This was our last stop before coming home, so we were hoping to unwind by relaxing on the beaches, swimming in the ocean and soaking up some sun. But…

the beach on Rarotonga

Rarotonga is a nice round little coral island. Its very cute and the road went right around the circumference. So to get to town, we hopped on a bus (either clockwise or “anti”clockwise) and took the tour of the island. The town was quite small and had a few touristy shops selling black pearls. I guess there are many black pearl farms in the Cook Islands.

One thing we noticed about Rarotonga is that it rained a lot. We even looked into leaving a few days early to stay in Los Angeles. But the forecast for LA was rainy on the two days we wanted to be there.

The storms were interesting, though, the rain and the wind blowing through the palm trees had a nice swooshing sound. Even when it wasn’t raining, the wind was so strong, that the sound the palms made was just like rain on the roof.

One rare day, when it was hot and sunny, we sat out on the deck by the beach and read our books. The wind was so strong, we were going numb from the cold! Everyday seemed to follow the same pattern: Sleep in, wake up slowly, pick up our books and read till our stomachs told us to go eat lunch. Then we’d wander out to the store, buy filled rolls (like Subway sandwiches) and wandered up to the internetcafe/used bookstore. Then back to read more or nap, then make dinner, then either read or play cards with other couples in the same lodgings. The day it poured all day, we didn’t even leave the lodge!

We went to town twice – once to get a drivers license from the police station to rent a scooter. The cop stop closed just before we got there (it was 1:30 on a Saturday) and all the stores were closed. Strange how things close so early!

And yes, you read it right – you need to have a Cook Islands license to rent a scooter, AND you need to take a driving test around the block with a cop to get that picture license. So we got back on the bus and went back home. The second time we went to town was to see the rest of the island on the bus and to buy some pearls and souvenirs.

The dog population: very weird. Almost every dog has short legs. Like a basset hound. Imagine a golden retriever or a German shepherd with short bow legs. I think there might have been some interesting crossbreeding and definitely some inbreeding of the dogs.

Another interesting thing to see is the front yards of the houses. They have huge cement graves in their front yards. There are bigger cemeteries at the churches but almost every other house has a two or three graves.

One day, when it cleared up a bit, we rented snorkel gear and snorkeled in the lagoon to one of the small islands and around the other side of it. We saw some cool fish and a lot of sea cucumbers. Richard picked one up so I could get a picture and it squirted this stringy sticky stuff that tied his fingers together. At least it didn’t puke its guts out! One type of strange fish, with its eyes set way back on its very colorful body was territorial. If we got close to one, it would stare at us and come straight for us! Yikes! I looked it up and I think it’s a triggerfish the Lagoon/Picasso kind. Saw some pufferfish too. And a really long fish with a long pointy nose-like mouth.

The place we stayed at first was at Vara’s Beach house. It was a hostel, but we had a private room. It was loud at times and the kitchen and bathroom was kind of dirty but the beds were comfortable for us. Every evening after dinner, there were tons of little wingless bugs and bugless wings all over Richard’s side of the bed. Don’t know where they came from as there are screens on the windows. After 3 nights, we moved to a more expensive place up on the hill. Still owned by Vara’s, we had our own bathroom and a cleaner kitchen. The other people staying there were couples too, so we didn’t feel as old as we did in the hostel. The walk up the hill wasn’t too bad, there were lots of nice smelling flowers on the way, a cute pig, a horse, papaya and banana trees, and couple of goats to greet us on our way. Trust me, though, we got sick of our “Horses and Cemeteries” game when we only saw the same horse every day, and tons of cemeteries…

Read a little bit about Rarotonga

This was very fast paced trip. NZ is crazy, expensive, beautiful and full of volcanoes!

We looked into booking a rental car through the internet and found the perfect vehicle for traveling around NZ – its called a sleepervan. These are minivans with the back seats taken out and a bed or mattress put into it. Some come with camping gear or just a “chilly bin” or an “Eski” (which are terms for “cooler” for those who speak Canadian). This was the perfect way to travel NZ – especially when you only have 8 days to see the whole country. Good for driving way past dark and then pulling into a rest area if you aren’t near a campground when you’re tired.

So we booked online a week or two before. A day before we leave for NZ, we get an email from the rental company saying that they are all out (even though they had already told us they had one for us). Do you know how hard it is to rent a car for only 7 days on such short notice? Well we were driving one way from Auckland to Christchurch, and flying back on the last day. Oops, already bought the plane tickets when we found out that rentals are easier to find if you are driving the other way. After arriving in the Auckland airport and calling rental agencies we finally went with the original company, but could only get an old clunker of a car. It had a few dents, lots of kms, and made funny sounds every now and then. But it was good enough and wasn’t too expensive. Hostelling/ hoteling it would be okay. Maybe we’d actually use our useless International Youth Hostel cards we bought in Paris….

So we zoomed out of Auckland and went north. But we didn’t make it too far north as we realized we didn’t have enough time to see everything up there. Yes, sadly the Bay of islands didn’t make our shortlist. Stayed the night (1) in Warkworth.

New Zealand is a great place for seeing great sites, doing fun outdoor activities, Lord of the Rings mania, and for going to bed early. “Open Late” means “We close at 9pm” or earlier. If you are winging it like we did, call ahead for reservations, or get to town before 8:30pm. If you don’t have a place to stay or haven’t eaten by then – good luck!

