Back to Honolulu

We caught a glimpse of sunrise as we were landing in Honolulu and we were admitted into the US with no hassle. The customs agent were cheery, and tried to make us feel better about handing over our Sweet Tango apple (we forgot to eat it on the plane 😢) by reminding us that we were now in the land of delicious pineapples!

It is currently 9am Hawaii time, on March 14th, the second time around. Hawaii doesn't do daylight savings, and New Zealand hasn't changed their clocks yet, so the time change is still 23 hours, but now we are 6 hours behind EDT.

We are now in the land of gigantic, dilute espresso drinks (a "regular" size latte is 16 oz, compared to the 6oz flat white I drank en route to the Auckland airport, today, the first time around). At least it's warm and sunny here; we are in complete denial about the presence of snow at home. It has 6 days to finish falling and then promptly melt away...

Farewell, New Zealand!

It's hard to believe two months have passed so quickly. New Zealand is even more magnificent than we could have imagined; when we first arrived, we figured we should hit all of the major attractions since we are unlikely to return. But as our trip progressed, that attitude quickly changed to sampling everything so we knew where to spend more time when we returned! Not sure when yet, we will definitely be back!!

Yesterday we were able to squeeze in a bonus ride along a new trail that traverses the width of the top of the North Island. It's 84km long and with our hotel in the middle, we took a shuttle to the eastern end of the trail and made our way back. Our motel neighbours also rode the trail and are biking enthusiasts from south Auckland - turns out our motel was the recommended lodging in our cycle tour book!

We spent yesterday evening doing laundry and packing, with our new friends looking on in astonishment.

Today we drove back to Auckland along the west coast of the North Island, stopping at the magnificent Kauri forest to see Tane Mahuta, New Zealand's largest Kauri tree.

This photo was taken while Neil returned our rental car, but now we are through security and waiting to board. Our flight takes off in an hour or so, and when we arrive in Honolulu we will get to live March 14 a second time! Happy double pi day :)

Coffee! Coffee! Coffee!

New Zealand's cafe culture is definitely something I will miss when we leave, especially since the flat white doesn't exist at home. While we were in Rotorua, we looked online for some espresso machines and quickly realised we had no idea what to look for, or what to do with one if we were to own one. So, Neil had the excellent idea of taking a class! Surprisingly (or not surprisingly, given the abundance of cafes here) there are many full-day or multi-day classes offered to become a professional barista. These classes actually require a student visa. New Zealand takes this very seriously! After a bit of effort, Neil stumbled upon a 3 hour "home barista" class offered in Auckland, and we were able to book it. So, we spent our morning practicing making espresso shots and attempting to achieve our perfect 25 second extraction (using 20g of grounds). We then tried texturing milk, both cow and soy, to make our own flat white.

For some background, a flat white is like a stronger, smaller, more velvety cousin of the latte. It consists of a double shot of espresso (40-60ml) plus only about 130ml milk and a thin layer of silky foam. The milk is steamed and then swirled to make a light and velvety consistency. In contrast, a latte contains the same amount of espresso but more milk, typically served in an 8 or 12 oz glass or cup (or even larger). The steamed milk is denser and the latte is topped with more foam than a flat white.

The class was really interesting. It was very enlightening to taste good and bad espresso, and then add milk to taste a regular (180ml) and large (220ml) flat whites side by side (note: a "large" flat white isn't actually supposed to exist, since the flat white should be small, but the desire for "more" impacts coffee sizing, even though a large size just means more diluted! The milk suppresses a lot of the espresso flavour, though it also hides some of the acidity or bitterness of a poorly extracted double shot. We may yet turn into espresso purists and drink the stuff black...though first we'll need some equipment, and a ton of practice :)

After our class we strolled around downtown Auckland a little, and then decided to head north. We weren't originally planning to head north of Auckland, so we looked at a map, picked a well-located town at random, found a well-reviewed motel online, and went for it! So here we are in Kaihohe, a relatively unremarkable town that's about 30 mins from the Kauri forest to the west, the bay of islands to the east, and sits in the middle of a new cycle trail. This is another hotel from the 50's era, with some awesome vintage furniture and a super sweet owner. We have found the perfect small-town North Island location for our final 2 days here!

Busy day ("a tale of two cheese shops")

Photos:
1. Last night's lodging, the formerly glorious and now somewhat less wonderful but slowly being restored Putaruru Hotel
2. Delicious cheese shop in Putaruru
3. Hilarious store that we drove by in the next town over, Tirau, that piqued our curiosity enough for us to turn around and check it out. They sold, unsurprisingly, merino wool products.

