Crawling, Falling and Climbing

This past week has been such a mixture of things, I just hope I can remember it all or else this will be a brief update. We spent last Monday and Tuesday in Auckland after coming back from the Bay of Islands, it was just a time of generally chilling out and having a bit of a break from beaches. Holly wanted to go see the house where her Dad used to live in the Epsom area so we caught a bus and went there, the area itself was really nice and I took a picture of Holly standing in front of the house – the neighbours probably thought we were acting a bit strange seeing as it’s not exactly the tourist area of Auckland! I can’t remember if it was this time in Auckland or from before we left for the Bay of Islands but there was a buskers festival in the city and we caught an act in the afternoon, it was a guy doing some escapology in his sack of doom or whatever he called it. I think that was about it for that visit to the city of sails, I can’t think of much else that we did, Auckland is Auckland I suppose.

We rejoined the Stray bus on Wednesday to take us to the Coromandel peninsular just a couple of hours or so from Auckland, it’s where a lot of Aucklanders (and many other New Zealanders) have their holidays so the locals have ready made nicknames for their holiday guests, not all of them entirely friendly! We got into Haihei sometime in the afternoon, it was a holiday park with camping and all that kind of thing, Holly resumed her camping adventures (without the ants of Taupo) but again I opted for the comfort of a bed. The bedrooms were so small, I shared with three others and there was no way we could actually be in the room at the same time as each other (except for sleeping) but I guess it all added to the charm. I strolled into the kitchen after dumping my stuff in the room and then it was time for “it’s a small world” part 3. After the usual ‘where are you from?’, I found myself talking to Claire from Ponteland! It had been a while since I’d met a fellow Northumbrian so it was a really good, random time for us both. She’d lived in London for six years and had time in Australia but the accent was very much still there and she said that as soon as she started talking to me, she slipped right back into northern speak, abandoning her city voice and use of real, recognisable words.

A bunch of us got together and had a walk towards Cathedral Cove and some really stunning beaches, the walk involved going through a bit of a woodland forest type thing where me and Claire reminisced about the mother country and past experiences of meeting Northumbrians in unusual places. We got back to the holiday park, had a brief rest and then we were driven to Hot Water beach where you could dig holes in the sand which filled up with boiling hot water (funnily enough) and then just chill for a while. By the time we got there, the choice spots were at a premium so we gatecrashed the hole of a nice New Zealand family which was then, in turn, invaded by the cold water of the sea. Our Northumbrian radar must have been on full alert at this stage as we bumped into a guy from Gateshead (yes, I know it’s technically Durham but it’s near enough) walking along the beach with his family so we had a quick chat with him. Once more back to the holiday park for a barbecue, a few drinks and then bed.

Thursday morning we set off towards Raglan which is famous for surfing and other water based activities. The place where we were staying was so nice, set in the middle of a large woodland area with a large loop of a walk (which we somehow managed to get confused over) and a zip wire ride thing called the flying fox. I can’t remember too much about Raglan, I don’t think we actually did that much as we got there fairly late on but we had a few drinks and talked to people and had a good night. I talked with Dina (Dutch girl we met in Paihia) and she mentioned she saw glow worms hanging around the trees and bushes of the resort but I was a bit reluctant to believe her after the carry on in the Bay of Islands and the alleged bounty of the little faeces burning maggots but I’m sure they were there if Dina saw them.

Friday took us to Waitomo and its famous caves and actual, 100% guaranteed availability of glow worms. I was determined to see some even if it killed me. Again, I can’t remember the exact name of the activity we did in Waitomo but there was Claire, James, myself and a few others from our bus going down to do some tubing. We had to get changed in what looked like an aircraft hangar in the middle of a farm, I remember joking with Claire that we couldn’t be more inappropriately dressed for walking through a farm towards caves in the hot sun wearing a miner’s helmet, full wetsuit and white gumboots. We thought it was someone’s idea of a joke but we were pleased all this trendy equipment came to good use down in the caves. I think our guides said we’d be about 30 or so metres underground at our deepest, the hole to get down there was a bit tight but we all just about made it. There was a bit of a walk around the caves, splashing through the streams and trying not to create any new traveller shaped holes in the wall/ground. We arrived at the eponymous tubes about a third of the way in, which we sat on and drifted along in the dark beneath a glittering array of shiny, actual real life glow worms. We’d reached the mother load! We got told their life story before disembarking our rubber vessels and heading towards a bit of a crawl.

