New Zealand - Day 5, Part 1

Sooo, yeah, kinda a rough night last night. I didn't sleep a whole lot and got up somewhat early. Heck, I might as well...and besides, I was curious to see if I got an email response from David. Becky was still sleeping soundly, so I snuck back outside to mooch off the innkeepers wifi again. Oh wow - I got an email response from David! He assured me that all would be ok...that we would work everything out. Thank you God. Thank you, thank you, thank you..... I fell into a slump in the chair, incredibly relieved that I had a chance to make things right and amazed at the wonderful man I had married. Things are looking up! After a bit, Becky woke up and found me outside. Her fever broke! She was worn out, but for the first time in a long time, she's feeling better!!! This was fabulous news! She wasn't going to have to go to the emergency room afterall. Ahhhh, yes, things were definitely looking up, indeed. We ate oatmeal in our room, showered and got ready to walk down the road to Kuirau Park (shown above). We spied it when we drove in. It was hard not to miss. Steam was coming up from it all over the place! This park was so awesome...and free! Check out this stuff that we found:

Mud pots!!! I LOVE mud pots.

Pretty neat, huh? We were WIGGIN' at how cool all this stuff was! Well, it got better. Yes indeedy. Kuirau Park had these thermal baths that we could soak our feet in!!! Check it out now, funk soul brother:

How many parks do you know where you can go soak in hot thermal baths for FREE?!? Sooo neat. Disclaimer: from here on out, I will have curly hair as shown above. I realize that this is an anomoly. I know it ain't pretty, but at this point, I didn't care anymore!!! Anyway, other observations from the park are shown below. The tree to the left is a eucalyptus. Isn't it wild how they shed their bark? Also, there were flowers all over New Zealand too, especially roses. The park had tons of pretty flowers! Oh, and when we were soaking in the baths, I also saw this funny sign. No swimming and no drinking alcohol in the baths....and BEWARE of the hot water! No duh!

We spent most of the morning at the park and LOVED it. In fact, my pics don't do it enough justice, so here are some movie clips of the nifty stuff we saw.

While super cool, we had so much more to do today. We walked back to the hotel, and on the way , I spied two Skylines. Skyline cars were all over the place in NZ, but they are not in the US (for the most part).

My drifter friends would have been drooling like crazy over these! These two weren't the best ones I saw, but it just goes to show how common they were. Speaking of common, see the phone booth? These things are all over the place too! We have basically no more phone booths left in the US. Believe it or not, phone booths are still a main form of communication in NZ. Fascinating....

So anyway, we got back to the hotel, hopped in the RV, and headed to another hike called the Whakarewarewa (Do NOT ask me to pronounce that!) Viewpoint Track. Again, thanks to NZ Frenzy, we were able to hike up this trail to see Pohutu Geyser, along with a bonus view of Lake Rotorua. I have a movie of what we saw from the top. (BTW - I called it the wrong name on the video...my bad.)

We scrambled back down the mountain, with fabulous girl talk the whole way and then made our way over to the Polynesian Spa for spa lunch and soaking in the adult baths. Ahhhhhhh....

More to come in Day 5, Part 2 (along with bikini top shots! - LOL LOL LOL!)

New Zealand - Day 4

We awoke in our motel in Warkworth. When I checked on Becky, she still wasn't doing well. Not good. We decided to go to a pharmacy to see if we could get her some meds. Fortunately, Warkworth town center was within walking distance. Before walking into town, we discussed our ever-evolving plans. I thought today would be a good idea to hit Piha Beach and possibly some goldmine ruins that have neato hiking trails through old mine car tunnels. I also thought it might be a good idea for me to buy a plane ticket from the south island to the north island. This would buy us tons of time and get me back to Auckland airport without having to worry about driving back...which, we were learning, would have taken FOREVER. When we walked into Warkworth, we not only found a pharmacy, but a travel agency too. Becky got her meds and a huge box of tissues. I got a plane ticket from Christchurch to Auckland for only $150. TOTALLY worth it.

