Rogers Big Adventure

I’m not sure what to do now. I’ve let this blog go so long now that I don’t really know how to get it caught up. Last time I wrote I was somewhere in new Zealand. Since everywhere I go its always some version of timed internet connection, I’m writing this on my little laptop and then I’ll sign on, and cut and paste it to the blog. But this means I cant look and see where I was up to with my story. I think it was as far back as Queenstown. That means you don’t know about staying with cat and James and mountain biking with james one last time on my bike before leaving both bikes and about 5 boxes of clothes and the campervan all with them to look after until I, umm returned? You also don’t know about my fantastic trip to Hastings and the visit to the sheep station that my dad worked on in 1939. The farmer was the grandson of the owner that was there when my Dad was there. He took me around the farm and I stood out on the fields that he would have rode his horse over. It was pretty emotional and wonderful. I so nearly didn’t go, but Im so very glad I did. To have been there finally at the place he spoke of so many times just seemed so perfect and right.

When I got back to Auckland I only had a couple of days left. I spent them getting things arranged for the trip to Australia and getting packed. Then I went out on a beautiful sunny day on a Americas Cup class racing yacht in the Auckland Bay. I also got the chance to catch up with a very old friend from high school. I havent seen Steve in about 30 years, but it was so good to see him. Theres no catching up that can be done with a meeting like that, but Im really pleased to have seen him and find that he has made a very good life for himself and family. It was nice to have a connection with my past and feel that if we had the opportunity with would have remained friends I think. But I left London and traveled and when I returned he had left and that was that.

Landing in Australia was so different from New Zealand. Theres something very village like about all of NZ, but Australia and Sydney had a big city feel but with a friendly buzz to it. I loved Sydney, but I was so over being cold. It was actually a bit warmer in Sydney than it had been in NZ, but I was so ready for some hot sun burn, get tanned weather.

At the airport when I landed in Sydney I met up frank and Carina, they had just got off the same plane as me and we ventured out into Sydney together to find our first sleeping place for the night. We stayed at a backpackers in the popular Kings cross area for nearly a week, while we explored and made plans for our trips around Aus. In the end we all took the same flight up to Cairns in Queensland at the far north eastern point of the continent. And I don’t use continent lightly. Its so hard to get use to the fact that is not the same small little island little island like NZ. Sydney to Cairns is 2900km. Ive been sort of based in cairns the last few weeks and gone on trips to the north and then to the outback in the west. Ive stayed at 2 sort of home stays both south of cairns. Basically you do a few hours work at peoples houses or farms in exchange for accommodation and food. it’s a great way to meet real locals. I also did a 3 day boat trip out to the Great Barrier reef and did my first scuba dive! Absolutely amazing. The first time I tried to go down I couldn’t equalize my ears and they hurt like hell as I went down. We came back up and I really didn’t think Id be able to dive. But the next day we went slower and I didn’t have any problems and was able to swim around 36 feet under the water and look at all the wild fish and coral..oh and get spooked by a shark that was swimming my way!

Ok well not a very detailed report at all, but if I try any more detail I’ll just never get this up to date and im likely to give up, so this is better than that right?

Leaving Cairns tomorrow to head south and slowly make my way back to Sydney to fly out to Bali. But hopefully I’ll get back to keeping this up to date and have a few more entries in Australia as I travel down the coast.

Franz Joseph was a lot of fun. I signed up for a full days hike, fully kitted out with crampons, boots, gloves and waterproof..ish pants and jacket. We had two guides, Donkey! and Julie. It was Julie's first day at guiding so she had Donkey to look over her shoulder and take over when we got up on the glacier. It takes about an hour to get to out onto the glacier and the walk up starts through sub tropical forest and then out to the face of the glacier which is all scree, debris pushed down from the glacier and material thrown out through blow holes from the river running under the glacier. the rocks here are carved over thousands of years when the Glacier was lower down the valley.

Although the Glacier is moving forward..umm another fact I cant remember, something like a meter a year, sounds about right, but this could be a small glitch as overall its retreated considerably even over the last decade.

You get a better idea of the scale of the Glacier when you take a closer look here at the people walking down.

At the beginning of the hike the guide broke us into groups depending on our estimated abilities, you know which group I headed for dont ya! I fell in behind a girl from Canada who was holding a good pace right behind the guide, but once we started climbing she let me take the lead. A Canadian guy she knew from home was out traveling with her for some of her trip and he was right on my heels. We ended up all having a great time. When your gloved up and soaking wet its hard to keep pulling out the camera, so somehow I got made the un official photographer, so I have a few shots of both Darryl and Sky.

