Rangitata, Kaikoura, Wellington, Rotorua, Auckland, Ha Hei, Raglan, Maketu…
Farms in England don’t make money, its common knowledge. Here in NZ things are very different and farming in recent years has been big business so much so that farmers here have swapped the land-rover for a helicopter making lighter work of the vast distances.
Travelling north from Mount Cook where we ended our last blog we headed towards Rangitata on our journey north towards Christchuch & Kaikoura before crossing to the North Island. The end of our last blog may have been a little confusing due to an error made in the final line naming “Queenstown” as our direction of travel – This would see us travelling back south and not the intended North, Apologies for any confusion!
Rangitata has no shops and not many people, just a lot of animals. Our accommodation for the night would be a rafting centre and working farm miles from anywhere. At the town before our driver hopped off to catch an afternoon rafting with some of the bus and on jumped the owner of the rafting centre, this would give the rafters some more time as we were running late.
As we have quickly learned licences and insurance don’t mean much here and although the temporary driver held the correct license he did warn us to “hold on as I haven’t driven anything this big for a long time”.
His driving seemed fine, if a little jerky, and he was soon chatting to us about the area and his farm. One girl on the bus helps her parents run a farm in The Netherlands with a grand total of 70 cows. The driver told her thing may seem a little less hands on here as he has 35,000 sheep, 15,000 cows and 5,000 deer – apparently just a small farm!
Our accommodation for the night was lovely and within no time one of the girls mentioned monopoly to which Matt couldn’t resist. Emma went off for a walk around the fields whilst Matt quickly became engrossed in a game of Monopoly “New Zealand Edition” against two Germans, one Dutch and one English girls. Four hours later and from a bad start Matt had bartered well and won the game.
We set off reasonably early in the morning heading first to Christchurch to drop off at the airport and collect new passengers before continuing to Kaikoura for the night stop. We had actually covered this section of the route before but had to again to reach the connection with the North Island.
Soon after leaving Rangitata we stopped off at the “Church of the Good Shepard” with views over the incredibly blue lake.
Matt took the above picture looking from inside the church and the cross stood at the altar, a stunning location for the little church.
The church and monument beside it commemorate the strong ties between the local people of McKenzie country and the sheep dog, going back many years. Without the dogs it would be impossible for them to move sheep quickly over such vast areas of land.
We carried onto Christchurch and through to Kaikoura. On our previous visit to Kaikoura we had been to the local fisherman’s house to eat crayfish and drink home-made wine. The afternoon fishing activity had received good feedback and we decided to give it a go. A total of eight people from the bus signed up and we were all looking forward to a good afternoon fishing and then eating what we had caught. The skipper came to pick us up from the hotel and dropped us to his garden where we had previously visited. It was only then (once we were stuck out-of-town in his garden) that he told us we would have to split into two groups as the boat could only hold four at-a-time. We got put into the second group and were told it would be an hour or so before he would return and we could switch over.
Two and a half hours later we decided (with no sign of the boat on the horizon) that the enthusiasm for fishing was gone and the day was drawing on. The skippers assistant drove us back to town and Emma managed to get her first proper haircut of the year!
A quiz at the hotel bar made the evening a fun one and we came third place winning a $15 bar tab.
As we had spent a fair amount of time in the South Island we needed to travel the Northern section without getting off the bus for longer than the allowed time in each destination. Therefore the next day we were up again and heading back to Picton to catch the early afternoon ferry to Wellington.
It was another lovely day and we left port from a berth alongside the Holland America cruise ship Volendam.
The ferry took three hours and was unusually smooth – the route is notoriously rough. A call out from the kitchen announced all cakes, slices and savouries in the cabinet had been reduced to one dollar. Matt took off running to the canteen and returned with some nice cakes for a total of five dollars. Most of the group had brought cakes only minutes before for the full price of five dollars each!
We stopped in Wellington and Rotorua for one night on our way north towards Auckland. We arrived in Auckland on a lovely day and spent the afternoon walking the waterfront, gazing at some incredible yachts. Auckland hosts over 135,000 private yachts and some of the finest in the world are manufactured and moored here. Many super yachts had been moved here for the world cup and were still here awaiting the next destination!
