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New Zealand Road Trip Week 2: Blog4NZ

March 21st, 2011

I’ve been a bit lax in blogging for the past several days, which I plan to correct this coming week. As part of the Blog4NZ effort, I’m planning to do my part to let everyone know that tourism is alive and well here. P1020262

It’s been 18 days since I arrived in New Zealand and the natural beauty here continues to astonish me. Steam vents and volcanic craters on the North Island, glaciers on the South Island, with coastline, mountains and meadows in between.

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What has struck me most is how pristine most of the country is. It’s been many years since I’ve been able to look up at the sky and see not millions, but billions of stars. The universe is glittered up as though it’s headed to a rave.

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One of the other highlights of the past week was a stay in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. In addition to more Irish pubs than I’ve seen in any city since New York, Wellington is home to the Te Papa museum.

EVERY nation on this planet should have a museum that is so comprehensive, interactive and well-designed. It covers everything you should know about the country: room after room recounts New Zealand’s geologic history, its natural inhabitants, the first settlers, the European migration and the more recent history of the nation’s political involvements, independence and progress. Topping that off, exhibits showing the culture of the country through its sculpture, painting, photography and other arts show the native and migratory influences and how they’ve blended into what you see today.

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Over the next couple of days, I’ll be catching up on where I’ve been and what else I’ve seen. If you haven’t read about the first five days, go back and catch up.

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Joel vs. The Volcano: Road Trip Day 5

March 15th, 2011

Rather than drive off to a new town today, I spent another night in New Plymouth.

The highlight of the area is Mt. Taranaki, the volcanic mountain that is built like you’d build a volcano for a science fair. It’s almost perfectly conical. IMGP4884

About 20km from New Plymouth, you head up to a station in Egmont National Park, which surrounds the mountain. Once I arrived, I learned about all of the hikes around the area. The options range from a 10 minute nature walk that stops at a viewing platform to a 3 day hike all around the mountaintop.

Wearing shorts and a t-shirt, I wasn’t quite equipped for a multi-day hike. With a strong wind, high altitude and the cloud cover, I was chilled without leaving the station. My clothes were in the car, so I could have easily changed, but the clouds were so thick that I didn’t think I’d be able to get any decent pictures. P1020142

It’s a beautiful sight when the clouds dissipate, which they finally did at about 4:00. I didn’t drive all the way back up to the mountain, but did find a good vantage point in town.

New Plymouth itself is a nice little town, with long hilly streets lined by shops open only during daylight. A 6km walkway extends along the coast, with stunning oceanside views. Brochures trumpet the fact that the town has won a number of awards as “best small city” in New Zealand. 

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The quiet, unassuming nature of the downtown area reminds me of what the US Midwest looked like before Wal-Mart steamrolled so many of the small shops and family businesses.

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Now Where’d I Put That Highway? -Road Trip Day 4

March 14th, 2011

The most compelling image of the day was one I failed to photograph. As I was leaving Taupo and heading west, my rearview mirror was filled with giant plumes of steam coming from the vista that was quickly becoming part of my past. It was a cool morning, so the steam was far more pronounced than the daytime visits to parks and lakes of my prior days. It was a fascinating sight, but one I couldn’t easily have captured from the middle of the highway that carried me through a mountain pass.

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Carrying on through the center of the country, the Forgotten World highway takes you from Tarangui to Stratford. It’s a peaceful drive through farmland and gently rolling hills. While well traveled, there are parts that are still unpaved and much of it is slow-going.

There’s a great deal of history and scenery dotting the landscape, most well defined by road signs as well as touring maps that are scattered throughout the local campgrounds. After the geothermic wonderland of Rotorua and Taupo, it was honestly a bit anti-climactic. Most of the key sights are well off the main highway, involving side journeys and, in some cases, long hikes.

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Mt. Damper Falls is one of the notable stops, and at 85 meters, one of the highest waterfalls in New Zealand. It’s several kilometers off the main road but only a 15 minute hike from the parking area. Unlike the tourist atmosphere in other areas, this was a place few people venture.

Scores of sheep watched me walk from the car to the small wooden bridge that carried me across to the hiking path. Unlike cows and most other livestock, sheep don’t ignore you when you walk by. It’s kind of creepy as dozens of them raise their heads in unison and follow you with their gaze.

The path is well defined and has wooden steps, bridges and a viewing platform for visitors. The falls themselves are impressive, but undoubtedly they are more awe-inspiring after heavy rain.

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The other interesting sight along the way was the Hobbit’s Hole, the name for a tunnel through a mountainside along the main highway. Like many of the bridges along the Forgotten World highway, the tunnel is only wide enough for one car, so you need to take turns making the trek. Fortunately, the road is lightly traveled that it doesn’t slow you down.

