2012 New Zealand

2012 New Zealand

Maoris and Kauris, vines and wines, rolling green hills and roads with thrills, roundabouts causing doubts, landscape that’s hilly and names that are silly, narrow roads littered with possum and people who are totally awesome. Welcome to New Zealand!

From Auckland’s airport we drive to Karangahake Gorge and stop for a hike along Ohinemuri River to stretch out our legs. Glancing into the gin-clear river I’m immediately ruing the fact I don’t have a fishing rod to try and save the lithe trout finning about from dying of old age. The NZ countryside is green and clean, and ornamented with one shitload of sheep.

Our lodging in the town of Tauranga is a fully furnished cottage with lush gardens, a welcoming hot tub, and an abundance of avocado trees dangling their monstrous fruit. Owner Rolf is an entertaining dude with a wacky sense of humor and has the endless energy of a Jack Russell terrier on amphetamines!

The property’s stream harbors large ugly eels, and one day chatting with Rolf a large rat scurries past along the far bank. Bending down, Rolf grabs a massive avocado fallen to ground and uses a perfectly aimed and powerful throw to splat the rat. Holy Guacamole, death by avocado; who knew! Other critters sharing the grounds include proud peacocks promenading their pretty, a beady-eyed possum, and a brood of chubby chickens with a ringleader Rolf has named Psycho!

We love the tree-house feel of our cabin, and keep the drapes open to give the giant bamboo a better view inside. Outside, the shrill lovelorn wail of male cicadas attempts to entice a mate after having spent 17 years alone under the earth. The booty call has a decibel level similar to a screaming steam kettle; but is a fathomable response I suppose, given their keenness to eradicate their ridiculously prolonged celibacy!

Tonight however, my ears perk up with another worrisome sound. Christine has come undone, running out of the bathroom and frantically squeaking like a scalded hamster. Having just discovered ‘La Cucaracha’, she catches her breath and commands the villain’s immediate execution! A heroic intervention by way of a powerful ‘cockroachian’ sandal-splat rescues my damsel in distress but leaves a most revolting smear.

Running around the town’s estuary with my lungs full of air and pupils full of sunrise, I stop three Maoris to ask for directions. Noticing one has a shovel, I ask him what they’re digging and I’m told it’s for a burial out on an island. I see no boat but one of the heavily tatted dudes widens his eyes, waggles his tongue, and says ‘now you gonna see miracle, man’. Turning their backs they just walk across the water; the illusion created by a raised path just under the surface allowing access to the burial island at low tide.

After meandering through ponga tree-fern forests at McLaren Falls Park we return to our B&B amidst explosions of thunder and a drenching rain. Chatting to Rolf about this, the clown performs his anti-rain dance in the puddled driveway. Just back from pouring cement and all splattered in slurry, the daft dude begins hopping around in his wellies in a silly gyrating dance that looks more like he’s trying to dislodge a tarantula from his trousers! Miraculously, not long after the performance, the sky has banished the clouds!

After four days of wandering shell-strewn beaches, the Mount, Papamoa, and Manganuim we drive to the town of Rotorua, which actually smells more like ‘Roto-Rooter’ due to its sulphurous rotten-eggy stench. Spending the night, we awaken to a sullen and spitting sky, and with the suntan lotion just a tube of discarded optimism, we decide it’s time to get the hell out of Dodge. Damn, if this soggy weather persists we’ll be going home with the tan of Count Dracula!

Staying at Rangimarie Guest House in Taupo we have the whole upstairs of a house as well as a hot tub in the gardens. Our host ‘Taupo Joe’ is a transplanted Scotsman with a wicked sense of humor, and throwing conversational darts with the old haggis-muncher makes for a most entertaining stay.

Never before have we seen such an abundance of sheep. NZ supposedly has 4 million people and 40 million sheep! Dawdling about town one day we happen to notice a skittish ewe tethered to a signpost, so I sheepishly ask wiseass Joe if this is the town’s recreation center.  Sorry mate – my baaa-d!

Our mission in Taupo is to tackle the famous and challenging Tongariro Crossing; a remarkable volcanic landscape billed as the best one day hike/tramp in New Zealand, and one of the top ten in the world. With steep climbs and erratic mountain weather as constant companions, it is imperative to be well prepared for a variety of volatile conditions. The estimated time for completion of the 20 km journey is 8 hours, but hey, I reckon there’s a lot worse ways to spend a day than a robust work out atop New Zealand’s finest ‘tramp’!

