Haere Mai Aotearoa

Again we arrive in a new country without a plan but soon find ourselves on a bus heading to a hostel we'd picked at random. Auckland was just another big city really so we were keen to set off and discover the rest of New Zealand. A couple of days later we were on the road in our bright orange Spaceship camper. Our first stop was Hot Water Beach in Coromandel. We spent a great afternoon here digging holes in the sand and sitting in pools full of hot spring water (we only got scalded a couple of times!) We had no idea where we were going to camp that night so Rich (in true Richard Sanzeri style) sauntered up to another camper van with two girls in it to ask them. They looked slightly alarmed at this lad that had just appeared through their window and didn't have a plan either so we waved them off and set off again. Before sunset we fit in a walk to Cathedral Cove which is a beautiful series of beaches surrounded by limstone rock that has been eroded into arches and pillars. We then found ourselves a council run campsite in Wentworth Falls.

Our first night in the van went well and to our surprise we spotted the two girls Rich had accosted at Hot Water Beach! We spent the morning swimming at the bottom of the waterfall which was so cold we all went blue. This was the start of the four of us egging each other on to do reckless things we'd never normally do.

As we were going the same direction as the Devonshire girls we decided to travel together for the day. By the time we got to Rotorua we had to find ourselves another campsite. The sun set at around 6pm and you had to make sure you'd set yourselves up for the evening at this point - it was quite tricky cooking outside when it got too dark. This is where Jo and Kate introduced us to their great invention Nutella raisins. In sheer desperation after having run out of chocolate covered raisins they mixed their chocolate spread together with regular raisins in a plastic mug. Genius. We could tell that we'd learn a lot from each other.

Rotorua was a very small and stinky town. It's home to a lot of thermal activity so there is a lot of sulphur shooting up out of the ground. We went to see the southern hemisphere's largest geyser which was pretty impressive and then headed into the town. By this time we were starving so we decided to treat ourselves to a Pizza Hut buffet lunch. Annoyingly we got there 10 minutes late. The restaurant was empty apart from one member of staff and the buffet table was full of food. Despite our pleading and the fact the food would only be thrown away he refused to give in. While he was cooking the large pizza we ordered we managed to devour most of the buffet. Terrible I know but when you gotta eat you gotta eat. Everytime the man came back out we'd freeze with our mouths stuffed full of pizza. Well, it would have only gone to waste. We sat on the side of the lake, stared at the pizza we'd bought and came to the conclusion that we were absolutely stuffed and couldn't eat it. That would be our dinner tonight then!

After a quick wander around a real maori village we hit the road again in search of one of the rare free campsites. The campsite was in Purua forest (basically the middle of nowhere). We drove up this winding dirt track, and we drove, and we drove some more...it had gone dark and the girls were running low on petrol...we kept driving and then the sat nav told us we were at the end of the road and now just floating around in green space. Eventually, due to lack of petrol and worrying that we might end up driving off the edge of a mountain, we pulled over in a turning point and spent the night there. We were all a bit spooked and Jo kept telling us it was just like the film Wolf Creek (luckily we haven't seen this yet) so we had a mug of wine each (for medicinal purposes) and went to sleep. We were managing to get a good night's sleep until a certain someone shook Rich awake convinced that there was someone shining a torch at us through the window. Turned out to be the moon. (Rich still hasn't forgiven me for this - Catherine). The next morning we were all glad to be alive and the forest didn't look so scary anymore. Then, as we were eating our breakfast, we watched a huge campervan come driving down the hill. Knowing our luck we were probably about 10 metres away from the camp!

Our next stop was the Waitomo caves which are famous for their glow worms. It was amazing to see the pitch black caves lit up like a starry night!

In desperate need of power (for our phones and cameras) and a shower (after a scary night in the forest) we headed to Lake Taupo and forked out for a 'posh' campsite. This was well worth it as we spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in a thermal swimming pool until we'd turned into prunes. This is where Kate came out with a classic - we were chatting to an older Aussie couple who were enjoying a relaxing dip and remarking on how nice the pool was when Kate said "yeah, it's great when you haven't had a shower for three days". They got out shortly afterwards.