I enjoyed the gate because it really does get across that this tunnel was hand-built by men with shovels, picks and maybe a little dynamite. It pre-dates the earth moving equipment today’s tunnels are carved with.

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The Forgotten World highway winds up in Stratford, a small town named after Shakespeare’s home town. The clock tower in town even has a glockenspiel that performs scenes from Romeo and Juliet 4 times a day. I was slowed down by a bovine brigade earlier that day, so I missed the 3:00 show by about 20 minutes and after driving 300km wasn’t willing to wait around until 7pm.

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An uneventful drive onward to New Plymouth closed out the driving day, my longest in both distance and hours.

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If You Wallaby My Lover: Road Trip Day 3

March 13th, 2011

Sometimes I think I need to stop writing blog posts and just do a title each day. I always enjoy those more than the actual post itself. I’m not even sure what that title means, but when I heard the name “wallaby,” I couldn’t get the Spice Girls song out of my head. Zig-a-zig-ah! I blame the gang in Chiang Mai and the endless nights of singing horrid karaoke songs.

I suppose I could also have sung along with TLC later in the day, but once one song gets lodged in my brain, it’s tough to shove it out.

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On the road from Rotorua to Taupo, there is a steady stream of attractions. Unlike Malaysia, you can’t just decide to walk through the jungle for a few hours wherever you’d like. Here, the prime hiking areas have all been parceled off to vendors who operate them as tourist attractions.

It makes it much more expensive, but it’s not without good reason. The instability of the terrain requires a carefully laid out hiking route with upkeep necessary on bridges and rails.

I stopped at two places along the way. Waimangu is renowned for being the only hydrothermic activity site in the world which has an exact origin date in the time of recorded history. On June 10, 1886 all the stuff that was bubbling around underground decided to make an appearance above ground. Craters, fissures and the natural environment that’s developed around those features are a key area of study for what happens in the aftermath of this type of eruption.

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And it looks cool, too.

Steaming lakes, rock formations and a variety of plant life are the main attr — wait! What the heck is that?

I heard a rustling in the bushes while I was on my hike. At first, I kept going thinking it was just a squirrel. Then I realized I hadn’t seen any squirrels in New Zealand and wasn’t even sure they had them here. So I stopped to take a look.

My first view was of a thick, long tail – blech, it’s a possum!

Nope, although not too far off in the scheme of zoological classification.

It was a little wallaby only about two feet away from me. Not more than a foot high, he looked up curiously as I took a number of photos. It wasn’t until my flash accidently went off that he decided to hop away, apparently more bored than frightened.

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The locals back at the reception desk took delight in correcting me when I said I’d seen a baby kangaroo.

The second attraction of the day was Huka Falls.

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A beautiful area for picnics and hikes, so I partook in both. I said to hell with local food on this one and picked up bread, peanut butter, jelly and milk. Laugh all you want, but this was my first PB & J in 9 months! Well, I had 4 of them, but still…

The falls were amazing in their blueness. This was water I felt I could have just reached out and bottled, then cured all sorts of ailments with. It was a stark contrast to the steaming, smelly, brown and gray water I’d been seeing in most of the pools around Rotorua.

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I carried on for a few more kilometers ending up in Taupo for the night, eager to get an early start on the Forgotten Highway in the morning.

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Dante and Sisyphus: Road Trip Day 2

March 12th, 2011

Thanks to some cold medication, I was unconscious for about 10 hours and woke up refreshed, though still a bit laden with sniffles.

But it was time to take a little drive around Rotorua to see exactly what was causing that smell of rotten eggs that permeated the small town. I’ve said elsewhere that New Zealand reminds me a lot of Wisconsin, but with better topography. Nowhere has that been more evident than in Rotorua. Endless farms fill the surrounding landscape, with sheep more frequent than my home state’s cows.

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The sheer volume of tourist attractions in the vicinity of Rotorua makes it the southern hemisphere’s version of the Wisconsin Dells. Hundreds of different sights and activities – most of them “made for tourists.” That smell of sulfur is another reminder of my childhood, although the daily scent in my home town was a result of the local paper mills. Here it’s bubbling up from the depths of the Earth.

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One of the biggest draws to Rotorua is the hot springs. I find it odd that geothermic instability is a popular attraction. Smoke and steam comes from the ground at the lake and local parks. Walking through the park is often limited to narrowly defined walkways, because stepping off the established path could send you through the shallow crust and into a steaming pool of water. And yet, people come here to relax in “natural steam pools.”