Then we drove up to Hamilton to spend the rainy day at New Zealand's largest mall, only to discover that the dire weather forecasts were incorrect, so we drove back through Tirau to Matamata for...

4&5. The Hobbiton tour!!! Hobbit cheesemonger and us with part of the movie set in the background.

And now we are in Auckland.

The Timber Trail

The original plan for today was to see Hobbiton. But after Wednesday's ridiculous rainfall that flooded areas to the north and the forecast for more rain all weekend, we decided to wait for better weather for Hobbiton and go biking instead. It actually worked quite well; by heading south to the trailhead, we avoided getting wet and didn't meet rain until after we finished biking and started driving north again. Rain became heavy rain, so we stopped at the nearest motel which happened to be in the town of Putaruru, population 3700. This town is not mentioned in our lonely planet guide. According to wikipedia the economy of this town is centred around timber. Our hotel is a magnificent former 5-star beauty built in the 1950s, which fell into disrepair and is now being restored slowly. It's become a little more like a backpacker's lodging, but provides everything we need in a surprisingly beautiful setting.

The Timber Trail was absolutely stunning. We would have liked to do the whole thing but our guidebook made it sound like our bikes wouldn't be able to handle the terrain. Surprisingly, the terrain was very smooth, compact dirt/clay, a nice reprieve from the gravel we've primarily encountered. Some sections are steep, which would be difficult riding loaded, but still doable. The trail runs through original bush as well as new/regenerating forest. The old trees are massive! And the with the dense forest comes many native bird species - we saw kereru (wood pigeons that make the coolest cooing sound when flying), fantails, a tui, New Zealand robins, and heard the call of the kaka (wood parrot). None of these birds exist at home. We caught some video of the wood pigeon and the tui calls (you can't see it but listen for the clicks, squeaks and whistles, and enjoy the fantail fly-by). Turn your sound on!

Waitomo Caves

Yesterday was a rainy day - so much so that parts of the North Island were completely flooded (we weren't affected). We left Rotorua and made our way to Otorohanga, which is 20km from Waitomo village. Since it was rainy we didn't have any specific plans for the day, so we made a small detour to Tokoroa to satisfy our curiosities about a well known news article from last year (don't worry, it's not under serious consideration).  Once we arrived in Otorohanga we found ourselves a motel (we're not interested in pitching a tent in the pouring rain!) and signed up for two different tours for today - a glowworm cave raft tour in the morning, in the caves used for the Planet Earth filming, and a cave adventure in the afternoon. The adventure included a 27m abseil (rappel), tubing, caving, and rock climbing. It was totally amazing!!!

Rotorua

Oooh, ahhh, ouch...everything is sore from our hike! We arrived yesterday in Rotorua, the geothermal capital of New Zealand. We also chose our accommodation based on the availability of a thermal pool on site which we thoroughly enjoyed this morning. Today we spent the whole day wandering (slowly) through the grounds of Te Puia thermal reserve, which contains the country's largest geyser and used to be a Maori settlement. The reserve also had a 45-min cultural performance, to share Maori games, songs and a demonstration of haka, the traditional war dance. Rotorua is the largest Maori city in New Zealand. There are only ~700,000 Maori descendants, of which 95% are mixed blood. Our Maori tour guide's name was Paul Mc-something. The reserve is also home to the NZ Maori Arts and Crafts institute, which has a 3-year wood carving program taught by Maori master carvers. One condition of admission is that you must be at least 1/64 Maori.

Tongariro Alpine Crossing

Today we hiked the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, a 19.4km hike across volcano craters and Mt Ngauruhoe (aka Mt Doom from the Lord of the Rings). We were up at 4:30am, with a shuttle pickup from our holiday park at 5:15 to take us to the start of the track. We started hiking around 7:30 and finished around 3:30, with many stops for snacks and photos. We would definitely do it again!

