but now of course i’m craving them), and apples.

we’re about 30 kms away from the final big city before our hostel where we’ll buy our dinner stuff – chicken and spaghetti and i’ll figure out some sauce, i guess. most likely tomatoes cause they should be good and fresh here.

my nose and cheecks are red – a bit burned – despite the 45spf sunscreen we keep applying. generally speaking my face looks less pale, but i still didnt have a chance to just lie in the sun and TAN, and i really can’t wait to do that.

upon arrival to our lovely hostel of which neither me or oleg take any photographs, we were so tired so we just lounged around the place for the rest of the day, thus not leaving much for me to write about. we looked out on the view (which we do have photos of), eventually cooked dinner (from the store bought chicken and pasta and tomato sauce), and soon thereafter went to sleep, after talking to some other hostelers.

interesting points learned today:

oleg learned to now open his mouth while walking around with a headlight, as a bug flew in and took a while to come out.

we learned that kiwi bbqs don’t have the top lid, leaving the task of bbqing a chicken quite difficult. andrew, another hosteler, who came back to NZ with his wife kim and 1 year old miles, adviced us to boil it first and then grill it.

i learned how to play with a cat (in terms of making it chase after a tree branch) (it was quiestionable who made who chase)

i overheard germans next door to us talking and i recognized one word – jaggermeister. i of course perked up and said “jaggermeister! thats a word i can recognize in any language!” to which they explained that they were wishing for a shot right there. lesson learned: carry jaggermeister with you, always

grapes in NZ cost $10/kg. OUCH. someone tell me the canadian price?

chicken is the cheapest meat and not lamb, despite having 3mil people and 30mil sheep

fell asleep by 11, time to wake up – 8 am. and i’m still thinking that’s not enough sleep!

the downside of sleeping in a dorm is that you wake up together with the first person to wake up – in my case, 6am. the alarms continued to ring at 6:15, 6:30, 7:00, 7:30, 7:45 and mine rang at 8, and there was still a person sleeping!

oleg was already at the counter checking out. he also found a cruise that we can take, which departed at 9 – boarding at 8:45am. we quickly parked nearby the pier, got coffee and sandwiches, and soon after left for the cruise on the yellow shiny boat.

cruise on the bay

the cruise was 4 hours long, and surprisingly awesome. the boat was one of those that hops on the waves instead of cutting through them, which lead to first me getting sea sick, and then oleg. however despite those two minor moments of inconvinience, we generally were very happy with lots of sun and lots of wind and sometimes even splashes of sea water (i know that all of my hands, face and hair was salty tasting afterwards… don’t ask how i tasted my hair).

we first went to find some dolhpins, where i shot some videos which kinda suck, and photos which really suck, and oleg got some incredible photographs. i’ll just defer to “yay teamwork” on this one. after looking at those awesome animals bouncing around, and listening to all the abilities that they posses (far more than humans), i’m firmly convinced that HHGTG had it right.

the second and final part of the trip was bouncing out to the pacific ocean, which was anything but pacified, and looking at some islands, rocks, beaches, listening to some kiwi history and going through a hole in a rock. it was far more exciting than what it sounds like! the hole in the rock is essentially a … well .. hole that lets a fairly big boat and go out into the pacific ocean. its pretty worrysome when you see how huge the waves are, but our captain managed to do it without killing us. after all the excitement and wind and speed and dangerousness, i found a sunny, windless corner on the top part of the ship and i just napped there. it was beautifully warm. i still can’t get enough of the warmth and sun. feels like the cold of toronto won’t ever leave me!

upon completion of the tour, i finally got to try out the card and found out they ripped me off – paid $10 for a $5 and didn’t notice. however, all is well as now a connection exists between the continents. and furthermore, we can make reservations without spending $.50/minute on local calls. those vodaphone people are NUTS.

after extensive testing of the card we started driving back down south. the road was astoundingly pretty, with more new and beautiful surprises around each corner. one place in particular just took our breath away – it was this absolutely awesome, soft white beach, pearly blue water and mountains on the horizon. we stopped, walked around, i got ice cream, and we soon continued on our way south towards new adventures. but that place was something special. and the most incredible thing is that people here seem to take places like that as normal.

one of the reasons why we ended up going this way in the first place was because of the kaori trees of the area. kaori trees are a NZ speciality – they are HUGE, white, smooth, tall trees, and on the west coast of northern NZ there is a whole forest of them.

we stopped by one tree in particular. neither words or pictures can describe how huge it is – let me try numbers. its thought to be around 2000 years old. at least. it is 50 meters tall, and 13 meters girth. like oleg said “if i lived here a few hundred years ago and saw this thing in the forest i’d start worshipping it too”.

