Spaceship

We hired a Spaceship and went into outerspace! We got this orange camper thing in Christchurch and went oop North!
















Monday 2 March 2009
The 365th day of our trip


We drove Christchurch to Picton. The ferry crossing on the inter islander took 3 hours! (the Cook Strait is tiny!!). Anwyay, it was an awesome sunset. Arrived in Wellington at 9pm and stayed at a motor home that we couldn't find and had to ring them TWICE!! Ha ha.







Tuesday 3 March 2009
Wellington city centre for the am and pm then the Botanics gardens and drive up to look out over city. Great views. Lunch next to a beach just before Paraparaumu (great name) off SH1. We drove further onto Otaki and stopped at a beach where we could drive onto the beach and had dinner.

We were somewhere between Te Haro and Otaki, along the Kapiti Coast.


We could see the Kapiti island which made great sunset photos. Stayed at Otaki Gorge DOC which was a huge campsite and a heap of school children staying there!! They kept all going off in groups into the bushes with their torches!!



Wednesday 4 March 2009
A cold nights sleep with the tent awning fitted on the back of the van which was drafty but quite nice having ventilation. We found the camp caretakers house in the morning to pay our $12 fee, like the good people that we are, and got stopped by a copper en route as a man had not been seen for 2 days back from his walk, only we had no seatbelts on whoops! A search party was out for the man! Eek!





Lunch was at Foxton beach and we had 2 x swims in the sea!! V lovely picturesque and we washed in the outside showers - touch to free showering! Dinner was in Wanganui on the side of the Anzac Parade by the water. There were some canoeists on the water and also some roller blading in the park. Pretty cool to watch a group of speed skaters. We drove towards Tongariro National Park after dinner and took photos of the sunset en route. Stayed at the free DOC campsite no .9 Mangahua Tongariro National Park. It was full but we squeezed in tee hee.


Thursday 5 March
Drove to the start of the Tongariro Crossing at the Mangatapopo Hut, but we should have arranged transport to collect us the other end dammit - didn't know. So anyway, we drove back to Turangi with a couple of Israeli hitchhikers who had bailed out of the walk due to bad weather conditions and needed a lift back Turangi. So actually we wouldnt have been able to do the walk today anyway due to the weather. We went to the information in Turangi and decided we should go up the chairlift at Mt Ruapehu in order to get a walk and a view in. We parked in Whakapuppa village and got on the chair to half way up the mountain then we walked (climbed) to the top.

Great view of Mt Ngauruhoe, better known as Mt Doom! It is used in the Lord of the Rings movie as Mt Doom. We ran down some of the screed on the way back down which was brilliant fun. Knackered though after.








Friday 6 March
Drove to Turangi and en route did a waterfall walk Taurhai Falls and through forest (a lot of and in wrong direction) to Okupata Caves. Quite cool. Lunch on edge of Taupo Lake, South. Lots of ducks and swans. We arrived in Taupo to find signs for the Ironman! We texted my cousins Ben and Tracy who happened to be there down from Auckland and went to meet them! Coolio.


Afterwards we quickly popped off to see the Huka Falls, which were awesome - the colour of the water is just phenomenal and then we found a little lay-by near the road not far from Taupo another free night camping, only after a while others started to turn up and then we had to share it with some other campers dammit! Great cards and DVD evening. {Yes the camper has a DVD player fnar fnar!!}. Look at that concentration!! Making sure we get alllllll the wine out of the cask!! ha ha


Saturday 7 March
We took a dip in a private mineral pool at the local leisure centre in Taupo dahhling then after a couple of hours enjoying the Ironman race we set off for Rotorua.

First though we stopped at the craters of the moon on the way, the smelly steaming hot pools and had a coffee in the camper afterwards. We saw some postcards for Orakei-Korako and new we had to go there so we planned to go the next day. We drove near it and found a lay-by which was a bit disgusting, as it had dead pigs bodies and heads… but it was off the road and well hidden. We had a lovely sunset.

Sunday 8 March
Early start up at 7.30! We were the first guests at Orakei-Korako which was awesome, never been up so early I shouldn't think. Boat ride over to the Terrace to check out the geo thermal hidden valley. Friggin fantastic bubbling mud pools.


