Indiana Stickface and the Gap Year of Doom

Tuesday 26th July

After waking up at death o'clock and sneaking out of the hostel, trying (but failing) not to wake anyone up, we taxied away to the airport and subsequently to Auckland, New Zealand. So far at this point, the day was going quite well - we caught the flight, got free breakfast and were optimistic about our upcoming second road trip. Everything was looking quite rosy. Our happiness was added to when we finally reached this green and wintery land when we walked out of the airport and saw just how similar to England it really is. Very. Although at this stage we were simply happy to have to wear jumpers again.
It was only after we got to the campervan hire place that things started to tail off a bit. Allow us to explain the situation as we understood it: Ed had booked a camper online, fulfilling all the criteria on the website and paying a quite hefty deposit. Naturally we assumed that when we arrived they would give us said vehicle without too much complication. How wrong we were...
First it was explained to us that unless we were prepared to pay near double the advertised price for an enhanced insurance package, we would have to put down a $7,500 deposit on damage being caused. This was problematic as even between us we didn't even have close to that much money available. As we pondered this and abused the free hot chocolate facilities it was then revealed to us that it was all academic anyway as apparently you have to be 21 to hire this particular model of campervan. Which was interesting, seeing as we picked this website because it quite clearly stated that you could hire one at 18. That was literally the only reason we chose them. But no, apparently not. So that was all fairly enraging.
Finding ourselves devoid of other options we agreed to hire a car instead, which we actually were allowed to do. As it turned out this was lots cheaper (although the cost of hostels makes up the saving but nevermind), but still rather annoying. We were really psyched about having a camper; we were going to cook, and play cards on the table while we traveled, and sleep in it and it would have been great. Bastards.
That said we did get over our loss quite quickly as we returned to our old American patterns, and it turned out we could still cook in hostels. Still, it was aggrieving.
ANYWAY. Enough moaning. The only thing we actually did that day was drive up to Paihia in the Bay of Islands, the northern tip of NZ, and watch the end of The Matrix in a hostel.

Wednesday 27th July

Yet another early start began this day in which we played our favourite game of 'Lets pretend our wallets are fuller than they are!' by buying a cruise around the Bay of Islands. Not to complain though; it was extremely beautiful and, more importantly, we saw dolphins! Real live dolphins doing all the stereotypical dolphin things, swimming on their backs and blowing out air and suchlike, swimming round the front end of the boat. Which was awesome. Particularly as we saw the dolphins do all this just after the competing tour company, with it's special 'Dolphin spotting boat', had just motored off to somewhere else. But aside from the dolphins, which were admittedly the highlight, the Bay of Islands is really very nice and made us all want to live in New Zealand forever. Which was quite a good first impression for 2 days in the country.
The cruise dropped us off in Russell, just across the bay from where we were staying, which was a rather quaint little village. In days past it was the capital of the international whaling trade, being one of the first major cities to be established in the South Pacific. It was once famed for its drunken debauchery from visiting sailors, but nowadays simply stands as a monument to the winds of economic change. That is to say, it's really small. But it will forever hold a special place in our hearts for Russell was the site of our first meat pies of the trip! During the American leg we had all developed something of a craving for meat pies as they simply don't exist over there and the sensation of finally eating one after over a month of craving can only be described as unadulterated joy.
So quite good.
After disembarking from the cruise we were pied and content, but also bloody cold. This prompted us to travel to a nearby clothing place recommended to us by our hostel owner (it was basically a Matalan) to buy some heavy winter gear. We all had dreams of buying coats and the like but, blanching at the prices, we quickly resorted to the reliable backup of hats and scarves instead. Which turned out to be very good value for money (Simon is very proud of transforming his wardrobe from 'some jumpers' to proper winter gear while spending only $6).
That problem neatly solved, we got back on the road to Auckland again. Thanks to it being winter down here in the Southern Hemisphere, there isn't very much daylight for us to use so upon arrival we just sat about in a hostel and made dinner, a pattern that his since become entrenched.