after the tree, we whirled down the curving roadways towards our hostel, both being pretty tired of driving. the road through the forest was incredibly happy, and you can see some videos of how awesome it looks here.

after leaving the forest, and doing some more scenic driving we arrived to our hostel which turned out to be yet another awesome thing in a pretty awesome day. the road to the hostel is a curving 200m long driveway that goes STEPLY down. a very interesting idea of driving.

the hostel turned out to be a really pleasant, quaint, country style place. except i tore the curtain (a bit) and broke the window handle (one of the two). i’m just going to pretend nothing happened and hope for the best. its up to them to keep this place running in face of clumsy travellers like me! especially given how “strong” i am, that window handle was about to break anyway.

the hostel offered fresh farm eggs for 40 cents (boiled eggs never have tasted so good), and homecooked steak dinner for $12, served at 7pm. we eagerly signed up for that (the time was 5:30), and i made myself 2 above mentioned boiled eggs (oleg didn’t feel like any). the time before dinner was spent lounging around the place, unpacking, reserving the stay for tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, and just relaxing.

the dinner was incredibly filling – steak and lots of veggies. tried kaura, like sweet potatoes (never tried before, but tastes exactly as described. sweet. potatoey.), except local to NZ. and absolutely mindblowingly awesome bbq sauce. imagine very pleasant bbq taste in a thick, juicy, warm, dark red sauce, with a strong, pleasant sensation of wasabi. turns out the owners grow wasabi. must… resist… temptation.. to… ask.. for… some… i think they could sell that recipe to restaurants easily. so awesome.

evening was spent editing photographs, typing a little of the blog (i’m finishing right now, which is next day in the car on the way further down the island) and staying up till late talking to other hostelers. they’ve got tents and they pitch them in the backyard and then cook in the hostel kitchen. we intend on buying food tomorrow and starting to cook as of tomorrow. i’m mostly likely going to be responsible for figuring out what to buy, so that will be interesting. we have no fridge at the moment, or box, to use a fridge (plan is to freeze water bottles and just store stuff there). hopefully we’ll find one when we stop for supplies.

only 2 (3 nights) days in NZ and i’m already overwhelmed! doesn’t feel this short, but instead more like a week.

departing auckland

the day started with a (far too early) waking up at 8:45am, by the hotel wake up call. we grudgingly drag ourselves out of the super comfortable beds (after the couch and the fold out bed of sydney, it was definitely nice to sleep on a hotel quality bed), and went to inspect the breakfast. the inspection was considered a success with 4 bowls of cereal (on my part only), 2 glasses of orange juice, and 2 cups of coffee with cream and sugar.

soon after the adventure has officially began with our checkout and departure from the hotel to the “bus on tahp o; the rahd”, which turned out about 10 minutes walk under blazing sunlight. given how before we were mostly in shade and/or wind, and dressed fairly warmly (like sweatshirt and windbreaker), and ended up being loaded like pack mules (oleg’s backpack is 15 kilos and laptop bag is 7 kilos, and mine are 10kgs and 4kgs) – this lead to a lot of discomfort really fast. upon arrival to the “tahp o’ the rahd” we figured the top is the other side where we could see a bus stop, so we crossed. upon arrival of the bus it turned out that we were on the wrong side, so we rushed back to the other side, and in another 10 minutes our bus came. total savings out of this small adventure: about $20 – since the bus turned out to be $6/person. cheap! we were told tales of 15$ – $20 tickets.

from this point life became a little easier for the next hour, while we were riding into town from the close-to-airport-hotel. unfortunately, in town we still had to haul our bags to vodaphone (to get a sim card. ask my parents for the number if you feel like paying $50 cents a minute to talk to me!), and then to avis. i believe i’ve worked off all the doritos i ate in 2005 on those few walks (and even getting lost once).

the process of getting our cute white 4 door hatchback holden astra was incredible. i don’t think i’ve told any of you that if you reserve the rental car in NZ from canada, the under 25 age charge ($25/day!!!) is waived. i called Avis NZ first a few weeks before christmas to check if we can rent at all, and they told me this information. then oleg called avis canada then avis international who confirmed this

guess what we were told when we arrived to avis to rent the car? “you’re under 25, so we have to stick you with a $25/day charge”. of course we disputed this, and two fairly sleazy looking young men of course disputed us. after them arrogantly demanding to know who did we talk to and when (when i asked why – and i was nice to them, i swear – the main sleazy looking one said “we record all the conversations”. *eye roll*), they said “sure we’ll call avis international to check”, with their own eye roll. after waiting for about half an hour, the less sleazy guy hung up with a slightly disappointed look and told the main guy that “yeah, you can give them the discount here if you wanted to”. argh! anyway, we got the discount. so its all good. :-)

upon settling into the car with all our stuff (i’m taking bets on the amount of time it took me to forget the weight i had to carry and start regretting not taking this or that “since we drive anyway” – hint, i’ve already said that. on the same day.), we quickly left auckland, with only one goodbye snapshot of the city’s skyline. and a blurry one at that!