I’d somehow managed to get myself at the front of our party where Claire very kindly volunteered my services to be the leader of our expedition through a long, tight, muddy and very very dark tunnel. Before I could raise any kind of protest or at least grasp what was happening, I was down on my hands and knees crawling through a pitch black tunnel with my arms waving around in front of me feeling my way through this part of the cave. Claire had a hold of my ankles, the person behind her had a hold of her ankles and so on as we’d formed a crawling human chain. I did my best to relay my findings back down the group to assist everyone and I think we did really well to work together to come out the other end and not lose any limbs or Canadians or anything like that. It was hardly escaping from Shawshank but it was an adventure all the same. There was a bit more tubing and walking through the caves before we eventually made our way through the caves and back into the light to collect our photographs from the office (I’ll get them on Facebook at some point).

After the caves, we drove to Maketau to stay in a traditional Maori house for a meal and a traditional concert and things like that. The Maori girls sang and danced for us while the Maori males performed a haka afterwords, it was actually quite intimidating even though they were quite young (there were around 4 or 5 of them, aged between 13 and 23) but they got up close to us giving it everything. We were told we had to stare right back at them or else they’d just keep on at us and assume they had us scared. Once those professional performances had finished, we were then told it would be our turn! Things were a little uneven as there must have been at least 25 girls in our group compared to 6 guys including our driver, even when the girls were put into two groups there was still a big disadvantage for us. The girls were taught the dance (Maori culture prohibits females from the haka as it degrades their beauty) whilst us lambs to the slaughter (the guys) were taken outside for a crash course in the haka!

First things first, our shirts were made to come off – great, we’d be doing a haka half naked in front of a group of 30 or so girls and senior Maori figures we hardly knew. The haka had two main parts, the first involved psyching out the opposition with sticks, facial expressions and grunting with the second part losing the sticks but gaining equally formidable hand/arm gestures. After some instruction and half a dozen run throughs, we were led back into the house in single file to be greeted by the awaiting girls. Our group of half a dozen pasty looking, united European, bewildered warriors stood just a couple of feet from a crowd of excitable females about to witness something never before seen. Our Maori instructors called out the instructions and gave the signals and we progressed through the haka, I think I was putting much more fear into myself than any I was supposed to be putting into our audience. Even now, a few days later, my thighs are still very much bruised from the slapping which took place during the dance. It was all good fun though, even if it wasn’t the smoothest haka ever performed. The two groups of girls then performed their dances before we chatted with the Maori men and women and before long it was time for a well earned hot chocolate and sleep!

On Saturday morning we drove through Rotorua to experience the sulphur smelling volcanic geysers and heard all about how they were formed and how people live amongst them during their everyday lives. We stayed in Rotorua for a couple of hours before making our way to Taupo, which is synonymous for a number of things but only one thing was occupying our minds on this day – the skydive! We got into Taupo late afternoon and the 7 or 8 of us who were about to say hello to the clouds were dropped off at the airport but just as we got there an enormous wind and rain session began to kick in which put the dive in doubt. (un)Fortunately it soon cleared and we were good to do the dive. Great. I can’t honestly say it’s something that I’d wanted to do but you can’t come all the way to New Zealand without jumping off/out of something so this was to be my day for that. There’s two options for a dive – 12,000ft and 15,000ft – both sounding as scary as each other but I guess if things went totally wrong, it’d probably hurt as much falling from 15,000ft as 12,000ft so that was the option I went for, incidentally it’s also the highest you’re allowed to commercially jump from. All together it was James, Hughie and myself doing the 15 with everyone else doing the 12.

Dale would be the guy I’d be attached to for this experience and he was really good, a nice cool guy to keep me talking and make me relax. I think by this stage I wasn’t as scared or nervous because I’d just accepted that it was going to happen. I got kitted out and given all the instructions before we made our way to the plane, also in the plane was Hughie, James and Des (who was doing the 12 but we were letting her out first). As we took off and started to climb, the reality was kicking in and it took me a minute to get my head round it all but we were all chatting away in the plane and us guys were doing our best to keep Des calm as she really didn’t want to do it but felt she had to so that was our mission whilst we climbed. Before we knew it we were at 12,000ft and it was time for Des to leave us, the door opened (it was a transparent door, by the way, a nice touch on the part of the skydive people) and soon she shuffled towards the ledge and she was gone! For us lot, it was on with the oxygen masks and then up to 15,000ft and a few more final words of encouragement from our instructors.

