A bit more travel

A friend from Limerick organised to come to Palmerstown North for a conference, so we agreed to meet up with him there. On the way we spent a night in Taupo and picked up a down river racing boat for Sean that a friend in Auckland has given him. Sean also got a much needed swimming lesson from Jeanine in Lake Taupo before we tucked into a barbeque in the evening sun by the beach!

We met up with Mike in Palmerstown North and over the next couple of days discovered that there’s not much to do there bar visit the rugby museum, drive through Manawatu Gorge and play pool!

When Mike left, we drove up the west coast to New Plymouth with lovely views of Mount Taranaki on the way. While there we went on one of the numerous walks around the base of the mountain, we weren’t feeling quite energetic enough to walk up it!

Further along we stopped in Hamilton and had a walk around the Hamilton Gardens, which are really pretty but had at least 4 wedding parties there at the time having their wedding photo’s taken! Deciding there isn’t much else to do in Hamilton, we carried on up the road to Auckland where we were going to play in the clubs Christmas Polo Comp. The comp was on Sunday morning, and by lunchtime I’d played 7 games, including one of teams from the south side of Auckland versus the north side. Apparently I’m now from the south of Auckland… And I thought being from the Northern Hemisphere would have put me on the north side!

As the competition was finished by lunchtime we went mountain biking in Woodhill Park for the afternoon. It was my first time ever on a bike off the road, but thankfully the others were nice enough to wait for me and put up with my hands being firmly attached to the brakes at all times! The park is a great location for mountain biking, but I’m more used to being on a horse when crossing country! After that energetic day we went back to Dave’s to a massive barbeque and a sleepy evening!

On Tuesday evening Dave was doing a kayaking race so we went along to cheer him on. We weren’t expecting the crowd though. The race is part of the Takapuna Beach Series on every Tuesday evening over the summer. They had 388 competitors that night with 3 different events running at the same time. There was a 5km kayak, a 5km run and a 1km swim. Sean and I have been doing a bit of running since we got here so the next day we ran the 5km course, not quite in the winning time of 15 minutes 39 seconds but we were happy!

That evening we went with Dave to watch him play underwater hockey. Not being much of a spectator sport we went swimming ourselves after about 2 minutes of watching! The game is 6 a side, with all the players wearing snorkels, masks and fins. They have a little stick and the puck is on the pool floor. From the top all you can see is them all diving for one spot in a flurry reminiscent of a tank of piranhas!

The weather wasn’t great for the week, so the next day we went for a drive up Mount Eden and One Tree Hill, two of the extinct volcanoes in Auckland. Despite the weather there was a good enough view, though with Auckland being such a sprawling city all you could see was buildings and water. On Friday we drove over to Marewai Beach on the west coast known for the gannets nesting there.

A week in the life! 17-25 Nov

Saturday 17^th November we hit the road again. First stop was at the Huka Falls Jet where we were only charged the special “locals” discounted price of $20 instead of the usual $95. Perhaps it’s a sign that we’ve already spent too much time in Taupo but we weren’t complaining! The jet goes between Huka Falls and Aratiatia Dam at up to 80kmph, including a few 360^o spins on the way. It was great fun, but I’m glad I wasn’t paying full price!

Then Sean, Jayne, Mike and I carried on up to the Coromandel Peninsula enjoying the beautiful scenery along the way. We stopped in the tiny town of Hahei and from there walked to Cathedral Cove, where a gigantic arch has been cut out of the limestone along the beach. On the way back we also saw Gemstone Bay and Stingray Bay (we kept out of the water there). After our walk we went to the famous Hot Water Beach, which was quite an interesting experience. There was a large, quite nice looking beach that was nearly deserted bar one spot where over a hundred people were grouped together. On going closer you find that it’s quite a busy spot as most of the people there are busy digging the beach up with their shovels – you can dig a little pond in the sand which fills with hot water coming up from the volcanic activity below. Then, once you’ve checked it’s not too hot with a tentative toe, you lie down in your own hot pool and relax. That is, if you can relax in the midst of all the madness! We were also there when the tide was coming in, so got a great laugh when the outermost pond was breached by a wave coming in much to the disgust of the people in it!

The next day we drove down the west coast of the Coromandel Peninsula and stopped along the way to enjoy the beauty of the area. The sea was calm and the sun shining - it was absolutely beautiful. We had a bit of a whirlwind trip around the Coromandel because Jayne was flying home on Monday. On Sunday afternoon Jayne and Mike left us to go to Auckland. We continued driving around the Firth of Thames as far as Maraetai where we decided to stop for the night. For the first time we had a bit of difficulty finding a campsite, but after a few enquiries we got booked into Omana Regional Park campsite, which turned out to be a long drop toilet in a field which we only had to share with a few hens. It was a beautiful spot though where we enjoyed the sunset and got a great night’s sleep without any distractions! The next morning the park ranger came around looking for the hens as they apparently shouldn’t have been sharing the field with us at all – I think they must have known he was coming though as by that stage they’d completely disappeared!

We decided to go up to the Northland next, so we had to go through Auckland. As we were passing we thought we’d pop into Dave’s factory again to say hi. That trip resulted in us getting the keys to Steve’s bach (holiday home) and driving a jet boat ourselves! They’re making a prototype jet boat and were bringing it out for a test run, so we got to go along too. They brought another older jet boat out to video the new boat, so we went out in that first and got to drive it for a while. Then we had a spin on the new boat, which was just scary! It’s so fast! It was brilliant, and sooooo much better than the Huka Jet!

After that excitement, we were a bit late to go too far North that day so we pulled into a campsite at Sandspit. It turned out to be quite an unusual campsite, with an open museum around the office. We had fun playing an after dinner game of snakes and ladders on a life-size board!

We then carried on to Goat Island where we went snorkelling, which was really good, once I got over the shock of the huge Snappers (fish) that had no fear of me, and seeing a ray of some sort! Sean had his waterproof camera with him so has a few good pics.

After that we carried on up to Matapouri to Steve’s bach where we had a few great days enjoying the beautiful scenery, we even took a go at sea-kayaking. Thanks Steve! Our time there was cut a bit short by an invitation to go jet boating on the Wanganui River for the weekend, which we couldn’t refuse! We got a lift from Auckland with Dave and got on the river near Taumaranui. From there we drove downstream for a couple of hours, overtaking the slogging kayakers on the way, as far as the Bridge to Nowhere Lodge, where we tucked into a fab venison dinner. We had a great weekend there, enjoying living it up! We went to see the Bridge to Nowhere – we had to walk 20 minutes through the bush to find it – a solid bridge in the middle of nowhere with nothing but bush on either side of it with a walking trail through it.

On Saturday our boat got a pebble caught in the grill of the engine (or so we thought) leaving us not able to put the revs over 4,000 for the trip back upstream on Sunday. The extra time it took us to get back up caused us to run out of petrol 3 times, the last time just 100m short of home! When we got the boat out of the water and did a bit of investigation we found that a fist-sized stone had got past the grate (which moved up and down, rendering it really useless for river use) and had been wearing down the propeller all the way home!