all sorted

I was incredibly productive today…at least from 1:30 – 4:30 pm! First thing on the list was buying laundry detergent, because I couldn’t even think of starting off in Australia with half a backpack full of dirty clothes. Got the detergent, and was carrying the box into the hostel when the guy at reception stopped me and asked me if I realized that the washing machines automatically dispensed detergent. Awesome. I did two loads of laundry, and then dried my clothes for over an hour, 20 minutes at a time, because 1) there isn’t a line and 2) they kept taking longer than I thought so I had to keep checking and feeding it dollar coins. At least they have coins bigger than a quarter here (10, 20, and 50 cent = silver-colored, and $1 and $2, gold-colored, just in case you were wondering. 1 and 5 cents coins no longer exist, which is pretty awesome).

I washed all my warm-ish clothes, so I couldn’t go out til they were dry, which is why I got a late afternoon start. First stop: library, to return the books I finished last night. Second: post office to mail collected items home. Third: bank to exchange NZD for Australian dollars (they’re super colorful!! very Monopoly-ish, except made from plastic, so they’ll survive laundry adventures). Fourth: AA (Automobile Association, the NZ branch of AAA) to get some free maps before my year-long membership runs out on Friday. Fifth: Kathmandu camping store to get my Summit Club membership, which came with my hostel membership. I probably won’t really use it, but I like having cards from places because it makes me look and feel legit/non-backpackery.

Back at the hostel, I booked my airport shuttle (4:25 am…ouch…), a hostel in Brisbane, and packed my backpacks. Jamie finished work early, so he came into town for an Indian dinner, and then we had a strange but entertaining conversation with a French Canadian pro skier & second-generation hippie who honed in on my ‘Alberta twang’ from a couple tables over in the hostel lounge. Interestingly enough, this was the second time today that I was told I [speak with a? have a? I do not know the correct phrasing here, because I don’t think I have ever used the word before] a ‘twang.’ The comment earlier in the day came from an Irish roommate who was convinced I’m from Texas.

Time for bed soon, since I have to be up before dawn. Internet’s not too good here, so I’ll upload the rest of the road trip blog entries/pics in Australia.

back to welly

...coming soon...

wairarapa

...coming soon...

lake ferry

...coming soon...

o possum world.

I introduced Jamie to the touristy side of Napier this morning, with a stop at Opossum World. Interestingly enough, the possums here don’t officially have an O at the front, but this store just dares to be different in a lot of ways.

In New Zealand, 70 million non-native possums consume 21,000 metric tons of vegetation each night. I know this because I have had this fact pounded into my head at every single conservation-oriented attraction in New Zealand, and there are many of these. Possums also eat the eggs of endangered native birds like kiwi. Therefore, it’s a good thing to kill them, and the government does all it can with poisons, traps, etc., and it’s considered very patriotic for individuals to go possum-hunting by whatever means necessary. I did my part for the good of the country by running over three of them in my car on the West Coast of the South Island last time I was here. It was partly out of concern for the national mascot, and partly because the roads there are pretty bad and I didn’t want to swerve at night and possibly end up wrapped around a [native] tree [and then feel guilty for maiming/killing something native].

Anyway, Opossum World is this terrifically tacky tourist shop selling possum tails, possum pelts, 8-foot-tall emus made of possum pelts (everyone needs at least one), mini kiwis made of possum fur, possum-merino sweaters and scarves, and Daniel Boone-style possum hats. More importantly, they have interactive displays such as a band of possums sitting on top of half of a car that sing a static-y version of ‘On the Road Again’ when you push a red button on the wall, a walk-through ‘forest’ with trapped (stuffed) possums and buttons to hear native bird calls, and jars of preserved fetuses/possum kittens in various stages of development. It’s definitely the must-see attraction in town – and best of all, it’s free!

After finally exhausting the entertainment possibilities at Opossum World, we drove up to a look-out point with a great view, and eye-hurtingly bright flowers. We also tried to drive to the gannet farm, but found out half-way that four-wheel drive/all-terrain vehicles are preferable over lowered cars.

Back in Hastings, we stopped at a hunting and fishing store that looked like the only thing open in the area. Turns out they were just about to close (1 pm), as it was some sort of regional public holiday and they’d discovered they were the only store still open in the town, but they welcomed us in, asking if we each wanted a ‘beer’ (we politely declined, which was especially good as it turned out to be Jim Beam & Cola premixed. The two guys in the shop seemed like they may have been a few into the day already). Anyway, we were originally looking for some bait for saltwater fishing down at Lake Ferry (today’s destination), but they didn’t have what we wanted so I wandered over to the fly-fishing section and…45 minutes later, we left the shop having seen the owner’s most recent fly-fishing digital photo album in its entirety, gotten hand-drawn maps to recommended spots on nearby rivers, added 4 flies to our collection, and heard plenty of fish stories from our two hosts.