The next day, feeling clean, refreshed and fully charged, we moved to a free campsite by the river (with the most disgusting long drop toilet in the world - it made your eyes water). This was a beautiful spot with the clearest, most turquoise river we'd ever seen. Rich and Kate went for a dip (crazy - they must love their freezing water) while Jo and Catherine sensibly watched from the bank. To be honest we were just trying to distract ourselves from our impending skydive that we'd booked an hour before. Catherine was determined she wasn't going to do it but eventually caved into peer pressure - those Devonshire girls again!!! Jo, having done one before, gave us a bit of a pep talk while we sipped on the very large vodkas we'd poured ourselves (there was no way we could do this completely sober - there's nothing wrong with the occasional midday tipple anyway, is there?) An hour later (not much chance to think about it) we were picked up and driven to our doom. Wearing ridiculous jumpsuits, hats and goggles we boarded the tiniest plane we'd ever been on. On board we sat on little metal benches whilst our instructors fastened themselves to us. This is where we need to break into two separate dialogues as we both had such different experiences...

Catherine's jump: Oh my God! What was I doing getting on this ridiculously tiny plane and then throwing myself out of it? Had I gone completely mad??! I'd sat there whilst everyone else was getting excited reading the disclaimer on the back of our suits "Even if the parachute is deployed correctly there is a risk of serious injury and death". Ok, not feeling too good about this. When I met my instructor typically I got the crazy looking one with the blue furry helmet - great. I asked "We'll be ok won't we?" and he replied "Well, we've all gotta die sometime". Seriously, you're saying this to the wrong person. Off we went in our little toy plane climbing higher and higher. We got to 2000 feet and I remember thinking how high we were and we'd got another 13000 feet to climb! I nervously watched as my instructors altitude measuring watch thingy moved through the numbers as we got higher. I was slightly alarmed that he'd gone quiet for a while and then noticed he was cluthing his head as it was bleeding. Great, I'd got a damaged instructor who might have concussion for all I knew. I watched in horror as two people did their jump at 12000 feet. They just roll up the shutter and go. The plane lurches as it stabilises again after losing some of its weight. We get to 15000 feet. This is it. I watch as Jo and Kate do their jumps and then it's my turn. My instructor does all the work so it doesn't matter that my legs have turned to jelly. He shuffles us over to the door of the plane. I hook my legs underneath the plane's belly while he tries to make me smile at the exit camera. He got a grimace. And then we fall. And it really does feel like you've fallen from a plane. My stomach lurched and then we settled into our starshaped position facing the ground and I finally opened my eyes. The view was phenomenal. I could see for miles and could see the curve of the Earth. I remember feeling very cold and struggling to breathe through my nose as the air was rushing past us so fast. I didn't feel like I was falling at this point despite dropping at 200km per hour. We'd paid for a dvd of our jump which meant I now had to pose for the cameraman who'd jumped with us. I'd like to say I did a really cool pose but I was still terrified that I might be plummeting to my death so the cameraman was treated to my 'swimming' through the air. Hmmmm. Wish I'd done a superman pose like Jo now. After a minute of freefall out came the parachute. I've never been so relieved in my life!! I was happily cheering away when I realised I was in absolutely agony with my ear. Falling that far that fast can really mess with your ear pressure. I was then treated to a guided tour of the surrounding area by my instructor (Lake Taupo is the largest lake in the southern hemisphere don't you know). He then scared me to death again by doing a load of crazy tricks as we neared the airport. Just before we landed he explained that as we hit the ground I need to walk like a rock star. Before I had time to ask how on earth a rock star walks the ground was upon us. Whatever I did worked as we landed really smoothly on our feet with me exclaiming "I'm alive!!!" Totally the best and most scary thing I've ever done. I'm glad we did it in New Zealand as we got longer freefall as they are allowed to jump from a higher altitude.

Rich's jump:

Despite promising myself I wouldn't throw myself out of a plane whilst on my travels when the opportunity came up I grabbed at it like fat kid and cake!! Jo's enthusiasm for it was infectious and from the moment I booked it I couldn't wait to get up in that toy plane and fly out of it head first! This is evidenced by the fact that I'm grinning like an idiot in every photo that was taken! Well... all bar one.. prior to the jump I'm beaming like a berk, it's the same in the air and on the ground afterwards, but if you lookn at the picutres there is one taken the second I came out of the plane where my smile has turned to a grinding of teeth and my expression clearly says "#@*^&!!! I'm falling out of a #@*%ing plane!!" A split second after though it is a pure adrenalin rush and the views from 15,000 feet are awe inspiring, you can feel the speed as you fall and the force of the air against your body. One draw back though, as a guy when they pull the parachute and the force of the upward drag hits the harness that runs between your legs it soon brings you back to reality! Inspite of this I still came down shouting "let's do it again!!!" Definately a wicked experience that I'll never forget.

