Last night Brandon and I got back from a four-night camping adventure in Rotorua and Whirinaki Forest. It went a little something like this:
We spent Thursday and Friday getting ready for our new departure date, which was going to be Sunday morning so that we could avoid Saturday's predicted stormy weather. However, when Saturday dawned bright and sunny we decided to get on the road a day early. Of course, it ended up being more like half a day early because we didn't exit Auckland until about 5PM; Brandon spent the morning rounding up things like waterpoof matches and extra propane cannisters while I finished a rewrite of my first chapter of that novel and sent it off to my professor, who is hopefully sending it off to his agent-friend. Then I pre-made a bunch of sandwiches while Brandon packed the car and listed the new phone on Trademe, since the store wouldn't refund us our money. I really don't know how that took us so damn long, but by the time we got down to Rotorua it was almost dark and we had no idea where to camp. I'd looked up a place called the Rotorua Thermal Holiday Park, but that was $28 a night and B and I had heard that it was possible to find free camping in most places in New Zealand.
Turns out, of course, that Rotorua is one of the few places where that really isn't possible. Rotorua is a sulfur-scented, geyser-riffic, spa-ridden tourist attraction, when it comes right down to it, and B and I ended up driving up to the highest point in the Rotorua region - a reserve park mountaintop - to find some free parking. Unfortunately there was a pretty swanky restaurant at the peak as well, so while we were surrepetitiously pitching our tent in the bushes there were folks driving past us on their way to their Saturday night out. But we really didn't get there until about 8:30 pm, so we figured the dinner rush was about over. And after hearing about the free camping possibilities we felt almost entitled to our little borrowed plot of land.
So we pitched our tent there - up on a hill next to the road, surrounded by some trees, on top of a very prickly bush (which we smooshed), and next to families of hedgehogs, mice, and loads of bugs. We were also right next to a fence that was apparently being used to keep a herd of deer from overtaking the city. Brandon and I aren't terribly experienced rule-breakers, so we turned off our flashlight and ducked every time a car drove by, but no one seemed to notice us or care, and we were pretty pleased with our cozy little spot. Of course, we were dealing with a brand new tent, which was interesting to figure out in the dark, and we'd never cooked on our new camping stove before, so that was fun. We saw it all as part of our camping-in-New-Zealand experience.
Then, just as we were starting to get our water boiling for our insta-cuppa-soup, we heard about three cars drive by us. Of course, we turned off our flashlight to avoid being seen. Then a couple more cars drove by. We heard some voices as the cars parked in the lot about 100 feet further up the road. They got out of their cars. Then they started blaring this terrible rap music. Brandon and I were in shock. The local Maori youth were setting up for their Saturday night right there next to our tent. I felt like I was back at USC, hating fraternities and their ridiculously loud parties behind my apartment. Anyway, B and I were torn between wanting to leave and find another spot (after all, we could actually hear some hooligans smashing beer cans against their heads - who knew what they'd do to our car?), and wanting to just go to sleep. Of course, then there was the issue of being able to fall asleep. Seriously, their music was so loud. It was just plain funny and also really annoying.
Brandon and I ate our soup while we contemplated our options, and then burst into a little insane fit of laughter, and then the party eventually picked up and raced down the mountain, at which point B and I finally got some sleep.
The next morning we woke up to some awkward stares from passing joggers, so we packed up pretty quickly and headed into town. That morning we walked around the city-side of Lake Rotorua, where we saw some more black swans and our first sulphur hot-springs and boiling mud. We actually wandered amongst those boiling pits for quite a while before we saw the sign that said, "No Walking Beyond this Point. Danger!" This picture of me attempting to stick my foot in one of the boiling pits was taken before we saw that sign.
We stopped into the Polynesian Spa, where you could bathe in thermal water for some exorbitant price, and there we saw a rack of pamphlets for things to do in Rotorua. We took a few, and decided to try out the Te Puia evening experience the next night. We also happened upon an arts and crafts fair, which we browsed for a while. One of the coolest things we saw there was this guy pictured below, who has won several woodcrafting awards in New Zealand and makes pictures out of thin slices of wood. It's remarkable how he's able to create persective with wood chips. I don't know if you can tell from this picture, but he was also missing three fingers, which is what I call dedication to one's art.
After that we drove to our Thermal Holiday Park and set up camp on their gigantic "tent lawn." It was definitely not what I am used to as far as camping goes, but it worked. We discovered a few interesting things about our Holiday Park: first, we had access to a kitchen, which had a microwave and a toaster (luxury), second, being paying customers at the park meant that we could bathe in their amazing thermal pools for free, and, third, there was a boiling pit of foul-smelling mud (pictured below) about 50 yards away from our camping spot. We set up our tent in the most secluded corner we could find, made dinner, bathed in the thermal pools, and fell asleep watching the gorgeous New Zealand stars sparkle through the sheer mesh of our "front door."