There’s nowhere else can I think of that creates an experience out of a potentially deadly natural phenomena. “Hey, come give your hair a natural windblown treatment in Tornado Alley!”

And yet, it’s pretty cool to look at. Steam vents are scattered throughout the town, often only a few feet away from people’s homes. In spots, you can hear and even SEE the water boiling up through the earth’s crust.

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One of the other attractions in Rotorua (for me, at least) is the home of the Zorb. While many other locations have started to crop up, this is one of those extreme activities that New Zealanders are famous for creating.

What is “zorbing?” Well, you climb to the top of a hill. Then you squeeze into a big inflatable hamster ball. Then you go down the hill.

And that’s about it.

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The “dry” experiences were closed for some refurbishment that are planned for the off-season. Evidently the dry balls sailed up and over the fences containing the course a couple of times – no one injured because of the ball, but something they needed to make some changes to the course before they could re-open for the dry balls.

I’m not sure how much I can talk about balls, but let me press onward.

The ball is filled with a few gallons of water and then you squeeze into a narrow canal to get inside. No, the water is not warmed up before they pump it in. Fortunately, you only have a few seconds for your own balls to freeze before the big one heads down the hill. After that, any thoughts of being cold disappear (much like my retracted testicles).

There are two courses – the straight down course and the zig-zag course. The advantage of the straight course is speed but with the limited visibility inside the zorb, speed didn’t seem to be too relevant. So, I chose to zig zag down the hill.

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The other aspect of the zig-zag that I discovered is that you don’t stay in one position for long. On the straight shots, most people are seated and remain in place as the ball rotates around them. The water and plastic allows you to slide around and remain in an upright position while the ball spins down the hill. Not so on the erratic course I chose. As the ball careens against each bank, it changes direction and it takes a while for your body to shift along with it.

You’re not rolling down the hill end over end, you do stay primarily in a seated position. But your body is not always facing forward as it does in the straight run.

A very fun experience and I do recommend trying it. I was a bit taken aback at the expense. It cost $40NZ (about $30US) for a single run which lasts about 2 minutes, at best, but it was a lot of fun to try. Several runs down the hill would have been nice for that price.

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The Mystery Machine: Road Trip Day 1

March 11th, 2011

I got off to a late start on the first day of my travels across the country of New Zealand. After making my way to the Wicked Camper headquarters in Onehunga, I checked in with an attractive woman from Holland. Wicked is one of those places that employs a lot of travelers, which is helpful because they have the experience and understand the mindset.P1020012

Unfortunately, the van they had assigned to me was a manual transmission. I can drive a manual transmission, although I’ve done it maybe a dozen times in my life so it’s far from second nature. When you add that to remembering to drive on the left hand side of the road AND having the gear shift at my left hand, it was a bit too much for me. In true New Zealand fashion, I asked sheepishly for another van.

I was in luck. An automatic transmission van had just come in from a couple who had ended their trip a couple of days early. I had to wait for about an hour for them to do the safety check and ensure it was ready to go out again.

Having not thought much of this through, I realized when I saw the van that I was going to need to spend a few more dollars. I’m not carrying a sleeping bag or any other camping gear. I had a few camping items with me at the start of the trip, but I left most of that back in Europe with my bike.

A stop at the Warehouse (discount store) and I was able to pick up a sleeping bag, pillow and a few items of warm sleep clothing since I wanted to be sure I wouldn’t freeze walking between the van and the toilet in the local campgrounds.

I also picked up a cord to connect my iPod into the car stereo system. Local radio stations are interesting to listen to, but I’m going to be in this van for two weeks and there are times when I want to be able to catch up on podcasts I’ve downloaded.

After all this, and a late lunch, it was 2:00 before I started rolling.

It was mostly an uneventful drive down Highway 1 to Rotorua. I turned my windshield wipers on pretty much every time I tried to signal a turn and switched on the turn signal instead of shifting into reverse a couple of times. Who knew that not only is the steering wheel on the opposite side, but all the controls are flipped, too!?

I need to rig up a voice recorder to narrate random thoughts while I drive. I don’t remember a lot of what I saw – cows, sheep and a few very funny town names that I wish I could recall.

One thing I do remember is how unbelievable the sky looked as I was driving the highway. And I mean “unbelievable” – it looked like a bad Photoshop of a skyline. It was a deep, perfect blue and the hundreds of clouds visible looked as though they were copied and pasted onto the sky one at a time. Too crisp, too identical in how the layout was done. It was like God’s nephew got hold of his photo editor and didn’t bother to blend or vary the background images.

I arrived at Rotorua and found a campground. Beautiful clean restroom, which is one of my sticking points when it comes to camping.

