… we want to keep this going, just had too many other projects on these last few months but are in the process of redesigning and will be back posting in 2010! 
back in 2010
22Nov09NZ Week 2
16Apr09Some of you may have been wondering what happened to NZ Week 2, well life happened I suppose, I got sent to Coventry, we got very busy and the precious memories I had set about diarising got neglected, but thankfully before they start to fade too far into the distance I have found a spare moment to set my fingers typing.
So we left off with the sun setting over Lake Taupo in the heart of NZ’s north island. From there we made our way to place called National Park. And when I say that I mean “the” National Park, not “a national park”. It’s actually a town if you see what I mean. Only in NZ. Quaintly named outback towns aside, we awoke early the next morning for what would be the single most adventuresome thing we did on our trip generally known as “The Tongariro Crossing”. A 19km walk across the ridge that passes between two largely dormant volcanoes called Mt. Tongariro and Mt. Ngauruhoe. It is said to be the finest one day walk of all, but what they don’t tell you is what you’re letting yourself in for.
It begins at a gentle canter up the lower edges of the mountain terrain, but just as you’re getting into the rhythm things start to get a little steeper, then a bit steeper, and then steeper still, until you are eventually climbing with hands and feet up craggy volcanic boulders at about a forty-five degree incline. Perhaps an hour or so later you reach an extraorindary, other-worldly plateau that wows you with its crimson and black coloured panoramic views. It doesn’t last however, before long you’re on the ascent again, climbing to over 6000ft along the conventional route. For the hard core walkers a diversionary path can be taken to scale Mt. Tongariro in full. Another hour on, calves, quads and other muscles you weren’t aware existed and don’t know the name of are aching and imploring you for respite. When it arrives, it does so in typical NZ scenic wonder. The Emerald lakes deep green waters are astounding not just for the richness of their colour, but for the mere fact they even exist in the midst of the arid landscape.
The initial descent is also quite sharp and proves an unstable and windy affair that eventually leads you to the half way point. From here on in its all downhill and the scenes best described by Tolkein’s middle earth give way to something normally associated with the Amazon, lush, verdant and relentless rainforest. Your last few hours are spent on a gentle downward tilt shrouded on every side by palms and ferns, the occasional brook trickling down a rocky aperture in the mountainside and the unending wail of unseen cicadas furiously rubbing their wings together in the upper reaches of the trees. And then there is the end, the conquest-filled joy of legs collapsing underneath you and the satisfaction of knowing gravity can no longer burden you as long as you are laid out on the ground. Later that night there was sleep and lots of it.
The day after the big walk was supposed to be spent on one of the many fine beaches of New Zealand’s Kapiti coast, where I spent many a weekend in my youth swimming in the Pacific and consuming innumerable cones of Tip Top ice cream. Sadly, this was the first day that the weather was not in our favour. On the rainy-day recommendation of the Lodge-owner we rerouted our course to go via Waiouru and its National Army Museum, a fine exhibition of artefacts and regalia from the ANZAC involvement in the world wars among other memorial tributes and a vast collection of veteran’s medals. Despite the grey skies we still headed for my childhood home, the Hutt Valley, via the shores of the Kapiti, we even stopped off for a short nostalgic walk along the sands of Paraparaumu beach, better known as Paraparam. They were eerily familiar, almost like the same grains were laying there as those I played on some fifteen years earlier.
The next five days were spent the region of Wellington where I grew up. We stayed in Upper Hutt with my hugely hospitable cousin and his family. They took us up Wellington’s Mt. Victoria to take in the best view over the city and its harbour and then put on a good old Kiwi BBQ for us and other family. We also went back in time to some of the locales of my childhood, including my old house, primary school and the park I loved playing in as a kid. Strangely, I still rather enjoyed it! We also visited old friends from our time serving at the Baha’i World Centre now settled in the steeps of Wellington and still other family and friends in and around Lower Hutt including my long lost best friend Andre, his wife and kids which was truly a night of much nostalgia. We also managed to squeeze in one day to take in New Zealand’s national museum Te Papa in Wellington which is home to the world’s only fully intact Colossal Squid, as well as other excellent displays including an earthquake simulation, a 3-D holographic presentation and plenty of Maori art and architecture.
