New Zealand is a
fantastically beautiful country, so when the opportunity to go arises, take
it! Ryan and I weren't sure if we would
go back again while we still lived in Australia since there are lots of other
places to go, but as luck would have it we had probably our best trip to date.
This story starts
months earlier when we discovered that two of our board gaming, rock hounding
friends from Canada, Kat and Ryan R, also started eating Paleo like us. Despite living so far apart we began chatting
again and playing online board games together just to keep in touch. Since they're also big travelers it wasn't
long before we chatted about doing a group camping trip, and naturally I
suggested New Zealand. It was kind of a
pipe dream, so we didn't talk about it for months after that though. When Ryan and I decided to plan a trip home
to Canada for Christmas, we were so excited to tell Kat and Ryan R. We called them up and told them we had a
surprise for them, but interestingly they also had a surprise for us. Turns out that they were also planning a trip
to come and see us around Christmas!
After some extensive planning and date juggling we settled on meeting in
New Zealand for part of their trip, and after NZ we would head to Canada and
they would finish their trip. So after
months of planning we were off on
another epic trip around the world!
Ryan and I packed 3
giant bags, since not only did we have to bring all of our gear for summer
camping and hiking in New Zealand, but we had to bring winter gear and presents
for Christmas in Canada. Needless to say
we were a bit loaded down!
Almost
immediately we learned an important travel lesson: always check your flight
status before you leave home. When we
got to the airport we found out there was a 6 hour flight delay! Before checking in we got some cards and our
computer power cables out of our checked luggage and hunkered down for our
wait. We could have left the airport,
but we didn't want to bother. We sent
Kat and Ryan R a message, and just spent some time relaxing. Then, before we knew it, we were on our way!
Consequently we
didn't get to Auckland until 1am, and by the time we picked up our car we
didn't get to the hotel until 2:30am. A
quick note on the car: it was the fanciest thing I've ever driven! It was a Toyota Forester, 4 wheel drive,
spacious, and it even had a built in GPS and reverse cam (even though it was
useless it was still cool). It took a
good 10 minutes in the parking lot to figure out how to adjust my seat, but
after that we were good to go.
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| Photo Credit: Ryan R |
So we arrived at the
hotel at 2:30am to find our friends looking like zombies. They were of course jet lagged, sunburned
from their few days in Fiji, and they had been throwing up all night. Needless to say it was a rough start but it
was probably good we weren't there 6 hours earlier! We spent a few hours catching up, went to bed
at 4:30am, and had to get up again by 8:30am to pack and check out of the
hotel. Ryan and I left a few bags behind
at the hotel, but even still the car was completely full to the brim.
We of course still
had to pick up some food, so first we went to a random store to buy a chilly bin
(see previous NZ trip for story) and we bought a treasure chest instead of just
a regular bin to keep all of our other food in.
It was an excellent decision, and kept a smile on our face the whole
trip! Of course since all of us eat
Paleo we bought a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts, and delicious NZ
lamb (plus some yummy cheese, chocolate, and wine) so of course it cost over
$300 and took up a ton of space. Totally
worth it though, since we ate like kings and queens.
To give you an idea
of where we were, here's a map of our route.
Our plan for the day
was to drive south, maybe check out some wineries, and end up at the Waitomo
Caves for our tour the next day. Not
wasting any time we booked it down to the visitor centre in Papakura, and upon
their advice we drove to the Misty Creek Winery just before they closed (at
3:30!) The property was beautiful, and
the chatty, pregnant owner was hilarious.
She didn't think much of Auckland or tourist stops, and warned us away
from Hobbiton despite never having been there.
But her Pinot Gris was delicious so we bough a bottle and went on our
way.
Next we followed
some random signs promising an olive grove, so Ryan and I expected that they
would do tastings like the groves in Australia do. To our surprise it was actually a very fancy
restaurant, so we walked around the property and had a picnic lunch in the
parking lot (in our camping clothes).
All sorts of really dressed up people started arriving, and then, to top
it all off, a helicopter landed on the heli pad near by! Needless to say we were under-dressed for the
occasion, so we continued on our way.
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| Photo Credit: Ryan R |
Our final
destination was the Waitomo Caves area where we checked out a few tour
operators and booked in a tour for the next day. But not just any tour - a glowworm water
tubing tour! More about that in the next
post.
We settled on a
campsite at the Juno Hostel right across the street from the tour office. They had indoor accommodations, but we just
pitched our tents outside on the lawn with a bunch of other people. We had our first competition to see who could
set their tent up fastest (we tied), and then headed over to the barbeque to
cook some delicious lamb chops, asparagus, fried mushrooms and garlic, and some
wine, with Kat only being able to stomach some soup.
Needless to say we
were all exhausted, so after lots of chatting we were snugly asleep by 9:30pm.
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