Taupo

We are now in Taupo. It was a busy day:
- woke up early early early to drive up Te Mata peak to watch the sun rise - photo taken at 7:07am!
- headed back to the aquarium at 9am for our insider's tour of the little blue penguins and their 9:30am feeding (fun fact: the fish they feed their penguins, which are injured/rescue penguins, are so small that they don't meet the size requirement for fishing in New Zealand...so they are purchased from the Netherlands instead and supplemented with US vitamins m)
- bought a bunch of fruit and veggies from roadside fruit stalls (including a fig farm that sells 5 types of figs that were picked this morning
- drive 2 hrs to Taupo and explored the city centre, which is hosting the Ironman New Zealand race tomorrow (we have a knack for catching the big multisport events, and just missing the sheep shearing events!!)
- bought wine at the grocery store, where we were not only carded but also had to run out to the car to fetch our passports since foreign drivers licenses are insufficient (note: the drinking age in New Zealand is 18)
- fun fact about our wine - it is from Marlborough but Vidal has a vineyard down the street from our Hawke's Bay campsite. We didn't bother with a tasting since we needed to drive to Taupo - so we will do our own tasting, one at a time, grocery store style :) this one is a 2015 Pinot Noir. It was quite nice after it has some time to breathe but red wines require more effort to appreciate...we are still working on developing this skill!
- cooked a lovely lamb stew (the fanciest camping cooking we've done so far!) to accompany our wine
- went for an evening swim in the heated pool - pool temp: 34-38'; current air temp: 16'...brrr! Getting out of the pool was much less fun than jumping in! This campsite also has a swim-up bar - it is the most resort-like campground we've ever been to!

Tomorrow morning we will check the forecasted weather conditions for Sunday and see if we will be able to hike to...Mordor! Yup, seriously.

Aquarium

We went to the national aquarium today. It was cool. We are going back tomorrow :)

Hawke's Bay

Hawke's Bay is known as the "food bowl" of New Zealand, according to the local food and wine brochure. This region accounts for a significant percentage of New Zealand's apple exports. There are also over 70 wineries here, which accounts for over 80% of New Zealand's plantings of merlot, cabernet sauvignon and syrah. That being said, we found the 2015 riesling from the Forrest winery that we visited in Marlborough and purchased it to go with dinner instead of a random local wine. We even picked ourselves up a plastic wine glass, which is a worthwhile upgrade from our plastic mug! We will sample a local winery tomorrow or Friday :)

Rivendell & Masterton

"What?! You want to go to Mordor???"

On our way out of Wellington, we passed by Rivendell (film location from Lord of the Rings). Continuing north, we decided to spend the night in Masterton. We stopped at a motel where we took the last available room...because all of the other rooms are taken by Aussies who are in town to compete in the Golden Shears sheep shearing competition! Unfortunately the competition doesn't start until Thursday, so we will have to settle for streaming it online (https://www.goldenshears.co.nz). The finals are supposed to be quite dramatic - 6 finalists, 20 sheep each, shearing for both time and quality. How exciting!

Onwards!

With 2 weeks left and all of the North Island (beyond Wellington) left to see, this 2007 Nissan Wingroad is our ticket to making the most of the rest of our trip. Goodbye Wellington, hello...something on the way to Napier!

Australian magpie

It would appear our campsite's mystery tuxedo bird is an Australian magpie. We thought it might be a tui bird, which is a bird native to New Zealand and nowhere else, but it does not appear to be so. According to wikipedia, the Australian magpie is an introduced species that is now considered to be a pest.

Mikado

What to do in New Zealand's capital city? See a British opera set in Japan, of course! Well anyway, it should be good and we can't wait for the show to begin!

Busy tourists

As Neil's gps tracing of our day indicates, we busy tourists today. We secured a rental car that we will return to the Auckland airport (and as Neil noted, this means we can start buying souvenirs!). Over the course of the day we visited two markets (the underground market which is quite literally an underground car park turned into a craft/food market), and the Wellington night market. We visited parliament (the executive wing of parliament is the "beehive" building from the earlier post) and two museums - Te Papa, the national museum of New Zealand, and Space Place, the planetarium. We only had one hour prior to Te Papa's closing; we will return tomorrow. The planetarium provided us with an overview of stargazing from the southern hemisphere. Fun fact: place one hand on the tip of the southern cross, place another hand over the bright star Achernar, clap your hands and now you've found due South! We rode the historic cable car up to the planetarium and roamed all around the waterfront and the central business district. We'll be back in town tomorrow or Monday, for more of Te Papa, Queen Victoria lookout and some of Wellington's famous coffee :)

Parliament

New Zealand's parliament is made of up 121 MPs. The voting style is mixed member proportional, where electors
cast two votes - one for their party of choice and one for their local representative. There are 7 different parties represented in government, with the National Party currently forming a minority government. 2017 is an election year (MPs are voted for 3 year terms) and the elected prime minister, John Key, resigned in December for family reasons, so former deputy prime minister Bill English is now the prime minister. The house doesn't sit again until Mar 7 so we didn't catch any action on our tour, but we can always watch it on tv or online!

Ack! A major city!