Darryl and Sky are both in college going through a sports medical programe. Darryl has that competitiveness that kept us both trying to out do each other on the hike. I think we had Donkey a little worried a few times when we'd disappear and pop out on a ice ridge that we wernt supposed to be on.

Julie was a good sport all day, they make the new ones carry the big pack, I felt so bad for her. Another tough cookie who did the whole hike in shorts.

the hike took about 8 hours. I was really surprised that the next day my legs were pretty sore, but didnt stop me from going and giving this a go.


An indoor ice climbing wall! what a cool idea.

My legs and arms were really toast after doing that for just an hour.

I have a couple of half written posts that just arnt making it to post. As usual I have bad internet connections and too much to do. I'm hoping 6 months in India will give me time to update! I was in Auckland a couple of weeks ago to pick up a package Rod and Joane had sent out with some more cold weather gear. Turns out one of my boxes I had sent over went missing. The BIO cops had seized it and I finally got a letter at the post office saying they had held it because there was mud on my boots. I sear they were clean, but there ya go. It was more hassle to pick the boots up form them so I bought a new pair. while in Auckland I met an Austrian girl, Joane, who was also looking at going on up to the Northlands. We talked and kind of danced around the idea of going together in my van. An odd arrangement when you dont know someone and your in very confined quarters. It worked out so well, we had a great time and it totally made the little 8 day trip. She introduced me to the joys of music! and I now have an ipod fully loaded with the sounds from her ipod. 21st century here we come.

theres weeks of updates i need to do, but I'll come back and fill those in later. so for now im up to date in Taupo
about to take a look at the Huka falls, then go do a 15,000 free fall skydive, before heading further south for an 8 hour hike at Mount Tongariro, that one should be fantastic, there is snow on the mountain and radio reports of volcanic activity and speculation of an imminent eruption!

This gives a better idea of the size of these trees

We drove through the Kauri forests and took hikes to see the biggest trees, making time to get down to a camp site that offered guided night time walks in the forest with possible sightings of Kiwi's. Now its off season and no one else showed up for the walk so the guide didnt want to take just the two of us. I have a red bike light and he said we were welcome to do the walk by ourselves. Wow no one else there, we had the whole forest to ourselves and the red light shone out a very dim glow that only illuminated two steps ahead of us on a narrow path with bridges and creepy dangling things. A noise off to our left had us stop in our tracks and there out of the woods walks this Kiwi! He just strolls on up as if we wernt there. It was amazing and we were jumping around so excited. Walk on a little way and more noise, wait theres more Kiwi, two this time! ok this is so cool, walk on some more and glow worms start to appear. Ok ive seen those before, no big deal, but Joane is totally intrigued. walk on, oh yeah more Kiwi, more glow worms, walk on, fucking kiwi, there everywhere, whats the big deal! Joana and i are making jokes and a hell of a racket and still the frigging Kiwi wander around us, no wonder they are nearly extinct.

Leaving Waitomo and heading to Kawhia (remember the wh is pronounced f, theres actually a town called Whakatana, which of course everyone giggles when they say it), a small sleepy fishing town on the west coast. Id thought about stopping here the night, but it was so sleepy that was about the only thing worth doing and I still had some daylight left. Had dinner in the local pub and against the advice of the publican, who thought the road might be impassable due to the rain, ( although I think she just wanted my business), I headed out on the dirt road to Raglan. The road wasnt impassable but it was getting close, and the 60k took nearly 2 hours. It was dark after the first 30 mins and the twists and turns and steep climbs had me chugging along at a crawl, but its all an adventure, I just hoped I didnt get the van stuck in the mud somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

On the drive to Kawhia

Raglan is a lot smaller than I thought it would be.

I guess Id heard so much about it from surfers I thought it would be a hopping little town. Its expensive, but then most of NZ has been, the houses are crazy high prices. I saw single bedroom houses for $350K and 2 bed 1 bath small shacks go for half million up.

