Te Puia

During the planning process for my brothers trip here, a Maori experience was one of the things one his to-do list. I spend a lot of time with a Maori family here, and the European and Maori cultures co-exist in daily life, but after he mentioned it I realized I had not done a completely Maori cultural experience. So in conjunction with Google and the opinions of the locals, I determined that we should go to Te Puia, in Rotorua. Te Puia is a Maori carving and weaving institution, and home to a thermal valley. 

First up for the day was a daytime concert, where we experienced traditional dancing. First was a Powhiri, which is a ritual that is performed when two groups meet for the first time. This was performed in front of the Marae, or meeting house.

Once we were inside the Marae, we saw performances of Waiata-a-ringa, Poi Dance, and the Haka. Waiata-a-ringa are similar to ballads, and are used for telling the story or Maori history. The Poi is for ladies only and requires a bit of coordination to make the Poi work gracefully. 

The Haka is a traditional dance used to prepare warriors for battle. A few female members of the audience were invited up to learn the Poi, and some male members to learn the Haka. My dear brother got to learn, as you'll see in the following video.

Here is a video of the All Blacks doing the haka. New Zealand's professional rugby team performs the haka prior to each of their games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbF4NG9_x7w

In additional to the song and dance, we got to see the carving and weaving schools, where students learn the traditional methods of creating the art. The area surrounding the Marae had some excellent examples of the work done there. The wood carvings are a record of tribal affairs and pay respect to ancestors. 

 Last stop was the thermal valley, home to the geyser Te Puia. We were lucky enough to see it shoot up about 5 feet. Nearly as delightful as the geyser was a group of Chinese tourists who saw us sitting on a bench taking a break and decided they needed pictures with us. None of them spoke any English, but they all lined up, passed their cameras to someone, and one at a time came and sat between us to take a picture. So when they were all done, I took a picture with them :)

Driving the South Island

My dear brother and I had the week of a lifetime road-tripping the South Island. We drove 1,500 kilometers in 5 days. "We" being me driving and him keeping me company, and perfecting his ability to see good photo opportunities and snap the picture before it was too late :)

We saw mountains and beaches, gorges and farmland. We took a ferry, drove a car, and flew in a plane. We got lost and we found beauty, adventure, and moments that are impossible to share with someone who wasn't there. 

We flew down to the capital city of Wellington and took a half a day to do a bit of exploring there. Since I'd been before I knew some good places for us to check out. Monday afternoon we made out way to the ferry dock for the three and a half hour trip across Cook Strait to the South Island. We docked in Picton, got some supper and settled into our hostel for the night so we could get an early start the next day. 

Cook Strait

Tuesday morning we picked up our car and off we went. First destination: Westport. We didn't spend too much time in Westport intself, because we had our sights set on things outside of town. We visited a seal colony (unfortunately it was a bit rainy so there weren't too many out), trekked around the coastline out to a seal colony, and a historic gold mine. Then we headed a bit further South to the Pancake Rocks, something that has been on my list since not long after arriving in New Zealand. We spent that night in a town called Hokitika, which I picked because it had a cool name :)

As we were driving to Westport, the state highway randomly turned into a gravel road for awhile

Seal colony

Cape Foulwind

Pancake rocks!

Punakaiki is the Maori name

We had another early start on Wednesday, beginning with breakfast at a cute little cafe. We took some time to look around town before heading off, enjoying some beach combing and shopping for jade items. First stop along the road was the Hokitika gorge, which has turquoise water. I have never seen anything like it, and as gorgeous as the pictures are, they hardly do it justice. A ways down the road, we stopped in the historic gold-mining town of Ross, where we explored some walking trails, and met a local musician who gave us a discount on one of his CDs because he was so delighted to meet some American musicians! Final stop of the day: Franz Josef glacier. We parked the car, tightened our shoelaces, and headed off on a nice hike to the glacier. For safety purposes, we could only go where you could see just the bottom of the glacier, but it was cool, no pun intended of course :) If you have the time and money, you can get a helicopter ride up to the top of the glacier. Maybe next time... We had planned to drive to Wanaka for the night but had to spend the night in Haast instead, because the highway had closed due to falling rocks. 

