Whanganui River

Tuesday night - stayed at National Park. Its really a ski resort on the slopes of Mount Ruapeho. The whole region is just stunningly beautiful but I am quite high up and its a bit cold at night. We passed Whakapapa village on the bus, there is a huge hotel there in the middle of nowhere built in 1929 called the Grand Chateau, its just in such a beatiful location. From National Park, I walked along the Fisher Track into just wilderness, its so quite and peaceful, there is no one around.

Wednesday and Thursday night I stayed at Ohakune - very tiny village, again more geared up for skiing. I walked along the Mangawhero River and then around the Rimu Track which goes through some woodland and is very informative as the different types of trees are well signposted with names and explanations. On Wednesday night I went to look for wild Kiwis in the wood. The guide Rengo took us high up into a forest that is owned by Maori but leased to a timber company called Winstons. It was pitch black, we were sitting in the middle of this pine forest at 11pm with Rengo trying to pick up a Kiwi (they have tiny radio transmitters) and lure it to us with his whistle and his taped recording of a kiwi call. It was like something out of Twin Peaks. Winstons are licenced to drop 1080 once every seven years on the forest to kill the possums, we saw about ten of them on the road on the way back (but no kiwis). Possums, stoats and weasels are killing off the kiwis and at the rate they are declining in about 15 years, they will no longer exist in the wild. Rengo is one of the people who monitor the effects of 1080 and he thinks its a good thing because the wild bird population increased after it was dropped.

Friday to Sunday - canoe trip down the Whanganui River. This was quite hard work as we were paddling for 6 hours a day, the first day I was really aching but I had a good stretch at night and felt better the next day, by the third day I was getting into it a bit more. Our guides were Kelly (18) and Josh (16), there wasa family of 4 English people, all doctors, the younger couple are living and working in Whanganui and the parents are visiting, then Amy a civil servant from London who has been working on Bird Flu and needed a holiday (poor thing, she is a very kind friendly person), two young lawyers from San Francisco, Gutner from Germany and me. The first night we camped in tents and the second night we stayed in a lodge owned by Josh's uncle. The lodge is in a beautiful location overlooking the river, his uncle keeps so many animals: a pig, ponys, geese, ducks, cats, dogs and a really friendly rainbow lorakeet that says "hello" and sat on my shoulder. The first night Josh made coffe for us and after that he wasn't allowed to make it any more because it was so weak. Kelly and Josh cooked the whole time, at the lodge, we had BBQ steak and wine with dinner and we sat outside till 11pm chatting. On the last day, Josh found a dead possum floating in the river and he picked it up to show people who maybe had never seen a possum. My god, some people got really upset that he was touching a dead animal and then would be preparing lunch. Kelly lectured him for about an hour and practically scrubbed his hands clean before she would let him anywhere near the food.

The banks of the river are 100m high in some places and mostly covered in lush green vegetation. All along the river, there are tiny waterfalls trickling down into the river, its really so beautiful and peaceful. On the second day we stopped and walked for 40 minutes to visit the Bridge to Nowhere. This was a bridge built in the 1950s to support the farming communities but the area was so remote that the farms were not viable, they've since been abandoned and the whole area has now returned to natural bush.

The day before the trip I bought a really flash pair of Teva sandles which I thought looked really great on me and I was really happy to have the right footwear for getting in a out of the canoe. So I was being a real princess keeping them clean and washing the mud off them when I got in and out the canoe. On the last day, we went to see the mud caves which involved walking through a patch of really smelly mud. My beautiful new sandle got just in the mud and fell apart when I tried to pull my foot out. I was really lucky because I still had the receipt so I took them straight back to the shop and they gave me a refund. So I had a free pair of sandles for three days. I didn't tell him what I was doing when they fell apart though :-)

Whakatane

Sunday - diving at White Island an active volcanoe. I saw eels and stingrays, leatherjackets, blue maomao and dolphin on the way back. The water was very clear and the visibility was excellent. On the first dive we went down to 28 metres and the water was still amazingly clear. On the second dive we swam around a bit too fast for my liking, I would have perferred to spend more time looking for nudibranches but didn't see them. The guide cut open kina to feed the fish but luckily I was at the back so I didn't see him do it. We swam back through the Spanish Arch and I lost my byouancy control and went up to the surface from about 6 metres and couldn't get back down. I was really angry with myself. Sunday night Monica and I made dinner at the hostel and chatted about diving and stuff over some wine. Monica is an IT manager from Tel Aviv and a really lovely person.