Hughie was first out and then I followed a few seconds later. Even with my limited vocabulary, I can’t even begin to describe what it’s like to jump from a plane, the free fall lasted for over a minute, probably the longest minute of my life as we spun round a couple of times, continuing to plummet towards the ground at an alarming speed. I’d forgotten to pick up some gloves so the one thing I can clearly remember is my hands being absolutely freezing! I’ve got the dvd so I’ll get that on Facebook at some point, it describes things better than I ever could, you can even check out my less than glamorous facial expressions as I’m falling from the plane. I wasn’t so much frightened by this point, it was just such a weird sensation, my brain was trying to figure out what the hell was going on, part of me was enjoying it and the other was still trying to do the ‘big banana’ technique I was told to do. The fall seemed to last forever but the parachute eventually opened (such a relief) and then we drifted for about five minutes or so down over Lake Taupo and surrounding area and this is where I really really began to love it all. It’s easily the best thing I’ve ever experienced, just gently gliding in the air, being so high up so see everything and there wasn’t even a fraction of a second where I felt in any danger or anything like that, I was in complete trust of Dale’s ability and I was even chatting to him on the way down, it was so effortless and surreal. When we eventually got down I wanted to get back on board and do it again! I needed more! I can’t recommend it highly enough, everyone needs to do it. Back in the centre, we had a quick look at our photographs and dvds before we had a limo ride back into Taupo and went out for a few celebratory beverages. So I’ll get the video onto Facebook as soon as I can for people to check out if anyone’s interested. I’ve just had a quick look at the video again and I should probably take back what I said about not being terrified jumping out of the plane as my face tells a very very different story! I do start to enjoy it after about 15 seconds but the initial jump does freak you out a bit!

Sunday we went to a national park to do the Tongariro Crossing, apparently one of the best walks in the world and it goes alongside the mountain that was Mt Doom in those Lord of the Rings films. I can’t pretend to be an expert in walking or hiking or anything but even at my most naïve I had no idea what I was letting myself in for on this so called ‘walk’. We can all laugh about it now – and we certainly have been – but at times it was so scary as it was very apparent we were out of our depth and would have appreciated at least some kind of information or advice before heading out. The trek took us about six hours to do 18km (probably about 10 or 12 miles) and we were doing a fairly decent pace but we were warned by our “very helpful guide” that if anyone wasn’t back by 4:30 then the bus would leave without them and they’d have to pay $200 for a separate pick up. During the trek we climbed up some rocks known as the devil’s staircase and that just about killed me, it seemed to go on for ages and was quite disconcerting when we were climbing and the thick fog meant we couldn’t see either how far we’d come or how far was yet to climb. After a stop to catch our breath we (Holly, Claire, Katie and myself) made our way up another steep incline to a ledge which will forever live in our memories. The wind and fog were really starting to kick in by this point and the ledge we were on was about 6 feet wide but the fog made it impossible to see how long it was and what was on the other side towards the way down. The strong side wind didn’t do us any favours and we were starting to panic because we didn’t think we could make it ahead without being blown off the mountain but we didn’t fancy the idea of turning back and repeating the past 3 hours but the way ahead was equally as unattractive an option. Katie then just sat down and we all followed suit, so we’re all sat, stranded on a ledge in the middle of some mountain in New Zealand! We seemed to be there for ages before another more experienced party came along and took pity on us, letting us tag along with them and helping us along the ledge and down the other side. We were so pleased we didn’t head back because the lakes we reached were amazing (even if they did smell of rotten eggs) and the rest of the way was downhill! The rest of the journey seemed to be much easier and the scenery was something special, definitely made it worthwhile.

We got back to the national park for a well earned relaxing evening and had a session of watching each other’s sky diving dvds on the tv in the living room. The next day we drove on down to Wellington after a couple of the usual stops in some random places – stairs, steps and generally bending over were my difficulties in the next couple of days.

In Wellington, Holly and myself were the tour guides for Claire and Katie as we took them around the harbour and Lambton Quay and the numerous coffee shops, it was actually really nice to be greeted by the wind as it cooled us down nicely. I’ve really really really had such an amazing time this past week or so, it’s had just about everything and the group of people we’ve met on the bus have made it all worthwhile too, we’ve had a good laugh. I’ve decided to stay on the bus and head on down to the South Island for a couple of weeks because I do really enjoy being with the people on the bus and it’s fun to hang out with them all, there’s a good mixture of people/nationalities.

This has been a bit of a long update, thanks for reading this far (if you have done) and it’s nice to have survived it all! I’ll get photos and videos uploaded wherever and whenever I can to enhance the experiences. Soon I’ll fill you all in on South Island adventures!