We stopped at one of the spots for a while, but the water seemed pretty rough and we certainly couldn’t see anything in it, so we just played around with casting practice for a little while and then picked up pizza for dinner halfway to our destination, Lake Ferry.

hawkes bay a&p

We made it to Hastings in time to visit the A&P show this afternoon – we thought we might do it tomorrow instead, but this’ll give us some extra time at the next destination, wherever that might be. Nobody seems to know what A&P stands for, though I think the A must be for agriculture.

Right inside the ticket gates, we caught the tail end of the sheep-herding trials. The border collies over here aren’t nearly as cute as Tucker, or, actually, nearly as cute as most of the ones in the States and the UK, based on the trials I’ve seen at home or on TV. They’re all really wiry and short-haired, maybe from mixing with another breed, or else they just all descended from a couple of wiry/short-haired border collies way back when, there’s a ton of within-breed variation. Anyway, they seemed to herd the sheep well, so that’s what matters here.

There were a ton of commercial exhibitors – AWD vehicle dealers, animal breeders, mobile vets, mobile butchers, as-seen-on-TV gadget peddlers, tractor salesmen, etc. We saw sheep-shearing demonstrations by an off-color Australian in the children’s section (and hoped the jokes were going right over the kids’ heads), wood-chopping competitions, winning fleece and alpaca wool, and champion poultry.

I’d seen in the paper that there would be miniature cattle there, and was very excited to see those – they were mini Highlands, furry things that stood maybe 2.5-3 feet at their shoulders, at most. I still have no idea what the purpose of miniature cattle could be, the brochure was no help in figuring that out and I thought it might be kind of rude to ask the breeder, but they seem even less useful than miniature horses, and I don’t think those guys have a purpose other than standing around looking cute.

My absolute favorite part of the whole thing was the petting zoo/kids animal exhibit section (no big surprise, right??). I learned by observation that ostriches are NOT to be petted (this could probably have been inferred by the completely enclosed cage without a ‘come on in’ or ‘pet me’ sign like all the other, but some people near us did not figure it out in time). There were ‘ginger fleeces’ from Iceland – oddly orangey-red lambs with cute little pink charm-collars (the fleece color was natural, but I’m pretty sure the collars weren’t). There were also several miniature horses and ponies, a super-furry donkey, goats and kids, ‘regular’ sheep, a pile of ducklings, and tons of colored chicks. One pen had a big sow and lots of piglets (too active to count), these were lots of fun. Half of the times I stuck my camera up to the fence to get an eye-level picture without having the chain-links visible I’d get a perfect little dirty snout-print on it from a curious piggie. The merino ram was also entertaining, though not overly friendly when we tried to hold it by its horns to search for its eyes, which were well-buried beneath all the wool. There were llamas and alpacas, and another favorite of mine – the Captain Cook pig and piglet. These guys were really furry, and had amusing facial expressions especially when something (a child’s hand stuck through the fence, for example) appeared to confuse them.

I have lots more A&P pictures that I don’t have room to post here, and will make a Picasa album with them at some point later on.

the longest wharf

We drove down the coast from Tokomaru Bay to Gisborne, stopping near Tolaga Bay on our way down. The longest wharf in New Zealand is in Tolaga Bay, and Jamie’s dad said he’d heard there’s good fishing there, so we bought a surfcasting rod when we got to Gisborne and made plans to head back up there for some night fishing.

Rather than messing with real bait without a refrigerator, we got a package of softbait and some flasher rigs. Softbait, realistically-shaped plastic bait infused with scent-chemicals, is supposed to outfish real bait in many circumstances, but we didn’t have that luck tonight. There were a bunch of other people fishing on the wharf, though, and no one else even got any bites – according to the locals, we later found out it’s a feast-or-famine spot there – so we didn’t feel too bad. Also, we can now say We Have Walked The Entire Length Of The Longest Wharf In New Zealand, which has to be good for something. It was reeeeaaally long; it’d be interesting to see it on Google Earth when I have a decent internet connection sometime. The sunset was gorgeous, too, and the cliffs on one side had a ton of caves, which looked pretty cool.

brian's place

When we were in Auckland on Saturday, we discovered that there’s an A&P show in Hawke’s Bay this Wednesday through Friday. Jamie’s wanted to go to one for a while, and I was disappointed I missed the Nelson one by a few days earlier this year, so we decided to try to make it to this one. Problem is, we’d planned to spend the holiday weekend on the East Coast, which is pretty far north of Hawke’s Bay. Also, everything gets booked early for the long weekend (Labour Day), so we might be sleeping in the car over the weekend, but we’re taking our chances.

