The East Coast

At the time of writing we are in Dunedin on the South Island. We're driving around the southern part of the island while waiting for Giigan's parents to arrive in Christchurch in a couple of weeks or so. A lot has happened since we left Mt Maunganui (besides climbing Mt Taranaki which we already told you about) so we have lots and lots of stuff to write about. However, due to the trouble our laptop gave us in January, we haven't even had time to write about everything we experienced when we were still living in the Mount. So today's blog post will take us back to the first few days of this year and the road trip we did back then.

Our primary destination was the East Coast (of the North Island); the cities of Napier in Hawke's Bay and Gisborne in Poverty Bay, to be specific. We left from home on New Year's Day and spent four days in total touring this part of New Zealand.

We stayed two nights in Napier to begin with. On the way there we stopped in Rotorua, where Giigan went on the Rotorua Gondola and got some adrenaline kicks out of racing down the mountain side in what is called the Luge (a sealed downhill track on which you ride a three-wheeled cart with steering and brakes).

The gondola in Rotorua

Napier is one of the absolutely nicest towns we have visited in NZ. In 1931 an earthquake more or less leveled the city to the ground. At the same time huge areas that used to be seabed were lifted 2 metres above the sea level. This new land has, for instance, been used to build an airport. The city was rebuilt mainly in the Art Deco style, which gives it a classic look and feel. The architecture radiates adventure and creates a comfy atmosphere. The waterfront location of the town centre doesn't make it any worse either :-) It was also pleasant to notice that all the modern box-like buildings like giant supermarkets and department stores had been built outside the old town centre, and were thus effectively out of sight, but still easily reachable. Good street planning!

Art Deco in Napier

Hawke's Bay where Napier lies is the second largest wine producing region in the country and the principal region when it comes to red wine production. There are more than 30 wineries within a 30 minute drive from Napier. Most of them are open for cellar door sales and tastings. Some wineries even have restaurants or provide accommodation. If you have a car of your own it is an easy thing to tour some of the wineries. Simply collect the region's free winery guide from an i-site and drive to the cellar doors. Usually there is a nominal tasting fee, for which you may taste 4-8 different wines depending on which wines the winery have available for tasting for the moment. The downside of driving to the wineries yourself is, of course, that the driver needs to keep a rein on his consumption.

An alternative is to go on an organised wine tour. It's more expensive (but still not impossibly so) than driving around in your own car, but on the other hand no-one has to mind their drinking--I mean TASTING! Of course you're not drunk after touring four wineries, no, no, ehm...

JBB at the Ngatarawa winery, which used to be horse stables

Anyway, as this was the first wine producing region we had ever visited, we felt more comfortable with going on a real tour. The four hour afternoon tour took us to four wineries around Napier and included (besides the tastings) a cheese platter matched with a complimentary glass of wine. The wineries were Trinity Hill, Ngatarawa, Matariki and Moana Park. The wines of Ngatarawa were overall our favourites. Their Hawke's Bay Merlot and Merlot Cabernet would go excellently with game, whereas the Sauvignon Blanc made from Marlborough grapes lifts a cheese platter to entirely new heights. For those of you with a sweet tooth (like me) I recommend giving the Late Harvest Riesling a go. It's not overly sweet and has "a luscious palate of ripe mandarin with lingering flavours of dried apricots and honey" (at least that's what the tasting notes say).

The members of our wine tour enjoying the cheese platter and white wine at the Ngatarawa winery

The downside of going on an organised tour is that you can't choose the wineries yourself, but on the other hand, the guide is a professional and should thus be able to pick the good ones :-) The nice thing though, is that you may find interesting people on the same tour. Of the six other people on our tour two were, in fact, Finnish! We quickly befriended Jukka and Elina, who were in the same age as us. Elina is, like we are, on a working holiday in NZ, whereas Jukka was just visiting his friend. After the wine tour we challenged them to a game of mini golf with a round of beer in the pot (we were all kind of thirsty for something less wine-like after having sampled over 20 wines). Guess who won? ;-) It was fun talking Finnish in a group and to discuss the cultural differences we had encountered with someone sharing the same cultural background. Siinähän se ilta mukavasti pyörähti!

