‘New Zealand’ in just a word - ‘Awesome’.
We left LAX on May 29th 2010 (Saturday) at 7.30 pm and reached in Auckland (The City of Sails) on May 31st (Monday) 5.30 am.
Day 1:
Immediately after we left the airport, we took a shuttle and drove to “Great Sights” one of the tour organizers there, the office is right near the sky tower (this is similar to one of the towers in various countries…., most country has its own tower which will be the highest building)
Booked the tour bus for 8 am and then got ready and started our next journey in the bus. We were about to go to “Bay of Islands” which is towards the north most of the north island. It took 3 hours for us to drive to that place in the bus. The path we took to reach the place was full of rain forests. That was cool to watch. Anywhere and everywhere you see, it full of green grasses and cows and sheeps on it. The bus stopped at a local shop in half way through the trip for a break and we had to have the breakfast there. We ordered 2 boiled eggs (they were kept in fridge and was given without even warming it), butter chicken sandwich and a tea. Guess what cost more? It’s the tea it cost more. It was almost $5 New Zealand dollars. Then we started the rest of the journey, it was full of turns in the mountains and our little girl had motion sickness and had a hard time in the bus until we reach there. We were dead tired after a 12 ½ hrs travel in the flight and then another 3 hours in the bus. Finally we made it to the ‘Bay of Islands’. This is not yet over. From here we need to take a boat ride for 3 ½ hours. So we thought of grabbing some lunch there at the local restaurant there. The one funny thing was we asked for a ‘to-go’ bag for the left-over’s and they didn’t understand. I showed them signs to make them understand and they figured it out finally. Then I asked them, what do you call that as in New Zealand? And they said its ‘Doggie’ bag. They themselves admitted the way we tell is pretty decent instead of a ‘doggie’ bag.
Get set for the boat ride! OOOHHOOO… excited. Then we took the boat ride. Kids had ultimate fun with the cool winds blowing on their face and they weren’t ready to come inside the boat till the whole ride in it. They took us near all the islands, we just saw every island from the boat and each island is named differently according to the shape or with any particular thing available in that island. For example we saw a bird island, where there were lots of birds… Final Island is the “Hole in the Rock”; there was a big hole in the rock, through which a boat can pass through. It was formed just by the erosion of rocks by the sea water hitting against it. Wow, that was really cool. We also saw a seal on the very top of one the mountains in one of the island. We were worn out after a long day and while coming back in the bus, we were fast asleep due to jet lag as well too much travel.
End of the day we went to our apartment. Are you surprised why an apartment? It should be a hotel right? No. In new Zealand they have apartments for daily rent basis like hotels. We wanted to have a different experience and so we stayed there. The name of the apartments is “Bianco Of Queens Apartments”. It was in the Queen St, which is the main street in Auckland.
The Apartment was a one bedroom apartment and it was fully furnished with all vessels, sofa, bed, coffee table, toaster, gas range, microwave, fridge with the breakfast for the next day, washer dryer….what else and what not. That was really good. We felt at home. We had 2 days stay in that apartment. We ordered food from an Indian restaurant and had our dinner. We had a deep sleep after a long day.
Day 2:
The day started with rain. Gosh! What are we going to do…? It wasn’t drizzling. It was a heavy rain. But still we had to move out; we didn’t have time to waste. We started with a cab to our car rental place. They were ‘discount cabs’ which was really good. They are the cheapest cabs throughout it seems. Our apartment recommended us to take that. We went to the car rental place and took a Toyota Prius with a car seat and a GPS so that we don’t get lost in the country. Since it was a right hand driving we were to take full insurance, we never know what will happen. All set. We went to the Mt Eden crate. This was a naturally formed crate due to volcano. But with the heavy rain we hardly saw the crate. We went near it and we could see only the board in front of it. Half heartedly we left that place and went to “Auckland Domain’, there also we weren’t able to see anything due to rain, so we went to the Auckland Museum, we were forced to enter it. We just had a coffee and a hot chocolate there and we came out of it and we took a big drive, hoping the rain would go away and we will have some fun. On the way we were welcomed by a big beautiful rainbow arch… We took a break and grabbed sandwiches from ‘Burger King’ and finally we went to Paihia beach, black sand beach. The rain stopped and we had a warm sun peeping out, and the throughout the ride, again it was full of rainforests. Sometimes I felt scared as we will be the only car driving in the whole road; though out the distance you can see. The kids left the foot prints in the black sand beach. They were following the sea gulls in the beach. They had fun keeping their feet in the water. We enjoyed to the core. Then we left to Waikato beach which is also called the ‘sun set beach’. We saw the sun set there in this beach. This was again a black sand beach. We took some sand for our remembrance. The day ended very well even though it started badly with a rain. While driving back we stopped in a local shop to get some native fruits. We bought Kiwi, Kiwano, Tomatillos, Fijiova, Snow peas, and Apples. We then stopped by a ‘Chinese Takeaway’ restaurant and grabbed our dinner. We came back to our apartment and ended our day.