Thursday 28th July

In the morning we climbed Mt Eden, Auckland's free-est attraction! It's basically a big hill in the middle of the city with some rather nice views. Well, by hill what I really mean to say is VOLCANO. That's right, we climbed a volcano. And it had grass on the top. OK so maybe it isn't active. It's still a volcano. Or was once. Probably.
We further embraced our new budget lifestyle by buying a hearty lunch of bread and cheese from a Pak 'n' Save (both of which we did) which acted as fuel for our afternoon adventure: climbing another big hill! We headed south to the Waikato region and parked up on the slopes of Maungatautari, a land-locked volcano covered in thick rainforest. Our attempt to reach the summit fitted our uniform trend of completing our goals, and fading daylight (this silly part of the world has winter at the wrong time of year, of course) meant we had to bravely turn back in the face of adversity and return to the car before we lost the ability to see exactly which trees we were tripping over.
Having wound our way out of the single track farm lanes around the base of Maungatautari, we continued south towards the famous Waitomo glowworm caves, staying in the nearby town of Otorohanga so we wouldn't get caught out by tourist-trap hostel prices.

Friday 29th July
Once again the group went its separate ways - Sir Tim the Boring venturing bravely forth alone into the untamed wilderness with only his car and camera for company, whilst his valiant brother knights began a cowardly descent into an underground cave to hide.
Perhaps that isn't a strictly accurate representation of events, but I did enjoy writing it. Tim did go out alone, to drive some nice windy roads, go on a walk he describes as "rather pleasant" and a boat trip into some glow worm caves. And take rather a lot of pretty pictures.
Meanwhile, the rest of us went adrenaline seeking under a field full of sheep, doing what is known as black water rafting. This, it should be explained, is not at all like white water rafting underground (which is what we thought). It mainly consists of sitting in an inflatable ring and being dragged gently around a placid underwater river. Which was still pretty awesome to be fair, especially given that to get there we had to clamber over stalagmites and tites, swim through freezing lakes and negotiate tiny passages in the rock which definitely not terrifyingly claustrophobic. And of course, turning our head torches off and traversing tunnels with only the light of the glowworms to guide us. The best part was when we took a break in the midst of all this to have some delicious hot orange juice and eat what was possibly the most satisfying Freddo bar ever in the history of creation. We had a brief biology lesson underground about glowworms and their reproductive habits (it's pretty much all they do) after our geology lesson was cut short by all of us knowing everything already.
Needless to say all this was quite spectacularly awesome. A long hot shower followed, interspersed with screaming, as we attempted to re-acclimatise to what suddenly seemed a balmy temperature above ground.
At length we reunited and drove on to Rotorua for another action packed day in the works. This was the first time we could have updated the blog and we did honestly intend to. However, after Fiji we had perfected laziness as an art form and when some randomer offered to play pool against us, the night was as good as gone.

Saturday 30th July

The previous day's squads were reformed again; Team Action Adventure was picked up by an eccentric minibus driver and whisked away to the Kaituna River to do some actual white water rafting (for a weirdly reasonable price thanks to discounts from both a voucher book we picked up and the hostel we were staying at) whilst Team Tim(id) went for a very lovely walk round Lake Rotorua and had a wonderful time thank you very much.
The river in question was mostly about Grade 3 level, which means Intermediate for those who are not pro rafters such as us. However it also included one section of Grade 5 waterfall which in layman's terms means SEVEN METRES HIGH! Needless to say, we went over no problem at all, unlike one of the other boats which flipped up on its end, disgorging half the crew into the river - we will happily take any accolades for being the best boat on that trip. So that was pretty intense. And wet.
Group reunited, we once again treated ourselves to a supermarket lunch before hitting the road towards Taupo. En route we decided to stop at the geothermal hotspot known as the Craters of the Moon. Decision made, we completely failed to find it and instead found ourselves at the rather spectacular Huka Falls. After a brief wander around the falls themselves we all rather fancied going on a walk along the river; that is all of us except for Guy, who wasn't really feeling like it. Still, the remaining Three Musketeers had a perfectly pleasant walk.
Returning to the car amid rapidly diminishing light, we got to Lake Taupo as the sun set and booked ourselves into a hostel for the night. Once we were fed and watered, we decided to head out into town to watch the All Blacks play the Springboks, finding ourselves in a rather pleasant Irish pub. Following the match we attempted to sample Taupo's nightlife, realised there wasn't any, and went to bed.