We walked back to the motel, packed up and checked out. Time to continue heading south. Next destination? Piha Beach to the southwest. Getting there ended up being sheer hell though! Becky was driving and I was navigating. We had to make our way through the Auckland suburbs and there was no direct route to get us to the beach. Signage in NZ is not great, so it was easy to get lost...and that we did. Also, once we got out of the suburbs, the roads were even more narrow and twisty! It took seemingly forever, but boy oh boy, look at what we saw when we finally emerged from the mountain-top road:

Piha! Soooo pretty! I love just saying it. Piha Piha Piha!!!! :) We got lunch (me, fish and chips and Becky got a fish burger) and we took it down to the black sand beach and ate whilst watching surfers do their thang (and the seagulls watched us!). I didn't realize it, but in the short time that I was out there, I got sunburned on my shoulders and nose. Mind you, I had been tanning before going to NZ, but the sun was still REALLY strong. Even though Becky wasn't feeling good, we had a nice time at the beach.

Now it was time to head off to Karangahake Gorge! This was another place that I learned about from the NZ Frenzy book by Scott Cook. The gorge was in Waihi, to the southeast of Auckland. It was the site of the original goldrush in the mid 1800's. At the bottom of the gorge is the

Ohinemuri River. It sounded really neat and I was psyched to experience it. Once again, Becky drove and I navigated. The journey was much easier this time too, even though we hit some rain, it cleared up by the time we got to the Gorge. Becky was trying to be a trooper, and I wasn't trying to hover/be overly concerned. Poor thing...it was like her whole body was draining through her shnoz. Her meds weren't working. We parked and before starting on the Windows Walk, I took a picture of all the tissues she had used that morning. Yep, this was just from the AM! Even so, we set forth on our hike. It was AMAZING! I had never experienced anything like it. It started off with a suspension bridge with only a 10 person capacity. Note the remnants of the factory all around.

As we continued on, we followed the mine car tracks and here is all the cool stuff we saw/experienced:

It was on this last leg, that Becky collapsed. It was a warm summer day, yet she had her jacket zipped to her neck, she was pale and she was literally DONE. She started crying as she sat in the dirt in the middle of the trail. "This is supposed to be a trip of a lifetime and I am so f'ing sick!" Ohhh man. I felt so bad for her. She had been trying so hard to keep going and see and do as much as possible that her body just basically said, "no more". She was toast and I felt so bad for her. I tried to cheer her up as best I could, but I had no magic wand to make her instantly well, damn it. I was also concerned, because she was really sick and her fever was worse. I knew that if she didn't get better soon, I was going to bring her to a doctor or maybe even an emergency room. I didn't tell her that, but I knew that we needed to get to a more populated place...just in case. In the meantime, I convinced her that we needed to leave. I would drive to Rotorua and find us another hotel. She was to do nothing more today but rest. We got her back to the RV and that's exactly what she did as I drove. After a few hours, we were in the Rotorua, one of the most popular cities in New Zealand due to it's geo-thermal activity. I found the Bella Vista Hotel. They had just a handicap room left, and we took it. Even better, they had internet access. I hadn't been able to reach out to David, mom or dad in a couple days, so it was important that I email them. Even though it was summer, Becky went right to bed and fortunately, there was a heating pad on her bed. She turned it up ALL THE WAY to mega high, can't go any hotter. She might as well put herself on a fricken rotisserie! Ok, so maybe I need to research doctors/hospitals, 'cause this ain't good.

She didn't want any dinner. After all our adventures of the day, I was starving. I ran across the street to a greasy spoon, "Wendy's Fish 'n' Chips and Chinese Takeaways". I'm not joking! Here's a pic of it (though closed at the time that I took it). I got curry chicken there and an L&P drink for Becky and myself. As I waited for my food, it must have been pretty obvious that I was a tourist. They asked where I was from, and once again, freaked when they heard I was from Atlanta. Funny, huh?!? Anyway, back on the L&P beverage. I remember David and I had actually tried this stuff at the World of Coca-Cola during our Staycation last year (see my blog from last year for details on that!). In fact, Becky and I had driven through L&P's birthplace, Paeroa, earlier in the day. We saw the huge bottle shrined in the middle to town. L&P stands for Lemon and Paeroa. Anywho, it was just alright, dog. However, when Becky drank hers a few days later, she liked it! (She's Mikey - lol!)

