Friday 28 March 2014

Auckland (28.3.2014)



It had to happen eventually. Today we made our way to Auckland for our final stop of our journey. This will be the last entry that I will write from New Zealand :(

The drive today was again one of those days where we played the game "Only in New Zealand...". For example, only in New Zealand you see three lane highways and all three lanes are occupied by lorries overtaking each other. Or only in New Zealand on a three lane highway is the leftmost lane (the slowest) entirely empty while the other two are packed with vehicles. My personal favourite is Only in New Zealand more than 75% of the locals don't know their rules of approaching a roundabout.

After watching the Kiwis' style of driving when there are more than three cars on the road in utter amazement, we finally arrived in Auckland at our hotel. We decided to let our trip wind down by doing first a little shopping and getting our check-in passes and baggage in order. Nothing fancy really. Finally, we went up the Sky Tower to see Auckland by night before we went for a final meal and a drink.

Auckland is just one more big city. I hope I do not offend anyone by saying this, but if you've seen one big city you've seen almost all of them. After being in areas of low population for about three weeks, it did not feel overly great to be back in "the crowd". Too many people running around. It was a cultural shock actually. 

Anyhow, next post will be from Belgium. Not looking forward to the flight, but we'll get through it. At this point, I'd like to thank you all for reading this blog. I hope you enjoyed it at least a bit. I sure did enjoy writing it. Hopefully, I'll be able to meet and chat with you all in the near future and you can tell me what's been happening in your life in the meantime :)

Take care, guys.



Yep, there was an important dude in NZ called Vogel. Goes to show that the famous Vogel's all needed to go to different countries than Germany to become famous...

View from the SkyTower over Auckland at night

Thursday 27 March 2014

Dolphins! We swam with dolphins!!! (27.3.2014)



And I say it again: "We swam with dolphins!!!!" I didn't want to believe it until it really happened, so I did not mention it in the last post in case that got my hopes up. It was something I always wanted to do and we had one last day time, so we thought that we should go out with bang!

We went to Tauranga which is on the Pacific Coast where there is a small company running a tour of dolphin watching and if possible swimming with them. The weather was supposed to be so so, but it was our last chance so we just went for it.

It took more than 2 hours before we even saw the first ones, but it was well worth it! When they eventually came towards our boat it was soooo... incredible! I love dolphins, man. While we had our feet dangling from the bow of the boat, the dolphins were jumping out of the water no more than 10 cm away. It was so cool! (I apologise for my squeaky voice in the video. I was excited)

 

The skipper tried to get close to a larger group but the ones we had were all very agitated so it was hard to keep them in one place (something you need to have for swimming with them). We saw them on and off for the best part of about another 2 hours until we already wanted to turn round when we saw something that even the captain had rarely seen before.

We were following a kind of bird called a gannet which feeds of the same food as dolphins, so they are an indicator for nearby dolphins (usually), when suddenly we saw a lot of commotion on the water. It turned out that a group of about 10 - 15 dolphins circled around a large amount of fish while one at a time the dived in and ate them. It was already a spectacular sight, but the gannets made it actually even more cool. They hunt by flying over the area and then diving into the water with up to 100 km/h to pretty much spear a fish and come to the surface.

So we saw loads of dolphin fins circling this area with other dolphins jumping into said circle. This all causes a "lot" of foam and bubbles and whatnot. Then out of the blue you see the birds gliding in and without warning just diving in. What a spectacle!

At this point, the skipper decided to give the swimming a try... well, I say swimming, I mean holding onto a rail at the back of the boat, while looking down with mask and snorkel (wet suited of course). We were lucky in so many ways. In this case, that there were only 11 people in total (up to 49 is possible), so everyone had plenty of time to look. Isi and I were in the second group.

