Time to Visit Some Kiwis in Their Natural Habitat

With the big journey on the verge of commencing, I spent my last weekend tying together some loose ends.

I've had a long standing goal of finally compiling my entire music library on my Ipod, and with the anticipated down time impending upon planes, trains, boats and other forms of transporation, I knew this was one thing I had to finish before I departed, which I was able to do successfully. I am well impressed with the advancement of technology in recent years. My entire library of a couple hundred plus CDs filled up about half of my Ipod. Gone are the days of massive CD binders; now it all fits in the palm of my hand.

One other particularly dreadful item to accomplish was filing my taxes. With a return date later than the federal filing deadline, it was one more thing that I had to finish before leaving. I've been fortunate enough to have several successive years of returns, but for some reason this year I had to write out a check to Uncle Sam. Ah yes, just the thing I wanted to do before leaving for the trip.

Packing

The final order of business before departing was a relatively significant one: packing my bag. I must say that packing a bag can be a bit of an artform, particularly for somebody like me who has worked on perfecting the art of travelling light. It's been very manageable when travelling for a week or two at a time; however, a trip of 9 weeks can be a different story. What I realized is that as long as I am willing to do laundry rather frequently, there is really no need to pack much more than if it were a much shorter trip. So, I packed a bag small enough to carry on (plus a day bag) with some room left to spare. It eliminates the potential for lost bags and allows me to skip standing around the baggage claim waiting for my bags to show. It's something I belive to be essential when planning on moving quickly and frequently around a couple of different countries.

The Bags are Ready to Go!

Alright, I am packed and ready to go. One question I have got from a few different people is "are you excited?" The answer is yes, but I am also left pondering so many things...will it be everything I have made it out to be? Will the experience leave me wondering how I could have survived wihout knowing the things that I will come to learn along the way? Only the time and the journey ahead will provide an answer. Off I go...

written by

CaliJoe on February 20, 2006 from Los Angeles, United States

from the travel blog: Time to Visit Some Kiwis in Their Natural Habitat

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Auckland, New Zealand

The flight over to New Zealand is a long one, a little over twelve hours to be specific. Whoever said time travel isn't possible has apparently never flown across the International Date Line. I left Los Angeles the evening of February 19th and landed in Auckland the morning of the 21st. The 20th just vanished. It's even better on the way home when I will land at LAX before I take off from Sydney. But this is all a topic for another day.

I flew over on Air New Zealand, and I couldn't have been happier with the experience. There was good seatroom, friendly service, and they've got these great entertainment systems at each seat that provide passenger independent on-demand movies, tv, and video games. It made the 12 hour flight seem more like 4 hours. This might only be on long haul flights, but if you ever get a chance, Air New Zealand is worth your consideration.

I landed in Auckland around 6:30 am. The first order of business was to find the hotel where I had to catch a tour bus at noon. I got there by 8:30, dropped my bags, and ventured off to explore the city. Another tip, when in a time crunch, most big cities have these hop on hop off buses that give you a decent overview of a city's main attractions. I had heard from a few people that Auckland isn't really a place in New Zealand to spend much time, so I was happy to find Auckland had one of these buses. I hopped on, listened to the guided tour and snapped a few photos.

While on the bus, I was particularly intrigued by a brochure for something called the Sky Jump. It claimed to be New Zealand's highest jump at a tower in the middle of town.

SkyTower in Auckland

For those familiar, it is very reminiscent of the CN Tower in Toronto. Once my bus ride wrapped up, I walked over to the tower, and to my delight, found the Sky Jump people setting up camp and doing their safety tests. I went inside for the particulars, and the jump works out to be 192m (600+ feet) at speeds of 90 kmh (55+ mph). This isn't quite the speed of a freefall, the smiling girl behind the counter explained, but she insisted it was thrilling nonetheless. It's a wire assisted base jump, and it's the wire the keeps the jumper from total freefall. I had a walk outside to get a second look, and decided that this would be a suitable warmup for a trio of bungy jumps in about 10 days.

600+ feet looks much higher from the top looking down than from the bottom looking up. I could feel the knots tightening in my stomach as we rode up the elevator, with its lovely glass bottom floor nicely placed to accentuate the increasing height. Once we got to the top, I volunteered to be the first jumper in a group of three. I'd like to think it's because I was the bravest of the bunch, but I was also mindful of the fact that my tour bus was leaving in less than an hour and I was in a jumpsuit and harness at the top of the tower.

Once at the edge it really takes something to jump off the platform, especially when you look down, but once the countdown from 3 was completed I found myself leaping into the air.