driving…

the trip around new zealand started off with us heading towards “bay of islands”, which turned out to be a fair bit away. after a challenging drive through the beautiful NZ scenery (see photos for all the photographs/snapshots – i’m going to oversaturate you people with those as much as the sky here is oversaturated to blue, because there IS NO WAY THAT I CAN CHOOSE), we stopped in wharengei, pronounced “fanragey”, for a fairly expensive dinner ($20/person) (but still better than nothing, and at least the food was excllent), and a break from driving.

driving itself is very interesting. in sydney our host’s car had the blinker on the right hand side and the windshield wipers on the left – totally backwards. oleg was worried about it, as it’s a big habit of clicking the blinkers with your hand when you turn. thankfully, our car has the blinkers on the left side, which however prompts the question of what is the standard? we may never know ;)

but, generally speaking, EVERYTHING is backwards. turning left is “sticking to the curb” and turning right is “going to the far side”. driving on highways is alright as you’re moving together with some other cars, but pulling out and parking is just ODD. oleg’s saying that the biggest challenge is feeling where the car ends – its totally backwards.

as the passenger, sitting where i’d usually be driving, is not that weird. the thing that threw me off the most is that the mirror is facing oleg and not me. in the start i had to crash the instinctive reach of correcting it to face me – the gesture comes very naturally after being used to doing it all the time in toronto! other than that, its surpisingly regular – some moments of oddness exist, but mostly its fine.

the thing that made us BOTH feel like we’re on pluto is that the windshiled wipers go the other way. i can’t describe how much you don’t realize it, but its just SO WRONG for them to be rotating the other way. which brings me to rain – and weather.

weather

on the way to paihia (the big city in bay of islands where we wanted to stay and take a tour the next day) the weather changed at least a 100 times. and the most awesome thing is that the sky was always blue throughout that time. basically, it was really sunny, then rainy, then really rainy, then really rainy and sunny, then really sunny and cloudy, then some rain, then some rain and a lot of sun, then a lot of sun, then … you get the idea. it was mindblowingly awesome, cause the sky stayed blue, clouds stayed fluffy, and sun kept on shining, but seriously strange to the maximum degree.

arrival to bay of islands

we arrived into the scarily beautiful bay of islands in the evening. oleg said he had seen more pretty views, and in some respect i agree that it wasn’t the most gorgeous view i’ve seen. however, it was certainly unique. imagine standing on a shore of a bay that’s big, but not so big that you can’t percieve its limits. the bay is littered with islands that are about 50-70 meters in circumference, and each island has its own white sandy beach which turns into a “mountain” (a very steep high hill) that is covered with lush greenery (trees, evergreen trees, and palms). and the sun is setting, and the color is grey and pink, and the yachts and sailboats anchored at the bay are softly rocking on the waves.

unfortunately finding a place to stay was not as peaceful. after going through a whole bunch of hostels (walking between them as there arelike 5 within 3 meters of each other), we found 2 beds in 2 seperate dorms. at that point it was starting to get dark, so it was just easier to agree.

upon figuring that out, we made plans for the next day, which essentially concluded in deciding to wake up at 8, so that we make the cut off time for morning tours – 8:45-9:00am. after walking around the town for a bit and finding a convinience store, we got a phone card (one NZ for dialing NZ numbers, and one international, for dialing out. you use the NZ card to call from a payphone to a local number for the international card, and then you dial the pin, and finally your home phone number), we proceeded to local bar where it was 2 beers for the price of one. the price of one beer is $5. so, life became very enterntaining very quickly.

the bar had some silly contests, and i had the pleasure of watching one with 2 kiwi (that’s new zealanders for those of you who are not “in” to the “slang”) girls who were on their vacation from oakland. the contest was musical chairs, and you could take off your shirt to stay in, or sing a song, or make a little dance. the girls were joking about americans and saying that they’re not shoving enough.

after watching the 12-year-old-looking-guy win, and the a-bit-too-big-girl fall on her ass trying to make it to the chair, i decided that i’ve had enough local enterntainment and headed to the hostel, where the internet was too expensive, but not so much that i could resist its lure. quick emails were sent, vodaphone survey was filled out in order for us to get $10 credit on our cell, and soon after sleep came.