We arrived to a not so smelly Rotorua and had lunch by the lake watching a couple of sea/air planes take off and fed the swans/ducks. There were also a load of Japs trying to take photos of the pigeons/sea gulls flying around them by feeding them bread and flinging it in the air! Hilarious!

We found the LUGE and went down 5 times! Bloody Brilliant. It was so fast, and better than Queenstown from what we could remember. The scenic ride was very long. Your hands hurt afterwards from the grips on the handlebars. That didn't happen in Queenstown as the rides were not long enough to cause this pain!! $45 each for gondola and 5 luges. Not bad. We had dinner at Lake Rotorua before getting to Awakeri Springs en route to Whakatane. (pronouced fuckataney!) Cool place with hotpool that was filtered. The showers were either cold or stank of sulphur when you turned on the hot, so that was a bugger. We had a late night dip which was nice though. I drove today (and yesterday!!)!

Monday 9 March
Woke up at 8.00 but went back to sleep whoops. Went to Ohope to the beach and had lunch there and I had a run then swim in the sea. Lots of bits in the water euu.

We carried on along the east cape coast towards the cape runaway and found a nice beach at Opotiki where we had another dip in the sea great beach with great waves by surf club. Had dinner and a stroll and aftering showering there as it didn’t smell of poo!, we started to drive while the sun set to find a camp spot. We drove over Waiaua River up over a big hill, looking down over Whitianga Bay, and got to Omaio as the book we picked up at the info in Whakatane said we could camp at Hoani Waiti Reserve for free. We were nervous of stopping just anywhere coz of all the Maoris in this area! So we turned off the road and even driving in towards the camp there were heavily decorated and carved Marae gateways where it said no camping but we persevered and found the Hoani at the end of the road. We felt like we are in some ones back yard, however, it said we could camp. It was a big field though and a steep bank down the hill to the bay near the sea. The bright moon was wicked and we were looking forward to a view in the morning.

Tuesday 10 March
2.30am woken by loud crap music some poxy Maoris in a van were parked right next to us in a 2 acre field! It took us half an hour to decide what to do about this and we quietly crept into the front seats and then drove off quickly with the tent still attached, but we couldn't find the exit to the field and I noticed they were following us round the field without their lights on! We were facing them at one point and thankfully they let us drive right past them and we eventually found the exit. The rubbish flew off the roof as we picked up speed, we drove 30k with the tent on as we didn't want to stop to take it off! We got to the next big village with a population of 10 and finally jumped out and took it off pretty quickly. Then we drove for an hour and found Waihau Bay campsite, a field opposite the beach. Phew. 5 hours sleep later we were greed with a man wondering when we had arrived, ah. He said to go and see his wife about paying only $10 not bad, mind you a homemade short drop! Wife gave us grapes, which we didn't eat in the end.

We tried driving to Cape Runaway but we kinda missed it as it is private land so we turned around back to Waihau Bay for petrol and on to Maraehako Bay and Whanarua Bay which were quite rocky and quaint beaches. The sun was out but it was too windy for a swim at the beach, so we drove back to Ohope to have a shower at the same place as yesterday. We got as far as Matata for dinner on the beach which was a lovely pasta with chorizo sausage tomatoes and pesto yum. During sunset we drove to Mt Maunganui and found it quite nice when we got there, even in the dark, so we hunted for a campsite and found called the Golden Grove Holiday Park Limited. V nice but v small!! We were this close to next door. ! __!.

Wednesday 11 March
Not up early whoops, but it didn't matter. We parked at Mt Maunganui and climbed to the top for a very cool view over Tauranga for just an hours effort. Bloody windy though! Great place has everything and it reminded us of St Petersburg. The rain set in we were forced us back to the SH2. We kept driving to Whangamata and stayed at the Wentworth DOC campsite, as it boasts a lovely waterfall. It was fairly late by the time we got there, but worth it as it was a v nice area, with plenty of bushy cubbyholes for campers and tenters. We stomped up to the waterfall in 45 mins and then it took us the same time to get back. We certainly worked up an appetite for dinner - sausage and mash. Yummy. Our last dinner in the spaceship :(

Thursday 12 March
Dropped van back at spaceships in Auckland - what a mare trying to find it!! All sorted cab to airport and bobs your uncle we were back in Christchurch before we knew it. Jutta picked us up from the airport and drove us back to Gosset, but she had moved out the week before whilst we were away L.