Day 3:
This is Jun 2nd 2010. And it was our 6ht wedding anniversary. We marked our anniversary with New Zealand.
This day started quite relaxed, we were planning to drive 3 hours from Auckland to ‘Glowworm Caves’ in Waitomo. Before we get started for the big drive, we wanted to finish of the ‘patel points’ in Auckland. We took a quick drive to ‘sky tower’ had a nice view early in the morning. Then we wanted to cover the ‘viaduct harbor’. We had a very good city view and nice pictures came out there.
Then we weren’t satisfied without having covered the crate which we went on day 2 but couldn’t see anything. Today the weather favored us and we wanted to cover it too. We went there and again another full city view was got from there. Then we started our journey to Waitomo. We found lot of cows, sheeps and horses on our way. It was full of green valley with all these animals… and the nice sunny weather. The funny part was all the horses were wearing dress. May be to withstand the weather… not sure. More scenic land I have ever seen. Very few cars on the road and we had our own time during the full drive. Then we reached the ‘Glowworm Caves’ where we took a tour in the underground cave which was naturally formed, full of limestone spikes here and there. It was little bit scary but still there was whole bunch of people for each tour, so we had company. They switched of the lights now and then to show the Glowworms underneath the roof of the caves. It was really nice to watch them. Kids had a very good experience, but they didn’t like the caves as such though, as it was scary for them. They had a boat ride along with the tour inside the cave, and it was again full of glowworms. They told us the life cycle of the glowworms. It was interesting. Then from there we grabbed lunch at Mc Donald’s. The worst part throughout our journey was, the land was full of water and trees everywhere but no one gives water for drinking. Everything is commercialized and profit minded as the country itself depends on the tourist and they make money out of everything. Even in the Mc Donald’s in the juice machine, even when you buy a meal and we asked for water instead of any drink and they said you need to get bottled water and they don’t have an option in the juice machine for water. Can you believe this? And even a small bottle of water costs 4 to 5 bucks. Then from there we took another 2 and ½ hour’s drive to ‘Rotorua’ where the natural geysers are there. The full city is completely covered with natural geysers. And it smelled hydrogen sulphide once you step into the city. Rotorua is the only place in the world built on an active volcano. The city is full of smoke from the water bubbling naturally from earth. Those water are boiling at a temperature of 98 degree C. The people live an active life there. It’s not just a place for tourist; it was a full fledged city where people have their own life style. It was weird in the beginning that how these people life in this rotten egg smell every day, every minute. But then if we inhale that for 2 hours, you get used to the smell.
