These Sailors are Kiwi Bound

January 23, 2014

Auckland Airport - a LOTR Welcome

Here we are ...  New Zealand at last.  This has been a dreamed about destination for both of us for many years.  It was an early departure from Brisbane on Tuesday morning and a short flight over the Tasman Sea on Virgin Airlines.  This was the first time we had flown with Virgin.  It was quite ok even though we had to pay for our food and the sandwiches were a bit soggy and the coffee rather weak.  But we arrived on time and the clearing-in process was a piece of cake.  We bought a SIM card for our phone (our first priority), and then called our rental company to pick us up at the airport.  

Lucky, our new home on wheels

We rented a Lucky Chaser camper van, which will be our home for the next 9 ½ weeks.  Our little van comes complete with a toilet/shower, two-burner stove and a mini fridge, bench seating and a table that drops down to make a double bed.  New Zealand is very camper / trailer friendly and we expect to find it easy to find a place to stop and sleep for the night as we make our way around the North and South islands. 

Excited as we were about our home on wheels, we didn’t actually move into it properly until today.  We spent our first two days in New Zealand visiting with Lance and Triana and enjoyed their wonderful hospitality.  Lance took us around and showed us the Vernall homestead.  He has about 400 head of beef on his property, which seems to stretch out as far as the eye can see.  His family live nearby and his brothers operate a dairy farm.  From our short time here, we noticed there are two kinds of farmers; either cattle or sheep.  And you find plenty of each, as the hillsides are dotted with animals peacefully grazing on the lush grasses. 

Nice views in Pirongia

Jens and Lance

New Zealand doesn’t have any endemic mammals.   The first mammal to arrive was the pig, apparently dropped off by the famous explorer, Captain Cook.  And the pig was followed by deer, horses, cows and sheep as well as your chickens, rabbits and assorted small animals.  They all live quite peacefully here since there are no natural predators.   In fact, New Zealand doesn’t have any dangerous animals whatsoever, contrary to its closest neighbor Australia, which seems to host many of the world’s most venomous creatures. 

Waikato and The King Country

We had landed in Auckland and made our way down past Hamilton to where Lance and Triana are living.  This area is known as Waikato and The King Country.  It is famous for it’s caves, beaches and small towns. 

Our first day of exploring took us to the Bridal Veil Falls or Waireinga as it is known locally.  A short walk takes you to the beautiful falls.  The site was well marked and with good walking paths and viewing locations.  If all of New Zealand is as organized as this, we’ll have no problems at all getting around.  From there we made our way through the country side to the coast stopping at the black sand beaches and view points along the way.  The Te Toto Gorge was a temptation for us but we didn’t have time to do the 4-hour hike that day.  I guess we’ll just have to pass by some things.  We had a nice lunch in Raglan, which is a very picturesque town on the coast, before heading home.

Bridal Veil Falls

Black Sand Beach

Today we set off around mid-morning with the Waitomo Glowworm caves as our destination.  There are more than 300 mapped caves in the area and the famous Glowworm cave has been open to tourists for more than 100 years.  There is a river running through the caves and it was the fourth generation of the owners who was our tour guide.  The 45-minute tour ended in a boat ride in the dark with only the light of the glowworms clinging to the ceiling to light the way.  What a fantastic place to visit. 

Exit at the Glowworm caves (no pictures allowed inside as that would disturb the worms)

Bushwalk in Waitomo

From the Waitomo cave site we embarked on what we thought would be a 2.5 km bush walk.  It ended up being about 6 km because we didn’t realize it wasn’t a loop, but a one-way trip.  So we of course had to hike back to the car park where we had left Lucky. 

We continued on our journey after a little lunch in the van.  Next stops were the Mangapohue Natural Bridge and the Piripiri caves and we finished our touring day at the Marokopa Falls.  Thankfully, all of these were a short walk from the car park.

So ends our first couple of touring days and our first night in our motorhome.