It was a warm evening and the van held in the heat nicely so I went to sleep with only my sleep sheet covering me. That didn’t last and I was soon tucked into the sleeping bag, as well. After watching Predators, I drifted off to sleep with thoughts of alien hunters stalking through my dream-state.

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If You New Zealand Like I Know Zealand

March 5th, 2011

Just a quick update on what’s going on this week.

After a couple of days of transit through Singapore and Hong Kong, I ended up in Auckland. I say “ended up” there, as though I didn’t plan it.

Once I started to do the research into what there was to do in New Zealand, a few things became apparent.

1) Be prepared to be disconnected. Internet is slow and expensive. Uploading photos, downloading podcasts and regular online chat sessions won’t be frequent for the next month. Internet is all paid by the megabyte and it’s pricey. A sole cable is all that connects the web in New Zealand to the rest of the world.

2) There are too many choices. Choices of areas to visit, activities to try, things to do. New Zealand really does have a bit of everything. Mountains, volcanoes, glaciers, beaches, islands, waterfalls, caves and lots of open space in between. It’s the home of bungee jumping and other extreme activities – sky diving, zorbing, abseiling and more. Exceptional natural beauty is apparent at every moment while engaging in the adrenaline-pump.

3) Getting around isn’t all that easy. Within Auckland, the public transportation system is good. Outside of the city, though, there are just too many destinations and directions you could head. While buses exist and operate efficiently (by all accounts), there are so many places to stop that the logistics of traveling by bus can be daunting unless you book a package tour.

Add all of that together and I’ve decided to do what many people recommended. I’m renting a camper van for 15 days to explore outside of the cities. It’ll be my transportation and accommodation, allowing me to free-form my travel plans a bit.

I have a general route planned, but will change it when it makes sense to do so.

My tourism priorities are:

- Glacier (Fox or Franz)

- Volcano – New Plymouth

- Zorbing – Rotorua

- Dinner with Lucy Lawless – TBD

- Hiking, biking, kayaking, caving and taking photos of anything else that catches my eye along the way.

I have a long list based on wonderful recommendations from friends: Craig and Linda of IndieTravelPodcast.com , Dave Dean of What’s Dave Doing and Rebecca of Travels at 88mph . With all of that information floating in my brain, I’ll turn the steering wheel where my whims lead me.

If I can get the hang of driving on the left side of the street.

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New Zealand: Heading Into Crisis

February 27th, 2011

One month from today, I’m planning to be in Christchurch, New Zealand. On March 30, I fly to Melbourne from the city that was hit by a major earthquake last week.

I’ll be in New Zealand later this week, but will start off in areas far from the epicenter. Auckland, Northland, other sites on the North Island are my plans for the first couple of weeks of March.

Following the news of people killed, injured and still missing, it’s not yet clear when I should head to Christchurch or even if I should.

It’s something I’ll be following closely over the next few weeks.

If I can help somehow by visiting there, I will. Whether that means volunteering to assist recovery efforts or just aiding the economy by providing a little tourist spending, I will do what is within my power. If I will just be getting in the way or taking up space needed by displaced residents, then I will wait until the day of my flight to make my way there.

Perhaps there’s nothing I can directly do that would benefit those impacted by the quake. We’ll see how it develops.

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A River Runs Through It. And Under It.

February 24th, 2011

One of the key sights on Palawan Island is the Underground River in Sabang. Unlike most tourist destinations, this was not overrun with people, nor was the natural environment disturbed. The people of the Philippines have strong restrictions on where people go and what they do, in order to preserve the environment of their most important natural locations. There is no trash, no touching and, most surprisingly, no souvenir stand.

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While it certainly receives a fair number of tourists, the challenge of getting there limits the number of people stomping around. It’s a 3 hour bus ride from Puerto Princesa, a motor boat to the national park, followed by another boat that takes you into the cave housing the river.

11 people embark on each boat, including the guide/paddle master. No motors are allowed here.

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Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale...

Unlike many other caves I’ve visited in Cheddar, Malaysia and Vietnam, there are no electric lights rigged up to showcase the sights. Instead, illumination is provided by a handheld spotlight attached to a car battery in the front of the boat.

Which means you’re at the mercy of the person seated in the front if you want to see what the guide is pointing out. On our boat, the light provider had trouble with left and right, so we got to see more blank walls than is typical. “Right. Right. Your other right” was a common refrain.

The river goes on for more than 8km, most of it navigable by boat making it the longest navigable underground river in the world. Most tours only go in about a kilometer, however, viewing the highlights within an easy distance.

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T-Rex Rock - it's just like Jurassic Park!

