I don't have any photos of our last day in Auckland - a combination of stupidity and another hard drive crash erased pictures taken during this time frame. All I really have are memories of that day and night -- having a guy at a non-starbucks tell me that they couldn't make me a tea latte becuase 'they were not starbucks,' sleeping in a 'real' bed, cleaning the campervan, drinking champagne and eating strawberries with hokie pokie sauce, watching music videos on tv, hanging out in the rooftop hot tub, exploring the streets of Auckland at night, eating amazing sushi, listening to a guy with a guitar sing ballads on the outdoor patio of our restaurant, finally having fresh new zealand oysters, and enjoying the last moments of our honeymoon together.
Our final night in NZ, we decided to splurge on a suite in downtown Auckland. We found the most bizarre "champagne and strawberries" deal online, and booked a room at the historic Heritage Auckland - a 1920s Art Deco style department store that was converted into a hotel.
I don't have any photos of our last day in Auckland - a combination of stupidity and another hard drive crash erased pictures taken during this time frame. All I really have are memories of that day and night -- having a guy at a non-starbucks tell me that they couldn't make me a tea latte becuase 'they were not starbucks,' sleeping in a 'real' bed, cleaning the campervan, drinking champagne and eating strawberries with hokie pokie sauce, watching music videos on tv, hanging out in the rooftop hot tub, exploring the streets of Auckland at night, eating amazing sushi, listening to a guy with a guitar sing ballads on the outdoor patio of our restaurant, finally having fresh new zealand oysters, and enjoying the last moments of our honeymoon together.
(Photos above taken as stills from the only few videos that survived from that day).
On our flight back, I almost caused an international incident when I asked if I could have my super 8 film hand-inspected rather than run through the xray machine. The Auckland airport went nuts,a and brought out their bomb sniffing dog. On the positive, because there were like 10 screening checkpoints, we were able to bypass the long lines and get escorted through security by the dog. Note to self: don't travel internationally with motion film.
I don't even know how to sum up such an amazing trip. Photos and words cannot even scratch the surface of such a significant and memorable period in our lives - a beautiful wedding followed by an awesome honeymoon. It was truly better than we could have ever dreamed.
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Our good luck/bad luck continued. Good: - stayed at an amazing holiday park - finally ate good fish and chips from out of a food truck - met another cute kitty - watched weird nz talent shows on the flat screen tv in the holiday park - jumped on trampoline, and when we got tired, stargazed while lying on the trampoline - ate Sly's awesome hamburgers accompanied by oddly flavored NZ chips (we ate so many bags of chips on our trip) - woke up, got coffee, went to the nearby hot water beach, rented shovels, dug a pit, and created our own 'hot tub' on the beach. - explored many beaches and coves on Coromandel Peninsula - found our own private beach, stayed there most of the day Bad: - lost two of my cameras when a rogue wave jumped the sand walls of the "hot tubs" dug into the sand, and swept my backpack to sea (the backpack was way up on shore, but apparently not far enough. Ugh_. Once recovered, two of my cameras were destroyed. - stupid frenchy stole the hot tub I dug when I turned my back, and then had the gall to tell me it was her hot tub. Wrong answer, Frenchy. - junky hot pies from a gas station - lots of people, crowded beaches, limited parking, and our campervan got stuck on an incline, in the muddy grass. We spun our wheels and tried pushing the car for about 30 minutes before some nice tourists offered to help us push. Thank God we were able to get it unstuck. - it was our last full day in NZ Kitty fell asleep like this! Hot Water Beach - on either side of low tide, warm (sometimes scalding hot) spring water seeps up through the sand. We rented shovel, found a warm spot, dug a hole and built up the walls of the hot tub. Some of the spring water was so boiling hot, that we had to find cold springs dig a hole and tunnel and siphon it to the hot springs to cool it down. The concept sounded amazing in theory, in practice it was a lot of work. Not to mention, this was the site of where I lost two of my (brand new) cameras, something that pretty much bothered me the remainder of the trip. It was a really hard pill to swallow. Cathedral Cove, Hahei Beach - where we took long naps in the sand Finally, our own private beach on Stingray Bay Below: doused by a wave By the end of the day, I was in better spirits. The beach has a way of always making me feel better. The ice cream Sly bought me didn't hurt either.
We had high hopes when we reached the Eastern Coast of the North Island - an area referred to as "The Bay of Plenty." The beaches and hot springs were supposed to be amazing, with crystal clear waters, beautiful parks. It sounded like a regular Shangri-la. Similarly, the description of the Tauranga holiday park we pulled into for the evening sounded amazing. According to the guidebook, it had thermal pools and an ocean view. The left out the part about how it was more like a long-term live-in trailer park, rather than a holiday park. The "cottages" were actually occupied by long-term residents who had decorated their "front yards" with tires, discarded furniture and rusty chains. The "relaxing natural thermal pools" was a luke warm swimming pool (child's size), with peeling paint. The kitchen was a little hodge podge, with mismatched tables of varying heights, a sketchy 1970s refrigerator, and a collection of about 50 mugs from various places in the world. We had been looking forward to a nice holiday park all day, and were pretty let down when we rolled into town. But, we made the most of it, cooked ourselves up another gourmet dinner of New Zealand mussels, popped open a bottle of NZ red, and watched the sunset from our concrete 'dock' that faced the highway. It couldn't have been all that bad if we had a view like this, especially with all the wine we drank out of those purple plastic cups. Another early morning of scrambling and rushing to meet a boat. Our sole purpose for visiting this area in particular, was to swim with the dolphins. I'll spare the drawn out details. The gist of of the story is that we may be lucky when it comes to weather, but we really suck when it comes to seeing wildlife. Even though dolphins are notorious in this area (something about the waters that they really love), we spent all day searching and didn't see a single dolphin. It was a day of pros and cons, because the silver lining to this story was that we (unexpectedly) saw a humpback whale (dolphins are extremely common to find where we were and whales are extremely rare). And that was pretty crazy and amazing. Oddly enough, two of my favorite photos from the entire trip came from this somewhat "disappointing" day - the first one and the last of this set. Maybe it was because I recognized in them what Sly and I do best - enjoying time spent together regardless of the situation.