The next day was Monday, and it dawned a little cloudier than we would have liked. The last time we'd checked a weather report it said that Monday night and Tuesday were going to be rainy, but after the no-show rain on Friday and Saturday we had hoped that we'd escape inclement weather completely. We drove a little ways to Rotorua's redwood forest, where we took a very liesurely stroll along the well-marked, beautiful trails.
Then it started to sprinkle. We ducked into the gift shop for a moment and then drove back to our camp site. The misting didn't seem too threatening, but we wanted to play it safe, so we moved our tent under a tree, and I built a little wall of leaves and sticks around the top of it so we would avoid any water running off the hill above us. We were optimistic about the rain expiring before bedtime.
We went back to the thermal pools before showering for our Te Puia evening experience, which was happening only a few blocks away at the Maori Culture and Arts Center. A car was supposed to pick us up at the front office at 5:30, so we sat there and waited. And waited. At around 5:50 (we needed to get there by 6pm) Brandon went to get our car while I waited at the front in case they came. By 5:55 no one had shown up, so we drove ourselves.
The Te Puia evening was fantastic. It began with a traditional Maori greeting, and then went into the traditional Maori meeting house where we heard some Maori songs and saw some Maori dances. Kids in New Zealand can opt into a program where they learn to speak Maori, and learn some of the cultural dances and songs that we saw that night. Some of the performers had incredible voices, and it was a good way for Brandon and me to fully appreciate Maori culture in its unsullied form. The Maori people have historically been fairly violent and brutal, emerging from their cannibalistic ways only upon their semi-conversion to Christianity by English missionaries in the 17th century, but at the same time there's a beauty to the strength and pride of their traditions. There were points in the show where all the women in the audience went up on stage to learn the "poi" dance, and then all the men had to go up on stage and learn a Maori war routine. I will hopefully be able to post the video of Brandon doing that at the bottom of this blog entry.
After that we were taken into a beautiful little dining hall where we had some Maori food served to us on the giant lazy-susans that were situated in the middle of each table. We also had access to vegetarian, salad, and dessert buffets, which were AWESOME. While we ate we were serenaded by a guitar-playing, Maori crooner, and then we were whisked away on sheltering people-movers to the Pohutu geyser, which erupted several times while we were standing there in the rain watching. I don't think it's as tall as Old Faithful, but it was very impressive, especially situated there against the Mesozoic, vibrant landscape of Rotorua.
Brandon and I went back to our tent then, hoping that the "water resistant" we'd read on the tent label meant we'd be protected from the now pouring rain. I think our tent did the very best it could, but at one point in the night I specifically remember that my arm rolled off my little foam mat and landed in a big freaking puddle. It was a very uncomfortable night, and I woke up on Tuesday with a sore throat.
We were intending to leave that day for a multi-night backpack around Lake Waikaremoana, but neither of us felt like spending another full four days in our damp tent, so we headed to a closer, less popular and free-of-charge loop hike through Whirinaki (pronounced "Fir-eh-NEH-kee") Forest, which sounded pretty awesome anyway, since it promised to wind us through one of the only areas of New Zealand populated by very large, old, beautiful trees. We also learned that some of those elusive, endangered, nocturnal kiwi birds lived in the forest, which had us pretty jazzed. We were planning on spending two nights on the "tramp," which is what New Zealanders call a backpacking trip, and then hit Lake Waikaremoana on the way back to Auckland, not to backpack around, but just to visit and maybe climb the first leg of the trail up to a little vista-point on a volcanic peak.
On the way to the forest from Rotorua we passed through a tiny town called Murupara. Brandon and I were out of dental floss, so we decided to stop and look around a bit. Murupara had one dingy shopping center, where people of all ages and sizes were loafing around at 2PM on a Tuesday, shouting across the parking lot to one another about personal matters and eyeing us suspiciously. I tried to surreptitiously take a picture of a couple thug-looking preteens, but one noticed and flipped me off. As you can imagine, we bought our floss and high-tailed it out of there.
Whirinaki forest was, indeed, a beautiful hike. We'd already spent three nights in a tent, but tramping promised a different degree of one-ness with nature, which Brandon and I were looking forward too. Plus, there were only two other cars in the "car park" (they don't call them "parking lots" here), which meant that we were sharing the whole forest with probably four other people. We started to hike at around 4PM, and after 8 kilometers (5 miles) through dense, damp woodlands, across a few streams, and around a few waterfalls we landed in Verns Camp, which was an unstaffed, open grassy area with a pit-toilet and a little open-air-shelter, complete with benches, a rain-water faucet, a clean concrete floor, and a wood-burning stove. We threw our stuff down there and thanked our lucky stars. We'd found some quality free camping at last.