She turns out to be quite the tramp indeed, especially when huffing up the steep 378 steps of the aptly named ‘Devil’s Staircase’. Our reward is the spectacle of Emerald Lake and the Red Crater; both used in scenes from the epic fantasy movie ‘The Lord of the Rings’. Given the conditions it’s easy to see how the foolhardy can either require rescuing or end up in an urn! Fortunately solid research has us well prepared for the fickle mountain weather the harsh landscape which has already claimed over fifty lives.

The spiraling hike down Mt Tongariro is equally as tough as the climb up and turns our leg muscles into tapioca. Distinct vegetation changes range from total barrenness at the top, to grass, bushes, small trees, and finally into a jungle-like forest at the base; where we’re oddly bombarded by a battalion of brazen Cicadas bugs. Clinging to our clothes like a bunch of bright brooches, the gaudy insects look like the love child of a grasshopper and Lady Gaga!

Completing the challenge in a respectable 5 ½ hours, we lay spread-eagled on the ground awaiting transport back to base camp in the National Park. Then, happy to get back to the guest house, we quickly introduce our fatigued forms to the hot tub and reflect on the awesomeness of our day.

We hike along the Waikato River to Huka Falls, where creating quite a rush, the surging 100 meter wide river suddenly squeezes 220,000 liters of water a second through a narrow 20 meter gorge! Continuing on, our sniffers go into a full wrinkle from the unswell smell of the Wai-O-Tapu geothermal area. Hot enough to boil a person alive, the liquefied mud vomiting out of the ground is reminiscent of a ruptured septic tank.

Named as ‘One of the 20 Most Surreal Places in the World’, Champagne Pool is a naturally colorful and dangerous hot spring that bubbles and fizzes like its namesake. Necklaced in carrot-colored Arsenic deposits, the boiling lake has carbon dioxide gas that bubbles up from its bottom and converts into mist at the surface to create the prehistoric looking scene.

Goodbying Joe in Taupo we aim the car towards wine country on roads equal parts pavement and possum splat. Clearly the plentiful and problematic possum never took the ‘road crossing course’ in Possum School, and countless rotting carcasses littering the roads are referred to by locals as ‘Kiwi speed bumps’.

New Zealand is famous for a plethora of mouth-mangling Maori monikers including a beauty called ‘Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu’; an absurd word that denture wearers should avoid unless they’ve doubled up on their adhesive!  Roughly it translates to ‘the place where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, who slid, climbed and swallowed mountains, known as ‘landeater’, played his nose flute to his loved ones’. It is clear that the Maori do not suffer from Sesquipedalophobia!

At delightful ‘Mission B&B on the Avenue’ in Napier, owner Robert has a large TV room with an incredible surround sound system and invites us to join him to watch a Roy Orbison concert called Black & White Nights. Hilariously, the semi-sozzled Kiwi Kojak is playing air guitar with a Rod Stewart wig over a head as bald as my knee, giving him the look of having a porcupine stapled to his skull. However, Robert is also a competent sommelier, and tonight is all about partying and ‘raisin awareness’!

Last night we got carried away with too much wine-worshipping and taunted by the ‘wrath of grapes’ today, we hope that fresh air will help clear the cobwebs lodged in our skulls. We follow up a hike to Te Mata Peak in Hawke’s Bay with five hours of cycling on, over, and through; beaches, boardwalks, and vineyards.

Inky skies urinate on us yet again as we drive to Gisborne or Gizzy as locals call it. Unable to find a recommended motel we stop to ask a little old lady out walking if she knows the street’s location. ‘Why yes dear,’ she says, ‘just go left at the corner, then take the first right. I’m going there myself. Going to the home are you?’  Apparently the street has a senior care home catering to geezers and geezerettes, and we can’t help but chuckle wondering if the old dear is implying to visit someone or check ourselves in!

Rollercoasting over slender roads through Waioeka Gorge after our night in Gizzy we’re dismayed to find a roadblock at Matawai; a pipsqueak town that’s only claim to fame is a bar with a stuffed two headed lamb which surely must have confused the hell out of its mother! Big rigs are stopped here, and the truckers mill about patiently waiting for an update, as a massive slide has taken out the road up ahead.

Passing time I start kidding around with some of the truckers, and during our conversation one trucker tells me he was listening to a radio program when some woman with her panties in a twist phoned in to say that truckers and their rigs should not be allowed on the roads.

