North Island Beginnings

Hello again! We’ve left Argentina and have traveled around New Zealand for the last 5 weeks. It’s been fantastic visiting our cousins in the Southern Hemisphere. But before we delve into everything “EN ZED” we ought to catch you up on how we got here.

We left Buenos Aires on December 23rd for a long trip of flights and transfers. We flew back through the States because the flights worked out to be much cheaper. (Thanks again to Scott for his tutorial on how to get places for less.) After a day stay in LA, we flew to Auckland via Fiji and arrived on December 26th. Because we flew across the international dateline, we actually skipped Xmas. Fortunately for Santa, we’d both been very naughty, so we weren’t due any presents. However, we were afforded an in-flight glass of champagne, courtesy of Air Pacific, so we did continue a Dalton family tradition of bubbly on the holidays.

We arrived in Auckland on Boxing Day, which falls after Xmas. We stayed in the neighborhood of Ponsonby, where most businesses we closed through the New Year. Auckland is a somewhat inaccessible city to tourists, although there are several extreme adventure activities you can do in the City. We declined to climb the steel structure atop the Sky Tower, base jump or free rappel from a building, or even climb across the Harbor Bridge (which is kinda like climbing between the two suspension towers of the Golden Gate). We've heard Auckland is best enjoyed by those who live there, however, many Kiwis have little nice to say about the town. Mostly it was raining and it turned our mood a bit sour. We found ourselves “whinging” about the weather.

Aside: our friends Sarah and Jason taught us a useful phrase. If Sarah whined in any way, Jason called her a “whinging pom.” To “whinge” (pronounced like “hinge”) is to whine. A “pom” is a Brit. Apparently Brits whine often (any Brits reading this may call this to dispute) and their whining has resulted in the above-mentioned phrase. It’s possible it’s Aussie in origin, as any chance the Aussies get to take the piss out of Brits is seldom passed up.

Anyway, we were turning into whinging yanks, but we really needed to get this tour of Summer underway. Apparently, NZ’s December Aught Six was the coldest and rainiest in 70 years. However, we did manage to buy a great tent and find a farm for our WWOOF stay, So after getting the rental car settled, we left Auckland after two mostly uneventful days and we dashed north to the wine region of Matakana. On our way out of a BP station roughly 20km outside of the city, we picked up Ben who was hitching at the exit. Ben just happened to be going to Matakana to a friend’s winery where he would stay for the night before heading to the tip of the North Island for a surfing and fishing New Years. Ben gave us lots of great tips for travel and we dropped him at the winery (owned by an ex-pat American from Philly). Here’s a picture of Ben and Jen enjoying some rays at the winery veranda.This leads a bit into a comment our friend Jen Gill left on the blog. And I know this post is long, but since we are able to update infrequently, you, dear reader, get posts way past the 500 word guideline, and you might as well print this out and bring it to the pottery studio to read at your leisure. Anyway, Jen smartly (and snarkily) asked if all the people we meet are “couples,” an assumption you could easily make from reading our posts. Well, for the most part this is the case, and I think part of it is a function of traveling as a couple. To specifically meet “singles” while traveling, it is essential one stay in the dorms of hostels (or backpackers as they are called in NZ). We’ve stayed in a few dorms, but mostly we’ve been fortunate to get twins (two twin beds, sometimes as bunks) or doubles (or as the Argentines cutely call them “matrimonials”). It’s harder to meet people at a campground unless one stays there for more than a couple days. It is also the dynamics of couples and singles that they do not easily become friends in casual environments. I mean that it is also easier to meet pairs or more who are not necessarily “coupled” but are traveling together.

After dropping off Ben, we stopped in the tiny hamlet of Leigh, and found a small backpackers to stay for the night. In NZ and Australia, a hostel is referred to as a “backpackers.” Makes sense to us. We left the next morning in search of more warm and rainless weather. But it was mostly not to be. People kept apologizing that it wasn’t normally like this, but we knew the truth in our heart of hearts; we had brought the rainy weather with us from Argentina and it would follow us to eternity!