Monday - went on futile boat trip in attempt to swim with dolphins but no luck. We snorkelled for a bit around whale island but its no good snorkelling after you have been diving, you just want to get down under the water.

The plan is to head off to Wanganui tomorrow to canoe down the river and then Wellington and then South Island. Lots of people at the hostel talk about 3 or 4 day tramps (hikes) in the south island carrying 14kg backpacks. Not really sure I am up to this but I'll try to start with an easy one.

Link to some photos

http://www.flickr.com/photos/59268315@N00/?saved=1

Waitomo - Rotorua - Taupo

I forgot to say that when we went to Cape Reinga we climbed up this massive sand dune and then boarded down on our tummy on body boards. It was really great coming down but the climb up was really hard. Climbing up a huge dune off soft sand is not easy, the sand keeps on slipping back down under your feet and you feel like you are never going to make it to the top. But its worth it when you slide down.

The next day I went to Auckland and then to Waitomo to the glow worm caves. The lady in the hostel in Auckland said "go food shopping before you get to Waitomo because its a really small place". I thought she was just saying that compared to Auckland but she was right. You would drive through it without knowing you had missed it. However, its all going on under the ground. Saying that the first day I arrived I went on a horse trek into the hills and the country side was beautiful, there was a lot of aberdeen angus cattle and a lot of thistles, someone from Scotland must have been missing home when they moved to NZ. The problem is that thistles are weeds and because everything grows like mad here, now they are a problem. I had a lovely old horse called spider who knew where he was going and just plodded along while I looked at the beautiful scenery. I was a bit sore though when I got off and was walking like John Wayne for a few minutes until I got the feeling back in my knees.

On Friday I went to the caves. There are so many caves and so many ways to see them depending on how much discomfort you wish to endure. Of course, the younger people go for the option that involves climbing through waterfalls and black water rafting and other mad things that are advertised as maximum adrenalin. I went for the 100 m abseil into the Lost World and the 30 m ladder climb out. The Lost World is supposed to be the best of the caves and it is really beautiful. You abseil/rappel down through what is basically a big crack in the ground through overhanging trees and greenery past moss and stuff into a huge cave system which has a little stream running through it. Abseiling is really cool once you get off the platform but its that bit where the guide says now look down and you think oh no, I'd rather not. The whole area is all limestone and riddled with caves (this is where the set for hobbiton was in Lord of the Rings), in some places the caves have collapsed and there are holes in the ground that mostly the farmers have fenced off to stop the cattle disappearing down them. At the bottom of the abseil, we (me and the guide Anne) walked into the cave. Well, I say walked but this involved a lot of climbing over rocks, looking at fossils in the rocks and stalactites and stalagmite. It gets darker and darker and eventually you cannot see daylight any more and you need to switch on the light on your helmet. Anne took me into a little cave where I switched off my light and looked up and screamed in delight, the ceiling was just covered with glow worms all shining away like stars in the sky. Glow worms are horrible little things when you see them in daylight, nasty little brown worms but in the dark they are awesome. Once they hatch into flying insects, they cannot eat or drink and only live three days which hopefully is long enough for them to make baby glow worms.