So, this was Tuesday, the day it was supposed to rain for 24 hours straight, but it had been clear since that morning, so we optimistically pitched our tent right next to that little shelter with a great view of the open sky, and started to make some dinner. We wanted to get that wood-burning stove going, but the pre-chopped wood next to the shelter was pretty damp from the previous night's deluge, so we lit up our camp-stove and heated up our packet of Thai chicken. Of course, that's when it started to rain again. By the time Brandon looked over and said, "Do you think we should bring the tent in?" I'd already pulled up the stakes and brought it onto the concrete. I refused to spend another night in a puddle. We were still hoping that this little shower would come and go, but it didn't. We had a nice evening, though, tending to the little fire we eventually got going in the stove and watching bugs kamikaze dive into our tea light candles.
We got to sleep pretty late that night, probably partially because neither of us was looking forward to sleeping on concrete, even dry concrete. But we finally closed up the stove and went to bed, only to be woken up at 4AM by the sound of some serious rustling near the head of our tent, right where I'd left my backpack, which was where we were keeping most of our food. New Zealand isn't supposed to have any mammals, but they've been introduced by humans over the years, and I was pretty sure that some little critter was eating its way into my pack. One of Brandon's ears was plugged up (all this damp weather wasn't great for either of us), so he was convinced the sound was coming from the other direction, but when we did open the tent to check on my pack we discovered that about an inch and a half of a zipper on my pack had been chewed clear off and something had been nibbling on my pre-made PB&J pita sandwiches. We brought the pack inside and tried to sleep again, but not without noticing the distinct call of the kiwi bird, which does this remarkably loud whistle-thing in the middle of the night. If it hadn't been raining and we weren't so bothered about the rodent-in-our-food incident we might have taken our flashlight and looked for a kiwi bird, but we went back to bed then.
The next morning we looked at our tramping book and realized that the rest of the trail was going to be less-well-marked than the first leg of this journey had been, and it was going to require "a dozen fordings across a river." My throat was so sore I could barely talk, and B could only hear out of one ear, and we decided then and there to go back to Auckland that very day. We'd seen a lot and enjoyed our trip immensely, but there weren't going to be any other shelters along our trails and we didn't want to get any sicker that far away from tylenol and a hot shower.
So we hiked back out then and made ourselves some soup and hot tea by our car before heading back north. No matter how uncomfortable camping may seem, I think it's important to strip oneself of modern conveniences every once in a while; it toughens me up every time. Usually I make Brandon kill all bugs and won't eat anything if a fly lands on it, but by the end of the trip I was picking all sorts of bugs out of our tent, and when I found a fly in that final pot of soup we were making I flung it out into the surrounding wilderness and then we just ate it anyway. Brandon and I felt that our trip had been a success, even if it was shorter and less far-reaching than we'd originally planned it to be.
On the way back up to Auckland we stopped at a little town called Tirau to look in some gift shops, and we went in one place called "The Merchant of Tirau," which was run by a guy who owned a farm that Peter Jackson used for Hobbiton. The filmic location for Hobbiton is a place called Matamata, which wasn't far from where we were, and Brandon and I decided then and there that we'd have to go back that way sometime soon. Our British friend from our first week here, Ryan, now lives in a costal town called Tauranga, which is out near Matamata, so those are two reasons to head back down that way sometime this summer.
Interstingly, yesterday and the end of that trip also marked the end of the first quarter of our year in New Zealand. We know that there's so much more to do and see here before we leave, but it's been a tough balance to find ways to make enough money to do all the traveling we want while also being able to take enough time off to go on those side trips that we came here for. One of the things we talked about the past few days was how much time we, and people in general, spend planning things. B and I are pretty good at going with the flow, but at about this time last year we were buying our tickets to NZ, which means it's practically time to buy our tickets back home. Of course, we also should be buying our tickets to Australia and any other islands we want to explore before we head back to the states. So how do we plan that far ahead when we don't even really know what we're doing tomorrow? Last night B got a text from his acting agency here in Auckland saying there was an open call for a commercial today, so that's what we just got home from. I'll be interested to hear back from my professor's agent-friend, and I'll keep playing with those bands while writing and applying for odd jobs. Brandon's gig for that musical fell through, so he's going to be auditioning and handing out his resume some more, but right now we're just snuggling back into our cozy little home and getting ready for Christmas.
We hope everyone is enjoying their holiday preparations and the wintry weather!
Much love from south of the equator,
Brandon and Jenny
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