The Burnhams in Kiwiland 2001-2

Skip to Episode 1: Page 2 Matauri Bay to Pinnacle Peak

Kia Ora from Kiwiland!

From what we have heard, Canada was experiencing a very mild November. Maybe it is getting to look a little more like Christmas now. It certainly is not here. After a week of rainy weather, it is finally improving and the sun is out sending the temperatures into the mid 20s during the day. We were relatively lucky. There were torrential rains causing flooding and road closures just south of where we were, but for us, it always cleared up enough to allow us to do almost everything we had planned. We have toured Auckland, gone to the Bay of Islands and Cape Reinga, walked through a Kauri forest and on the Coromandel Penninsula, we have taken our first overnight tramp.

But I must start at the beginning of our Kiwi adventure. The plane touched down just after 1 PM local time November 23. We took the bus into Auckland, checked into our room in the YMCA, and a couple of hours later we were the proud owners of a 1986 Honda Accord. Don't laugh, the car is not that old in Kiwi years. We were told the best place to locate a second hand car was the notice board in the Auckland Backpackers Hostel, so as soon as we checked into our room at the Auckland YMCA, that's where we headed. We were reading through the advertisements of the cars and vans offered for sale on their notice board when a young British girl arrived with a handwritten notice to pin up with the others. She asked us if we would like to see the car, so we followed her outside where her boyfriend was trying to find a parking place for the car. We ended up all going for a test drive, agreeing on a price (NZ$1,200) and settling the matter in short order. Ray took her in to get her tuned up before we left Auckland and all she needed was an oil change, one new-to-us tire and new windshield wipers. She had been performing like a charm ever since. Touch wood. We can only hope we have as little trouble selling the car to someone else when we are ready to leave NZ at the end of February!

Now as we explore the kiwi highways and byways, I find myself singing

Alice the Honda has 4 wheels,
Alice the Honda has 4 wheels,
Alice the Honda has 4 wheels,
Go Alice go, put, put put.

When we arrived in Auckland, back on Nov 23, we called friends of the Potters, Ivan and Barbara Reilly, both professors at the University of Auckland, to say hello. They met us on Saturday and kindly gave us a tour of part of Auckland and afternoon tea at Mission Beach, a popular weekend picnic and swimming spot for Auckland families. They pointed out the native Pohutukawa, kiwi Christmas tress, growing on sheer rock faces all along the shores of Auckland. They were just coming into bloom and their large pom-poms of red flowers, dotted with gold centers, made quite a display.

Sunday was our Auckland tourist day. In the morning we visited the War Memorial Museum, housed in a beautiful neo-classical building in a park high on a hill overlooking Auckland. We went especially to learn more about Maori culture, so we attended a short performance of Maori singing and dancing. As part of the audience participation, Ray volunteered me to learn how to use the Poi balls. These are soft balls tethered on a short rope that you swing rhythmically to the music. I could perform the introductory movements, but flopped badly as soon as it got more complicated. I'll stick to my day job of backpacking. The museum also had an excellent collection of Maori and Pacific Island artifacts and a large natural history section that we explored.

After leaving the museum, we drove past the Auckland Rose Gardens that Barbara Reilly had recommended to us, so in we went. The garden covered more than an acre and the roses were in full bloom, creating quite a display. Obviously the Auckland climate is kind to roses, as the bushes were far larger than the varieties we can grow in Ottawa.

Our last stop for the day was at Kelly Tarlton's Antartic Encounter and Underwater World. This aquarium, housed in converted stormwater holding tanks, was the inspiration of a local diver, Kelly Tarlton. The Antartic exhibit consisted of a life-size replica of Scott's 1911 Antartic hut and a penguin colony, complete with baby penguin chicks. I found the hut very interesting, especially the actual film sequences of both Scott's and Shackelton's expeditions.

We spent quite a bit of time in the aquarium. The fish swim on either side and overhead as you walk through a clear acrylic tunnel. The lighting is suitably low to give you the feeling you are actually scuba diving. One half housed varieties of fish found around NZ, including huge turtles, moray eels and small sting rays. The other half was the shark tank where menacing looking sharks up to 10 feet long floated by, crossing paths with sting rays about 6 ft across. Apparently, when sharks are first introduced to the tanks, trainers have to swim with them to teach them about walls and how to maneuver through tunnels.

