North Island Road Trip – Part 1

After coming back from the Hollyford, I crashed in Noah’s apartment at Sonoda and left most of my stuff with him before leaving again the next day. Fiona and I were going on a trip with the University of Canterbury physics club to Mount John Observatory, which is at Lake Tekapo. Fiona studies physics and is planning to go into astrophysics, so this was right up her alley. I agreed to come along on the trip because I had nothing better to do during those days, and thought it could be interesting.

We drove up to Tekapo and settled into our hostel, ate dinner, and went up to do observations for the first time. I was wholly unprepared for how cold it would get up on the mountain – just stargazing at the observatory was incredible, but it was hard to be outside for any length of time. We got a tour of some of the telescopes – they are very fancy and the person giving us the tour, a PhD student at the University of Canterbury named Zac, had strong opinions about each of them.

It turned out that making observations with the telescopes was not looking at stars through them but controlling them with a computer, waiting 15+ minutes for it to take a picture of a nebula far far away, and then having a black and white image that needed to be run through some code before looking like the cool pictures that you see of space. Most of it went way over my head. It also did not help that I had a cold and was pretty tired in the evenings. Although I did my best to be interested, I ended up going to sleep on the floor under a table around midnight every night.

We were up late every night – some more than others – and were thankfully given the mornings to sleep in. We had a different activity for each afternoon – the first day, we went on a hike on the Hooker Valley Track. I did this track in April but it rained the whole time, so I appreciated this chance to do the track again in better weather. It was quite icy and a couple people had some dramatic falls, but overall very beautiful.

The next afternoon, we soaked in the hot pools and then got fish and chips from a small cart (some of the best I’ve had).

After sleeping most of the drive back to Christchurch, Fiona and I stopped by Noah’s apartment, picked up our stuff for the road trip, and then drove 3 hours north to Kaikōura, where we shared a pizza for dinner and then headed off to a campsite for the first night of our last road trip.

The next day, we drove up to Picton and took the ferry to Wellington. Taking the car on the ferry was expensive but surprisingly easy. We sat outside on the ferry the whole time and enjoyed the views of the Marlborough Sound.

Once in Wellington, we wanted to camp at the campsite I had stayed at in April, but when we drove up, found that the gate closed early in the winter. On the inside of the gate, however, there was a number you could call if you needed to get out. The next campsite was over an hour away and also probably closed, so we decided to call and see if they would let us “out”. The gate opened, thankfully, and we camped there for the night.

The picture above is the route Fiona and I drove on the North Island, and some of the places we stopped at.

The next morning, we went to the Kaitoke Regional Park, which is where the scenes in Rivendell in the Lord of the Rings movies were filmed. We did a little hike there and looked at the film area, which had descriptions of the different shots. Then we drove a very windy road to the Gentle Annie Track to do another short hike up a steep hill. That evening, we drove to Palmerston North for dinner at an Indian restaurant named “Arranged Marriage”. Fiona and I thought this was hilarious – it was a running joke that we were effectively married. It began with a joke that “usually people start dating before they move in together and buy a car together”.

After spending a night in the town of Whanganui and taking much needed showers, we drove to Tongariro National Park via the Whanganui River Road. The Whanganui River is one of two natural areas in New Zealand that are recognized as “legal persons” in the same way corporations are. It is governed by a group of shareholders that take care of the health of the river while balancing the needs of those who use the river. There is a small road that you can drive for a long section of the river, with various cool places to stop. Many iwi (Māori tribes) live along the river. Fiona and I switched drivers every time we stopped, ensuring that we both got to take in the sights.

From the Whanganui River, we drove to Tongariro National Park. We were staying at a holiday park there, where we would sleep in our car but have access to a communal kitchen. Whakapapa Village, which is the little town in the national park, is at about 1000 meters (3200 feet) elevation. There are three main mountains in the park: Ruapehu, Tongariro, and Ngauruhoe. Mount Ruapehu is the tallest, and has several ski fields on it. It is also the mountain that is “Mount Doom” in the Lord of the Rings movies. However, the top of the mountain is tapu (sacred) to the local iwi, and therefore was not allowed to be filmed for the movies, so the top of the mountain in the movies is CGI. Unfortunately, the mountain was obscured by clouds the entire time we spent in the national park as well, so we never got to see it either.

We went on a couple hikes while we were there – nothing too long, because Fiona’s hip was injured and walking a lot made it worse. on our first morning the weather was beautiful, but it became cloudy and rainy after that. It was also COLD, and we spent quite a bit of time right next to the heater in the kitchen trying to stay warm.

On our way out of the park, we did the first 4 kilometers of the famous “Tongariro Alpine Crossing”. During this time of year, you need ice axes and crampons to do the whole thing (about 20 km), usually with a guide. Usually the views are incredible, but we had heavy cloud cover and didn’t really see much of anything. It was still a nice hike, though.

One thing I didn’t realize about the North Island is how volcanic it is. The last time Mount Ruapehu erupted was in 2007, but has a history of several recent eruptions. Taupō, where we went next, sits on the edge of a lake that is a volcanic crater. There are geothermal vents in Taupō and extending up the island to Rotorua and beyond. Even Auckland, the largest city in New Zealand, sits on a (currently dormant) volcano field, which could become active again.