SkyJump from the Auckland SkyTower

The rest was a little anti-climatic. They stop you about 20 feet down to snap a photo (still suspended 600 feet above the ground) and then send you on your way down. It's not quite the same gut wrenching feeling you get from the freefall in a bungy jump, but still a formidable adreline rush. It had been a few years since my last bungy jump, so I felt satisfied after this Sky Jump that I'll be ready for the infamous bungy trio in Queenstown.

Once I got unsuited and bought the overpriced photos, I hightailed it over to the hotel just in time to catch my bus. We had a 4+ hour ride up the coast, made a quick stop in the rainforest, and then made it to our final destination near the northern tip of New Zealand, a town called Paihia.

It's a picturesque place where one can easily spend more than the two days alotted on this tour and still feel like there is much more

Paihia, New Zealand

After wrapping up my "I made it safely" email at the Internet cafe, I headed back to our hotel just in time for our first dinner together as a group. Such gatherings in the early stage of a trip like this can be strikingly similar to walking into a cafeteria on your first day of high school, where you try to make a quick assessment of where to sit without looking like the freshman who's got nobody to sit next to.

Upon my arrival at the hotel, I was happy to see a moderately sized congregation of people from our tour loittering outside of one of the hotel rooms with an assortment of alcoholic beverages in their hands and a decent amount of empty cans and bottles of the social lubricant at their sides. So, while I was out pounding on a keyboard, the rest of the tour was having their first happy hour together and getting to know each other.

So of course, I was destined to be that guy in the cafeteria, with may eyes darting across each table hoping for a friendly face. That was until I heard a "hey, you want a beer?" come my side on my way into dinner.

Ethan's Infamous Sandal

Within a few minutes we had gotten all the basics sorted out, and it seemed readily evident that we had a great group on our hands. I knew it would be good times when a fellow Californian ripped off his sandal to pop open my beer (it had a bottle opener built-in to the bottom).

After dinner, our fearless (and extraordinary) leader Libby led us out for a night on the town, which in a sleepy tourist town like Paihia, essentially means a choice of about 3 bars/clubs. Her theory was that there's nothing like a couple of cocktails to get everyone to bond together as a group, which a few of us had already figured out. We were excited about a 2 for 1 coupon on draft beer that had been passed around, but quickly found out why it was 2 for 1. It had to be the worst tasting beer I've ever had the displeasure of consuming, so I am sure that the only way they are able to move it is to bait people with the special. The second stop of the night was much better, with more palatable libations and some decent billiard and foosball action. By the end of the night, I'd say that Libby's idea worked like a charm: we were ready and excited to spend the next couple of weeks together travelling around New Zealand.

written by

CaliJoe on February 22, 2007 from Paihia, New Zealand

from the travel blog: Time to Visit Some Kiwis in Their Natural Habitat

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Paihia, New Zealand

After a great first night together, we were excited to begin our first full proper day on the tour. There's one thing about these tours that's worth sharing for those who don't already know. The tour is a fairly basic package: it includes accomodations, 1 or 2 meals per day, transportation aboard a coach, and a limited set of sightseeing typically at the same places that all the other coaches stop. What this means is that there are many "optional" activities that you can choose from, which can add sustantially to the total cost of the tour. So, it's something to keep in mind when budgetting for a trip with a tour group.

Quite a few of us opted for a sailing trip around the Bay of Islands. We had a full day and one more night in this place and this particular activity would consume about 6 hours out of our day. It seemed to encompass a good amount of activity in one bundle with snorkelling, hiking, lunch and sailing on the intinerary. There was also the possibility of seeing whales and/or dolphins, and if we were lucky, we could even jump in for a swim with the dolphins.

We set off into the Bay of Islands and the view was marvelous. Something I didn't know at the time that I chose this particular activity was that this area of New Zealand is well known for the high quality scuba diving available all around the bay. The local dive shop said it was one of the top 10 sites for diving in the world. So, here I was, my second day in New Zealand, and I was already thinking that I'd have to come back sometime to check out the dive. The trip inside the dive shop made me realize that there was one rather important thing that I forgot back home: my dive log, and more importantly my dive certification card. I am hoping this won't be a problem when I get over to Australia and the Great Barrier Reef.

I digress. The view was quite marvelous as we cruised around the bay and weaved between the islands on our way out toward the open sea. The boat doesn't venture very far out into open water, if at all, but it goes just far enough to where the whales like to hang out. Within a few minutes of arriving to the outer fringes of the bay, the captain's radio came alive crackling with a report that was unitelligible to me but revealed obvious excitement on other end of the mic.