There is a fascinating island, Rangitoto, in the Hauraki Gulf, that we explored on Monday. Rangitoto erupted from the sea about 600 years ago and is now a nature reserve. We took a ferry boat from Auckland harbour to try out the walking trails. Shortly after starting up the broad walking trail to the summit, we saw what looked like newly ploughed fields of black earth, except it wasn't earth. It was clumps of hardened black lava streams that had flowed down the mountain during the original eruption. In the intervening years, lichens covered the rocks, died off leaving hummus to support the bushes, ferns and Pohutukawa tress that cover the island.

At the summit, we had a picnic lunch and admired the great view of Auckland and its suburbs. We took a circle trail around the crater, which is now covered with trees and bushes but still retains its original sunken form. A short distance down the hill, there were a few lava caves to explore. They were formed when the top layer of lava cooled before the molten lava streams had stopped their flow. We walked through a few tunnels, feeling our way carefully in the dark, until we could see daylight at the end.

Our sightseeing in Auckland done, we headed north to the Bay of Islands on the hilly main highway #1. We stopped for coffee in Warkworth, a small tourist town with funky pottery stores. Thus fortified, we decided to try our luck on the sideroads leading to the east coast. Goodbye traffic, such as it was. The road to Mangawhai Head wound up and down steep hills and dropped to the ocean at Lango Beach. The day was cool and windy, so we ended up eating a picnic lunch in the car and carrying on, rejoining Hwy 1 for a while, then taking another side road to Helena Bay and Oakura. Once again the quiet roads wound up and down hills and through forests. The route was scenic but it was getting late so we headed for the small tourist town of Russell in the Bay of Islands. This turned out to be a good choice. We had our best room to date in a very nice backpackers lodge, complete with communal kitchen facilities, and there we stayed for three nights.

Our sailing friends would love the Bay of Islands, but we opted to see the islands with a commercial tour company. Wednesday we signed up for a day-long trip through the islands. The Fuller's boat we were on stops at several of the islands to deliver the mail, as they have done for 50 years. The captain of the tour boat is definitely in the good books with the local dogs as they get fed a biscuit when they come to the dock to greet the boat.

The tour boat stopped on the largest island, Urukapuka, for a lunch break. Ray and I had brought a picnic lunch with us so we headed out on a walk to a hilltop to see the view. There were even benches conveniently located for our lunch. After lunch, we decided to explore the many other paths leading to yet other peaks. We ended up walking along a cliff on one side of the island and descending to a beach where a group of wet-suited tourists from another tour boat were having lunch after swimming with dolphins. We are saving this popular activity for our visit to the South Island, hoping the weather will warm up by then.

At 2 PM it was back in the boat to see the Hole in the Rock. This is a huge archway through a rock in the sea, large enough for the tour boats to go through. When we were there the skies were grey and the winds were whipping the waves up and through the passage. Our boat took three tries before being able to maneuver through the opening in the rock. We all clapped.

Just outside the Hole in the Wall passage was a huge school of silvery blue fish, swimming near the surface, eating the plankton that was plentiful in that area. On our way back to Russell we passed a pod of dolphins leaping out of the water on their way somewhere. We were satisfied we had seen all the sights of the Bay.

The next day was our Russell Walks day. In the morning we walked up to Flagstaff Hill, the sight of symbolic resistance by the Maori residents against English settlement, the first in NZ. The flagstaff was chopped down four times by the Maoris in 1845, resulting in the destruction of Russell by the enraged English. Peace was finally restored and the Maori flag now flies for 12 days each year. No flag was flying when we visited.

From Flagstaff Hill we walked to Tapeka Point, the site of the original Maori Pa, or fortified town. From there we watched the tour boats set out for the day. We were glad we had gone the day before as the weather was starting to worsen and the distant islands were cloaked in mist. To get back to town, we followed the beach route. The description of the hike had warned us that the trail was impassable at high tide. The tide was about half way out and we had a few problems to overcome. We rounded one rocky point only to be stopped by a channel, a little too wide to jump across. After retracing our steps and not finding an alternate route, we tried again and this time the tide had lowered enough to uncover two rocks we could step on to get across. We like a challenge.

We made it back to Russell in time for a nice lunch in one of the several restaurants on the waterfront. That meant we had to walk off lunch, so we set off for Long Beach. This was a short 1 K walk to another bay over a ridge behind the town of Russell. More vistas to enjoy.