Next day I left for Rotorua. Its a bit smelly there as its a volcanic area and there is sulphur seeping up through the foundations between the cracks in the pavements. They keep on having to repair the buildings because the sulphur eats away at the cement. I went to the thermal park at Wai O Tapu to see the geyser and the bubbling mud pools. It sounds really boring but they have a really great walkway laid out and a brochure that tells you what you are looking at. The pools are all different colours depending on the minerals that are coming up through the ground, its really interesting. They can make the Lady Knox geyser go off at 10:15 each day by dropping a bar of soap into it. The soap breaks the tension between a hot chamber and a cold chamber and makes the geyser erupt. The bus driver was so interesting, he was an old guy who had been in Rotorua since 1950 when he came back from the war and he knew everyone and everything about the place. He used to drive a logging truck and he took me through the forestry commission park and told me all about the trees. While I was in Rotorua, I managed to make contact with Jill and Roger who are on a two week whirlwind tour of New Zealand. We arranged to meet up in Taupo for dinner so I quickly checked out of Rotorua and made off for Taupo. The driver to Taupo was a bit of an amateur geologist who told me all about the volcanic activity in the area and how we were on the edge of the same Pacific plate which causes the earthquakes in San Francisco. I meet Jill and Roger and Roger's friend Anthony who lives in Auckland. Roger and Anthony were going golfing the next morning so I dragged poor Jill off on a five hour walk to see the Aratiatia Rapids. We arrived at 10am just as they were opening the dam and waited till they closed it again at 10:30, it was incredible to see how quickly the water level went down again when they closed the dam. it must have been about 8 feet in about 7 minutes. It was really great to see Roger and Jill and have dinner with them, it really reminded me of home.

On Wednesday I walked the Tongariro crossing which is a 17km walk up a volcano. Its a hard climb up but once you are there, the views are excellent, it is supposed to be the best one day walk in New Zealand. They are really seriously into some heavy duty walking here. This one starts at 1150m, climbs to 1886m and then descends to 700m. The bus picks you up from the hostel at 5:40am (see what did I say about the early morning thing?) and drives you to the start of the walk for 7am so that you can do the hard climbing part before it gets too hot. The last bus home is at 4:30pm from the other end of the walk and although I was fairly confident I could finish the walk, I was worried about how long it would take me, so I timed myself all the way along, tried to keep going as much as possible and had short stops (the longest with 15mins two hours from the end). I was really pleased with myself when I finished at 3pm, in time to catch the early bus (yippee). Here are my times at the various points of interest:
Start 7:25
Soda Springs 8:40 (this part looks a lot like walking anywhere in Scotland, there is heather on the ground and a bubbling brook)
The next part is a hard climb over boulders called the Devils Staircase. its longer than the Devils Staircase at the end of Rannoch Moor but I'm not sure if its as hard as I expected it to be. It took me 60 mins and the guide book says 45 mins.
South Crater 9:37. This part you walk across the inside of a volcano crater, its very flat and really weird.
The next part is another hard climb up to the Red Crater, this time it is quite sandy (black volcanic ash) underfoot and quite hard to get a foothold. Top of Red Crater 10:28.
After this you go down to the Emerald Lakes, sounds easy but you are going down this soft soft again and its really hard to keep your foothold. Emerald Lakes 11:17.
After this it is just a long winding walk downhill with spectacular views all the way. There is a hut halfway to the bottom and once I got there I knew I would be finished by 3pm because I got there at 12:50 and left at 1:04 and it was 2 hours to the end. Near the end there were men repairing the path and it was really funny because they had a mini bulldozer and cement and stuff all the way up this bloody mountain. God knows how they got them there.

Today (Thursday) I did my first skydive. It was the best thing ever, ever, ever. Sure I've said that before but I don't think anything can top this. I decided to go for the 15,000 feet option as the guidebook said if you are going to do it, go as high as you can and the woman (really good sales woman at the counter) said for the first few seconds you will have sensory overload anyway and not be able to take in what is going on because basically you have just jumped out of a moving plane and you are plummeting to the earth. So with the 15,000 feet option you have 60 seconds freefall as opposed to 45 seconds with the 12,000 feet option. So you jump strapped onto someone who knows what they are doing and all you have to do is not wet yourself. There were eight people in this tiny plane. No seats, we sit on the floor of the plane. You sit between your instructors legs and he attaches your harness to him. Ok so I've been in a small plane before this part was ok. It started to get a bit scary when they opened the door for the other people to jump out, they had elected to go for 12,000 so they got out before me. Now when they open the door and the wind is rushing past it seems like insanity for people to be jumping out of a moving plane. So that was a bit scary but my instructor was really good and reassured me that I was strapped to him securely and everything would be fine. One thing I need to say here is that all the people who are guides or instructors seem really young for the amount of responsibility they have and they handle it sooooo well. They are polite but very professional, they reassure you and make you feel comfortable and even though they have done it thousands of times before, they still want to make it really fun for your first time and for you to have a blast and really really enjoy it. Its just amazing. Like one of the people who jumped with me today said, the whole country is just willing you to try things you would never do at home and they are so enthusiatic about you doing it and enjoying it.