As soon as the hangi was over in Rotorua, we headed straight to Waitamo caves. We booked something called the "Lost World Epic" at the caves the following morning. A short synopsis of the "Lost World Epic" - We dressed up like Japanese factory workers, hiked to a sinkhole, strapped into a harness (mine being so tight, that it cut off all circulation in my legs and had to be readjusted half-way down), abseiled (that's rapelling for us Americans) 330 feet down into a limestone cave, hiked over huge slippery rocks and streams (all the while having to use our carabiners - which I thought were hooked onto us just for show - to lock ourselves in), saw some glo-worms, pet a friendly cave-dwelling eel, had a snack of chocolate covered marshmallow fish, climbed a rickety 330 foot ladder (in the dark) to get out of the opposite end of the cave, hiked back to the old barn, changed back into street clothes. This was another tour noted as "good for beginners" and "extreme level: low." Like I said, maybe Kiwi standards of what is "easy" and "beginner" is totally warped since everyone is so hardcore and extreme in NZ. The abseling was great (except for the strangled legs part), the experience was awesome, but I wouldn't say it was for beginners. I would say it was more moderate in terms of difficulty level and hardcore factor, but definitely not "leisurely." We had to double clip into wire 'handrails' laced throughout the cave. At first I thought it was just to give us something to do, and then I realized, when perched 50' above the cave valley on a two inch wide platform, that the carabiners and ropes were there for a reason. They were there so stupid frightened tourists like myself didn't fall to their deaths and put them out of business. The worst part of the trip was the 300 foot climb up a slippery ladder, at a 90 degree angle. This required two safety ropes - a primary and a backup...you know, just in case. Besides that stupid ladder, and hiking over rocky terrain in rainboots, everything else about the trip was awesome. stupid never ending ladder to nowhere glow worm, unlit glow worms, lit (this is also what it looked like at the Glow Worm Dell)
One of our guidebooks mentioned that Rotorua was the "Las Vegas of New Zealand." It made me wonder how a town in the geothermic heartland of NZ could really make that sort of claim. The guidebook was right. Of all the towns we visited, Rotorua was the most built-up in a Vegas/theme park sort of way. The town consisted almost entirely of huge hotels and commercialized natural wonders that you could view if you were willing to part with a hundred bucks. I'm almost positive that any prepackaged tour of NZ that stops in this part of the North Island, comes to Rotorua. All we saw were tour buses, large tour groups (of mostly Europeans or retirees), and families. Maybe the area outside of the city was amazing - we read about all kinds of secret hot springs, geysers, spas and thermal pools that were awesome and free - but we didn't spend enough time here to find out. From what we experienced, unless you were on a tour, retired, or with kids, this would be a pretty annoying place to visit. For those people, guides, guidebooks, etc. who suggested this place to us: you suck. The main reason we stopped in Rotorua was to experience the Maori Hangi, or feast. Similar to a luau, at a hangi, there's dancing, singing, challenges, lots of fake acting, and a huge buffet of food cooked on stones from a deep hole in the ground. If you find it fun to be on a bus with a large group of Eastern Europeans, being prompted by the bus driver to pretend you are on a canoe, then you might enjoy a tour like this. Also, if you like things that involve 'audience participation,' introducing yourself to everyone else, eating at large buffet tables across from people you don't know, watching cruise-ship level entertainment being performed half-heartedly, pushing through crowds to eat average, yet overly priced, buffet food, then this is perfect. I found the entire thing to be extremely awkward - from the shuttle bus to the hangi (where the bus driver tried to get us to 'paddle the canoe'), to the people laughing while the Maoris were sticking out their tongues (an ancient and serious tradition), to the odd sensation that the Maoris were being exploited/exploiting themselves, to the awkward silence of eating at a table of people you didn't really know (didn't expect that). You would need to be either extremely drunk, extremely bored, or extremely young to enjoy this. We did our best to make the most of it, and ended up befriending the cute elderly couple that sat across from us. That was the best part of the evening. The bus ride home, however, almost made me lose it. The same Eastern Euros from the ride over got drunk during dinner. The entire way home, we had to listen to them singing Polish folk songs...over...and over...and over...Shoot me. Sly was chosen to partake in a Maori game where the last person holding the stick, won the game. Sly won. Above: The highlights of our tour. Below...um, yeah. (B + JJ: Protection) Boris Nosocks Euro stylin' Audience participation is confusing to most You must be over 65 to enter Sexy We endured hours of this. A cry for help. The verdict is still out as to if this entire tour experience was awesomely bad, or just plain bad. Probably a little of both.
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