Facts and Stats

March 31, 2014

As we prepare to move on, here is a quick summing up of our 9½ weeks in New Zealand.  

The country has 4.5 million inhabitants across an area of 269K square kilometers (bigger than the UK) but 63% of them live on the North Island.  No great surprise there – the South Island’s terrain is a lot more rugged and the climate is less temperate than the North Island.

During our stay we did a fair amount of walking / tramping.  Counting only the walks along trails and not the normal walking one does while shopping or visiting museums, etc. we calculate we have walked more than 100 hours.  Just to put that into perspective it would mean walking 12 hours a day for 8 ½ days if done consecutively.  And if we calculate an average walking pace of 4 km per hour we have gone more than 400 kilometers by foot.

We did a fair bit more driving however.  We covered the North and South Islands by doing a huge figure eight and drove more than 11,000 kilometers which is quite amazing when you consider the distance from the tip of the North Island to the tip of the South Island is a distance of just over 1,500 kilometers.  But as I mentioned in one of my blogs, you are hard pressed to find a straight piece of road on the South Island and the North Island has only slightly more, so with all the twists and turns and ups and downs the kilometers do start to add up.  Fuel is not so cheap here with the average price for unleaded at $2.10 NZ.  We managed to spend almost $3,000 NZ on fuel during our 71-day road trip.  I guess the hilly landscape and our thirsty Lucky van both contributed to fairly bad fuel economy.  C’est la vie! 

But having said that, staying in our Lucky van saved us quite a bit on accommodations.  We spent just under $15.00 per night including the two nights in a hotel.  And who knows how much we saved by cooking many of our own meals.  It is quite amazing what great meals you can prepare on a two-burner stove.

 

Overall, New Zealand receives about 2.4 million visitors per year.  We noticed the majority of travellers using the camper van sites were either British or German – not including the Kiwis.  So we were intrigued to find out if this was representative of the total number of visitors to New Zealand.  It turns out not to be the case at all because of the 2.4 million arriving to New Zealand each year, only 3% are from Germany and 8% from the UK.  The majority of the visitors are from Asia and from our observation they apparently are not as much into the camping lifestyle as the Europeans.

It has been a wonderful visit and we have met some truly lovely people here.  It has been a mix of meeting old colleagues, making new friends and catching up with the Puddle Jumpers who are now busy preparing for the next sailing season.  But it’s time to say farewell and hope we’ll see these folks again, perhaps in the Northern Hemisphere.

Another Gannet colony on the West Coast - not as large or impressive as the one at Cape Kidnappers.

The Pukeko - a very common bird in NZ

Pukeko mom and chick.  

We still looked for the Fairy Tern, but without any luck.  So the Pukeko had to fill in for the photos.

A visit with Daire and Keith at their home in Omaha.

Our little picnic lunch - enjoying the fine weather.

This beach was wall to wall shells - can you imagine?

And of course we had to collect a few!

Spelunking and Cascades

March 25, 2014

It seems as if we have seen all that we want to see and I dare say it is starting to get a little repetitive.  So I threw in a couple of new words in the title to make it sound more interesting (ha ha). 

We’ve been to yet another cave – The Waipu Caves - where we saw some eels swimming about in the shallow water.  And we walked to another waterfall – Piroa Falls - which actually doesn’t qualify as a waterfall but fits more into the description of a cascade*.   We love to be outdoors so even though it doesn’t make for a terribly exciting blog, it does fill our days quite nicely.

After picking up a brochure at the i-site in Whangerai I became quite enthralled with the Fairy Terns.  So today, we went on the hunt for the New Zealand Fairy Tern hoping to see one of the 43 remaining birds.  This expedition took us up to the Papakanui Spit and despite our best efforts, we came out a little disappointed.   We did, however, see some of their close cousins at our campsite this evening and I would say except for the black beaks and feet, they look almost exactly like a Fairy Tern.  FYI – Fairy Terns have yellow beaks and feet.

It will be soon time to wrap up the blog on our New Zealand trip.  In less than a week’s time, I’ll be heading home to Canada for a short break.  In the meantime, Jens will join Captain Ken and Bob and sail across the Tasman Sea to Brisbane on SY Moonbeam which is just now getting all spruced up at the Opua Yacht Club.  I’ll catch up with Jens in Brisbane sometime near the end of April and we’ll continue our journey traveling the Land Down Under.   

*Cascade:  a small waterfall, typically one of several that fall in stages down a steep rocky slope.

Not Much to Report

March 21, 2014

Today I am writing my blog sitting in my office.  Yes, I call it my office because it’s the one place I go to every day :-), the only place I can sit out of the way while Jens makes up the bed in our Lucky 3.  I am looking over the pictures and it seems we have done more driving than anything so there isn’t so much to report. 

But  – we have driven on 90 mile beach (extra cool – driving along a beach for 75 kilometers and then up a stream bed back to the road … ha!  And all that with a campervan … ha ha!); been to see the second largest Kauri tree in NZ; visited an old gumdigger site; went to the most Northern lighthouse in NZ which is also where the Maori spirits go into the sea to join their ancestors (or something like that) and where the Tasman sea clashes into the Pacific Ocean; and into some caves where we waded through waist deep water, clambered over and down rocks into the deep recesses of the caves, turning our lights off to see glow worms.  Just stuff like that. 

And here are the pictures.

Gumdiggers:  The gum is a congealed resinous sap produced by the Kauri trees to cover a wound.  The large lumps that form fall to the ground and were collected by the Māori’s for use in lighting fires, for chewing and tattooing.  The English found another use for the gum.  It was exported back to Britain by the boatload and used for making a high quality varnish.  In this particular area an ancient Kauri forest was found in the peat bog and they are now studying the well-preserved trees that are over 220 million years old (see second photo).  This is a picture of a “hurdy-gurdy” they used to separate the pieces of gum from sand and twigs.

Te Matua Ngahere – Father of the Forest:  The Kauri tree is a slow growing giant that was almost obliterated from New Zealand being highly prized for its timber.  The trees in this forest were saved from destruction and this particular one is the second largest in all of New Zealand with a girth of 16.41 meters; hence the name “Father of the forest”.

Abbey Caves:  There are three caves to explore – unguided and undeveloped – enter at your own risk.  Organ cave is the largest and goes in as far as 260 meters.  Our favourite was Ivy Cave where we entered at one end, walked 200 meters, sometimes through waist deep water, to exit out the other end.  There were lots of glowworms and cool rock formations in all three caves. 

Jens and I before we got wet and muddy.

Vern contemplating if he should continue and get into the water up to his waist.

Jens and Michelle forging ahead.  

The Top End: This is where the Pacific Ocean clashes with the Tasman Sea.  And the tree you see below clinging to the rocks is where the spirit of the Maori’s passing into the next world would climb down its roots and into the sea.

Looking forward and looking backward - nothing but miles of beach.

90 Mile Beach:  We’re not sure why it’s called 90-mile beach because it is actually only 55 miles – but we were able to drive about 75 kilometers along the coast on the beach and up a river to the road at the other end.  The gorgeous sand dunes along the way reminded us of the deserts in Dubai.

On the beach!

The river bed we drove out of.