So I am strapped to Volker (a young attractive German guy) and after he has reassured me that I am tightly strapped onto him and he will look after me, we head for the door. At the door you need to put your head back and curl your legs back under the plane and then he jumps and you do too. The woman was right for the first few seconds you don't see anything and then it doesn't feel like you are falling, the air is pushing against you so hard and the ground seems so far away that you feel like you are just suspended there in mid air. The views are stunning, we were over Lake Taupo a beautiful blue/green lake bigger than Singapore. After what seems like a really short time, Volker opens the parachute and does a slow turn towards the land. This part is like being on a massive fairground ride and he asks me if I want to turn faster, of course I say yes please and we do with me screaming. Volker does the landing and all I have to do is pull my feet up to avoid hitting the ground. I think I am addicted. Later in the hostel, I met a lady from Isreal who has done it three times now. Everyone at that hostel just talks about skydiving and the Tongariro crossing, those are the two must do things in Taupo. Taupo itself is really beautiful (apparently its even more busy during the skiing season) and the hostel (Rainbow Lodge) is one of the best I have been in

Link to Roger and Maire-Paule's photos of the trip to Alice Springs

http://www.wistiti.fr/marirog:australie

Rainbow Warrior

Internet cafes are a challenge. The coin operated ones are the worst. $2 for 20 or 25 mins and then the screen goes black right in the middle of the email you are writing. I am in Auckland now and you pay for what you use but the first PC had internet explorer in Chinese and this one has the blog site in German - arrrggh.

Advanced Open Water Course at Poor Knights
The plan was that I would do the course on Sat and Sun and then take the bus to Waitangi on Sunday night to see the Waitangi (New Zealand Day) celebrations on Monday. Waitangi Day celbrates the signing of the treaty between the Maori chiefs and the Queen's representative James Busby in 1840. About 25,000 people go there to see the celebration, part of which involves the launch of a big Maori war canoe (waka) which only happens once a year. Also part of the celebrations seem to involve pelting the Prime Minister (or any government representative who is brave enough to turn up as the PM doesn't go now) with eggs in protest against the unfair interpretation of the treaty. You can just imagine a document written by a bunch of Whitehall civil servants, it must be so full of vague language and loopholes that its no wonder people complain. Apparently the Maori chiefs thought they were getting a good deal at the time but things haven't quite turned out as good as they thought (hey - what's new?).

Anyway when I turned up at the dive centre, my instructor wanted to see my dive medical which was in Cairns and involved several phone calls to get it faxed through so I lost a day and missed the celebration. The owner of the dive centre was really nice though, he let me go out round the islands on the jet boat tour for free.

The owners of my hostel were wonderful and couldn't go enough to help me. They booked my accommodation at Paihia and booked my dive at the Rainbow Warrior and then they changed that and also changed my bus reservation when everything got put back. Noel took me to the woods to see the glow worms along the river at night. They are tiny worms that look light christmas fairy lights in the dark. We saw a freshwater crayfish and an ugly big brown grasshopper type thing that lives in caves and is a rare species (can't remember what its called but Noel was really excited about seeing it).