Speaking of Becky, she slept while I ate my dinner at the desk in our hotel room. After dinner, I tried to get internet access on my little itouch. I had to go outside and under the staircase to the window closest to the innkeepers living quarters in order to pick up their own personal wifi (thankfully they gave me the password, because the internet they had was the ethernet cable type, which won't work on my itouch). So there I was, in the dark, and now cold, under the staircase trying to check my emails. It was then that I found out, mostly from only being able to read subject lines (due to internet access being so sketchy), that my marriage was in trouble. I'm not going to go into details, but I made some minor mistakes in the past, and long story short, David found out about them. On top of that, he was mad that he hadn't heard from me in a few days and thought I was hiding from him. In one of his last emails, he said he was ready to pack up his stuff and leave. So here I was, outside in the cold, with my my whole world crashing in on me, and I was literally a world away and couldn't do anything about it. This wasn't vacation anymore, boys and girls. I desperately tried to peck out an email on my itouch back to David in hopes that I could salvage "us". The very last thing I wanted was to lose him. When I got back to the room, Becky was out cold. I was jealous. Even though I was exhausted, sleep didn't come easy for me that night in Rotorua.

New Zealand - Day 3, Part 2

Still amazed by the glow worms of Waipu Cave, we continued our trek north on Route 1, then west on 14. The scenery was beautiful. Mountains, pasture, coastline, sheep, cows and an almost sub-tropical climate were all experienced along the way. Poor Becky was coughing like crazy and now sneezing too. Maybe this isn't allergies afterall...she's really not feeling so well, and I am getting concerned. She tried to pass it off as nothing, but I dunno... Still, we continued to our next destination - Waipoua Forest at the northwest part of the north island. The roads were really narrow but Becky did a fabulous job of keeping us on the road at all times! She sure was getting an arm workout from all the twists and turns in the road though.

Our first stop was Tane Mahuta..."Lord of the Forest". This tree is a mere 2000 years old and the largest living Kauri tree in New Zealand!!!! The picture above shows part of the path we had to take to get to this tree. You can see how tropical it all looks....almost what I imagine Hawaii to look like. We turned around a bend in the path, and there it was. This monster tree! It's impossible to get it all in one shot, but hopefully this picture gives you some perspective.

It has a fence around it to protect it, but this wasn't the only large Kauri around. Once again, the book NZ Frenzy, gave us the low-down on where we could see more huge Kauri trees. Just 2km down the road and a few hikes away were "Four Sisters", "Te Matua Ngahere", "Cathedral Grove" and my personal fav, "Yakas".

We hiked to all of them (thanks to Becky for talking me into it)! The forest was lovely and the trees were amazing. Yakas was my favorite of them all because I could HUG IT! Yepperoni, I hugged this big 'ol tree.

It's also good because it gives you perspective as to how HUGE these trees are. Cool stuff, especially for a tree hugger like me!

After Yakas, Becky was starting to feel pretty sick, so we hiked back to the van. On the way back, I saw this Koru! This is an unfurling fern frond and a very popular symbol in New Zealand, specifically with the Maori, the indigenous Polynesian people of the country. It symbolizes new beginnings, strength and peace....which I think is pretty darn cool...and more timely than I ever would have imagined.

Once back at the van, we decided we needed to head back south. I was going to drive for the first time. I really wanted Becky to rest, 'cause she wasn't doing so well. On top of that, we were in the middle of nowhere and only had a 1/4 tank of gas left in the van. Uh oh. Let me add, that EVERYTHING closes early in NZ. Even gas stations! I took to the wheel and hoped for the best...confident that we would find an open gas station somewhere on our drive as far south as we could go. After driving through several towns, we finally found one that was still open. Whew! What a relief! But then, how in tarnation do you open the fricken fuel door on this darn van???? We both have Master's degrees and neither of us could figure out how to open the damn thing!!! I ended up walking over to another patron at the gas station...an older gentleman who was barefoot, and asked if he could help us. He was incredulous as to why we didn't know how to open it. The more I tried to explain, the more stupid I sounded! At least he got a good laugh from us. He looked around for a bit in the drivers side of our van and then found the release UNDER THE DRIVERS SEAT! Ghhhheeeeez. Duh us. We thanked him profusely. We got dinner in the same town. Poor Becky was feeling rough, though a tiny bit better after we ate at least. I was still concerned though. She was developing a fever and I needed to find us a hotel so she could get some rest. I took to the wheel once again and continued our journey south. Sooo much driving though...I was tired too, but knew I needed to press on. Becky was able to sleep a little. When she woke up, it was dark. She exclaimed that I needed to pull over and see the stars. I hadn't really seen anything...just paying attention to the road. Once I got out of the van though, HOLY SMOKES. I had seriously never seen so many stars in my life! There was bazillions of them and you could actually see the galaxies. It was nothing short of amazing! I was on a mission though....to find a hotel further south. Time to move on! Back on the road, we pulled into the town of Warkworth at 10pm and saw that the Central Motel had lights on and vacancy. At this point, we didn't care what it cost, we just needed to go to sleep. We got accommodations (which were clean and neat, but like stepping back into time...all fixtures were from the 50s!). We grabbed what we needed, and went to bed. It felt so good to lay down! I was worried about all the driving....we can't keep this up. We were beginning to realize that to see all the stuff we wanted to see, we were going to have to drive like crazy. That's not vacation! Hmmm....what to do. You shall see on Day 4...