Wellington is the first major city we've been to since our two days in Auckland at the very beginning of our trip (6 weeks ago!). At this stage of our trip it's like culture shock all over again. We aren't surrounded by tourists. The locals are busy going about their business. There are more roads and highways, so navigation is more confusing (just figuring out how to leave the ferry terminal took some time!), and all of the roads are busier. We are no longer on the South Island, so some brands (though admittedly not too many) at the supermarket are different. Some of the birds at our campground are different too! There is one that looks like a black and white seagull (literally like a seagull wearing a tuxedo) and makes a curious sound like an 80's robot noise.

We are staying in the suburb of Lower Hutt, which has its own downtown. Riding here seemed too scary (there might be a cycle trail but we aren't sure) and the ferry stop nearby was damaged in November's earthquake so the commuter rail was our best option. So many public transport options! Refreshing and completely overwhelming all at once.

Adding to the mental stress is the fact that we are lacking a solidified plan for the rest of our trip from here on out. Seems like a rental car will be most efficient to string together the stops we desire, but we haven't been into the city to make our reservation yet. There is an interesting cycle trail that starts here (the Rimutaka Cycle Trail), but we don't have solid intel on track conditions in certain sections that are rated more for mountain bikes, and whether the road that links the end of the trail back to the start (since the trail forms 7/8 of an oval shape) is rideable. So, we have a number of fact finding missions on tap for tomorrow (we will take the train or bus into the city)...but first we're going to sleep in!

No interesting photos to share just yet; we were too focused on reading our maps and figuring out the train and finding our campsite and then reading our maps some more to get out to tourist information (they were, perhaps unsurprisingly, not very helpful with or obscure cycle track questions) and out to the grocery store and back again. But now we have a better handle of where we are and what's going on, so we'll have more interesting news tomorrow :)

Onward to the North Island

We are currently on the 3.5h Interislander ferry ride to Wellington, with our bikes tucked away (and tied down!) on deck 3 along with other vehicles.

Marlborough sounds

Picton is where you catch the ferry to the North Island (which we will be doing tomorrow). It is also the launching point to Marlborough sounds and the Queen Charlotte track, a 72km trail through the sounds. This morning we caught a shuttle boat out to Motuara Island, a predator-free (ie no mammals) bird sanctuary. We saw South Island saddlebacks, South Island robins, bellbirds and checked in on a few penguin nests (no penguin sightings though). Then we took a transfer shuttle boat to Resolution Bay, hiked 10.5km to Furneaux Lodge and boat shuttled back to Picton. Some of the lodges along the Queen Charlotte are actually more like resorts; with boat and luggage transfers available this is the most luxurious hiking I've ever seen. Sounds very pleasant to hike/stroll a few hours per day, spend a night or two at the lodges with good food and wine...something my parents might even be interested in sometime :)

Wine wine wine

We are in the heart of New Zealand wine country! It was so hard to choose a winery from the gigantic list of available options, but here we are at Forrest Estates. There is one Forrest sauvignon blanc available at the LCBO (it's not on the tasting list but we can try it when we're home!).

Blenheim

We have arrived in Blenheim. The drive was uneventful but was notable for being Neil's first time driving manual transmission on the left side of the road! Our Corolla hatchback (do those exist at home?) handles the twisty turns roads much better than the RAV4!

Nelson airport

We at the airport but we are not flying out of Nelson. We biked here to pick up a rental car that we are relocating to Picton (the cost of the rental car itself is free). Nelson airport however, is impressively equipped for bikes, including a designated spot for people to build their bikes, as well as signage for cycle hire ("cycle hire left lane, car rental right lane"). Once we get our car we will have 24 hours to deliver it to Picton, which gives us just enough time to make a quick side trip to see Blenheim!

Back to Nelson

Leaving Mapua, we hopped on a short (10 min) ferry that runs purely for cyclists riding our trail (in fact the ferry is run by a bike rental company). We rode along the beaches of Rabbit Island on our way back to Nelson. This evening we watched the New Zealand movie Pork Pie, about three accidental outlaws journeying from Auckland to Invercargill. A silly but entertaining film with lots of kiwi inside jokes and humour (including a cameo by the mayor of Invercargill!).