DoD: Tim for managing to break the car keyfob.

Sunday 31st July

Our itinerary for the day was to visit Tongariro National Park, for not only is it a national park in New Zealand, and therefore automatically full of absolutely beautiful scenery, but it was also the filming location for Mordor and Mount Doom in The Lord of the Rings films. After proving that you can simply drive into Mordor (actually right in the middle of a ski resort) and Simon sampling a snow slide made by people at least ten years younger than himself, we pushed on through the national park in order to go on a walk and actually get somewhere and back before it got dark. Our walk took us right around the base of the rather snowy Mount Ngauruhoe, which is the stereotypical image of a volcano - perfectly conical as if a child was tasked with drawing the landscape. It was this quality which earned it the role of Mount Doom in the LotR films, and I have to say, I don't see why Frodo made such a fuss when there's a perfectly serviceable path right up to the base of it.
From Tongariro we made a beeline south towards Wellington as daylight fell, and all we had to do was drive through the city to our hostel of choice. Unfortunately, Wellington's infernal one-way system got the better of us, and after negotiating what turned out to be several bus-only streets, we found ourselves at our destination. Or rather, we didn't, and after about half an hour of driving in circles and scratching our heads we realised we were on the wrong street. Ten minutes later we had a bed for the night and set to booking the ferry between islands before heading to bed.

Monday 1st August

Fate once again stepped in to mildly hinder us when it turned out the ferry to the South Island was fully booked until the next day, which gave us a day to kill in Wellington. Our search for free things to do led us up the hill behind the city to The Wind Turbine. Oh yes, this was a special one, capital letters and all. It turned out the reason this wind turbine's so special is simply that it was the first one in New Zealand, but at least it afforded us a decent view of the city and the bay.
Our next stop was Wellington Botanical Gardens, a huge free park which killed some more day quite nicely. Being at the top of the hill, there was also a Tram Museum dedicated to the trams going up and down said geographical feature, which while maybe not an obvious choice for us, was still free so we gave it a shot. With the museum proving just as dull as anticipated, we headed off into the gardens in search of amusement, ultimately finding a kids' adventure playground, where I'm sure none of you will be surprised to hear we thoroughly satisfied our inner children; Simon and Ed even devised quite a good timed obstacle course.
With the morning suitably dispatched, we decided to spend the afternoon on another Lord of the Rings location hunt, as our road atlas helpfully points out all the locations used. A short trip along the highway took us to Silverstream Scenic Reserve, a beautiful area of national parkland where scenes at Rivendell were filmed, and also a ford featured in the first film. However, the highlight of this area had to be the swing bridge, which kept us all far too amused.
On our way back to Wellington from Silverstream we intended to visit the location used to film Helms Deep, but we quickly discovered that it was hiding behind a heavily forested mountain with no roads leading to it, so once again we gave up and returned to a different hostel in Wellington. Our hostel of choice actually turned out to be a hotel which happened to have dorm beds, which was a nice change of scenery, and after dinner and a couple of films we headed to bed, ready to catch the ferry to the South Island early the next morning.

HOD: Ed, preventing Tim from losing too many things

Tuesday 2nd August

The ferry from Wellington was scheduled to leave at 8am but for some reason we had to be there at 7. No idea why, but mild inconvenience endured we boarded without incident and a few hours later found ourselves in the town of Picton. The coastal road out of Picton towards Nelson proved to not only be scenic but also ridiculously twisty, an aspect that Guy and Tim absolutely reveled in and which kept them more than happy for the rest of the day. We spent the rest of the day driving up to Abel Tasman National Park, where we were met with more stunning scenery, before we headed to our overnight stop in Motueka.

Wednesday 3rd August

A morning of driving brought us to the absolutely stunning Nelson Lakes National Park, where we saw both Lake Rotoiti and Rotoroa nestled in their frames of snow-capped mountains. After a spot of lunch we headed west to the coast and then followed it south, with the road winding between rainforest covered cliffs to our left and the Tasman Sea glistening under the setting sun to our right. After a brief setback - we'd wanted to stay in the town of Ross but it turned out to be too small to have any form of budget accomodation - we found a hostel in Hokitika which happened to be the upstairs of a jade factory. All that followed was our usual evening routine of dinner, film and bed.

