New Zealand 2009 – 4th & 5th Days: Northland

It was a very good motel we found to stay at in Whangarei. Needs to be mentioned: Fountain Lodge Motel. I didn’t see a fountain there, but we got a suite of two rooms, lot of beds, a kitchen and dining area. And best of all – it had a speedy internet! While traveling it is hard to find enough time to use it, but we did, even talked through Skype with my parents. This is the view we had:

Seeing such a kitchen I couldn’t resist to cook a good breakfast. A peculiar thing for us from the US – it is not so common to see a supermarket here, and they open pretty late and close very early. So we have to adjust to that. The other thing I want not to forget to mention – the books wark that NZ has a lot of moskitoes and sand flies. But until now we haven’t seen a screen on a window – the windows are open at all times, letting this wonderful air in and out without any flying subjects. Maybe we will see them in the future.

From Whangarei we stopped at Whangarei Falls:

There is a nice trail down to the bottom of them and then by the river to a Kauri tree grove.

The path is all surrounded by this jungle growth – dominated by big ferns. As is a dinosaur forest as we have seen them in museums:

Because of the clean air the NZ sun bites, even under the hair line…Some trampers look like lobsters their lips swollen and cheeks red. So Andrei uses his umbrella and looks like “A lady in waiting” from a French court…:

Half an hour of a nice walk through some pastures and a forest- and we find ourselves on a bridge called canopy walk. Lots of trees above us, but lots of them under:’

At last – here they are – one Kauri tree and then another, and that is all. They are too good to be in abundance:

As if those trees are the oldest here, or maybe on planet?.. In any case, they have been here before people came and took care of them ,meaning they used them for their good timber. Also, it is believed that some tsunami downed a lot of them at some point in history and now they find the old preserved trees in swamps and do crafts form them. The sap fossilized into something similar to amber. That bridge was so convenient to walk on that I have to show how it looks like:

The Whangarei river:

After that we wanted to buy some fruit in the orchards – they were writing on entrances – Fruit market – but we entered, and there was nothing there, no market, just orchard. While passing I took a picture of kiwis – Mark advised me “to pick a kiwi from a branch” – instead I touched several kiwis, but didn’t pick, didn’t dare…

After tramping in the jungle we needed some beach, which was not hard to find. We did a loop towards Tutukaka, stopped and Ngunguru for lunch and seagull feeding, then at Whangaumu Bay for beach combing:

Andrei even snorkeled there – the waters were calm, the process was easy, but nothing under waters just sand… But he enjoyed.

Lots of islands…Also here and there like weeds by the road you cannot ignore those beautiful flowers:

A little town Kawakawa was our next stop. An interesting story, One couple (Ann & Alan) from Rockville has been there last May and showed their pics to their friends upon return. In one of the pics was an impressive toilet, impressive in its design. But that couple didn’t stop or enter the toilet, just took the pic from ther car window and that is it. The other couple (us) saw their pics and especially me got very intrigued by those toilets – for god’s sake they are created by Hundertwasser and i was lucky to see his toilets in Viena where he was from. To make things a little clearer – he was not only a toilet builder, but a prominent architect. i have seen his exotic houses only in pictures. So a chance to see his work, in this case- “the toilets”, was very enticing. Amazing as it is this othert couple form Rockville managed to see them in detail in less than a year! To me – it is a miracle:

One more view of a Bay:

and we reached Paihia, where we had a two night reservation in a Peppertree lodge, which is a very exclusive hostel – very clean, private and non-private rooms, big kitchen with lots of young and older people cooking non stop -it was a pleasant experience to watch how good they are in cutting veggies, cooking, presenting on plates. And how neat they were, cleaning after themselves. Then long evenings sitting and talking -people from all around the world…No, this time I didn’t participate in talks, I rested after all those impressions and wrote this Blog.

Our day of rest in Paihia was good! We walked on the rocky-sandy beach and then used the hostel’s kayaks:

And swam to an island:

Where again -I picked the shells…

Unluckily – a wonderful calm and sunny day turned into a windy and cloudy, so we didn’t do a long trip as i planned…our botoms got cold in the water and it is not very comfy to sit in that cayak.Wheather here changes a lot during the day. When the sun comes out – it is rather warm, when it hides – you don’t want to be standing with wet clothes on…

Tomorrow a long drive downwards is waiting for us.

