Tessa and I arrived in New Zealand on November 30th. We spent the day walking around the city and exploring the harbor. In the afternoon, we met up with Sandy and walked to Mount Eden. We got a great view of the city from here and were able to explore along the way to see different shops and restaurants. There is a very large Asian population in Auckland and a lot of the restaurants are Japanese, Chinese, Thai, and Indian. Heading back, we stopped through the Auckland Domain where we saw the Auckland Museum and the Auckland Wintergardens. On our walk back to the hostel, we walked through the University of Auckland which had a very industrial look to it.
Our second day in Auckland, we took a ferry to an island off the coast of Auckland called Rangitoto. The volcanic island is conserved by the Department of Conservation and so has no residences or shops. It was a bit of a gloomy day, so we made the trek to the summit and through the volcanic caves and then headed back to the ferry. We picked up Lindsay in the afternoon and grabbed some dinner before heading to a chocolate bar to top off our night.
On the 2nd of December, we made our way down to Lake Waikaremoana. On the way, we passed through a town called Rotorua. This town has a lot of adventure sports such as luge-ing (sp?) and zorbing. We stopped through the town to grab some lunch and then headed to a Maori reservation to check out some local culture and explore the geysers. We made our way to Lake Waiaremoana that night and stayed at the Big Bush Holiday park. The drive to the Lake was extremely windy and almost exclusively on gravel roads (we have remembered to drive on the left side for the entire trip! It took some adjusting). The Holiday Park was really cute and was located right on a smaller lake abutting Lake Waikaremoana. It consisted of a bar/restaurant, a home, and a dorm like hotel for travellers. While we were there, a group of 20 bikers from New Zealand were there that were a part of a biking group that road around the county every year for the last 21 years (ages ranging 56-73). They were a lot of fun to get to know and taught us a lot about New Zealand history.
The next day we started our 3 day trek around Lake Waikaremoana. The first part of the trek was the toughest and consisted of climbing 1800 feet in the first three hours. My long legged friends were a little tough to keep up with their long strides but we got into a good rhythm. We hit a nice spot overlooking the entire Lake at the top of the plateau and keep trekking. There were huts located along the way that people would stop to sleep at, but we opted to camp the entire trip. The location we stopped at that night ended up being right next to a kids camp, so we played volleyball that night with the kids and helped scare there in a haunted trail when the sun went down. We also hiked for a bit and camped that night with two Austrian guys that were exploring New Zealand for a couple of months as well.
The next day, we went to a waterfall and went swimming in the pond. The locals told us it was around 9 degrees C, which I just looked up to be around 45 degrees. It was freezing and took our breathe away but was really beautiful and the swim was refreshing. Our last two days were spent walking around the rest of the Lake which was relatively flat in comparison and taking a water taxi back to the Big Bush Park. We are now back in Rotorua for the night before heading out to Waitomo tomorrow! It has been a really fabulously fun trip so far!
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