Reaching the pinnacle of peeved he phones up the station and says: ‘I’m a trucker and I’ve got a message for your last caller. Please tell little Ms-nose-in-the-air that the bed she sleeps in was delivered by us truckers, as is the food she eats, and the clothes on her back. And by the way, when she wipes her arse, it was also the truckers who provided the toilet paper!’ It seems that was suddenly the end of the topic, and told with a huge grin displaying a failing grade in the dental category, his story totally ‘cracks’ me up.

Word finally comes down that clearing the road will take days not hours; meaning another daunting 11 hours and 700 km of backtracking over the narrow twisty roads. Left with monumental mileage to overcome is incredibly discouraging, as we were only an hour away from our destination before the road was totally annihilated.

After resting up back in Tauranga for a couple of days, we head north to Coromandel Peninsula, driving costal roads so corkscrew-crooked they have a 25 km speed limit! Spending the night, we then continue on to Cathedral Cove’s postcardesque beach and its stunning rock arch featured in the Chronicles of Narnia.

Wondering where our next layover awaits we happen to pull into the little shore town of Orewa; ‘Gateway to the Hibiscus Coast’. It seems like as good a place as any, but checking into the Edgewater Motel it soon comes to our attention that our room’s toilet doesn’t flush correctly so I mention it to the owner.

Handing me a bucket he replies, ‘No worries mate, a leettle low on wotter pressure eere, so jist feel’er up from the fire hose’! Despite the bathroom’s shortcomings, we enjoy a basic abode offering a private setting, sandy beach and a lovely ocean views through Pohutukawa trees frothing with vivid red flowers.

Rising with the sun I’m off on a run, and several kilometers later on the path around the TeAra Tahanu Estuary, come to some rather gangly Pukeko birds. Held upright by monstrous feet, the fowl are feathered in black and blue plumage accented by an orange beak and bonnet. Mentioning these birds back at the motel I ask the owners if they are edible, and Les grinningly relates his granddaddy’s recipe for them.

So, you takes the bird’, says he to me, ‘and gits a big ole pot. You adds some wotter, and then adds a gumboot. Boil it all up for about three days, and when eet’s done you chucks out the bird and eats the gumboot’! Well then, I guess our likelihood of a meal of Pukeko is slim to none; with Slim having just left the building!

In the 150 year old settlement of Puhoi we stop at a store signposted ‘Cheese is Milk’s Leap to Immortality’. Inside however the place looks like a fungal jungle, and a sniff test of the stinky festival of mold reminds my nostrils of unwashed rugby gear left in the kit bag over the weekend.

Across the street and in operation since 1879 is the historical Puhoi Pub. The quirky decor has every imaginable inch cluttered with memorabilia; including eclectic old photos, farm tools, passports, pioneer newspaper clippings, world currencies, stuffed birds, and a raft of other unusual artefacts telling stories of the last 200 years.

As I’m sampling the suds at the bar the waitress smiles at me, and with a side order of sass says ‘Oh, you’re in the special seats, look above your head.’ Glancing up I notice a sign clearly reading ‘Old Fart’s Corner’!  She has a giggle, Christine has a giggle, but I start to wonder if I’m getting a complex. Perhaps the cheeky waitress and the old broad in Gizzy are in cahoots? Clearly these women have driven me to drink. Bugga, it’s time for another muga!

After covering 3,500 kilometers of thread-like roads we arrive back at Auckland airport, elated to shed the pregnant roller-skate we’ve been driving. Our wander full days in this wonderful country have simply run away from us, and loyal to the soil of cushy Canada it’s time to bring our amazing Kiwi adventure to an end.

On the flight home I manage to travel all the way back to Canada with a Naked Lady! No, not Christine, nor any other female of the two-legged variety. Instead, it is a bulbous Belladonna plant gifted from crazy Rolf in Tauranga. Sadly, before Christine and I can board our final flight home Bella and I are forced to agree to a separation agreement issued by an unimpressed customs officer at Vancouver Airport.

Musing over our trip, Christine and I realize that although the weather had more dispiriting drizzle than sun, it really didn’t matter; because like the Kiwis themselves, the country is absolutely brilliant! Thank you New Zealand for your kindness and your beauty, it was indeed a pleasure to make your acquaintance.

Mark Colegrave    2012