We reached there around 6 in the evening to our hotel ‘ibis’. It was a good hotel with all basic amenities included. In the front desk, we enquired about the mouri cultural program which we researched and found via internet before our trip. They said, it will go on in every hotel at Rotorua. And they also had one, which will start by 6.30 pm and goes on until 9.30 pm. And they also said, the package comes with the big dinner buffet if mouri food. We ended up going to that function after refreshing ourselves from the long drive. This program held at the back of the hotel and we were invited by people dressed up with mouri cultural dress. We saw many people came in to watch that program. They asked us to start with the dinner and then the program will start following it. They had so many varieties of starters/appetizers( one of them was fresh fish salad- uncooked) with pumpkin soup, many main dishes (I could remember only some of them, lemon lamb, smoked salmon, mussels, some chicken , baked potato, sweet potato and many other) and so many desserts. By seeing the food items I didn’t want to give even a try. I just took a bread and butter and I ended up my dinner with it. But the kids had baked potato and some cheese and some bread. My husband had no other choice; he had to try some in front of the whole crowd. And he had a tough time. But finally he said the deserts were really good. Then the program started with lots of their traditional dance with 3 men and 4 women. The men danced the ‘Hukka’ dance and the women did the ‘Poi’ dance with ‘poi’s in hand. The rest of the dance and performance was the combined effort of men and women. Finally they made the program interactive by calling the audience (us) on the stage to dance. They called people from different table, they taught the steps for ‘Poi’ and ‘Hukka’ dance and they made us dance. From our family, Shriyaa represented for the ‘poi’ dance. She had her first stage, first performance in front of completely new audience away from her school. She did pretty well. As a mom I was so happy for my daughter volunteering.
After another tired long day, we went to our hotel room and had good sleep. The next day was our final day.
Day 4:
We started our day with the schedule from the front desk of the hotel we stayed. We went to a Mc Donald’s again there and grabbed our breakfast and went to a nearby shop to quickly grab a souvenir for our trip remembrance, then went to the information center. We got some idea for scheduling the day and then we went to the ‘kuirau park’ where is park is fully covered with natural geysers everywhere. The park also had a swimming pool paid one though. They had all pools warm naturally and they also had natural spas. The full city doesn’t spend money on heating equipments. They make use of the natural resource and convert it to the form they need and use it. After finishing this spot, we went to the ‘Government Park’ which is a park surrounding a big lake. This is the place we saw few unique birds. We also saw big ducks, black and white swans, sea gulls and pigeons as well. We took some snaps there and took off that place. Then we moved on to the tour called ‘ ‘ . That was a 2 to 3 hour tour, they have their own park/area which has naturally erupting geysers, they have ‘kiwi birds’ which is the national bird of New Zealand, they also have ‘mud pools’ here and there. These mud pools were very nice to see. Like when you put a stone in the water, the rings form, similar to that the heat from beneath the earth makes rings in the mud which is almost like clay. That was cool this to watch. They have a food cooking place which is a 4 feet hole on earth which is a naturally formed one, with water till the rim of the whole which was boiling with very big bubbles. We didn’t know the temperature of it though, but it should be above 100 degrees C. They keep big vessels over it and they cook food in this boiling water. We then saw the natural geyser which was erupting from earth like a volcano, but boiling water to a height of 10 to 15 feet from the ground level every 15 to 20 mins and it will be erupting for 20 mins. It was awesome to see it very close. The kiwi birds are almost extinct. They safeguard the ones available in a dark place with only mild path lights for us to go around. These birds are nocturnal. They used to have some millions of birds few years ago but now it’s only 70 thousand birds altogether available throughout New Zealand. We could hardly see the bird… in the dark… but we did at least see the image of it. We finally ended our trip here. We started back to Auckland for our flight at 7.30 pm on Jun 3rd 2010. It was again a 2 and ½ hour drive back to the airport from Rotorua.
While driving back, we got to see lot of lama’s, the baby ones, in a bunch here and there… WOW, we finally saw an animal of that country. We took some pictures. We then moved on our journey, wanted to get some native chocolates for our friends, so we then stopped by a convenience store which was pretty big like Wal-Mart. In the front they had a coffee shop where we ordered hot chocolate for the kids and a coffee for ourselves. That was the one store we had an excellent coffee and hot chocolate. It tasted excellente! Then we finally drove to the airport, left the car at the rental spot and checked in our baggage and get set go to our place with another 12 hour drive back to LAX.
We reached LAX at 12 pm on 3rd Jun 2010. Our friends came to pick us up and we are back to California…. The kids each of them were the happiest person once we reached home after the hectic but fun trip. They were the ones who were totally tired of the trip.