Hokitika Beach

Hokitika gorge

Walking to the glacier

Franz Josef Glacier

We were a bit behind our planned schedule since we didn't make it as far south as planned on Wednesday, but luckily we didn't actually have serious plans, except for where we were spending each night. So we headed to Wanaka Thursday morning. On the way we stopped at the blue pools, which were similar to the Hokitika gorge, with that gorgeous turquoise water. To get to the pools we walked through a forest that made me think of the woods where Snow White met the dwarves. We also had incredible views of Lake Hawea, which we agreed would have been unfortunate to miss had we driven to Wanaka in the dark the night before. Once we got to Wanaka, we enjoyed exploring a maze at Puzzle World (I must admit little bro had far more patience for that than me, I just wanted to find the way out haha), complete with illusion rooms at a 35 degree angle. After lunch, we headed towards Queenstown. We didn't actually get there because we ended up in Arrowtown instead, which we were quite happy with. It was another gold mining town, but there was a historic Chinese settlement we explored, and a delicious gelato place when we needed to cool off. When we were ready to hit the road again, we drove to Dunedine for the night. 

Rainbow after sunrise :)

Lake Hawea

Puzzle world

The road to Queenstown

Cabin in the Chinese settlement

Dunedin was great, one of my favorite days the entire week, although really, it's hard to say what was the best. Our hostel in Dunedin was an old Victorian mansion, absolutely huge and gorgeous, and we had the attic room to ourselves. We walked about downtown a bit, and then went to check out the steepest street in the world, Baldwin Street. We walked up it, but I chose to not drive up, because I was not entirely confident that I had the nerve to drive up something so steep. Every year the local chocolate factory organizes a Jaffa race down the street. Each Jaffa is numbered and they see what number gets to the bottom first! We spent the afternoon exploring the only castle in New Zealand, Larnach Castle. 

Baldwin Street

Larnach Castle

Castle grounds

View from the tower

We spent our final night of the roadtrip with some friends in Invercargill, just about as South as you can get, and then took a flight back to New Plymouth. It was a bit windy since there was a big storm moving in, but we made it back safe and sound. 

This post was a bit tough to write because there was so much to share and picking what to share is hard when I want to share every bit all at once. I went with an overview so I could share good pictures, maybe I will add some more details later :) In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed the photos!

Waitomo Caves

This post will be photo-less as this was not an adventure which allowed a camera, but I have convinced myself it is good to write a post that I cannot include photos with because it will motivate me to sort out and organize the several hundred photos I took on my brother and I's road trip of the South Island :) I will fill you all in on that soon as I get something done with the photos and figure the best way to organize what I'd like to tell you about.

Shortly after arriving in New Zealand (while I was taking the bus from Auckland to New Plymouth my first week here to be exact), I saw a sign for black water rafting to see glowworms at the Waitomo Caves. So naturally I added this activity to my New Zealand bucket list.

So my brother and I showed up, filled out the necessary waivers, medical forms, etc. and off we went with our guide. There were 12 of us in the group, 2 French people, and 8 Germans. First stop was to get gear. The morning was a bit chilly, probably about 55 degrees, so it was absolutely delightful to put a wet, cold, clammy wetsuit on over our swimsuits :) We also got boots, and cool helmets with lights on them. Once we'd donned our gear, we each grabbed an inner tube and were off.

It took about an hour and a half to get through the cave. Part of the time we were drifting along in the dark (we'd turned our lights off) so we could see the glowworms. It was gorgeous, it was like stargazing in a cave, at greenish stars. For those of you who are not sure what glowworms are, they are flies that have cocooned themselves in the caves. They leave strings of spider-type-web hanging down from the ceiling (called the "fishing lines of death" by our guide) to trap bugs to eat. Once they hatch they have a few days to mate and lay eggs and then they die. Pretty exciting life :)

Part of the trip through the cave was walking in ankle to knee deep water carrying our tubes. This is great if you are coordinated and not clumsy. Or experienced at walking in big bulky boots full of water :) I managed to only scrape up my knuckles a few times. I'll blame it on the fact that sometimes the ceiling was too low for me to stand up straight. A good bit of the time we were sitting on our inner tubes as we went through the cave. None of the places had terribly fast or rough water, but enough to be exciting. In slower places you just paddled yourself along with your arms.

