The flight from Vancouver to Auckland was less than ideal (being seated next to a young red-haired child) but survivable none the less. Sleep was rare on the flight.
After clearing customs at 3am or whatever insane hour it was, I caught a taxi (not the cheapest, but the easiest at 3am) to a hostel downtown. As I could not check in yet, I started scouring the interweb for vehicles. I had a couple specifics in mind: it had to be a hightop van so I would be able to stand up in it, and it had to have a fridge, and had to be kind of a comfortable living space. Yes, maybe a little picky but I intend to spend the next months living in it.
For the next week I looked online every day for new postings of vehicles and then toured around the city. Auckland is busy, always. Even at 3-4am I could still hear people carrying on from my 3rd floor window. There were a few interesting things in Auckland though: I spent a bunch of time in the Maritime Museum learning of the history of boating in New Zealand. Auckland is known as the city of sails and that was very obvious, they have quite the passion for racing. The marina in Auckland was huge, more boats than I've probably ever seen in one spot. The views from the SkyTower (328m tall) were quite something. Touring around Devonport (the orignal and still current location of the naval base) was nice, including a trip to the Naval museum.
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| Maritime museum. One of the first jet boats, circa 1957. |
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| Maritime museum. Lots of model ships, including this one made of whale bone. |
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| Pride of the Kiwi racing team, Steinlager 2. |
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| View from the SkyTower, Auckland harbour bridge. |
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| One of the numerous old churches in Auckland. |
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| Auckland skyline, view from one of the harbour ferries. |
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| Few boats having a race. |
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| NZ frigate, loading up to leave. Watched it sail out shortly after. |
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| Another shot of Auckland. Note the marina on the left. |
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| Auckland at night, seen from the SkyTower. Note the cruise ship upper center. |
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| Walking bridge that raises and lowers for access to part of the marina. |
On the weekend there was a couple of car fairs where people can sell their used vehicles and quite often good deals can be had. I had walked to both of these, the one day putting on over 20 km round trip. Nothing suitable was to be had at these car fairs, but I wasn't to bothered by it as I had found a vehicle online that would suit my needs and the couple selling it would be in Auckland Monday.
I met up with the fellow Canadians Monday and,after looking over the van, decided it would be the one for me. The rest of the day was spent hanging out as they packed their things and sorting out a transfer of the registration which was pretty straight-forward and easy. They found a rental vehicle and I dropped them off at it and then hit the road, happy to finally be out of Auckland. That felt like the true start of my trip.
I made it a couple hours out of Auckland and found a campsite to park my van. Caravan parks are common around here, providing a place to pull up and park, plug-ins if needed, toilets and showers (not all have hot water), and a communal kitchen. New Zealanders are real fussy about just pulling over and camping anywhere as past tourists have not been so tidy and ruined it for the rest of us.
The next day I found a cheap grocery store and stocked up on supplies and then again hit the road, making my way down to Raglan. Raglan is kind of a sleepy surfing town and was a nice quiet place to stay and walk down a large beach.
The day after I continued south down the west coast to Waitomo Caves, stopping off to look at the renowned bridal veil falls, which was nice.
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| Bridal Veil falls. |
From Waitomo caves I headed south to New Plymouth, where it absolutely poured. I started reading a novel left behind by the previous owners. I figured this was note-worthy as I haven't done that in years!
There, I got in contact with Hugo van der Werff. Hugo had been living in Canada just previously, working in Vernon. He had been in Smithers, but I wasn't there that weekend, so I got his contact info from Erica. He invited me down to his parents place, just outside of Upper Hutt city. The next day I made my way down to the van der Werff residence. The road to their place was quite a windy road, 25km/h was the max speed one could get. I was warmly welcomed at the van der Werffs and spent the rest of the day just chatting and get to know everyone.
The following morning we headed out with other members of the church to pick pinecones. The cones from the pines here are much larger than ours back home and many people burn then in their woodstoves during the winter, especially as firestarter. They bag them up and sell the bags as a fundraiser from their school.
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| We ran out of bags so we filled van der Werffs trailer up! |
Later that day we headed out back of the property and made sure Hugo's rifle was still shooting straight. A lot of New Zealanders use suppressors (silencers) on their rifles and it was quite something to hear the difference it makes.
After ensuring it was sighted in, we headed, with his brother Derek, to the neighbours property. He had recently fractured his pelvis and was unable to get out to shoot some meat so he invited the van der Werff boys to come shoot something for him.
It was quite a climb up the side of the valley behind the neighbours but the little Suzuki made short work of it (motor bored out to 1600 cc's, high compression cylinders, aviation carburetor). From there were headed in along the track on foot.
The weather that had been nice in the morning was no longer cooperating. We walked from vantage point to vantage point looking into the valleys below for red deer. This time of the year they are rutting and the stags emit a "roar" as its known. Hugo and Derek would call from these vantage points hoping to stir up a stag. It wasn't long before we spotted a hind and her fawn. The hind wasn't in the best of shape, and with the possibility of a stag coming into a roar, we decided to leave them.
We continued along the ridge tops, still shrouded by blowing mist that would sometimes limit visibility to maybe 30 yards. Adjacent to the property was a large fenced area for the water catchment that supplies the city with water. Along the fence is a break in the fence with a small cliff that the deer can escape the catchment area but can't get back in. We stopped here and let a roar go which was quickly responded to by a stag! Its quite something to hear them roar! We hunkered down as we had a bit of visibility along the track and hoped he would come out through the deer jump. We could hear him coming our direction as every time we would call, he would quickly call back, his roaring getting nearer and nearer. Hugo and I hung back while Derek headed into the thick bush to try head him off. Unfortunately he must have caught our scent in the wind as he quickly shut up and moved off. We never did end up seeing him.
We continued along the track, calling and spotting when and where we could. We didn't end up seeing any more deer, just several wild goats. We made our way back down.
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| Hiking up through misty pines, this is way more open than the bush we were hunting. |
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| View back down towards the farm through the fog. |
Sunday, my birthday, was a nice, quiet, relaxing day spent going to church, chatting, and reading hunting magazines.
Monday I thanked the van der Werffs for their outstanding hospitality and headed out to get a few groceries and hit the road once again. Heading north through the central part of the island, I made it to a nice little campsite outside the small town of Mangaweka.
The next day, yesterday, I continued north through to Taupo. Along the way I stopped off at the national Army museum. It was quite interesting and had quite the assortment of guns!
That brings me to today where I'm currently sitting in the library in Taupo to use their wi-fi to get this blog off the ground! I scheduled an oil change for the van today so that could get done while I sit here typing.
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| Typical winding New Zealand road. |
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| Countryside. |
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| Interior of "Jake" (the previous owners named him). Note the 5 speed column shift manual transmission. |
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| Top popped up. |
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| Not even a tenth of the guns at the army museum. |
~Korey