After a great time catching up, laughter, fun and reminiscing it was time to leave the north Island and cross the choppy Cook Strait to the larger, but less populated south island on board the Picton ferry. From Picton we took the coastal Queen Charlotte Drive to Nelson, a small town on the northern edges of south island within striking distance of Abel Tasman National Park where we’d take our second tramping trip, but that’s about enough for now. Abel Tasman, Kaikoura, Ashburton and Christchurch will appear in a whirlwind account of Week 3. Until then…
NZ Week 1
19Mar0912-13 Feb 2009 – LHR to AKL via SNG
Twenty four hours spent in transit is rarely worth retelling, but in this case some novelty is offered by our first experience on board the new super jumbo A380 operated by our chosen carrier Singapore Airlines on the first leg of our journey. Hugely improved comfort and entertainment are offered even to the mere mortals who can only afford economy seats. Screens are much bigger, power sockets are available to all and you can even play movies off your iPod through the said display unit. Nice.
We arrived in Auckland around midnight on the thirteenth. Sleep much required.
14-15 Feb 2009 – Auckland
We began our visit in something of a strange manner by attending a distinctly English event, namely the Top Gear Live Show which was taking place throughout the weekend headlined by two of its usual three front men, Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond who were accompanied by New Zealand race driver Greg Murphy in the absence of the floppy haired James May. Taking place in front of over 3000 people at Auckland ’s prime exhibition centre the ASB Showgrounds we were treated to the usual good humour with an added Kiwi twist and the full gamut of Top Gear fun. There was a Cool Wall, The Stig, car soccer (as NZers know it) and four Frenchman hooning around a spherical cage on motorcycles among other things. The rest of our day was spent seeing Baha’i friends and eating Burgers, what better way to spend Valentines?
On Sunday we met up with some friends and took in the sights at Piha beach and on Mt. Eden before taking the lift up to the café in Auckland ’s famous sky tower where we tentatively walked over the glass tiled sections of floor looking perilously down on the distant ground below.
16 Feb 2009 – The journey to Rotarua
After much debate on what route to take and thus what sites we could fit in along the way we eventually settled on taking an indirect path via a small town called Otorahanga and the renowned Waitomo caves. At the former we visited a bird sanctuary where we were able to see the native Kiwi bird after which New Zealand nationals and the fruit once better known as the Chinese gooseberry are nicknamed. At the latter, we first absorbed the extraordinary Aranui cave replete with stalactites and stalagmites so remarkable that they were formed over millions of years. Sadly, much damage was caused to many of these natural formations by the early visitors who broke them off to take as souvenirs not knowing the unimaginable age of the mineral life they were destroying. In the cave’s cathedral (highest point from floor to ceiling) we were treated to a song in Maori by our sweetly voiced young female guide. From the artificially lit caverns of Aranui we made our way to the star speckled Waitomo. We were led through the darkness by torchlight so as not to disturb Waitomo’s minute inhabitants, the prolific glowworms that live fixedly upon the cave ceiling. It was as though we’d entered some kind of paradoxical universe where day turned to night and although we were sheltered from the elements we could still see the galaxies above us. But fantastical metaphor aside, be warned, don’t get too near the brightest bioluminescent as apparently that means they’re the hungriest.
17 Feb 2009 – Rotorua
On our first morning in NZ’s smelly city we started with a gondola (cable car) ride up Mount Ngongotaha , the site of Rotorua’s well known luge ride. Despite the presence of traditional ski chair lifts, there was no snow or slalom course in site, instead several concrete tracks cut through the mountainside at varying degrees of incline and windy-ness. After munching on a delicious brunch of French toast, bacon and grilled banana it was time to feel the speed. M took in the view on the mountain walk while I got my adrenalin fix, hurtling down said tracks in a go-kart with only my own fear and some modest barriers to stop me from careering off.
From the Skyline Skyrides we headed for Paradise Valley Springs Wildlife Park, for which we had a free voucher. It was an unexpected treat. It wasn’t, like many New Zealand attractions, milking the “native” selling point, but rather played home to all manner of creatures mostly comprised of those common to New Zealand subsequent to European introduction, including alpacas, great ugly pigs called kune kunes (pronounced kooni koonies for the amusement of our Persian readers) and other such things. The highlight however was the lion enclosure where a feeding took place each day at 2:30pm. While we are not necessarily advocates of captive wildlife, these big cats were evidently well looked after as the photos will show. They were large, loud and anything but tame, which made it all the more impressive.