For me personally (and probably most of the group I'd wager), the biggest adventure within the adventure as a whole, was jumping off a waterfall. Two actually, although the first was only maybe 18 inches high. The second was about 5 feet high I believe. What you do to successfully jump off a waterfall when blackwater rafting is to stand right on the edge, backwards (so that your looking upstream), put your tube behind your bum and jump backwards. I would recommend not spending too much time thinking about it beforehand, it is far easier to just take the plunge (no pun intended of course!!). The first waterfall wasn't high enough to really be much of a plunge, but the second one definitely was. So glad I had my mouth closed because I got completely submerged :)

Climbing the Mountain

So what did you do last Saturday morning? I didn't do a whole lot, just climbed a mountain. All the way to the top, approximately 8,600 feet! It only took 4 hours :)

My brother arrived in New Zealand about a week and a half ago for a three week visit, so last Saturday we woke up bright and early at 4am (more early than bright haha) and joined a couple of the locals in climbing Mt. Taranaki.

There wasn't this much snow on it, I took this not long after I arrived
during the winter, but it is a good shot of what I climbed!

It was still dark when we got there, so the mountain was silhouetted against a star-filled night sky. The first hour was pretty easy, started out with a gravel road, and then a paved road up to an excellent look-out just in time for a beautiful sunrise (the last section before the look-out is called "the puffer" since by the time you get to the top you are ready to take a break). It was clear so we could see clusters of light that were New Plymouth, Egmont Village, and other surrounding townships.

This one so doesn't look real but promise it is!

The next bit was not too much more of a challenge. We followed a dirt path further up the side of the mountain through a grassy/rocky area until we got to a set of stairs, about 500 steps. The scenery helped distract from the fact that my legs were starting to burn a bit :)

Just as we reached the top of the stairs and I was thinking that mountain climbing wasn't so bad, we got to the next bit which is called "the scurrier." We had started climbing at 6am, it was now about 7:40am. We would not reach the end of the scurrier until about 9:15am. I was ready to be past it long before then, if I may be honest. It was a mixture of loose gravelly rocks and dirt. As you looked up it did not appear to be terribly steep, but I quickly discovered that for every two steps forward I took, I would slide back down at least one, sometimes three. It was most definitely a lesson in perseverance, and you quickly found out how fit you are or are not.

Next up was "the lizard," named for the fact that you couldn't go straight up since it was just rocks on the side of the mountain, so you had to pick your way back and forth to find hand and footholds. It was about that point that I decided I would put off looking down for awhile. I am not terribly afraid of heights, but somehow knowing that I was climbing up some rocks, which were not straight up, but were certainly far from flat, was a little unnerving when I realized just how far we had climbed.

Once we reached the top of the rocks, we just had to cross the crater (Mt. Taranaki is an inactive volcano), and climb one more brief section before the top.

The crater was full of ice and snow, but by that point we had been working hard enough you hardly noticed the cold unless a gust of wind came up. Once we reached the top, we had lunch, at 10am, but it felt overdue after 4 hours of climbing. There were clouds down below that had formed since we began our climb, so we could not see town or the rest of the mountain range or surrounding area, but it was a bit magical to feel like we were were in our own little windy paradise on top of the world. The clouds were gorgeous in their own way, and it was somewhat awe-inspiring to see other mountain ranges across the island that I have heard of but have not yet made it to.

Mt. Ruapehu in the distance

The very top (and yes I went up there)!!

Of all the ones we took, this was the best..... :)

The climb down was much easier, and quick than going up, naturally, it only took about 2 and a half hours. When going down "the scurrier" we pretty much just ran down it, or slid down on it, occasionally not on my feet if you were me. About two thirds of the way down we were walking through the clouds which had prevented us from seeing all the way down, which was a slightly odd thing as we knew we were still high up but could not see more than a few yards around where we were walking.
I could keep attempting to describe it, but I think I will let you look at the pictures again instead because they tell the story a bit better :)