Thursday 4th August

A short distance further down the west coast brought us to Fox Glacier. At this point we decided it was time to don our full winter wardrobes (such as they were) before walking along the floor of the valley to the glacier itself. The sheer sides to the valley made for a rather spectacular walk, and the glacier was similarly impressive in the way that only a large block of ice can be. Touristing complete for the day, all that remained was to drive to Queenstown. This drive took as past some utterly fantastic scenery as we skirted the edge of Mount Aspiring National Park before the road took us between Lakes Wanaka and Hawea, both of which were beautiful not only in their size but also their stillness as they mirrored the mountains surrounding them perfectly.
By early evening we had reached the town of Wanaka on the southern tip of the eponymous lake, and stopped to watch the sunset over the water and skim stones, before heading to Queenstown under cover of darkness. Upon arriving at our hostel of choice we were given fistfuls of money-off vouchers for one of the bars in town, so despite the fact we were feeling a little tired after the long drive, we now felt duty bound to go out. Dinner soon woke us up however, so we wandered off into the night, drank our fill, then went to bed.

Friday 5th August

Our big plan for today was to go skydiving, and once we'd gotten ourselves up we booked up for a dive at 12.30. Unfortunately the weather got the better of us, and excessive cloud cover meant that we first got bumped back to the 2.30 dive, and then finally it was cancelled altogether. While this did leave us massively disappointed, there was at the same time a sense of relief in that we hadn't spent lots of money and could now probably afford to eat for the next month.
We couldn't visit Queenstown and not do anything mildly touristy or adventurous, so we swallowed our disappointment and took the gondola up the mountain and found ourselves a luge circuit, which was huge fun. Before leaving Queenstown we had one final stop to make, and that was the famous Fergburger. For those not in the know, Fergburger has a huge reputation for making the best burgers in the world, and as far as we're concerned it fully lived up to that reputation.
Stomachs fit to burst, we got back on the road towards Dunedin, eventually ending up in the small town of Milton for the night. Our hostel turned out to be run by an eccentric Swiss man named Tony, who during our brief evening there taught (or at least attempt to teach) us all to juggle, told us our Chinese horoscopes, and was generally eccentric. We discovered in the morning that he slept in a shed in the garden without electricity, and upon waking the first thing he would do would be to jump in the bath he leaves in the garden. Bear in mind this is winter, and he said the past few nights he'd had to break through the ice covering it first... Told you he was eccentric.
Anyway, I feel I ought to point out here that this is the most southerly point of entire trip, as in the morning we were to head back north to Dunedin and ultimately Christchurch in the next couple of days.

Saturday 6th August

We had received a couple of recommendations to visit Dunedin, as it features both albatross and penguin colonies, so that was our first stop for the morning. Upon arriving at the albatross colony visitor centre, we discovered that the only way to see the big birdies was to pay for a guided tour, which we really couldn't afford to do. After wondering around the bit of the peninsula that we could without paying, we once again surrendered to misfortune and returned to the town itself bereft of any interesting avian sightings. Disappointed and hungry, we set out on an expedition to find a Dominoes, as we had a voucher which would get us cheap pizza, an opportunity I think all four of us would find impossible to resist whatever the circumstances.
After some more wandering around Dunedin, including a trip to the library, we found ourselves a hostel and set to writing the previous blog entry to this one, with no knowledge of the coincidence waiting for us...
While writing the blog, Ed innocently posted to Facebook that he was in Dunedin, and within minutes a girl he hadn't seen since primary school had got in touch and told him she was at uni here and that we simply had to go drinking with her and her friends. After literally seconds of deliberation, we forsook the blog in favour of her offer and toddled off into the night to selfishly enjoy ourselves rather than tell you all about our holidays. We're such bad people.

Sunday 7th August.

Hooray! We're up to date! This morning we got up, checked out, and have since been abusing the hostel's computer access to tell you all about this। This evening we'll head on up towards Christchurch, and maybe some time soon we'll bother to tell you about it.