One thing I forgot to mention. To keep dolphins interested, you need to make a lot of noise, so we were shouting, whistling, screaming, banging against the side of the boat like mad. It helped :) Once Isi and my turn came round, we moved to a different spot. We were anxious to see if we would see anything. I remembered about trying to kick up a fuss, so I tried to scream while snorkeling. Apparently, even the guys on the boat heard me :D

Again though, it worked!... Or at least I like to think that it was my screaming. I swallowed so much salt water because of it, it must have had some good. We had some of the best views of them ever (even the other crew member said so). At times there were 3-5 dolphins not even a meter away from us, dashing and diving around us. I really felt like a 12-year old child again. We have seen dolphins!!! In the wild!!! When it was time to get out of the water, I was so hyper I jumped around the ship for about 5 - 10 minutes before I could sit down again. DOLPHINS!!!

A Czech guy on the trip had a waterproof hand-held camera with him and he filmed the entire dolphin encounter. I gave him my e-mail address and hopefully he will send a mail with the link where to download it from. He even had it with him when he was in the water. Let's see if I can get my hands on that video. We hardly took photos, only at the beginning, partially because we forgot and mainly because the waves shook the boat quite hard (although it was a very calm day) and we were worried to drop it in the water.

After this amazing first half, we chillaxed on the beaches of Tauranga for the other half, before we got home to consume all the food that we still have. It needs to go (damn! :D).

Tomorrow we're off to Auckland for our last stop before we jump on the plane home on Saturday :(


The boat we went on. It has place for 49 passengers... luckily we were only 11 in total

















Wednesday 26 March 2014

Ruapuke and the Bridal Veil Falls (26.3.2014)



After yesterday's exciting descend into the depths of the Waitamo Caves, we took it slow again. It seems to be a good pattern. The beaches of the West coast past Raglan took our fancy.

Our first little walk was the so-called Waikato Bush Walk. It was short and sweet and... bushy ;) We had the chance to see a lot of different birds there. However, most of them were too fast to be caught on camera, sadly :(

Raglan is apparently the Surfer's Paradise of New Zealand. Because of this, we also went to Waikato Beach to see the surfers instead of going straight to Ruapuke beach with its black sand. It is supposed to be a fairly unknown place (it's not in the Lonely Planet Guide, for example). But back to the surfers.

At first, surfing seemed like a really pointless exercise to us. We saw 5 - 10 individuals consistently battling into the waves with that board, then reaching a point a little out. The waves came and they try to stand up on their board and... they fall down unceremoniously on their arse 2 seconds after or they manage to stand up and by the time they manage, they are already at the point where the wave finished. We got quickly bored of watching people fall over and left.

It got only apparent when we left and saw some 5 or 6 people at a different part of the beach when we connected the dots. There was a surf school next to our first spot, so those guys must have been beginners. The guys we saw there really did the cool stuff. Almost like on television. Beautiful to watch, how they rode the waves. I gotta say though, I don't think that sport is for me.

Once we tore our eyes away from that view we carried on along the coastal street... if street is really the word we are looking for ;) Cows were sitting on the gravel footpath that we went along, but the view was fantastic. Once we reached Ruapuke, we were not quite sure how our car would look from the outside, the street was that bad, but it was well worth it. The sand which is derived from basalt really is black. The beach stretched for kilometers and apart from us, there was only a horse rider (and his horse) that passed us once or twice. The sun and the strong winds made the sand reflect the sun from random grains, it was quite a spectacle. I tried to take photos of it, but a video would only show it well (see below).



The sea itself was very rowdy today as well and we could see the waves crash into the sides of cliffs a little further up. It was quite the view we had. We stayed for some time walking up and down, not really believing the view. First time, we saw black sand...

However, the best was still to come. We carried on to see the Bridal Veil Falls a little further inland. Now, I mentioned already that Isi and I have become quite the fans of waterfalls, but this one really took the cake. It was almost a cliché. The fall was fed by a fairly small stream that would roll over a cliff some 50 meters high. Because of the constant wind most of the water would never touch the bottom and be carried away as a spray. This created a perfect rainbow and gave the air the illusion that you are really looking through a bridal veil.

