Aotearoa – I see white clouds

“He Ao! He Aotea! He Aotearoa!” (A cloud! A white cloud! A long white cloud!)

According to legend that’s what the wife of Kupe (New Zealand’s discoverer) shouted when she discovered the unusual cloud formation while they were sailing across the sea locking for new land. And so the ancestors of the Maori named New Zealand “Aotearoa – land of the long white cloud”.

We first arrived in Auckland. It was good to be back in a big city and even more so to be back in a country where we both were able to speak the language. We really enjoyed Auckland and had a perfect first day, even though it was raining. We visited the Auckland Art Gallery, a very good museum displaying modern art in an interesting building. We spent a couple of hours wandering through the museum, which had a couple of European masterpieces but was mainly focused on art from New Zealand.

Looking at marvelous Maori portraits.

Yves had a lot of fun participating in the art of Yayoi Kusama.

Afterwards we walked trough the city, looked at the harbour and late in the evening had a drink high above the city in the Sky Tower, the highest TV tower in the Southern hemisphere. Sadly we didn’t see much as it was all cloudy. The second day we took a harbour cruise tour to get another view of the city and afterwards got our rental car, which served us very well during the upcoming four weeks. First we were travelling for 1 ½ weeks through the North Island. The rest of our time was dedicated to the South Island.

One of the harbours of Auckland. On the right you can see the Sky Tower.

Soon we learned that New Zealand has so much to offer, that it would take us at least one lifetime to discover it all. We had a real hard time to select our destinations and the attractions we wanted to see and the activities we wanted to do. Even more difficult was finding an affordable accomodation. We had expected that NZ would be expensive but we weren’t prepared for the immense amount of tourists. Nearly everything was booked out, but we managed to plan our trip. Our first destination was Waitomo.

We visited the Waitomo Caves – Caves washed out over thousands of years by water. The stunning and beautiful highlight there are the glow worms, which live in the caves. We sat in a boat and were gliding over a small cave lake. It was absolutely dark and quiet and after rounding a corner we saw hundreds of blue lights high on the ceiling and on the walls. The boat slowly made its way in the direction of the worms and we marveled over this unbelievable beauty.

Afterwards we headed into the direction of Rotorua. On our way we made a stop at Hobbiton. Yes, you read correctly: Hobbiton, the town where the Hobbits live or at least used to live during the filming of the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies. Of course this is an absolute tourist magnet and consequently we were not the only ones who wanted to take a glimpse of this filmset. The filmset is situated within soft and green hills, which originally served as farmland for sheeps and cows.

The view from Bilbo’s house down into Hobbiton. On the other side of the lake you can see the famous Pub “The Green Dragon”.

We were taken through Hobbiton with a rather larger group and where really impressed to what extent the filmmakers had worked out the details. After having a look at Bilbo’s house (Bag End) and replaying the scene where Gandalf enters Hobbiton, we had a drink in the Green Dragon and then headed to our next destination.

Bilbo’s house. The sign from his birthday party is still on the garden door.

In Rotorua we saw some geysiers and mudpools, but weren’t quite as impressed as we were about the geysiers in the Atacama desert in Chile. We learned a lot about the Maori culture, saw their famous war dance „Haka“ and most importantly, saw two Kiwis! Not the fruit, but the highly endangered and national bird of NZ.

The famous Lady Knox geysier in Wai-o-Tapo near Rotorua. It is known to blow as high as 20 Meters, but we weren’t lucky and saw only a smaller version.

We also went for a walkthrough a Redwood forest. Redwoods are one of the tallest trees in the world and seeing these majestic giants up close was magnificient.

Redforest trees together with ferns, which look also like trees and only grow in New Zealand.

NZ is very well known for its multi-day hikes. As we are not really into camping and most of the „big walks“ were sold out months or even a year ahead, we opted for some day hikes. The most famous one is the Tongariro Crossing. It was not very difficult (which was nice for a change) but cloudy and cold. Together with thousands of other hikers (or as the New Zelanders call it: trampers) we made our way up the vulcano Mount Tongariro along the path which led trough peculiar moonscape basins and along rough and crazy rock formations. On top we had an amazing view into the clouds and the world around us truly looked grey. The first descent was extremly steep and the „experienced“ trampers with their not so suitable shoes had much to complain.

Me descending down a very steep slope together with a big party of friends. 😉

As we reached the beautiful Emerald Lakes we got lucky and the clouds lifted a little, allowing us a view into the valley. The final desent was quite long but we really enjoyed the changing landscape from rough rocks to grass hills and finally native cloud forest.

The Emerald Lakes.

On our way to Napier, a city with nice art deco style we visited a big waterfall and in the evening treated ourselves to a nice dinner. Playing minigolf the next day was great fun and gave us the opportunity to stay a little longer in the sunny Napier.

Napier and its art deco houses. Art deco is omnipresent in this city. It’s a wonderful destination for all Great Gatsby fans.

We were a little reluctant to drive to Wellington as we knew that the zyklon Gita would hit the town this very evening. But we had to move on and drove through heavy rain to the capital city. At least it wasn’t that windy. The next day we spent entirely in the fabulous National Museum. It covers everything from the beginning of the world to the nature of New Zealand and its history. Most impressive were the display of the giant squid and the exhibition about the pests (like rabbits, rats, cats, possoms) in NZ.

This visit marked the end of our time on the North Island and the next day we set over with the ferry to the South Island. If you feel this blog article was a little packed, than you are right. It’s like the 1 ½ weeks we spent there. But although it was packed we had a marvelous time exploring the beautiful countryside and cities and I hope you enjoyed your time reading this blog entry as well. 😄