The description of Brian’s Place, a BBH hostel in Tokomaru Bay, caught my eye on the internet – an eco-hostel with fishing, hunting, tramping, etc. overlooking the bay. We hoped they’d have room for us a few days early, and we were lucky. The place definitely has character, as does the owner, Brian. After buying the best fish and chips ever (a huge fillet of ocean-fresh groper and chips with garlic butter, heavy on the garlic) from a little decaying-cinderblock place right on the bay and eating them at the beach and then exploring an old wharf as a possible fishing spot later on, I took a nap for the rest of the afternoon while Jamie chatted with the owner. When I woke up, we hiked through some paddocks to the top of a big hill with a 360-degree view of the bay, farmland, mountains, etc. – and then I was completely exhausted again.

One drawback of the hostel was that it was in such a beautiful area and so laid back that a lot of people got ‘stuck’ there, including one couple with a very loud 1-year-old. It might not have been so loud if they had watched it sometimes, and, for example, not let it fall four to five feet off of the porch into a spiky plant, or if they had told it that tackling a half-blind and grumpy cat (with claws) is not a good idea. But they didn’t, so that is actually what’s motivating us to move along down the road tomorrow rather than staying for the two days we’d planned to stay.

rotorua

As we were leaving Rotorua and its wonderful rotten-eggs sulfur aroma, we stopped to fill up the car and I noticed this 98 octane biofuel pump. The price was a little higher than the 91 octane regular, but not out-of-whack compared to the usual higher-octane gas. Do we have biofuel pumps at normal gas stations in the States? I haven’t seen them yet, but I didn’t do a whole lot of driving when I was back, and none outside Virginia. Anyway, just thought that was pretty interesting.

Jamie and I spent an hour or so trout-spotting along one of the rivers in town, but didn’t have any luck, so we decided to keep the fly rods in the car for now and head on down the road. We realized our original road trip plans, which included the Far North and skiing on Ruapehu, were far too ambitious, so we’ll just mainly do the East Coast and lower North Island now.

We drove through Whakatane and Ohope today, nice coastal towns on the Bay of Plenty. I’m still fighting a bad sinus infection, so I’m not very good company and also not very motivated to suggest stops along the way…hope this goes away soon!! We stopped for lunch at a nice beach with White Island visible in the distance. A few kms down the road, a little white church glowed in the sun right on the coast – it’s been raining on and off and we caught it just as it stopped.

Lesson of the day: when you’re driving into the boondocks [Waihau Bay/Opotiki is a good example], it’s helpful to go grocery shopping beforehand. Also, just because a camp has a communal kitchen doesn’t mean it has pots, pans, dishes or utensils. Fortunately I had some Trader Joe’s mac n’ cheese and a can of tuna from home, so we made that with water and oil instead of milk and butter, and it actually turned out pretty well. We cooked it in a little pot and frying pan from my mess kit – also useful – and ate it with my new titanium backpacking utensils (yay! I love them) and Air New Zealand plastic ones.

kelly tarlton's

I spent three hours in Auckland’s sewer system today. Ok, so it’s been repurposed – the former municipal waste management facility is now home to Kelly Tarlton’s Antarctic Experience and Underwater Encounter.

Highlights of the day included a Snowcat ride through the penguin breeding facility, watching the 6’-wide stingrays being fed, walking through life-size reconstructed Antartic explorers’ huts (with mostly authentic items rather than reproductions) and salivating over a tank full of gigantic crayfish (rock lobster). Sunglasses shown for scale.

After Kelly Tarlton’s, we drove down to Rotorua for the day. I’m feeling worse than yesterday, so I wasn’t up for the dusk fly-fishing that the campground manager recommended (he and his buddy landed 4 trout between them in under an hour last night. supposedly) and I crashed soon after dinner.

wgn to akl

Number one on my list of Things You Should Definitely Not Take On A Roadtrip: a sinus infection. Thanks in part to the airline ventilation system, though, I think I’m coming down with one. Based on approximately 54 historical data points (one in spring, one in fall, every year. yaaay.), it should last about 2 weeks, or through the end of the road trip and on into the beginning of the Australian adventure. Sigh.