There was one aspect that I liked the most about it though. Along the path to go, there were little plaques with information. The one on the bottom talked about an aspect of the ancient Maori belief.

"All water is seen to have originated from the separation of Ranginui the sky, and Papatuanuku the earth. Rain and mist personify their mutual grief of parting."

Folklore and the sagas of polytheistic belief systems always struck a chord with me and this one I found very touching, especially in a place like this.

We returned home from there to get an early night as tomorrow looks to be quite exciting. I won't mention what it is just yet as it is very weather dependent and tomorrow may be borderline for that. Not sure yet if it will happen. We'll see... :)


The one bird, we were able to take a picture of in the Waikato Bush Walk

We liked that spot

Panorama from a spot along the road

A Panorama of Ruapuke Beach

Check out the black sand

I tried to catch how the sun reflects from random grains in the sand

There were two streams leading to the sea. They carved themselves into the sand in quite an interesting fashion

The patterns the stream made were very interesting

The waves crashing into the cliffs

My new desktop background ;)

Bridal Veil Falls

See how the wind distorts the fall

 Most of the water barely touches the ground


Monday 24 March 2014

Into the Depths we go... (25.3.2014)



We dived into the Black Abyss... and lived to tell the tale... What sounds like a rather dramatic and dangerous adventure was actually the name of a tour that we undertook with "the Legendary Blackwater Rafting Company".

We almost missed our allocated time, because our GPS sent us down the most stupid route ever imaginable. It is almost as if it has the setting "Avoid State Highways if possible". So we went down the backstreets of New Zealand (not for the first time, thanks GPS, you fool!) and luck was on our side. A Lorry toppled over and blocked the entire road, yet another detour. That detour was so full with winding roads, faster than 50 km/h was not possible, but I would have wished that we could at least drive that fast... since we were stuck behind a humungous lorry transport tree logs (about 30-35 km/h). Finally we got past it and we thought we were on the home stretch, the road became even narrower and more winding just to spit us out on the road we want... The given address was... a field of cows grazing... Damn! Well... we switched off the GPS and drove. With 2 minutes to go, we somehow found it ;)

The trip itself was yet another unforgettable experience. We went caving into one of the many cave complexes around Waitamo. Only wearing bathing gear, we donned our wet suits, shoes and helmet and got trained in how to abseil correctly and, of course, how to stay safe and not fall down from the ridges.

I have mentioned previously, that I am extremely fearful of heights of any kind or as Rincewind from Terry Pratchett's Discworld Novels puts it, "The Grounds" (because it is the grounds that kill not the height per se). So off we went and abseiled into a dark hole so deep, you couldn't see the bottom (37 meters), then attached to a rope that acts as a slide, we jumped into the dark, not know how deep we would fall. I don't know what made me do that... maybe because I am tight-fisted and know I paid for it ;) These two experiences alone were worth it, though. The slide was in the complete dark and you could see glowworms on the roof. It was a fantastic sight!

The strange and borderline stupid things did not stop there, however. We were then given an inflated ring and jumped (yes, even more jumping, just imagine my joy when I had to do them) about 2-3 meters holding the ring to our backside into the cold water in the caves (8 - 12 °C). If you were sleepy before, that was the point you really became awake trying to figure out how to breath :)

At this point, we were about 60 meters below the ground, led on by our two fantastic tour guides. In general, I have to say that the guides we had on our trips so far, were all professional, knowledgeable and while knowing it has to be fun, made sure at all times that we were safe. These two made sure, we would not get too cold with one or two breaks giving us a hot drink and some energy snack, while making the trip even more of an experience. It was fun to challenge yourself while at the same time we were always assured that if we do not dare to do something, there is always another way. Admittedly, the jump was the worst for me, afterwards it was easy cruising fear-wise, but I can imagine a person uncomfortable in tight locations may have issues.