Quite a few people at the hostel were diving and Noel wakes you at 6:30 to get ready for the shuttle bus pick up at 7:10. Why do all outdoor sporting type things start so early in the morning? Honestly now I feel that I've had a long lie in if I get up at 8am. I was the only person doing the advanced course which was super duper not having to share the time of my instructor with seven other people :-) It was so different from Cairns, I was really surprised for one thing the water was colder and totally took my breath away when I got in. Also, I had a thicker wet suit and that made it a bit more difficult to control my buoyancy, this was a good thing really as its the area I most needed to work on. On the second dive, John (instructor) got me to take off some weight, then he said, let the air out of your BCD and see what happens. Well, that was a big lesson in buoyancy because I sank like a stone. I just expected that I would float but I wasn't looking at my depth and and once you start to go down there is an acceleration effect which is really dangerous if you don't control it. I realised that something was wrong when I couldn't see him anymore, I slowed down and he caught up with me at 12m. Ok, so now I go down really slowly and in a controlled way every time and watch my depth gauge all the time because it is really hard to tell what your depth is once you are under the water.

Someone once told me that he suffered from vertigo until he learnt how to control his buoyancy and it made no sense to me at the time but I can understand it now because sometimes you look down and there is nothing but darkness below you but you don't fall, you just stay there suspended, its really cool. That is the best part because if you can stay still without floating about up or down then you can watch the fish and the tiny sea creatures. If you are always moving about you don't see the stuff around you and you scare off the fish. But believe me the hardest thing to do is to stay still, I'm getting better at it but my god you would think it would be easy but no.

I tried taking some photos with the basic film camera that the dive centre supplied but that is even harder. Once you are able to keep still, then you have to look through the viewfinder while wearing a mask, try to get enough light in the shot, don't blow bubbles into the picture and hope the fish are still around by that time. Some of the best pictures I have seen are of things that don't move like anemones or sponges which are really colourful and make good photos. There was a lovely Japanese girl in my hostel and she had fabulous pictures she had taken in Okinawa of schools of fish.

On the last evening at Whangarei, we all watched a film in the sitting room and Noel need a big bowl of popcorn for everyone. She is so kind. I cooked corn on the cob for dinner and believe me, it tastes nothing like this in England, you are not talking about the same thing, in England there is no favour compared to this.

Next day I caught the bus an hour North to Paihia to see the Rainbow Warrior. I really wanted to see this because I remember all the fuss in the news when it was sunk by the French and at the time I never thought I would see it so it was a real thrill for me to go down and swim around the wreck. Its a bit rusty now but its also covered in all sorts of life, anemones, sponges, shellfish and there are lots of fish and eels and crayfish swimming around and through it. When you go into the lounge, there are so many fish trying to cram in there that they're spilling out of the door, its like a really popular fish party is going on in there. When you leave it and ascend it disappears into the darkness like that scene in Titanic, really, its sooo cool.

Someone brought two sea urchins back up to the boat and I was a bit shocked partly because most of the time I've been diving in Marine Reserves were you will get fined for doing that but also, I just could not bear to watch the little things dying in front of my eyes so I threw them over the side. Then when I got off the boat I went and bought fish and chips which was totally delicious (yes but its different if you don't have to see it die in front of you).

At the hostel I was sharing a room with Pauline a nurse from Peterborough and also Saito from the hostel in Whangarei was in the same room. About 1am this guy came back and he must have had a drink, he feel asleep and my god could he snore and not just that but he had really really smelly feet. First Saito went out of the room, then I went out and at 2am, all three of us were outside in the lounge and snoring man was the only one in the room. It was so funny, we laughed so much, it was so loud, you could hear it from outside the room. Pauline went back in and woke him up so he stopped for a bit but Saito and I just slept outside. Next day Pauline and I went on a guided trip to Cape Reigna, the northernmost point where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean and they crash together in waves. I cannot say in words how beautiful it is. Cape Reigna is a sacred place to the Maori, it is the place where the spirits of the dead leave NZ to make the journey home, you are not allowed to eat or drink in sacred places. We drove along 90 mile beach which is actually 64 miles long and when the tide goes out the "road" is about 20 metres wide. Its too dangerous to swim in because of the tides but its popular for kite fishing which means that you have a fishing line suspended from a kite 2km offshore. We saw a little blue penguin which was washed up on the shore, we tried to put it back in the sea twice but it was either too tired to swim or we weren't able to put it out far enough to avoid the waves so in the end we had to leave it to its fate.