On our third day we left Napier in the morning and headed north along the curve of Hawke's Bay towards Gisborne.

On our way we strayed to the Te Urewera National Park. Besides vast stretches of rolling hills covered in untouched native forest, the national park is home to many lakes and rivers. Time allowing, we would have done some of the many walks in the area, but we had to settle for admiring the views.

Lake Waikaremoana in the Te Urewera National Park

Our flatmate Matt had recommended visiting the Mahia Peninsula south of Gisborne because of its beach. Despite the cloudy sky occasionally giving us a shower, we also strayed there. It turned out to be very fortunate, as there was a dolphin swimming with the people on the beach! We learned that the beach is its home, it's lonely and likes to swim with people. It's so tame, that it even lets you touch it. Giigan ventured into the cold-looking water and can now boast with having swum with a wild dolphin :-) He reported that its skin is very slimy and that its breathing sounds human.

Gisborne in Poverty Bay was a bit of a disappointment. Sure, the location is quite beautiful and there are endless miles of sandy beaches, but unless you're a surfer there isn't that much exciting to do. The city and the main street are a bit dull. There are, however, a lot of wineries around Gisborne too, but since we didn't have much time and we'd already done a wine tour recently we didn't go for it. Nevertheless, from a historical perspective, Gisborne is quite significant. It was in Poverty Bay that Captain James Cook stepped ashore in New Zealand as the first known European. The year was 1769. To commemorate this there is a statue of both Captain Cook and Young Nick, the boy who first sighted land on board the captain's ship, next to the beach in Gisborne.

Giigan striking a pose next to Captain Cook

All in all, it was once again a very successful road trip! The end of it also marked the end of our Christmas holidays. On Monday 5th January we both had to go back to work. As usual, you can access MORE PICTURES from this part of our journey by clicking this link.

Thermal wonderland

Yesterday evening I had my first kiwi barbeque experience. Matt invited me to his cousin's place for some BBQ food and to watch the rugby game between NZ's national team the All Blacks and the Wallabies (Australia). It was a pretty decent night, we even saw a live firework show which rivaled the best Vasa has to offer on New Year's Eve (Matt's cousin lives next to a racecourse where there was a big car competition). Since I've decided to have a vegetarian month (at the very least) and still have 1½ weeks to go, there was no BBQ meat on my plate. I really didn't mind as the steaks, chicken wings and kebabs looked quite black and burned to my eyes. I was happy with the feta-filled button mushrooms and kumara (sweet potatoe) slices I had brought and BBQed myself.

I offered some salmiakki-sweets from Finland to everyone to taste, but noone liked them. We have yet to meet the first person on this trip to like salmiakki either as a sweet or in liquid form (salmiakkikossu)! Guess it really is an acquired taste :)

But, I really wasn't going to go into more details of yesterday. Instead I'm briefly (at least I'll try to be brief) going to tell you a couple of things we did about 4 weeks ago after leaving the Coromandel Peninsula.

Heading south from the peninsula we stopped for one night in Tauranga (where I currently reside, you know) before continuing to Rotorua. A major reason for us coming to Rotorua at the time was the national championships in basketball for under 16-year-old teens. Giigan wanted to check the games out.

Backgammon and lots of toffee ice-cream in Tauranga

Rotorua lies in the middle of the North Island's volcanic plateau and there is still a lot of thermal activity in the area. The city lies by Lake Rotorua, which is a gigantic volcanic crater. Pools with either hot boiling water or bubbling mud are spread throughout the town and the surrounding countryside. There are hot springs, geysers and gas vents. Our travel books had warned us of the strong smell of sulphur (rotten eggs) prevailing in the area, but we think the remarks were exaggerated. Sure, from time to time the offensive smell reached our noses, but hardly constantly.

We ended up staying in Rotorua for more than a week. The absolute highlight was one of the first days when we went to the sports centre to watch a couple of basketball games, but soon found ourselves somewhere completely different.