Rock formations all have cutesy nicknames, but the variety is impressive. It’s not just one stalactite and stalagmite after another. The multitude of colors, shades and structures built by erosion make it an unforgettable ride – seeing what nature can create over millions of years. Narrow river stretches open up to gigantic caverns, most notably one called The Cathedral which has a variety of rock formations named after religious icons.

More interesting to me, though, was the proliferation of bats. They advise you to keep your mouth closed when you look up so that you don’t get bat droppings in your mouth. And it’s understandable why. While bats are present in most of the major chambers, there are some that house thousands. Evidently we didn’t even go into the ones that were home to most of the bats so that we wouldn’t disturb the bulk of the little buggers.

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In case you are looking at this lo-res: dots = bats

The Underground River is in the running to be named one of the 7 Natural Wonders of the World, and is already a UNESCO World Heritage site.

It got my vote.

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At The Hotel, Motel, Horrible Inn

February 21st, 2011
Pedestal squat toilet

Image via Wikipedia

Every long term traveler has at least one hotel horror story. I’ve racked up a couple, but the one I stayed at last week in Puerto Princesa on Palawan Island takes top prize, so far.

Admittedly, my standards still veer a bit to the OCD germaphobe side but I’ve come a long way in the last 8 months. I no longer curl up in a ball and cry when I have to use a shared toilet (as long as I have Wet Ones with me).

With a rating of 80% on HostelWorld, I was expecting something well within my standards with my booking on Puerto Princesa. I had heard that the town was pretty full so I booked the place in advance to ensure I wasn’t sleeping on a park bench. As it turns out, the park bench would have been the best option.

The park bench would have been the best option

I walked in to an indifferent staff and a crowd of kids on the ground floor mocking me when I said “hello.” Eventually, someone showed up to check me in since the person at the desk appeared to have a phone call that was going to drag on longer than the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

No reservation. They had no record of me checking in that day. After insisting that I had a room booked, I filled out a check-in form. “Ah!” The desk attendant recognized the name. Still no record of a booking, but he now believed I was supposed to be there.

He ran upstairs and spent 7 minutes prepping the room, which evidently hadn’t been cleaned that day (it was 5:30pm). I can only imagine what happened in that 7 minutes because the room was still a bit of a mess. Long brown hairs on the floor, indeterminate brown stains in the shower and cobwebs and spiders in the bathroom.

A couple of other quirks were immediately apparent. First, the hotel provided a towel but it was so ridiculously worn that it would have been better used to net fish.

On to the bigger issue: there was no seat on the toilet. I should have been thankful it was a western toilet, although without a seat it was LESS useful than a squat toilet. I couldn’t even USE it as a squat toilet because it was positioned right up against the shower wall, so there was no way to straddle it. The only alternative was placing one foot forward into the shower stall and doing a kind of one cheek sneak.

The final fun of the stay was the arrival of nighttime visitors. When I got home for the night and turned on the lights, the scurrying little feet of cockroaches roused me from my tipsy state. Both hightailed it into the bathroom, which I assumed was the access point. After killing them, I settled into bed.

Unfortunately, thanks to the ingestion of San Miguel that evening I had to get up again to visit the toilet before long. Yep. Another in the room and one more in the bathroom. My shoes were subjected to more pounding that night than if I had run a 100 yard dash in my sleep. Finally, an hour later, I chased one more into the bathroom and watched it scurry into a gap between a pipe and the wall.

My shoes were subjected to more pounding that night than if I had run a 100 yard dash

Stuffing the hole with toilet paper apparently did the trick, although I kept the light in the bedroom on so that any newcomers would stay in the dark bathroom to honor the memory of the compatriots who had been ceremonially flushed.

The next day (yes, I was unable to find another room until the third day of my stay), I let the staff know about the cockroaches. After playing Pictionary to get across what the problem was, I was compensated quite fairly with a nod of the head and an “okay.”

Of course, nothing was different that next night. Except this time I had the heavy artillery. On my way home from dinner, I picked up the professional strength roach spray. Sure enough, a couple of the buggers had found their way into the room again, so I sprayed the ever-living shit out of the bathroom, stuffed the hole in the wall with poison soaked toilet paper and turned the fan in my room on high to keep the toxic stuff from leaking back into my bedroom.

I’m fairly sure I inhaled far more than a safe amount of the stuff, but it was worth it.

All this fun was had for a price that was 30% higher than the exceptional room I was able to book for the rest of my stay. Perhaps I was paying extra for double occupancy?

Sorry for the lack of pics. I didn’t even think about it until I had checked out. I usually only take pictures of pretty things.

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