New Zealand - Day 3, Part 1

A new day! Time to head north out of Auckland. First, we needed to go grocery shopping. It was a little nerve-wracking getting back in our RV to drive again, but it had to be done! We checked out of the Barrycourt and followed their directions to the grocery store. It was down near the wharf where we were yesterday. I thought it odd that we had to park in a garage underneath the store and then go upstairs to get inside! We picked up a few sundries....oatmeal, granola bars, peanut butter, bread, Nutella (MMMMmmmm), apples, apricots, etc. One thing we bought was this coffee in a can stuff. It's a syrup that you mix with hot water to make coffee with cream and sugar in it already! Interesting, huh? I had never seen that before, but the can said it was perfect for camping. Excellent! We went through the checkout and went back downstairs to put our groceries away in the RV. The above picture shows me returning our cart (NJ) / buggy (GA) / trundler (NZ). Afterward, we went back upstairs to have a quick breakfast at a coffee shop before heading north.

Back on the road we went. Route 1 north....we made our way out of Auckland without any issues. Becky mastered the roundabouts quickly (I didn't start getting the hang of them until a week later - lol!). All was going well...until a sign said that the highway was going to turn into a toll road...and that we had to pay $2.00NZ in exact change. AGHH! We didn't have exact change...and there are no toll booth attendants. We pulled off to a rest area/info booth to find out what to do. We talked to a nice lady and she was quite helpful. Oddly enough, we found out you could pay your toll in advance at the rest area at a walk up machine, or you could pay it later online. You have to pay it though because a traffic camera takes a picture of the license plates as you go through the toll. She actually recommended that we pull off on to the "free road" which would take longer, but be more scenic. Well heck, that's what we want right there! She had asked where we were from and when I told her I was from Atlanta, she reacted almost like I was some kind of celebrity! A lot of people did that, actually. It's interesting how reknown Atlanta is there! Anyway, off we went on our scenic route and as you can see, there were really pretty beaches and trees along the way.

As we continued on, we stopped at the Sheep and Wool Center. It was really expensive to watch

them shear a sheep during their "show" so we checked out the shop instead and then moved on. As we left, I noticed that the sheep they had on site were spraypainted PINK! What the heck?! I guess that will remain a mystery...

Our next stop was Waipu Caves. This ended up being my absolute favorite part of the whole trip. I had read about it in a book called NZ Frenzy by Scott Cook. This book ended up being an amazing resource for us for cheap or low cost outdoorsy things to do. Yay Scott Cook! You ROCK! Anyway, back to Waipu Caves. We got off the main road and drove 12km on a narrow road to seemingly nowhere. We found a small car park with just 4 cars parked in it. Are we at the right place? We threw on our flip flops and our headlamps and headed toward where we heard voices from across a pasture. Yes, a pasture. We had to unhook the gate to get in, re-latch it behind us and walk across a big pasture to the woods, dodging sheep poop the whole way. The woods were really pretty with cool trees and instantly in front of us was the cave opening! We made

our way inside. It had a lot of stalagtites and stalagmites and I remembered that Scott said that we had to go to the biggest one and hang out for 7 minutes while we waited for our eyes to adjust to the darkness. This would allow us to see the GLOW WORMS! Yep, I said it. Wormies that GLOW in the dark! As time went on, our eyes began to adjust and we saw a couple of the worms glowing in the cave! I recalled that Scott said in his book to follow the stream to the back cavern for the real show. It was really muddy and slippery and steep in areas, but we made our way to what I assumed was THE chamber. We turned off our headlamps, and no joke, I started to cry. It was one of the prettiest sites I had seen in my life. All around us were tiny sparkling lights, not only on the walks and ceiling of this big "room", but all the lights also reflected in the stream we were standing in. It was like we were standing in the middle of the Milky Way. My pictures don't do them any justice, as I didn't have a tripod and couldn't figure out how to do a 15 second exposure with my little digital camera, but this still kinda gives you an idea...

