A Kiwiana Birthday

Another weekend in New Zealand, another weekend off in Carrie the Van... Our excuse this time was to celebrate Sarah's birthday. I'd been at a conference for the last half of the week, so after the final keynote Auckland city witnessed a man in a suit sprinting across town to jump in the van and beat the traffic. Kiwis like nothing better than getting out of the city at the weekends, and I tried my hardest to get in front of them!

This time, we decided to stay in the Auckland region (a huge super-city and regional area which stretches a long way North, encompassing lots of amazing parks). The plan was to tiki-tour around from one regional park to the next and visit the bays, wineries and villages on the way. As well as celebrate Sarah's birthday.

We got out to Wenderholm Park that night, and were the only people in a secluded field sat on a river delta, nestled in between the mountains. Just us and lots of Pukeko, the NZ version of British moorhens. Bring on the birthday drinks!

Sarah's new nautical cardigan, courtesy of her mum!

Next day, we left the van in it's spot and had a walk around the mountains looming above the sea. The parks up there were full of native bush and odd birds, the noises were like walking round a tropical jungle!

Chillin' on my tree

Back in the van, we headed further North - calling in at the Puhoi Valley Cheesery. Sarah insisted. We tried a lot of cheese. Sarah managed to sniff out the cheese which "apparently had to be eaten that day". We bought it. We ate it all that day. Nothing surprising there.

A sight for sore eyes!

Puhoi village itself was tiny - a little enclave formed by Czech Bohemian immigrants in the mid-1800s. Everything was super tiny - check out the vast library below!

Cheese and books.
What more could she need?

And south of Warkworth, a huge beehive establishment - with the complementary tourist shop and museum. And more free tastings.

bzzzzzzz

And then around the next corner? A Kauri tree reserve - the world-famous-in-New-Zealand tree of immense proportions. Check out this bad boy, a mere tiddler compared to NZ's biggest Kauri of around 50m in height and 5m in diameter. A proper big boy.

Spot the difference.

After plenty of sightseeing inland and at beaches, we hunted out our next spot - a site recommended by workmates and the guidebooks, the regional park of Tawharanui. After a Colin McRae style mountain pass on gravel tracks in the campervan, Sarah was glad to finally arrive. And the pots and pans in the back were happy to go back on their shelves.

Boy was it worth it - a stunning peninsular with a pest proof fence (akin to Jurassic park, but a bit shorter) to let the native flora and fauna flourish. Crack open a bottle and wait for the sunset...

Go away clouds- we want colour!

There it is - in all it's glory

Before retreating into the van, to shelter from the persistent wind of NZ. Our rock and roll lifestyle over the last few months has turned us into avid monopoly players.

Be warned any visitors - I'm a pretty cool kid nowadays.

Sunday morning... up super early and off on a hike around the peninsular following the various trails. Along the sandy bays, scrambling over rocks, up a shallow cliff edge, through rolling green fields filled with lambs, to lookout points across the bay and back down through rainforest valleys. All in the space of 3 hours - such a diverse countryside. And the best bit? We saw a real life, wild kiwi bird! It was only a little one and scurried off into the undergrowth before sticking it's head out a few times, but it was great to see. They're supposed to be nocturnal, but this one was a bit confused!

Spring is here!

And back in time for a full English fry-up in the sunshine... Happy birthday, Sarah!

Carrie & Sarah - FRIENDS
(watch Inbetweeners if you don't get it!)

Tiki Touring

Tiki Tour n. a roundabout way to get somewhere, serendipitously discovering sights and activities along the way.

Tiki touring round NZ is a bit of an institution. Travellers fly in to Auckland, buy/rent a van and do a big lap of the North and South Islands, passing over the Cook Strait in between. We've got the luxury of being here for a year, so have plenty of weekends and visitors to go off touring in Carrie the Van.

The country is perfect for it - quiet, long open roads on such a narrow pair of islands, allowing you to go down one side and up the other without ever getting too far from any of the action in the middle bits.

Our first proper tiki tour was down to the Bay of Plenty. We're now coming to the end of Winter but the weather has been ridiculously good (already getting some dodgy cycling tan lines, including brown arms and white backs of hands from wearing mitts!)

First stop - Paeroa; home to L&P with the magnificent tagline of "World Famous in New Zealand", a delicious lemonade made with the local spring water. Every town here has some curious claim to fame and milks it for all it's worth - L&P is one of the stronger claims to fame. Other towns have labelled themselves the mural town (we found two painted walls), the corrugated iron town (with a giant corrugated sheep) and the tudoresque town of Cambridge, of which the only stained timber framed thing we saw was a park bench. I'm sure that bizarre list will grow!

Sarah bought the super-size bottle (660ml)

But the sights aren't all odd claims to fame - travel around the next bend and the tiki tour points the way to an old gold mining gorge. Slam brakes on. Start turning. Put indicator on. Lots of the old mine shafts were still open (and encouraged to go down!), so we grabbed the torch and went as far as we dared. When the wind started making funny noises we turned back!

Next stop of the day was a vineyard, in the little town of Bethlehem. Judea was just down the road, too. No joke. We tried about 10 different types - whites, reds, sparkling and ports. And cheese. Good times.

Well, it would be rude not to try some.
And even ruder not to buy some.

Time to head up to the hills to find a Department of Conservation site to stay the night. We settled on Mclaren Falls Park, full of secluded spots and lots of newborn lambs. Born to make tasty shanks.

Enjoying life before the butcher

Our spot for the night

Breakfast with a view

Chucking everything back in the van, we headed further East along the coast to Tauranga for a walk around town and to climb the volcano perching above the town.

Nice to climb one without the bikes for a change!

Getting out of town was a bit of an issue - definitely missing our satnav at times! But, in the spirit of the tiki tour, we just kept on going in vaguely the right direction and all ended well. We even drove through the kiwi producing centre of NZ - Te Puke, complete with giant kiwi and kiwi-ana shop! Cue more kiwi wine tasting, feijoa vodka drinking and jam testing. Rock and roll.

Kiwis in NZ are way bigger...

There's only so much you can learn about kiwis - so we left.

And found our spot for the night, perched on the dunes of this lovely bay. Rock and roll living continued, with a cup of coffee on the beach.

Living on the edge.

Nearly there... 1 night left to go! Arriving in Whakatane (Wh = f ). Behave. We parked up on the quayside and enjoyed a long walk along the cliff tops, visiting secluded bays and an ancient Maori pa (a kind of castle of the native folk). Lovely.

More exercise. Why?!

And we found some of these fellows guarding a cave!

And our stop for the night was a more commercial site, nestled in the mountains on the way to Rotorua. Inbetween all the posh campervans, we washed off all the seagull poo from our old banger, before jumping in the thermal hot pool to clean ourselves up.

Sadly the next day was a shocker - pouring down with rain as we made our way down past all the lakes to Rotorua. We saw nothing! Through Cambridge and Hamilton - too wet to get out. Ah well, a dash back home it was. Not the easiest driving!

A giraffe taught me how to drive.

All in, a great trip. Looking forward to more tiki tours!

Love from Mitt and Sirrah x

(it's as close as the kiwis can get to pronouncing our names, bless 'em)