New Zealand 2009 – Out towards Northland

Today we rented our reserved car in Juicy rentals (BTW -very good prices!) and left Auckland. It was a little challenging for my husband to drive – first, on the left side…and second -the car has a manual transmission. To change gear with left hand versus the right is a little inconvenient at first, especially after using only an automatic car at home. But otherwise – the little Japanese red girl is very good, tiny, but spacious inside, very comfortable to sit in.

So we drove through some resort towns North of Auckland and reached the Goat Island marine reserve:

It means that they don’t let to fish there and so the fish are big and tame. I saw blue ones- very bright blue. We snorkeled there by those rocks you can see in the pic. I wanted to swim to the Island, but the wind started blowing and somehow it felt cold and unpleasant. maybe we are not good snorkelers, I guess we really are not :-)…because the main problem we face is the lack of air. I start grasping for air after a little while – the little tube through which you breathe is to narrow for us. So you were right, Adrian, we shouldn’t have brought our snorkeling equipment with us.

A bigger attraction for us was while we ate the tasty kumara chips we got in the famous Fish and Chip place in Leigh on our way to Goat Island. A seagull and several duck appeared to ask for there share. it was not written not to feed them , so I gave them a little. I haven’t seen such a territorial seagull and such brave and needy ducks – they snapped on my toes and jacket, sneaked their heads into our bags looking for food.

Then we drove back to Rt 1, to Warkworth. On the way stopped at a group of big barns – there were restaurants and arto and crafts galleries. The arts there were very good! It was pleasant to mix some arts into your day of nature. Those were the views on our road:

Then we saw a sign to Ruakaka – it is not advertised anywhere, but we saw that there is a beach and wanted to explore it, for curiosity reasons. And that was the best impression! We parked the car under white sandy dunes which looked like in Palanga – my Lithuanian resort city by the Baltic Sea. And we walked to the ses – it was marveluos, very close to my heart! No wind, warm, peacefull and very spaciuos, very soft white sand, beautiful shells, that are my preciuos findings. We Lithuanians are big pickers – we like to pick berries, mushrooms, and shells or amber on sea shores. So that made me really happy!

Except that in Lithuania there are no islands in the horizon of the sea. And the weather is seldom so warm.

On this last pic one can see chimneys -there is a power station on the shore there and it is being dismanteled. For that reason they got workers to here and they rented both motels for them long time rents…So we couldn’t stay, couldn’t listen to the wonderful soothing sounds of the waves more. And therefore we drove to Whangarei and got a motel with Hi-Fi! next time about it.

New Zealand 2009 – Third Day: in Waiheke Island

It was hard to decide what to do today…The forecast said there will be showers. After yesterday’s really big ones we were afraid not to find ourselves in a cloud again. So we took a green Link bus which goes in circle around the city and saw some of Auckland through the windows. It took us 40 min to do the circle. While sitting in the bus we were making decisions – the skies started to look clearer, so lets rent a car for a day and drive to the Kerikeri beach where they filmed the movie The Piano. But the rental offices refused to rent us a car for a day. So the only last thing we had in mind was to take a ferry to Waiheke Island which we did. It sails through Devonport, even stops there, then by Rangitoto island, some other islands and here we are – in Waiheke, which was described by some Kiwis as a really good thing to see. The length of the island is only 25 km and the width is 5 km, but it is made of green rolling hills with some trees and bushes. Some dinosaur type ferns in deeper wet crevices. As I expected – once everyone from the ferry was taken into buses or cars – the narrow road got clear and quiet and we walked some 20 min to the first town Onerua to eat. The servers screwed up our lunch, we paid for one thing, got another, etc. In any case that was not the main point. The rain started again…So we waited while eating, then walked towards the sea on the right side (I am reminding – the island has seas on both sides :-).

The waters were very green, no dark blue hues at all. The other shower caught us on the way – and luckily there was a bus stop. Here they build bus stops with roofs and sides – so we sat there for half an hour, a Swiss girl on a bicycle came all wet and we talked with her. She came to Auckland for 6 weeks to learn some English and she said she is very old…already 31 years old…After the rain stopped we reached the shallow beach and walked around a steep edge of the island and towards the other side – towards the praised Palms beach. There were fancy houses by the sea – very modern to my eyes.