After just 5 minutes of aimlessly wandering around the sports centre a grey-haired man in his 60s approached Giigan. His name was Brian and he turned out to be a nice fellow offering to show us around the hot pools by the lake just outside the sports centre. Before we even could say "cheesecake" we found ourselves outdoors, walking inside the fenced areas among the bubbling pools along with our "guide". Brian told us about the different kinds of pools and gas vents and showed the way where it was safe to walk. From there he offered to take us out in his car to look at some of the larger non-commercial hot pools and attractions that the locals visit and bath in. It was an unbelievable opportunity for us (all commercial thermal parks around Rotorua are rather expensive) so of course we accepted!

Our local guide and acquaintance Brian and Giigan by a boiling mud pool

We drove around 30 km north from Rotorua and visited a small hot lake by the Rainbow Mountain (so named because of the different colours of the stone on one of its cliff walls), a huge boiling mud pool and Cerosine Creek where some people were bathing and enjoying the warm flowing water. At the small car park next to Cerosine Creek thieves had broken into one of the cars just minutes before we arrived. A couple of guys stood there in their towels calling the police. Incidents like that are unfortunately rather common in NZ at places tourists visit, so you shouldn't leave any valuables in the car even if you'll be gone for just a few minutes! We were a bit stunned by this because Cerosine Creek was pretty remote and not a very well known tourist attraction (a couple of kms from the highway along a small unceiled road), but apparently the thieves are quite professional and know their business.

During the drive we learned that it was a hobby of Brian's to in his free time meet up with people from other places and show them around Rotorua - at no cost. He reminded us in some ways of Piri who we met on Rarotonga. Both were generous men who liked the company of new people like us.

Finally Brian took us to a secluded hot water stream with a small waterfall. There were no other people there and Brian told us that it's only locals who know about the spot. It was fantastic and perfect for a bath! Luckily Brian had brought several towels with him. We relaxed there in the warm pool beneath the waterfall for almost an hour, talking with Brian about NZ and Finland. He was very interested in learning about other countries and new customs and we had good discussions with him.

The beautiful hot stream with the waterfall

By the time we were back in Rotorua we had been gone for several hours. It is such a joy to meet people like Brian. People who may have had hard times in life (his wife had passed away in cancer a few years ago) but struggle on and remain positive and friendly beyond imagination towards life and other people. The world needs more of them.

Besides checking out the thermal activity around Rotorua you might want to see a Maori cultural show while in the town. We went on the Tamaki Maori Cultural Experience, which was a whole evening thing. We (and around 150 other tourists) were taken out to a reconstructed Maori pa village. There we saw a good Maori cultural show and had a traditional hangi dinner. Hangi is a Maori feast where the food has been prepared in the traditional earth-oven (called umu) way of the Maori people. Basically it's very similar to rövargrop/rosvokuoppa back home in Scandinavia. We are, however, not quite sure if everything that was claimed to have been prepared in the earth-oven actually had been. The amount of food necessary for all of us would have been very tedious to cook for 5 hours in an earth-oven and besides, few of the buffet dishes had any special "earth-oven" taste to them.

A frightened JBB next to a fearsome Maori warrior

While the main courses were just barely OK, the desserts were excellent. Steam pudding with lovely custard and traditional pavlova. Pavlova is an interesting cake popular in NZ and Australia. It's made up of a thick meringue base, topped with lashings of cream and kiwi fruit slices. An absolute bliss!

Dammit, shouldn't have mentioned pavlova! Now I feel like having something sweet...

We felt that although the Maori cultural show was good and the food acceptable, the whole package was not worth the hefty price of $80 per person. Luckily we didn't pay a cent for the evening! Apparently there must have been some kind of confusion about our payment, since at no point were we asked to slam a credit card or cash in front of anyone. And this time we, eeh, didn't feel the need to be completely honest travelers, but decided to go with the flow instead :)

MORE PICTURES from Tauranga and Rotorua are available here!