my personal timeline

the interislander

after an early waking up in our lovely hostel, and a superbly pleasant conversation with our hosts (and lots of petting of their HUGE bernese mountain dog, that is only bred in bern! what a coincidence), and giving them the thermometer with the penny, we departed towards our ferry.

the ferry is completely unlike any ferry i’ve seen before. for one, when we say ferry in toronto we mean this kinda tiny boat that houses maybe 300 people, the ferry that we took here is called the interislander, takes 3 hours to move between the islands, and has seating for at least 700 people + however many cars (we didn’t go into the car parking area). it is huge – the biggest boat i’ve ever been on – has like 7 levels, and tonnes of things – cafes, movie theatre, a few outside decks, workstations (with plugs for internet and electricity – unfortunately they were still in process of having broadband internet (o_O no idea how) and didn’t have any dial up either), shops and a lot of comfortably wide walkways. very spaced out ship in terms of seats and walkways – i’m sure it could actually handle more people than it takes. which is itself an interesting point as it seemed to be almost entirely empty. at no single point it felt like there were too many people around you.

we quickly got our south island car – a dark red mitsubishi lancer, in a far worse shape than the car we’ve had on the north island. so bad that the next day we’re stopping by christchurch (biggest city on the south island and thankfully on our way to where we need to go – also coincidentally the city out of which we’re flying out) avis to see if we can exchange it. we quickly departed towards kaikoura – the city in which oleg has booked a hostel for us.

cafe in the middle of nothing

on the long and picturesque drive along the coast two very pleasantly surprising stops awaited us. the first was a cafe, called “the store”, that was located precisely in the middle of nowhere. imagine a big, old, stylish looking barn – wooden walls, tall ceilings, and a lot of wine cellars around the place. wooden chairs and little round tables, with candles and salt/pepper shakers litter the left side of the room, and in front a huge open arch that gives you a few of perfectly turquoise ocean, crashing waves on black sharp rocks, and lush greenery in the courtyard.

the place is so particularly awesome because it has absolutely nothing for kilometres either way, except for the beach with polished rocks on it, and sharp cliffs cutting the turquoise water into white foam.

another reason why i loved it is cause they gave the hungry me a mindblowingly awesome carrot cake. it was the best carrot cake i’ve ever eaten in my life. moist, soft, with awesome sweet glaze and here’s the genius part – they cover the top entirely with raw sunflower and pumpkin seeds, and offer yogurt on the side. yum. i gotta learn how to make that.

while i was devouring that piece of art, oleg walked around the beach, and i snapped a few photos of him looking absolutely tiny compared to the nature. after the magnificent cake (okay okay i’m done with the cake now) i went down to the beach too and collected a few of the amazingly white (and grey and black) smooth round rocks that were lying around. the place is just surreal. the best i could describe it is … its like you’ve been moved into an hdtv show. its like outside of life.

anyway.

after that amazing stop, we continued on with the picturesque drive. so picturesque, that coming upon a viewing point in the road (its just a few meters of pavement to the side that let cars stop for a little, and maybe stairs to the beach) we decided to stop and take a few snapshots of the ocean.

well, turns out that the crazy kiwis don’t make stops for just ocean. apparently its a stop in the middle of the highway, where wild seals come to have babies and raise them (not sure about making them). we couldn’t go down to the water, but we did get an amazing view of about 40 seals, totally wild, swimming, with lots of tiny cute baby seals (OHMYGOSH THEY WERE SOOO ADORABLE!!!). they were playing, and fighting, and just lying in the sun, and it was generally again surreal that in the middle of the highway there is a huge seal colony.

planning for the future

upon arrival to our hostel we attempted to book stays for the next few nights, where we came upon a load of problems. essentially, everything comfortable in terms of location, quality, and price was full. after a lot of tinkering and a lot of phonecalls we have figured out a way to get to our next location – mnt cook, a superbly awesomely cool mountain, supposedly anyway – with the least damage on all fronts. note to ya’ll – book ahead as far as you can.

quiet evening

the evening at the hostel in kaikoura was very nice and quiet. oleg went out to the ocean again, while i did laundry and chatted on the phone. i also realized i lost the aforementioned scarf (see ‘whole day at national park’ entry) – forgot it in the awesome hostel we stayed the previous nights. they are so kind as to actually mail it back to canada (they have my address as you write it down upon registration), payment on delivery. w00t! i’ll seriously miss the scarf throughout the rest of this trip though.

for dinner we had shrimps with alfredo sauce and penne. the sauce was store bought, and superbly tasty for the price, quality, quantity and the amount of non work :D this is the 2nd excellent sauce experience in this kind of travel – i think we will have a lot more pasta + sauce nights, especially since oleg doesn’t eat rice.

we’ve also had a medium sized bottle of heineken, with the leftover cold shrimp, which made the entire day be very enjoyable. the first day on the south island of new zealand is thus declared a success.

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!