One had an extremely big chair in the yard – a chez long – as a sculpture, I guess. Or maybe they sit in it if they have a group of guests. The walk was nice, there are benches along the road to sit and rest, and we had to climb quite a bit to reach the very top of the mountain. The road was winding till we got down again to the Palm beach. It was beautiful. The sand was not white, but there were waves and the green waters were warm enough to play in them. On the whole the air and water temperatures here are so comfortable here for a feel! I can’t stop appreciating it.

This is how locals love dogs:

I guess we walked around 8-9 km from ferry to Palm beach – it was like a hike and a pleasant one – I could observe plants and flowers by the houses. The had some unripe peaches, though not the planted ones in a tidy orchard but the wild ones growing in a jungle environment. Nobody there seemed to be interested in gardening.

While waiting for a bus to get back to the ferry – i saw a tiny gallery and had a pleasure of seeing some local talents’ paintings.

This is how Auckland looked while approaching it from the sea:

New Zealand 2009 – A Second Day in Auckland (a rainy one!)

Boy oh boy! I haven’t seen such a rain for a long time! it was like the whole ocean raised into the sky and was pouring down on us. No relief for the whole day except for now, going closer to evening. So we used our brain power to decide where to go :-). And went to the Auckland Domain which is the park with trees that I have never seen so wide, with branches extending not up vertically but horizontally. Sometimes you have to bend down in order to go under them to continue on the path.

All Auckland is built on hills – so walking up and down is what awaits the walkers or trampers as they call it here.

We found the greenhouses there:

In front of them there was a big building – Auckland Museum. A rich museum in its possessions! I would say – not enough space fro them all – they are a little cramped. it is mostly about Maory culture, volcano activity, Polinesian nations and nature. An interesting thing about all it – you can take as many pics as you want:

And here is Buddha in Greco – Roman style!

New Zealand 2009 – The flight

So we came. We did it! I had no time to be worried about the flight – too much work before leaving home where my mom is taking care of the house and occasional guests. She is very hospitable so no worries, if you decide to visit our B&B now – just choose the warmer weather and go! 🙂 For today there is some snow in Rockville.

Here where we are sitting in a cafe – it is warm and nice, a little humid. Auckland – the center. We started our trip at 5:30 pm Las Vegas time on Tuesday and came to Auckland on Thursday – Wednesday just disappeared…We lost a day…:-(. but the trip was not too long. The flight from LA started at 9:30 pm and ended in 13 hours at 10:30 am California time. Just one night in the plane. it was a full flight so not too much space for stretching legs or walking – exercising. but the selection of movies was good, and we managed to sleep – it was night on our bio clocks. the food was good, the stewards were nice, what else can you wish. I saw Vicky Christina Barcelona – a usual crazy Woody Allens stuff, as if he can’t get away from his usual permanently unsatisfied woman’s problems…but it was played by such good actresses that I enjoyed. then followed The Secret Life of Bees – if I remember the name correctly. Queen Latifah and Dakota Fanning play there. And they a re good! Dakota should get Oscar sometime. her acting can’t be better. A big pleasure to see her in this tough role. A girl facing more problems and hardships she should in her age…

The hardest in long flights are the first 3 hours. Then you somehow get your body into a position and manage to sleep. Before landing – beautiful rolling green hills showed sticking form the blue-green waters. The sails of clouds were scattered all over.

Then in the airport we were immediately introduced to Maory culture even before we passed all the control lanes:

Once we landed – long lines at passport control, at luggage control. Kiwis protect their country – they have dogs who smell our bags looking for unwanted meats, plants, or something else, I don’t know. Then an officer even took our snickers and disinfected them. “No” to bacterias coming to this country! So all the procedures took almost 2 h. Now we are in the center of Auckland in a Sierra cafe, using this wonderful thing called internet! While on the way from airport – it was warm, it is summer here, but no flowers. maybe they are all in the special gardens, regular people seem not to bother by growing them in their gardens. the city seems spacious, not crowded at all. But those are morning impressions, lets see what we feel later!

This is the main street – Queen street. When the green light comes – people cross the streets in all directions , even crosswise, which is strange to us.

Nice little details all over…We like them. The upper sculpture reminded us Adrian’s sculptures in Springdale.