Our North Island “loop” began in Auckland and the first stop was Ha Hei, famous for its “hot water beach”. We walked the track from the small village along the stunning beach to the equally stunning cathedral cove. We had been spoilt with clear blue skies for the last few days.
On our return to our accommodation just behind the beach Matt donned his “togs” and went for a (very quick) dip in the ocean which was nice and cold!
After a good feed we jumped onto the bus and headed to “hot water beach” to catch the low-tide at 8pm. The beach sits (as does much of the North Island) on geothermal activity and boiling springs are found just beneath the sand of the beach at low-tide.
It tricky to explain but the basic idea is that you dig a hole, it fills with hot water and some sea water and you sit in it like a hot-tub! Matt quickly set-about digging his first hole.
It soon became apparent that we were digging in the wrong place and we gave up, moving to sit in one of the already “established” holes from another group.
The shallow holes were all centred on a single spring which was pumping out boiling hot water. Once mixed with the other water lapping in from the sea, it was a nice temperature to sit in. Emma paddled her feet whilst Matt jumped in for the full experience. Matt and some of the girls also jumped out for a swim in the sea a couple of times, soon returning to the warmth of the beach.
Raglan was the next stop on our route and we arrived early afternoon. A “surfers paradise” surrounded by good beaches our accommodation was perched on the hill with good views.
We opted for the sunset cruise which turned out to be a good choice, if a little cold.
One of the highlights of the Stray route in the North Island is the Maouri cultural evening in Maketu. We left Raglan early to allow us time to stop at the famous Waitomo Caves before heading the Cultural Evening.
The Waitomo area has around 370 different caves of varying sizes with some the size of a cathedral inside and others requiring a 150 metre descent by rope to gain access.
We opted for a “wet” option climbing, scrambling, tubing and swimming through a 1km long cave network. There was eight of us from the group and we had great fun in the cave at times crawling through tiny spaces, with no lights on hoping for the end to come into sight!
The highlight of the cave was tubing down the river with the lights off with the whole ceiling of the cave covered in glow-worms. Unfortunately cameras were banned in the cave and their images were not good enough to warrant the hefty cost to buy them.
Heading north from Waitomo towards Maketu we were praying for the bus to get us there without breaking down. The majority of the people we had met on the bus had quickly learned that this wasn’t an organised company in any aspect of their service. Our current driver had only been given two weeks training on the route before they cut the training short and started her on a trip as they were desperate for drivers. To top off the matter they gave her a bus which had no microphone or radio and a large water leak. We had been filling the bus with 5-6 litres of water every couple of hours to keep it running and no replacement bus or repair was in sight!
We made it to Maketu without any issues and settled into our roles and accommodation for the night – the males were now referred to as “warriors” and we had elected the oldest male to represent the group as chief. Our driver had warned us before entering the area that this was still a working tribe who take their heritage and traditions seriously and therefore we should remain serious during their welcoming rituals. We ate dinner and then the tribal chief addressed us all again regarding what we would see and experience for the evening and what was expected of us in return. He made us fully aware that breaking the tribal rules would see the whole group expelled and back on the bus (with a full refund).
The next stage was for us to assemble in the “hangi” or traditional meeting house and for a challenge to be laid down by the warriors of their tribe to the chief of our Stray Bus tribe! An elaborate and violent dance followed with a leaf laid down in front of our chief. If our chief took the leaf whilst holding eye contact and a serious face then it would show we were not scared and we had been welcomed into the tribe. If on the other hand he stepped over the leaf or didn’t pick it up then he would show weakness and disrespect and be attacked!
Our chief took the right decision and soon we were separated into two groups with the males learning the “Haka” and the girls learning the “Poi”. Once we had learned our respective dances we performed them to each other and received some other performances from the tribe.
We hunkered down for the night in the large open plan room but not before utilising the very “traditional” wifi internet access!
The night was great if a little oversold – The ”Traditional Maouri Meeting House” turned out to be a newly constructed building with all mod-cons. The “Traditional Hangi Meal” has to be cooked in a full commercial kitchen as health & safety prevents the use of the Maouri oven dug into the ground.
The next stop will be the Tongariro National Park where we hope to walk the Alpine Crossing. We will also hopefully stop en-route in Rotorua to take on some white water rafting!
Love Emma & Matt
xxx
Cooke & Craddock 