A packed day ended with a Maori village tour. On our Waka (traditionally a canoe, but our tour bus in this case) the impending “experience” was explained, a rangatira (chief) was appointed from among us, various other Maori terminology was taught and we arrived to the marae as a tribe, subject to challenge before entry. Welcome rituals complete and peace offerings accepted we made our way through the contrived arrangement of huts and their occupants who were engaged in various traditional craft or duties. Weapons were keenly demonstrated by young tattooed actors before a show of hakas and poi dancing. With the main protagonists, the musket-wielding chief of another tribe and the prophesised young warrior of Tamaki village joining forces the story is concluded with a traditional hangi (food cooked in an earth oven) and a fond farewell. The whole thing is rather theatrical for anyone that has visited an actual marae, but for the less informed tourist it is probably as good a way of getting a taste for the culture as any and the hangi (including steamed pudding also cooked in the earth oven) was excellent.
18 Feb 2009 – The journey to National Park
On Wednesday we continued our gradual journey south stopping just south of Rotorua at Waiotapu Thermal Reserve, where we watched a geyser erupt and walked among mud pools and bubbling reservoirs of striking colour where various chemical deposits had settled. And with that, we decided to take our leave of Rotorua and its pungent aromas to head for the more nasal friendly Lake Taupo . We spent the afternoon of a beautiful blue-skied day on the beach of this huge freshwater lagoon feasting on our first meal of Fush and Chups and proper NZ dairy ice cream, namely hokey pokey and orange choc chip flavours. Mmmmmmmmmmm good. After a fleeting visit to the onrushing Huka falls and a round of mini golf, we had dinner by the lakeside as the sunset turned the clouds pink, much to the shepherds delight.
Thus ends Week 1, check back again soon for Week 2 and more photos!
nineteen days
15Mar09I feel lucky to be involved in this project. Nineteen days started in 2008 as a collaborative project between friends and fellow bloggers amy and leila.
Like them, I am a member of the Bahá’í Faith—a world religion that has as its fundamental purpose the unification of all the peoples of the world. You can learn more about the Bahá’í Faith here.
As Bahá’ís we are enjoined to fast from sunrise to sunset for nineteen days, from March 2nd to March 20th.
Day 13. My turn to be the ‘guest photographer’.
The big NZ trip - Intro
08Mar09So we’re back in UK land, and we’re working on sorting through the photos to share with you all, but in the mean time here’s a quick taster of what’s to come, which we started working on during the flight home!
In five hours time we’ll be touching back down in London after three weeks visiting my childhood home, New Zealand. It has been a very special trip for both of us on several fronts. For me, a chance to revisit long treasured memories, to eat junk foods that fifteen years of deprivation have turned into eternal fruit, to reacquaint myself with rarely seen family and friends and look on the playground of my youth with adult eyes to see if my dreamy perception of it had some grounding in reality. For Manijeh, it was the fulfilment of a lifelong desire, the chance to explore an environment abundant with natural history, to put faces to names of aunts, uncles and cousins she’d heard about as though part of some ancient myth and to acquire a greater sense of her Kiwiness.
Three weeks is of course a generous holiday by anyone’s standards when engaged in full time employment, but it is only sufficient to scratch the surface of what the two-isled country of Aoteoroa has to offer. Nevertheless we achieved everything mentioned and more in a jam-packed schedule and yes it was every bit the utopia I left behind in my early teens, even through the less naïve eyes of an almost thirty-something. However, I am beating about the gorse bush. I’m here to tell you what happened, to recount our adventures and to add some meaning to the many hundreds of pictures we took, a sampling of which will be shared with you here.
So here’s how it’s going to go down. I will write one post of each week of the trip, giving dates and locations of each day, (I might skip some to prevent total mind numbing boredom) a short summary thereof and a concluding shortlist of the Kiwi delights sampled or re-sampled as the case may be.
Week One will be on its way soon, but in the mean time here’s a quick pic just to make you all wish you were there too and make us wish we were still there!