Wai-O-Tapu boiling lake

Sites:
The Rotorua (spent 2nd night) thermal reserve in Wai-o-Tapu (http://www.geyserland.co.nz/) is amazing. It was awesome to see all of the hot pools with different colors and steam rising out of all kinds of crevices, geysers (not pronounced geezers ) and boiling mud.

boiling mud

More thermal activity near Taupo at a place called Craters of the Moon. Zooming across the north island (in the pouring rain) we arrived at Waitomo caves in time for the last trip of the day – but it was flooded so the glow worms had to wait till the next day. We found a great place to stay (3rd night) on an ostrich farm (http://www.waitomobigbird.co.nz/ - yes, the free evening forest walk with Ross -who is the farmer and a conservation officer- to see the forest glow worms was great! And the breakfast of ostrich eggs and bacon was yummy). The next day we went into the Waitomo caves (http://www.new-zealand.com/WaitomoCaves/index.html) and saw the limestone formations and the glow worms. It was like looking up into the night sky with millions of stars.

From there, we zoomed down to Wellington - it was still raining hard, so we missed the spectacular views of the volcanoes on the way. We hoped to catch a ferry to the south island that evening. Most people look at the schedules of things, but not us – we like to live on the edge. We missed the 5:30 by 15 minutes and found out the next one wasn’t until 1 am or 3 am. Since we didn’t have a place to stay for the night in Picton, we had to stay in Wellington for the night (4) and catch one at 9am. Strange ferry system – weird hours and very very very expensive to bring a car across. Our rental company didn’t offer us the switch at the ferry option – (leave the car there, walk on the ferry, pick up a new one at the other end). Anyways, Wellington was nice, but we avoided town since this was the weekend of the Return of the King movie premiere and we didn’t want to get stuck in traffic.

We drove south from Picton to Kaikura (where we didn’t have enough time to go whale watching) then south and west to spend the night (5) in Greymouth. Looked for some penguins, but didn’t find any. From Greymouth, we went south along the west coast to the Fox and Franz glaciers.

Fox Glacier

Oh yeah, saw the Punakaiki Pancake rocks sometime that day – but the tide was low so we didn’t see the blowholes blowing. Penguin search today yielded nothing again. Got a flat tire near Wanaka (driving through the misty mountains?) (the Whistler of NZ), but rolled into town after 10. Nothing open except the gas station. Spent some time looking for a hotel/hostel/motel/campground but everyone was in bed for the night. The gas station was open and the attendant offered us an expensive option – a night (6) in a lodge - he gave us a business card and everything. We had no other choice, so we left the car and walked to the lodge. Turns out his wife was waiting there for us, and we were their first visitors ever. They were planning to open in a couple of weeks, but since we needed a place… and it was a very nice place. There was a hottub (but it was too late for us to use it) and an awesome view of the mountains out the window (no curtains yet)– everything was brand new, comfy and cosy. Expensive, but it was worth it. I found the website http://www.blackpeaklodge.co.nz/facilities.htm.

Next morning, we were awakened by the fire alarm! I guess they had put the timer on the breadmaker and set it wrong. Oops, it was kind of funny… and we had to get up anyways to get the tire fixed. Waiting for the tire to be replaced, I went down to the post office and got stamps – they have Lord of the Rings stamps! http://www.nzstamps.co.nz/cgi-bin/nzstamps/web_store/web_store.cgi?cart_id=&page=recent/2003_lotr.htm . Looking at the site now, I noticed that there is one I missed! :o( Oh well I guess Merry and Pip will have to stay in the Shire…

From Wanaka, we went to Invercargill and then started east along the coast. Saw the fossil forest – a coastal shelf where you see old stumps and logs that used to be trees but are now solid rock. We looked for penguins here, but again none :o(. Farther along the south coast, we drove on some gravel roads and we found penguins! The yellow-eyed hoiho penguins! Yay! Driving out of there, we got another flat tire. Still two hours from Dunedin – we drove on the spare, and called ahead to get a chalet at one of the top ten parks (they’re a good deal and not too bad).

Driving around Dunedin, we got lost a few times, but somehow made it back to our place. It was too late to drive out to the end of the Otago peninsula to see the Albatross and the penguins, so we put it off until the next day. Had a good sleep there (7)

Next day we got the tire replaced and decided that we didn’t have enough time to drive out to the end of the peninsula and back as we had to get the car to Christchurch the next day before the rental place closed. The drive was nice going up the east coast – saw Moeraki Boulders and more seals and nice coastline. We made it to Christchurch in time, and after some searching, found a nice motel to stay in. We returned the car (no refund for the new tires we bought them) and got the guy to drop us off at the shopping center. We found an internet café and checked our email and then cabbed back to our motel. Early night (8) as we had to get up early to catch the flight back to Auckland.

moeraki boulders

In Auckland, Ngaire (whom we met on the Egypt trip) met us there and took us around town. After visiting Willie (her hubby) at work we went to the top of one of the craters and looked around. What a beautiful city! So many strange grass covered craters scattered around town. We went up the Tower and then for coffee. After that, we went back to the airport to catch our next flight to Rarotonga.

Here is a great site for planning a driving trip around NZ - http://travel.newzealand.com/

On to Rarotonga