Mapua

Yesterday we rode 40km from Kaiteriteri to Mapua. With rain clouds chasing us the whole way, we didn't stop to loiter at any of the tantalising cafes (including one with tame eels that you could feed!). This is the first campsite that we've been to that offers a restaurant/bar, so we ordered some refreshing beverages and then returned an hour later for dinner. After dinner we took the low tide route into town, walking through clay and clam shells to the cute town centre. Today was our lazy day - we lounged around until the heat and humidity chased us out of our cabin. We started on a 30km wine route that passes by 5 wineries, but we didn't get past the first one! At Mahana Estates we tasted 9 different wines, ate a delicious mixed platter of cheeses, charcuterie and antipasto and topped it off with dessert since the shady patio with live music an excellent view was exactly what we were looking for!

Kaiteriteri kayak

Us in front of the Tonga arches.

Indeed, Abel Tasman discovered Tasmania in 1642 and then sailed east and discovered New Zealand, arriving not far from where we are currently (but then he was chased away by the Maori, and gave the name "Murderer's Bay" to what is now known as Golden Bay).

Kaiteriteri

We are now in Kaiteriteri, a one street town on the beach and a launch point to Abel Tasman National Park, which we will explore by kayak tomorrow.

Ginger Dynamite

This little container-turned coffee shop serves up award-winning coffee and pies and was recommended to us when we were in Takaka. We rode 50km by 1pm...now it's time to sit and enjoy some food and the cafe's comfy couch before continuing onward. Neil is sitting in the corner of the container on the left but it's hard to see him in the photo.

Tapawera

Tapawera is just a blip on the map. We drove through it three days ago in the way to Motueka and it barely registered. But the local proprietors of the campsite filled us with interesting local information and history - there is a symbol on the hill made of white rock that depicts a stag with the lettering "12XIII", which commemorates the 12th and 13th army battalions that were stationed here. There is a carved gate in the town centre that symbolises European and Maori cooperation, and what can be accomplished by working together. We will have to find it tomorrow; we were too focused on finding food when we passed through earlier!

Tapawera is essentially surrounded by mountains on 3 sides and the sunset and clouds are absolutely gorgeous. Also the campground is spacious and quiet with beautiful fan-tailed birds, yummy plum trees and something mysterious in the woods that scurries away whenever we approach. Everything you could ever ask for after a solid day of biking!
Also, we rode through a 1.35km long tunnel today, built between 1891-1893 and then retired in 1955. It is the longest disused rail tunnel in New Zealand.

Rest stop in Brightwater

23km down, 37 or so to go. Time to refuel with a flat white and a berry smoothie!

Golden Bay

We logged a lot of distance in our rental car over 48 hours!

After arriving in Motueka on Sunday night, we spent Monday exploring Golden Bay. We drove the stomach-churning switchbacks out to Takaka, then continued to the northern tip of the South Island.

Along the way we stopped at:
- some lookouts on Takaka Hill

- Pupu Hydro Powerhouse, which is a hydro station that fell into disrepair in the 70s but was restored by the community
- Te Waikoropupu Springs

- Wharariki Beach, which involved walking through some farmland before arriving at the stunning beach (with seal pups!)

- Farewell Spit, though the beach was closed due to a recent mass whale stranding

We tried to fill up on gas in Collingwood on the way back, but the credit card machine at their single gas station wouldn't read any of our cards and the station was no longer staffed, so we had to continue onwards. We made it to Takaka with the fuel light on and the dashboard showing 24km to empty, which is a little closer than we wanted to cut it! Thankfully their gas station was able to read Neil's chip-and-pin card (it was ~8pm so none of the stations were staffed). We ate a delicious dinner at the ominously named Dangerous Kitchen (but it was great! no danger at all!) and decided we didn't want to drive another hour back to Motueka. At the recommendation of our waitress, we checked in at the bar of the local hotel - which was hosting pool night for the locals - and were surprised to discover that a) they had availability for the night and b) it was very reasonably priced. The hotel dates back to the early 1900s and looks like it hasn't been updated in the last 30 or so years, but it did the trick and we were very pleased. And the cafe served up a mean coffee in the morning!!

Today we checked in early to our campsite and dropped off all of our stuff, returned the rental car and spent the day casually roaming around Nelson and planning the next few days on the Great Taste Trail

Greymouth -> Motueka

Yesterday we finished the last 29km of the west coast wilderness trail, returning to Greymouth. We spent the night in a place called Noah's Ark (formerly a rectory) where all of the rooms our animal themed. Our room was the cat room.

Today we picked our rental car back up, and drove the 300 or so km to Motueka. We are no longer on the west coast and are now in the Tasman region at the northern end of the South Island. After a day or two of touring around in the car we will ride the Great Tastes Trail, and sample the wineries and orchards that we pass!

I don't have any good photos from today on my phone, so here's a photo from Sunset Point in Hokitika that I meant to post on Wednesday.