I also took a rather amusing video in an attempt to try to capture how pretty this was. This video is entertaining more for the audio than it is for the visuals - lol!

As you can see/hear, Becky and I were the only ones in the chamber (PS - Sorry, Becky, for cutting you off when you said it was the most beautiful thing you've seen!). Anyway, it was awesome to see such a thing that wasn't touristy/commercialized. How cool is that? After a long time seeing the "stars" in the cave, we made our way out (see below), with the intent of making our way to Waipoua Forest...to see the biggest Kauri tree's in the world! The day isn't over yet....more to come in Day 3, Part 2!

New Zealand - Day 2

WOW! We had so much fun today! We got our comfy sneakers on and walked down Parnell street to fetch a yummy breakfast, and then off to explore Auckland on foot. We ended up at a place called Dunk. YUM-O. We ate outside, and I had a vegetable quiche with a tomato compote. Becky was a rebel and had blood sausage and a fabulous coconut french toast, clotted cream and a lime/citrus jelly. What's blood sausage? Don't ask. I'll tell ya what though, it's damn good! Don't knock it unless you try it! After breakfast, we walked down to the wharf, and kinda off the cuff, we bought ferry tickets and a tour of Rangitoto Island later in the day. After walking around the wharf a bit, we walked up to the Skytower (the UFO-looking building that you can see in the view from our room pic that I showed you yesterday). As mentioned, it is the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere. Our ears popped as we went up the elevator. The view from the observation tower was AWESOME! Here's a picture of Becky (yeah, she's wearing her backpack on the front!).

What was really trippy was that the floor is GLASS in some areas. At first, I wasn't freaked out by it, but then I started thinking, "What if the glass broke and I fell through?" EEK!

I slowly made my way to the non-glass floor as my spine kinda freaked out from fear of falling - lol. ...Speaking of falling, get this... You can pay to walk on the edge of the circumference of the top of this building and/or bungee off of it! Here's a clip of one of the jumpers:

Is that insane or what?!?!? (Sorry for all the OMGs!) We got our fill of crazy jumpers and fabulous views and took the elevator (which also had a glass floor!) back down to terra firma. We walked back down to the wharf, grabbed some Subway lunch, and hopped on our ferry to Rangitoto Island. Here's what it looked like from out ferry boat, looking back at the neat ferry terminal:

We got to the island and climbed onto a trolley-like car that was being pulled by a tractor! We were taken around the whole island and learned of all the flora and fauna, and of course the history of the island itself. At one point, we stopped and could climb to the top of the island, which is essentially, the top of the volcano. It wasn't the easiest climb, but we were up for it! The views were worth it. Those little tiny white dots are all sail boats. Sailing is really popular there and it was neat to see them all.

We had a lovely picnic lunch at the top and enjoyed the gorgeous weather and the spectacular views. We clambored back down to our "trolley" which took us to a field of volcanic rock.

After our tour, we caught the ferry back to Auckland. We began walking back to our hotel and explored some of the nooks and crannies of the Parnell district on the way back. Here's Becky stepping her way down one of the cute alley-ways. :-)

The picture to the right shows where we had dinner the night before (under the white awning). Right behind me is where had breakfast that morning. There are tons of neat restaurants, shops and galleries all around. It was a neat place!

By the time we made it back to our hotel room, we were BEAT! ...and we were also sweaty and really dirty from all the volcanic dust at the island. We got cleaned up and went to the restaurant next door. I don't even know what the name of it was, but it was somehow affiliated with our hotel. The food was actually

fabulous (the food is EXCELLENT in NZ, if you haven't already gathered that!). We stayed at the Barrycourt Hotel, btw. I highly recommend it if you are a frugal traveler. It's clean, neat and the hotel staff was friendly and accomodating to our zillion questions. After our tasty dinner and wine outside, it was getting dark (it gets dark late...around 9pm at night!) so we went back to the room. Upon looking at the view from our balcony, we noticed the Skytower was lit up in different colors! It was to celebrate New Zealand's national holiday Waitangi Day. What a beautiful site!

Tomorrow, we are checking out of the hotel and heading north the explore North Island. Mind you, Becky has been coughing like crazy since we arrived in Auckland....I hope she isn't sick! More to come....