Talking about strange feelings. There was one sensation that I found very odd, yet no one else seemed to care much about it. Occasionally, bubbles would form inside your wet suit as you are drenched from head to toe. These bubbles would travel up your leg and back. It was a bit like "reverse-farting", in a way. It sounds gross, but the feeling was a bit strange to be honest.


From then on we walked, floated on the inflated ring or swam (swimming in shoes is hard!) through the caves, while the guides pointed various parts of the caves out to us. One section referred to as the Zombie Walk followed by the nipple pool amused everyone. The ground was so uneven and underwater, it was impossible to walk straight while at the end almost without warning you dropped down into the water all the way to about your nipples at which point you are finally wet all over. As a side note the guides, like everyone in NZ, were very protective of the nature, environment and Maori culture. An aspect that I greatly respect. 

The biggest attraction, of course, were the glowworms, that clung to the ceiling giving it the feel of a starry night sky almost (I for some reason had to the think of Star Trek's Borg all the time. No clue why). The glow in the dark attracts mayflies and other insects that then stick to a little thread that hangs from the ceiling.

Next to the worms (which are actually a type of maggot) there were also some stalactite formations (one looking a bit like Gandalf actually) and a bone, that NASA apparently thought of as Alien and another scientist showed it to be of a whale. The bone was trapped in the limestone and got fossilised. The entire experience of being down there was indescribeable...

Once we came to the end of our tour, as a bit of a change, we did not go through wide caves, but had to squeeze through very tiny holes (the Birthing Canal) and the climbed "up" little waterfalls and streams. As it involved pulling my own weight up, I found that physically the hardest part, but it was like the entire experience wholly enjoyable :).

At the end of the climb, out of nowhere, we could see an opening in the rocks and suddenly looked into the sun. Another very special experience. Now I've also been to the Underdark. Seems like there is also a bit of Faerûn in New Zealand (For all you Dungeons & Dragons afficionados, out there) ;)

We then got back, cleaned ourselves up and went back home to relax and figure out whether we can take a bog standard stone from a beach back home to Europe. Something that is usually annoying to do, i.e. contacting official bodies and speaking to people who by default are not able to think outside their usual thought patterns. When you try to make them do it, you earn yourself a blank stare and an answer that does not fit the question. Not so in New Zealand (I love this country). We went to the DOC (Department of Conservation) here in Hamilton and despite the person not knowing, she contacted DOC Auckland straight away and gave us contact details for the two officers who will know. All this within 10 minutes, only because she couldn't reach anyone as we came shortly before closing time.


Now we're just letting the day slowly come to an end. I have come to enjoy that part of the day, too. Writing the blog entry of the day lets me reflect on what has happened over the day and appreciate it once more. It doesn't flash past me so quick as is often the case in holidays where a lot is happening. Then maybe reading a book or playing a PC game for an hour or so before hitting the sack and have another exciting day to look forward to. The exciting part tomorrow is to see the black sands of the Ruapuke beach near the Bridal Veil Falls on the West Coast...



It's a Promo Pic, but that is what we did... but in the dark

Again a Promo Pic. We did the same, but it was, again, darker. This was the hardest part for me. I am really scared of heights and I hate the feeling when your gut starts to march towards your head in freefall. I nearly peed my pants. I didn't, as a favour to the guides who have to clean the suits afterwards. Isi did it without blinking an eye.

The last Promo Pic. This is what we saw almost whenever we switched off our headlights.

Yup, there I am. The smile somehow chiselled to my face as the grimace of terror was not allowed. 37 meters down I went.

And here my sweetheart follows. Her smile is real. She loves this stuff.

Isi exiting from "the Birth Canal"

Really cool picture of the whole group (without guides) consisting of a Swedish, French, French, Isi, Israeli, myself, Israeli and Kiwi (from left to right)