Whale

We quickly diverted directions and about 100 meters in front of the boat was a whale making his way through the water. It was my first time seeing a whale, so it was pretty exciting. They are quite massive creatures with massive lungs. One of the things this affords them is the ability to stay down quite a long time on a single breath. What this requires from the would be whale watcher is a substantial amount of patience. We spent the better part of 45 minutes tracking the whale around. What I realized is that I'm not much for whale watching and I am glad that we came across this thing rather quickly. I'd rather be in the water with the thing personally.

After we gave up on the whale, we turned back towards the bay and charted a course to Urupukapuka Island, the largest island in the bay.

The "Wet" Option

This is the place were we would drop anchor and spend the afternoon swimming, snorkeling, and hiking around. One thing about New Zealand that's easy to forget is it's geographical position. The stunning crystal blue waters conjour up thoughts of the tropics and warm tepid waters. I can assure you that in reality, it is anything but this. New Zealand's latitude at its northern tip is more south than the bottom tip of South Africa. I'm not sure if it's just latitude or currents or some combination of the two, but the water temperature is about 17 C (63 F). I'd be surprised if the water at our stop was actually this warm. For those not too keen on diving in and swimming to shore, there was a little dingy to taxi people from the boat to shore. The latter was the "dry" option and the former was the "wet" option. Most of us opted to stay dry, but I wasn't going to miss out on my first chance to take a dip in New Zealand's waters.

One of the things that was particularly striking about the Urupukapuka Island (and its neighbors) was the color of the grass. It was the extraordinarily bright green. In fact, it was almost a little too green. You know when they add color to an old black and white movie and it looks a little bit off? It was something like that. Nevertheless, green is my favorite color so I still found it exciting. It only got better once we took a hike to the the top of the island. The captain's promises of splendid 360 degree views for those willing to take to make the trip proved not to be overstated. The bright brilliant green grass in the foreground with the turqoise water of the bay and whispy white clouds dancing on a blue sky was simply breathtaking.

Urupukapuka Island

I was in awe, and if the day handed ended in here, I would have been quite pleased. In fact, pitching a tent is an idea. I can only begin to imagine what the night sky and stars would look like out here, not to mention the sun rising over such a picturesque landscape. It's something for me to add to the itinerary the next time I come out here diving. No diving this time around, although I did manage to take a nice little snorkel around the bay before returning to the boat.

On our way back into Paihia, we shut off the engine and pulled up the sails. I am relatively certain that I've not ever been sailing before, and I quickly realized why it's such a popular pastime. Sure, it's easy for me to say as I lounged on the deck of the boat while the crew ran around pulling this rope and tying another one down; but once the sails were set and the wind took over, the trainquility was palpable and unavoidable.

That was until the radio crackled alive once again with the voice of a man speaking in a familiar tongue with a funny accent. A word about the Kiwis here (Kiwi = someone from New Zealand). I've never met a Kiwi I didn't like. They are, in my experience, a friendly, helpful, obliging and enthusiastic bunch. And this radio traffic was no exception. What was happening is that captain/crew from other boats were letting us know where the wildlife were hanging out. I'd say that's pretty freindly competition. This time around, a group of 3 dolphins had been spotted swimming on the surface around one area of the bay. We quickly lost the sails, fired up the motor, and made our way over to the reported location.

We weren't the only ones who had heard the broadcast. When we arrived, a couple of other boats loaded with eager dolphin-trainers-in-the-making were closing in on our position.

The Dolphins I Swam With

Their excitement was understandable. They had booked a trip devoted solely to "swimming with the dolphins" whereas we had spent our day doing several other things, and the dolphins were a really a bonus at this point. Ironically, the dolphins ended up being closer to our boat. We were told that the trick was to slide into the water calmly yet quickly to have the best shot at catching a glimpse of these guys in action. We ended up in the water twice. The thing about dolphins is that they are fast, very fast. It's one thing at sea world when they are in at 50 foot long tank with a trainer. In the open sea, forget about it. When we first got in the water, they were about 2-3 meters away, and within a few seconds they had checked us out and moved on. I imagine it must have been a hilarious sight from the boat to watch our excitement of having dolphins swimming right at the side of our boat and then the unsuing chaos when we all flopped in the water unsure of which direction they had gone and swimming into and over the top of each other. No complaints here though, I actually got to swim with dolphins in the wild. I'll save the showboating (like riding around on their nose) for the next time.

written by

CaliJoe on February 23, 2007 from Paihia, New Zealand

from the travel blog: Time to Visit Some Kiwis in Their Natural Habitat

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Time to Visit Some Kiwis in Their Natural Habitat

a travel blog by CaliJoe

The Preparations Are Underway...

Los Angeles, United States

Greetings from New Zealand!

Auckland, New Zealand

Bonding Like Super Glue

Paihia, New Zealand

A Magificent Day in the Bay of Islands

Paihia, New Zealand