Lava Plains

It is a dying land but not yet dead, with vegetation clinging to life, low scrubby trees, coarse grey grass-tussocks, withered mosses, greatwrithing, tangled brambles, and thickets of briars. It is a barren wasteland, riddled with fire and ash and dust, the very air you breathe is a poisonous fumes……

And so it was into this land that I ventured, to further my quest for new experiences, pushing myself beyond my limits, getting out there and seeing what there is to be seen.

Though it wasn’t the land described above that I explored but here on the North Island you’re never far from the dark land of Mordor and nowhere more so than Tongiriro National Park, home to several volcanos and the Tongiriro Crossing.

Several parts of the national park were used in The Lord of the Rings to depict areas of Mordor and one of the volcanos was used to represent Mt Doom, and it is through this land that the Tongariro Crossing passes….

For some reason I had the impression that the crossing would be a nice flat walk across endless plains under the baking heat of the sun, while some people made it sound like an endurance test. I suppose the source of these ideas was the fact that the only photos I’d see was of people walking along flat stretches – they were obviously trying to hide the tough parts!

I never for one moment thought that the “crossing” referred to crossing a mountain ridge, you’d think I might have considered that possibility….

That said, it wasn’t too bad a walk, in fact with the almost clear blue skies it was quite a nice walk. It was a bit chilly at times with ice-crystals mixed in with the mud underfoot but the scenery made up for it, the volcanos, the lava plains, the Emerald Lakes and the Blue Lake, it was almost as if you were crossing some mythical land…

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42

Not being able to find any new and interesting ways to hurtle downwards at great speeds in Tongiriro, I decided to try an old favourite instead, I went for a little cycle!

The little trip that I had in mind was the 42 Traverse, a 46km mountain bike ride though Tongariro Forest (formerly known as Forest 42, hence the name)

I’ve never cycled 46km before and certainly not on a mountain bike track. I was sure that it would be mainly downhill so the kilometres would just whizz by. I hired myself a bike, met up with my co-riders Chris and Cat and away we went!

Some advice for those of you thinking of doing this in the future, if at all possible, try not to do the trip with two people who are cycling around New Zealand, or indeed with someone who used to own his own mountain-biking shop and regularly goes out riding. Don’t make my mistake, find someone less fit, it makes you look better!

It started off well and by well I mean downhill, we got through the first 6km relatively quickly, that was just the road to the forest, once we got into the forest it got more interesting and somewhat bumpier!

When I hired the bike, I discovered that the bike had disk brakes and the guy said that I shouldn’t pull the brakes too much or else I would wear out the disk and then where would I be at the top of a really steep hill? So with this in mind I plummeted down the first few hills, barely using my brakes unless entirely necessary, though how do you define necessary?

Another thing to bear in mind is knowing when to brake when travelling down dirt and gravel tracks but I’m not sure if I’ve mastered that quite yet. Braking on loose stones is not a good idea, or on smooth rock, somewhere in between seems to work most of the time.

Chris was worse than I was with taking photos, he’d race ahead of us and then lie in wait with his camera ready, so there I’d be racing down a hill or swerve around a corner barely keeping control of the bucking bronco beneath me and I find myself staring down the lens of Chris’ camera, if that’s not distracting I don’t know what is!

I would love to say that I managed to do the whole descent without a tumble but there were a couple of times when I just lost my balance and fell sideways onto the plants on the side of the track, that was quite embarrassing to say the least!

And then there was the time that I turned the corner a bit too fast and ended up head first in the ditch, it was a soft landing but I ended up with a substantially bruised ego!

There seems to be a bit of contradiction when the brochures are describing the Traverse, on one hand they describe it as somewhere you can either enjoy the magnificent beauty with your family on a relaxed and peaceful outing and also somewhere renowned for the long and often rutted downhills, to test even the most ardent kamikaze freak. And after having taken the track we couldn’t see how you’d really sensibly take your family on a relaxed trip, there’d be tears, scrapes and bruises galore!

From time to time we would run out of ‘down’ and then the cycle stopped being so much fun, we had to climb the next hill before we could start hurtling downwards again, it’s hard work, I’ve been reading up about the trek and there’s estimates of between 15km and 20km of the track is uphill, that’s a lot of uphill cycling!

It was a long day and I was stiff and sore by the end of it, every muscle I had was aching and I’ve never understood why they can’t make more comfortable bike saddles….

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Life’s a Beach

“Four Seasons in One Day” used to be a nice little Crowded House song until I came to New Zealand and it’s amazing how often you hear the phrase being used here. With so many Kiwis from Irish and English stock, talking about the weather is a national sport and with such changeable weather hereabouts you can almost experience four seasons in one days.

I arrived into the beach town of Paihia in the pouring rain. Paihia is in the Bay of Islands, known for some of the best weather in New Zealand, with loads of sunny days and not so famous for the torrential downpour that I was lucky enough to experience!

Luckily, the rain eased off a bit over the next few days and I was able to get out into the bay and cruise around the islands. The first was a day trip to see the famous “Hole in the Rock” (it’s a island with a hole you can drive a boat through, not all that exciting!) and to catch a glimpse of some dolphins if possible.