The next day I set up for a surf lesson with a local surfer who has competed in world surfer competitions and is well known in the surfer community in NZ. Mikey was awesome. We went out to Manu beach which out of the 3 main beaches in Raglan is the easiest to surf. they progressively get harder the further south you go from bay to bay. Harder being they have rocks that will rip you to pieces, or rips that will pull you out into the Tasman sea in a second, not to mention the size of the waves. I got there on Saturday and after the stormy weather the surf was up pretty good. It was still raining off and on, but the sea wasnt too bad a temp and with the wetsuit Mikey set me up with I was good to go.

Ok so last time I surfed, I didnt get up on the board very often or for very long. It was only when I started to think back of the time that realized it had been 8 years since I had that last lesson in Hawaii. But laying on the board and having Mikey choose the right wave and push me off into it, made it really easy and I was standing and surfing better than most of the other beginners that were out in the sets too. So Im officially a surfer now.

I need to get better at asking to have my picture taken. I have non of me and Mikey, but I did go to a surfing competition at the next bay and took some of the guys there.

If you look to the left you can see a guy about to jump off into the water, to the right in the surf a some other surfers.

Trying out the panoramic software that came with the camera. This is Manu bay where I surfed

This rainbow was pretty cool, it went from one side of raglan to the other. Rainbows in NZ are starting to become a bit blase, you can pretty much see one everyday here.

Left Raglan the next day and on the advice of Mikey took a slight detour to go see Bridal Veil Falls.

Leaving Rotorua that Tuesday and the rain started to really come down heavy. The roads were rivers as the water cascaded off the hillsides. Some roads were washed out and I only made it through to Waitomo with a bit of luck. Your going to see "wai" a lot so let me explain. in Maori wai is water, I think tomo is into, or enter. So Waitomo means where the water enters. And that is basically what everyone is coming to Waitomo to see, the water entering into large limestone caves that you can abseil into, then wade through underground rivers and see glow worms, which arnt actually worms, they are larvae, they live in the caves as larvae up to 12 months to then pupate over 2 weeks to then emerge as a moth and live a couple of days, have sex and then off to the big glow worm in the sky, or whatever it is glow worms believe in.

Wiatomo is just a huddle of a couple of shops and a restaurant, the campsite and a tourist information center. Nice campsite, as most of them have been. The next morning I walked over the road to the information center and looked at doing a caving trip. Because of the rain all the tours had been shut down, the caves were totally flooded or the underground rivers raging and too dangerous to wade in. Even now some of them were still closed, but eventually the girl managed to contact the tour I wanted to do.

Here they are being glowy (stock picture from company)

and this is the webs they spin to catch their food (stock picture from company)

Stalactite formations (stock picture from company)

Entry to the cave

Theres hundreds of these caves, the one we did is leased by the company and the cave allows for a bit of everything, assailing, black water rafting, glowworms. Its also only our group of 5 and another group of 5 from an earlier trip thats down there, the larger companys run them like cattle trains with dozens of people screaming and shouting and lights everywhere.

heres our intrepid group
Hunter, me, Martin, Scot, Carrie

Me heading down into the cave abseiling

You wouldnt think Id just done a triathlon and should have no fear of water

This was a 5 hour trip for $125. Thats a bargain compared to the other trips and Paul the guide was awesome. he kind of hates tourists and people in general, but he loves his cave and will answer any questions you have on it and he warms to you if you show a serious desire to learn and your not some wimpy tourist that screams everytime the lights go out or you get a little wet, which you get very wet.

That night I decided to stay at the campsite again so i could get a bike ride in and also go see the bunnies being shaved.

The next day morning I planned to get a bike ride in. The road had a bridge out miles down the road, so I figured it would be safe from too much traffic. Other than a pickup truck of guys who thought it was fun to hoot and holla at me then shoot me the finger, the road was pretty quiet. The animals here act like they have never seen a cyclist before, still so do a lot of the humans. You can run a semi truck within inches of a sheep and it wont move, but when I cycle past they all go crazy and run like hell. I had a cow run along side of me at the road, like a dog excited to see such a strange thing. A hawk circled me for a while out on the desolate road, I think he knew I had no pump, no map, no money and wasnt too sure where I was. The road in some places was really rough, but the scenery was worth it.

eventually I got to where I was heading. Natural rock bridge.

Getting back into Waitomo I changed and ran off down the road to be intime for the bunny shaving!

The women that run this place swear that no bunnies are hurt in this process, in fact they claim the bunnies are very happy to get rid of their hot coats, and the ladies are more than happy to relieve them of it. They make amazingly soft and Im told very warm hats, jumpers etc.