We rewarded ourselves for our bravery that night by cooking up a barbeque. Our plan was stay up late drinking wine and playing cards. However, after laughing at our skydive dvds we were exhausted. Too much adreniline and midday drinking!

We decided to tone things down the next day and went for a leisurely walk to Huka Falls. We also met up with Kim who we'd met on Mana island in Fiji. The one thing we've noticed about travelling is that everyone is doing more or less the same route which gives you a great chance to meet up with people again. It also makes people in hostels look oddly familiar as you've probably seen them before! Kim had also had a scary tsunami experience. She had moved onto the mainland and managed to convince a local to give her a lift up the hill where she spent a few hours with his family. Our afternoon with Kim was over quickly and then we were off to the Tongariro national park.

The Tongariro Crossing is said to be one of the best one day walks in the world. An 8 hour walk takes you up into the alpine range, across one volcano crater and up to the summit of another complete with turquoise mineral pools and thermal vents before decending to through the valley and through fern forest to the finish line. As with any crossing the key is preparation. We decided however to not bother checking the weather report, ignoring the fact that all the guided tours had been cancelled and the girls decided to tackle the whole expidition wearing hot pants!! Needless to say there were many points at which I thought one of the girls might die, with them losing feeling in their hands, feet and faces and getting pelted with wind blown rain and hail!! We made it back though and on telling some New Zealanders about our trek they remarked that we were the type of people that they hear about on the news every year, usually being found dead and frozen to a rock!

Next we stopped off at a small town north of Wellington called Otaki. That night in the pub we got chatting to two locals whilst watching the football, one a White New Zealander called Tony and the other a half Mauri guy called Seth who turned out to be the cousin of (Sir) Trevor Brooking!! These guys were really friendly and genuinely interested to hear our stories and ask about our homeland whilst also sharing tales from New Zealand. Tony invided us to use his surf board and sea kayak the next morning and even gave us a lift down to the black sand beach. I had great fun right up to the point where I came out of the sea kayak and it hit me square in the face, I man-ed up and told them it did not hurt but I couldn't eat properly for 3 days!! On saying our farewells to our new Kiwi friends we were introduced to a younger chap Dennis. We chatted to him for a bit and when he found out we were going to Wellington he offered to let us stay at his house! We weren't too sure as we'd just met the guy but after much conferring we accepted.

We'd gotten used to New Zealand's tiny one horse towns so weren't too surprised at the small size of the capital city. After exploring the city and zooming up and down the hill on the hillside railway we ventured off to Dennis'. His house was amazing. He'd designed it himself and it was very impressive with a pool out back and a huge glass ceiling above his gym. All fears about staying with some random man soon evaporated on meeting his son Nikita. He was great fun and made us feel really welcome. He also had us in stitches when he invented a new sauce called 'Tomato-que' which was basically a mixture of Ketchup and BBQ sauce. On adding some corn he then renamed it Tomatoque Supercorn. We started to get worried then that we had some serious competition in our marketing careers. After a hearty BBQ and some beers (wine for Jo and Catherine) we dragged our mattresses out of the vans and went to bed. Rich pretty much spent the night with one eye open but we were absolutely fine and again found ourselves waking up to exclamations of "we're still alive!" Dennis was great and even went to work just telling us to lock up on our way out. How trusting is that?

We had a long day ahead of us as we had to catch the ferry that night over to the south island. After wandering around Wellington some more we got ourselves tickets to Alice in Wonderland. Cost us an arm and a leg but was worth it, especially being in 3D. We drove to the ferry terminal hours and hours too early and nodded off in the queue. The next thing you know we are being rudely awaken by people beeping their horns at us and telling us to move! You'd think they'd be more understanding at 1am. We didn't see any of the ferry crossing - which is supposed to be beautiful as you get into the South island and see Marlborough Sounds - we were all fast asleep sprawled across the chairs and floor of the boat.

We had an amazing time on the North island. We had a few close shaves but that only adds to the flavour of our trip. Let's hope the South island could live up to its reputation as being everyone's favourite.