We did find some dolphins in the morning and it was a “wet pod” which meant that we could go swimming with them. Though swimming is not quite how it happened. For the first group in, it was like a Christmas pantomime with everyone on the boat shouting at the swimmers “he’s behind you” and the swimming turning to see the empty space where the dolphin place was. We could see the dolphins popping up in the middle of the swimmers and the swimmers looking around confused, not seeing as much as we could.

When it was my turn, the dolphins had stopped teasing the poor swimmers and were off swimming further away, so for us it stopped being dolphin swimming and became dolphin chasing! One interesting I discovered was that as unbelievable as it might sound, dolphins can swim faster than me, but I did get within a few feet of some passing dolphins and it was good to swim around as the water was freezing (well 16 degrees), it took me ages to warm up again!
After lunch we came across another much larger pod (probably about 20-30 dolphins) which raced along in front of the boat and so that was a more satisfying experience.

The next afternoon I hopped aboard an overnight cruise. The boat was a small former car-ferry which was now taking people out around the bay. There was plenty of things to do aboard, you could relax, watch the scenery go by, sit by the bar, play a game of pool (yes a pool table, the cruise was pretty calm so the fact we were on a boat didn’t really affect the game much), not only that but you could practice your shooting off the back of the boat – it was no good, the target kept moving, I hit nothing!

As the sun set, we put away our guns, took up fishing rods and crowded around the back of the boat in the hope of catching something to eat for dinner – we all failed dismally, it looked like there’d be no supper that night. The staff on the boat had obviously realised how bad our fishing would be and so had an alternative meal prepared so we didn’t go hungry!

After dinner it had gotten nice and dark so we hopped onto our sea-kayaks and went paddling beneath the stars…

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All creatures great and small

It’s hard to believe but there are plenty of things to do that don’t risk life and limb in New Zealand, you can go to areas known for their earthquakes and volcanos instead!

We had the opportunity to go to the Agrodome to see sheep-shearing but unfortunately we got lost and ended-up Zorbing, terrible shame really. Another time we tried and ended up on the luge, hurtling down mountains at high speeds on a plastic tray with wheels!

In Waitomo we had the opportunity to go see angora rabbits, which sounded much cuter than sheep, there was even the chance to watch them being sheared ( they seem to shear everything here in New Zealand, it’s a bit dangerous to stand still for too long in case there’s a shearer nearby) but we were busy crawling around under the ground at the time and missed it.

It was a time of missed opportunities, in Waitomo they seem to have very strange places to stay, we could have stayed in a plane, a train and even in hobbit holes (we were tempted but unfortunately they were booked out!) but instead ended up at the Big Bird Farm.

Surprisingly there were no Sesame Street characters there, sodisappointing, I’d been hoping for at least a sighting of MrSnuffleupagus, instead we got to stay on an ostrich farm with the birds coming to greet us whenever they saw us – thankfully there was a wire fence between us and them as they’re quite big when they get close!

Of course there’s one strange little creature that you have to see when you’re here….

Catherine described it as looking like a muppet and it does, it looks like a brown furry peanut with legs and a beak, it doesn’t look like it should be able to run or walk but the kiwi seems to prove us wrong and scampers around happily ignoring anything we might think!

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To love and obey

When we arrived we were taken out back to meet the goanna, and it was a lovely goanna who comes wandering out of the bush each morning to eat on the family’s scraps, nearly 3 foot long and still just a baby. Standing there watching the lizard ambling along I knew for sure that it wasn’t going to be a typical wedding day….

For one thing I had somehow landed myself with the role of back-up bridesmaid, not something I’ve really had to deal with for previous weddings I’ve been to! It was all very stressful, after all my legs could possibly have done with a shave, and there was the whole issue of where I could find the right dress in time!

Fortunately the bridesmaid was in perfect health on the big day so I could relax and enjoy the ceremony! It was all very exciting behind the scenes, the ceremony and reception was being held in Zarina’s parent’s back garden and so there was a little bit of preparation work to be done and lots of running around worrying and getting things ready.

I offered to lend a hand, expecting to be utilised in a suitably manly way, lifting things, carrying things, the usual type of work for a macho man like myself but instead I found myself decorating the marquee, wrapping strips of material around the posts of the marquee and generally making things look pretty, just the thing for me!

Okay, the important girly stuff, the bride looked resplendant, wore a lovely cream dress, had shoes, a hair-style and even wore make-up, the back-up bridesmaid wore a white embroidered chinese-style shirt with white trousers and spent the day being complimented on his attire, overwhelmed by the attention I stepped back into the shadows after a while and let the bride enjoy some of the limelight…

It was a lovely ceremony, the bride and groom wrote their own vows which were really touching and perfectly suited for the two of them, there was crying (the groom and possibly others, they were very moving vows), there were ooohs and aaahhs, there was gossip (a mystery woman was seen overly tussling the bride’s brother’s hair), there were kilts (well one kilt), there were alpen horns and yodelling, there was singing and dancing, there were even bubbles!

And apparently some guy travelled all the way from Ireland to be there!

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