Anyway, we left Wellington at 5:10 this morning to miss weekend traffic. As planned, I set my alarm for 5 am, and slept in my clothes so I’d just have to brush my teeth, put in my contacts, and grab the overnight bag and food from the kitchen on my way out the door – everything else went in Jamie’s car last night. Unfortunately, though, I was in a bit of a fog yesterday from lack of sleep, jetlag, and killer allergies, so I forgot I’d been subtracting an hour off the time shown on my phone/alarm clock to account for daylight savings time. I did not change the clock or account for this when setting my alarm. I was ‘lucky,’ though – one of my five roommates was not feeling well from her bar adventures, and was making lots of noise fumbling for her water bottle in the early hours, and 4 am (by my phone-clock) was the last of several times I woke up. I suddenly realized 4 am might really be 5 am, and sent Jamie a sheepish text asking what time it really was and apologizing if it was actually 4 am and he was still trying to sleep. I got the reply back saying it was 5 am, and (foolishly) there wasn’t anything in there about ‘…and you’re an idiot, I’m reconsidering this road trip idea,’ so I headed downstairs to meet him.

The drive was pretty uneventful – about 8 hours to the Onehunga outlet mall outside Auckland, including a couple of stops. We drove up the middle – the Great Desert road by Mount Ruapehu etc. is an intriguing contrast to the lush green farmlands north and south – and saw a bunch of nice rainbows along the way. Rainbows are nearly as common as sheep here, but they haven’t lost their charm for me. Oh – and neither have little lambs, I’d almost forgotten how absolutely adorable they are. Sheep = kind of ugly, though. At least close up.

Outlet shopping was semi-successful: I did not find the right kind of Canterbury polo shirt I am hunting down for Charles, but I did find things for me. Oops. I need to remember I am backpacking, and already carrying at least one too many backpacks.

wellington

I'm in Wellington! It took me about 33 hours door-to-door, so I was very excited to get here...but then my hostel room wasn't ready so I had to wait 4 more hours to shower and change. I got about 3 hours of sleep on my LA-Auckland flight...AirNZ had an excellent movie/tv selection this time around so that kept me up longer than intended! Now I'm fighting to stay awake til evening so I can get onto schedule for the new time zone (17 hours ahead of EST).

I missed my first Auckland - Wellington flight because the LA-Auckland one was delayed, and nearly missed the second one for the same reason, despite putting in good effort on the Auckland International Airport 1K Run between the domestic and international terminals...with my three backpacks in tow. Fortunately they have free+numerous luggage carts, but they kept sliding off. Before that, when I was waiting at the baggage claim to pick up my stuff to go through customs/biosecurity, the cute little yellow-vested beagle-bloodhound biosecurity dog singled out my carryon bag because of the fruit I'd had in it on the plane, and the ensuing hand-inspection of ALL of my luggage even before I got to the checkpoint (where they repeated the process) contributed to the near-miss...

The Wellington flight, like the one before it, was pretty turbulent but fortunately the famed Wellington fog didn't prevent our landing as it so often does. After dropping my stuff off in the hostel's storage room, I headed to the grocery store to get stuff for the N Island road trip (begins very early tomorrow morning!) and then met Martha at Rahzoo for lunch - they have a great 3- or 4-salad combination plate.

I have to say I absolutely love Wellington's 'walkability,' and today's activities made me realize how much I missed the built-in exercise I got when living/working here - 6K/day (with hills!) at the very least.

I'm at the downtown YHA, a gorgeous eco-conscious hotel-like high-rise hostel that I stayed at after my lease was up here last July. Next up for today: a trip to the library for fun-books and Fly-Fishing for Dummies, a visit to Kathmandu [camping/outdoor goods store], meeting Jamie to finish any pre-roadtrip preparation, then early to bed!

...and i'm off again!

Tomorrow morning at 9 am is the start of my next adventure - the first leg is Baltimore to LA via Detroit. After that, it's LA-Auckland-Wellington, then a 12-day break from airports (N Island road trip!). Then finally Wellington-Auckland-Brisbane...and that's where my ticket ends. Yes, I do have a one-way ticket to Australia...but I'll be back by Thanksgiving '09, I made a promise :)

I finished packing in the early afternoon today, and then proceeded to spend the rest of the day adding mostly-unnecessary items to my backpack. In fact, one whole backpack is unnecessary, but I decided to make full use of my 2-free-50-lb-checked-bags allowance, so I'm even bringing non-perishable food just to get my money's worth (it's cheaper here, plus they don't have Trader Joe's down under...one day, I hope to fix that). I just weighed my big bag, though, and it's only 31 lbs, so...hmm....what else could I add? bricks? a dive weight belt? It's probably a good thing that I don't know the Baltimore-area shopping scene.

Anyway, I have enough clothes in the blue bag to last me a good 2 weeks or so without a laundry stop (not a goal, but could be useful at some point) - it's easy packing for just warm weather! My electronics get their own bag - laptop, camera, every kind of back-up storage you can think of, etc. I'd be such a light traveler without them! It's worth it, though.

I guess I should change the name of the blog to something a little more Australia-centric. Any suggestions?