After Leigh, we drove further north to the beautiful Whangaroa Bay. This bay is the Marlin capital of the North Island and it was a beautiful area for fishing and boating. There was also a huge oyster farm in the bay that we could see at low tide. We met all the locals at one of the two pubs in town that night and the next morning we climbed a tall stone knob, for lack of a better word. Yes, we actually climbed to the top of this. There is a pathway around the side and a chain to help you scale the rocky part. It was basically a short hike straight up to the top with an excellent view of the whole bay below. Here’s a couple pictures:


And here you can see the oyster farm. Pretty cool, huh!Aside 2: The schizophrenic writing continues. The letters “Wh” appear in many Maori place names. “Wh” is pronounced as “F” no matter where it appears in the word. Maori is a spoke language, but was not a written one, so there are a few rules that differ from English. Why they didn’t use an “F” when creating written Maori words is a mystery to us. Therefore, Whangaroa is “Fangaroa” and you can guess how Whakatane is pronounced. Some of the older white NZ citizens do not use the Maori pronunciation, and really they come across as prejudiced old farts. (More about prejudice abroad in another post.)

After Whangaroa, we started heading south again. Foolishly, we didn’t realize that backpacker and camping accommodations would be so heavily booked for NYE, although we should have figured this. We had a long and lovely drive from Whangaroa Bay to the town of Colville on the Coromandel Peninsula. This is a beautiful stretch of land across a large bay from Auckland. It has beautiful stony beaches and windy coastal roads that give anything in California a run for its money. Delicious seafood and a boisterous, family-packed backpackers received us on December 30. There we met two wonderful folks Tom and Kaye who were traveling together, but were not a couple. (See! And you never thought we would circle back, but lo and behold we did!)

Kaye is a born and bred Kiwi and her friend Tom is a Brit who has lived in NZ for five years. He’s also spent time in Silicon Valley, and had traveled widely in NZ, so he offered metric tons of info on his favorite spots to visit in NZ, and places he enjoyed staying. He really hooked us up and we were mighty grateful for his generosity! Here's a shot of Kaye, Jen and Tom commanding the weather to remain sunny!As we mentioned, we were at quite a loss for NYE and Tom suggested we head to the Bay of Plenty where he knew the owner of a backpackers. After securing two primo tent sites at the very small and friendly place, we drove the wickedly curvy roads to Opotiki. We loaded up on Green Lipped mussels and Trevalley, a tender white fish, plus plenty of wine. Oh, and we mustn’t forget the JD for NYE, that just wouldn’t be right. It was a small, quietly raging (if possible) New Year’s Eve with beach bonfires in the rain and new friends.

On New Year’s Day, we checked out a sand sculpture competition just down the beach from the backpackers. As we later found out from our new friend Kurt (to be introduced in a later post), that this po-dunk contest made the national newspapers in NZ. You’ve heard of a slow news day, this country could be said to have a slow news life. After a chill afternoon, we said goodbye to Tom and Kaye and stayed another night in Opotiki, relaxing in the rain.

The next day we drove the rest of the Bay of Plenty and over to the East Cape, a stunning and rarely traveled area with a relatively large Maori population. Over every hill was yet another azure bay fit for paradise. Here's a shot of Jon next to his favorite new town name. (In Maori, it would be actually be pronounced "tick-i-tick-i", not "tee-kee-tee-kee.") We expect Baby Doe and Otto to be moving the family there tomorrow. We spent the night in Gisborne (pronounced like Lisbon), a surfer town. The stay was mostly uneventful other than a trip to the Salvation Army to buy clothes for our farm stay (at 50% off for the holiday no less!) and a new swimsuit for Jon to replace his permanently stinky red one.

Our next stop was Woody Hollow Farms, our WWOOF-ing stay in NZ. So far, we’ve made new friends; only a few couples, and several found in pairs. We may not get the farm stay movie edited until later, so our next post will take us through the rest of the North Island and into the South.