The guide told us that sheep are not such a big thing now in NZ since the Chinese got into the wool market and started depressing the price of wool. There are now 48m sheep in NZ compared to 78m a few years ago. The big thing now is dairy farming, NZ milk is the cheapest in the world. Possums are a big problem for agriculture and the government are using a lethal poison called 1080 to wipe them out. This thing is so bad that only three countries in the world will use it, sounds pretty bad to me and not only for the possums but maybe for other things as well. The living Kauri trees are protected but you can buy lots of lovely wood things made from ancient Kauri found buried in swamp forests that are 30/50,000 years old. Its a hard wood so the furniture looks beautiful but its really expensive.

Poor Knights

Well this is fantastic, I am so pleased I decided to do this, I wouldn't miss it for the world. Its so different from Cairns. The water is colder and a lot clearer, I am wearing a thicker wet suit and that changes my buoyancy. I am the only person doing the advanced course and so I have the instructor all to myself. My instructor is John, from Canada, of course he is very young I've come to expect that now, he is very helpful and explains things very well.

I did three dives today and he said I improved a lot, I am beginning to get the byoyancy thing sorted. I just need to watch my depth a bit more but there are so many things to watch and the fish distract you by swimming up real close to you, its like they are laughing at you sometimes. I also did a navigation dive and I was really pleased with that because it wasn't really easy to understand the last time but this time it was great. You can always trust a Canadian, to teach you how to use a compass, they are renowed here for being mad keen on camping and anything to do with getting out into the country. I've also tried taking some photos which I need to get developed so I hope that there are fish in some of them, it not easy when they don't hold still.

Tomorrow I'm doing my deep dive which menas I go below 18m for the first time and after that I will be qualified to go down to a max of 30m.

Auckland

Wow it is so strange to go from one country to another, I felt like I was at the end of my holiday and should be going home. In Australia I had planned and booked my trip up the east coast and it was very organised. Plus there are a lot of people traveling up (or down) and you meet them again and again at the next hostel. Then on my last week there I was on the diving course and spent three days on the boat with every minute planned out for me. So it was so strange to arrive in Auckland and start from scratch again. I've spent three days here just vegging about really, getting used to the idea that I'm in a new country (I'm not used to this traveling thing at all, I now realise). I've been reading my travel guide and looking at the brochures in the tourist centres. I've been to the Maritime Museum and I've bought a new camera. Mine got sand in it on Fraser Island and I couldn't get it working again, so as it was probably coming up for five years old, I decided that it would be more economical to replace it. I don't put pictures on the blog site because I have to pay for internet access and it is really frustrating watching the little green bar creeping across the screen when you are paying for it.

Tomorrow I am getting a bus to Whangarei (yes a lot of places here have names like that but some are also very Scottish like Hamilton for example). When I'm there I will do my advanced open water diving course at a place called Poor Knights which is one of the world's top dive locations. I am so excited. Then after that I am thinking of going to a place called Bay of Islands where you can dive to see the wreck of the Rainbow Warrior, isn't that fantastic. I think I have the diving bug now. I forgot to say that I have seen sharks (small reef sharks are not dangerous), turtles and jelly fish up close and of course coral and fish feeding on coral. I've even been stung by jellyfish but not the dangerous ones, its hard to avoid them when you come up to the surface but its no worse than a mozzie bite. I went to a place in Cairns called Reef Teach which is a two hour lecture on the coral and fish to help you understand what you are seeing and know what's dangerous and what's not. It was excellent and it was included as part of the diving course.

Here all the signs, advertising, labels on packets and everything are in two languages (English and Maori), the Maori people are much more integrated in the community and you see them working everywhere. At the airport, they are really strict about you bringing in any biohazards, the sniffer dogs are trained to find foodstuffs. They even checked my walking boots to make sure they were clean.