Anyway, we drove from Tongariro to Taupō and spent a little time in the city that afternoon before going to our campsite. I quite like Taupō, its a bit touristy but not in the over-the-top way Queenstown is. Also, they had a nice little museum and we got ice cream even though it was pretty chilly that day.

We stayed two nights at a farm campsite that had an abundance of chickens and other birds, as well as sheep, llamas, and some cats. We slept in the car and kept warm in the small kitchen, choosing to bake instead of boil our carrots because it helped heat up the space.

The next day in Taupō, we visited some of the “must see” tourist things, including glass blowing at Lava Glass and Huka Falls. We had been talking about getting sushi together for a long time, so that was lunch. That evening, upon returning back to the farm campsite, we decided to try the Devonshire Tea that was advertised at the farm. Neither of us knew what it was, and expected a cup of interesting tea. Once we had requested it, the old man who owned the farm disappeared into the kitchen for a long time. When he came back, he was carrying a tray with a teapot, cups and plates of fine china, scones, cream and jam. We had not expected that, nor did we expect the price we had to pay afterwards! It was delicious though, and neither of us regretted having spent the money, even though we wouldn’t have decided to order it if we had known what it would cost.

The next day, we stopped by Aratiatia Rapids to watch the release of the dam. 3 times a day, the gates open up and thousands of liters of water are released at once in an impressive display. It was actually quite exciting. From there, we drove to Kerosene Creek, which is a creek that is warmed through geothermal activity. We went swimming in it, and the creek was lukewarm but not warm enough to stay in for all that long. The sand at the bottom of the creek was the warmest part, and so we dug ourselves into it as best we could. Geothermal activity near Rotorua goes hand in hand with Sulphur, and this stream was no different – once we got out, we smelled slightly like rotten eggs. We rinsed ourselves with clean water in the parking lot but a shower was necessary to get the rest.

From there we drove to Rotorua and had lunch in Kuirau Park, which has geothermal vents. Rotorua is often called “Rotten-rua” by Kiwis, with good reason: the entire town smells inescapably like rotten eggs. The geothermal vents are cool but personally the smell was a bit much.

In Rotorua, we stayed with family friends of Fiona’s. They are distantly related but I never quite understood the family tree, even though it was explained to me several times. The family has 4 boys, a herd of sheep, a couple cows, 2 horses, a dog, and some cats. They were very nice, and it was good to finally be in a house for a couple days after being on the road for a while.

While in Rotorua, we did quite a few of the “touristy” things, some of which were genuinely very cool. One of them was the night-time “Redwood Tree Walk”. A grove of redwood trees planted there had been turned into a night-time art exhibit by making a path through the trees with a series of bridges, and then hanging other lights from the trees and illuminating the forest in various ways. It was very pretty, and they had informative signs telling us how the grove and the walk were created. One of the most interesting things was that redwood trees are a “soft wood” (as opposed to a hardwood) in New Zealand because they grow so much faster due to abundant rainfall. In the slideshow below you can see how widely spaced the tree rings are for the New Zealand redwoods, as opposed to the millimeter distance between rings in the California redwoods.

Wai-o-Tapu is probably one of the most touristy places and costs money to get into, but with good reason – the coolest geothermal pools are there. It is managed and maintained by 2 different iwi, which meant the cultural history of the site was well represented.

There is a geyser there called the Lady Knox Geyser, which goes off at 10:15 every day – a very specific time, which made us curious because usually geysers are pretty unpredictable. As it turns out, they are able to trigger it, and did so after explaining how it works. As the story goes, there used to be a work-camp for prisoners in the area. One day, the prisoners were washing their clothes with home-made soap in one of the hot water streams, when suddenly, a jet of water shot up out of the ground! Evidently, there is an underground reservoir of water that is under pressure, and when the soap reaches it, it breaks the surface tension, resulting in a dramatic release of water. We were told that the amount of water released is quite variable, but on the day we were there, it was a very dramatic day that went on for more than 20 minutes.

Fiona and I then walked through the rest of the area, which had many different thermal pools and vents. We learned that the local iwi would use some of them to cook their food as the water is boiling hot, and would bathe in some of the pools. The area smelled heavily of Sulphur, but was otherwise very interesting.

We also went to see the “Buried Village” site, which was a village that was destroyed in the 1886 Mount Tarawera volcanic eruption. Only a few houses are left, and I had to use my imagination for most of what was described. The museum was very well done, however, and I enjoyed learning about the way of life at the time there and how it came to an end.

And just like that, it was time for Fiona to leave. We took a couple last pictures with our car, and then drove to the airport in Auckland. On the way, we stopped to look at one of the weirdest and coolest thrift stores I had ever seen – two whole buildings were shaped like sheep! Fiona and I were very sad to say goodbye to each other after so many adventures together, but we already had plans to see each other around Christmas when my family is going to Germany.

Although Fiona was leaving, the road trip was not over for me! This post is already long so I will end it here, but will post the next one soon.