Family Vacation

In early December, Mark and Anna mentioned the idea to me of taking a holiday between Christmas and New Year’s.  I told Anna that I hadn’t been to the east coast yet and really wanted to, so it was decided that we would visit the area.  So began our family vacation!

Mark and Anna picked me up around noon on Boxing Day.  We weren’t driving too far on this day, only to somewhere between Taupo and Rotorua.  One of our rest breaks was at the Taupo bungee jumping site, so we watched some people plummet down towards the water off of a cliff for awhile.  Don’t worry, I haven’t done it!  We stopped for the night in Turangi, a small town where they had previously stayed.  Mark and Anna had reserved adjoining rooms, which was very nice.  I got my own room, bathroom, even my own kitchenette.  It was getting to be about evening time, so we walked into town to buy breakfast foods before dinner.  Mark is very interested in fishing, so he was drawn across the road from the grocer to the local fishing shop.  Once inside he got to talking with the owner and found out that the owner was also a guide, meaning he could take us out fishing in the morning.

This is how I came to be on a boat at 6AM on Tuesday morning on Lake Taupo.

I didn’t know we were going to be fishing, so I wasn’t too well prepared in the clothing department.  I had on short sleeves, a lightweight jacket, jeans, and my GT baseball cap.  Not too warm in the pre-dawn wind!  Once the sun started to come up, it got steadily warmer, but man, that first bit was cold.  It was quite fun to be on the lake that early, though.  I got to see the early morning mist rising up off of the lake, and I always have liked morning light better than afternoon light.  I also had never been fishing as far as I could remember (although I do have some slight recognition of my grandfather teaching me to cast once, so I must have been on the water sometime), so the new experience was broadening and kept my attention.  I caught the first fish of the day, and that started me on a roll.  Lake Taupo is full of American trout which was introduced just so people could fish for it.  It is illegal to sell trout in New Zealand, which keeps it open to only sport fishermen.  We threw back most of what we caught, but we did keep two good-sized fish.  The original plan was to have it professionally smoked and vacuum-packed to ship back to my parents in the USA (sort of proof that I actually did it), but no one was open because of the public holiday.  We cooked the fish for dinner that night in Rotorua, one with herbs and one with a sweet chilli sauce.  They were delicious!  It was quite cool to be eating the fish that I had caught earlier in the day.  I have never done that before.

After the fishing, we took quick showers, packed up, and took off for Rotorua.  Rotorua is in the middle of the Taupo Volcanic Zone (TVZ) of New Zealand and has a LOT of geothermal activity.  It’s sort of like a commercialised and civilised Yellowstone National Park but with fewer geysers and more thermal pools.  Mark was really excited about taking me on a luge ride, so that was the first stop.  We drove a little outside of Rotorua and pulled up to what was most definitely a tourist attraction.  What with the school holidays and Christmas and everything, there were a ton of tourists, the most I had ever seen in one place in New Zealand.  We took a gondola up to the top of the mountain and got in line for the luge rides.  I wasn’t too sure what to expect, and Mark wasn’t alleviating my nervousness.  He kept describing it as a sort of sled at really fast speeds down a concrete track.  In my mind I am thinking, “Yeah, and what happens when we crash?”  It’s just one of those things that you have to do, so I put on my helmet and settled in to the luge.  It’s basically a sled on three wheels with a steering concept that is very simple: push forward to stop and pull towards you to go faster.  You use your body mainly to steer, but you can also turn the steering rod a bit to help.  The first ride down I took the “scenic / beginners” track and had a great time.  It was weird at first and took some getting used to, but it was great fun.  The next time around I took the “intermediate” track which included the “Little Dipper” and some other large drops meant to kill your stomach and make you fly off of the ground a little.  I remembered something my dad told me when I was learning how to drive – “You can’t steer if you’re breaking” – and decided to go a lot faster down this time.  It was way easier to go faster because you hugged the curves more and it was a smoother ride.  I didn’t attempt the “advanced” track as I heard it had a jump in it, similar to a ski jump, and was glad that I didn’t when I heard a story the next day from a friend who broke her ankle when she fell off on the landing.

The next day I spent a little bit of time catching up with a friend who lives in Rotorua while Anna did some shopping.  I joined her after awhile and then kept Mark company outside while she continued to shop.  That afternoon we headed out 27km outside of town to Wai-o-tapu Thermal Wonderland.  A little commercialised, but there weren’t as many tourists as at the thermal pools closer to town.  It was a really cool trip.  I was pretty young when I went to Yellowstone, but I remembered enough to know that this place was totally different.  Wai-o-tapu smells different, probably because there are several mixtures of sulphurous gasses, as well as a lot more colourful.  One pool, the Champagne Pool, has a brilliant ring of orange surrounded the edge, and the Devil’s Bath is an electric green colour that I didn’t believe existed in nature.  We went on the longest walk possible, going all the way out to a waterfall at the edge of the park.  I got a slight headache from all the sulphur in the air, but a bottle of water afterwards helped a lot.  We spent the rest of the afternoon driving around looking at the scenery and other hot spots in Rotorua.

That evening we also took a walk in the park close to our cottage.  One thing that amazed me about Rotorua was that it existed at all.  Everywhere there are wooden fences blocking off a small square of land where a hot pool has emerged.  These pools are all over the city.  Everywhere you can look in the distance and see steam rising above somewhere.  While we were wandering in Wai-o-tapu and around the park, I kept thinking, “This earth under my feet could collapse into a hot pool any second.”  It’s a bit of a crazy thought that Rotorua exists at all, much less as the commercialised tourist destination that it is!  (Rotorua is often called “Roto-vegas” by Kiwis to accentuate its commercialisation, its shopping and entertainment, and its attempts to become a tourist destination.)

Next, it was on to the east coast.  We had picked a highway through a national park as opposed to the highway that went through Taupo because I had been there a few months prior.  (Quick note about New Zealand state highways: they are not that big.  They are small two lane roads with occasional room for passing, and oftentimes you encounter roundabouts and stoplights along the way.  They are a lot like local highways back home, especially in back country areas.)  We planned on it being about a 4 hour journey to the coast.  Little did we know what we were getting ourselves into!  This road included roughly 105kms of unsealed road (read: gravel road) winding through mountains around a lake.  Well, we got our scenery!  The four hours turned into more than six, but it didn’t matter much to me.  This was the most gorgeous scenery I have seen in New Zealand, or at least the north island (the awesomeness of Mount Cook and Milford Sound cannot be overlooked).  This lake was absolutely amazing.  About halfway around, I finally opened up my Lonely Planet to investigate this route (something I should have done at the beginning; then we would have known what we were in for!) and found that we were circling Lake Waikaremoana (Sea of Rippling Waters).  This lake was huge, gorgeous, and awe-inspiring.  It really is one of New Zealand’s best kept secrets, partially aided by the fact that it is so difficult to get there.  There are some great tracks around it, and I would love to kayak around the border.  It had rained the night before, so everything was new and green and magnificent.  Close to the end, we came across a huge waterfall, and once we got to the other side realised it was part of a pair of waterfalls.  I am happy that we didn’t know how far it was going to be, or that we would have to travel so far on unsealed road (in the Jaguar!), because the scenic drive was more than worth it.  There aren’t sufficient words to describe how beautiful this area was.

After exiting the national forestry area, we were almost on the coast.  I have long wanted to explore this Hawke’s Bay area, not least because it is where much of the award-winning wineries are located.  We were staying in Napier, the art deco capital of the world.  In 1931 or so, Napier was completely destroyed by an earthquake, and the entire town was rebuilt in the style of the times; hence the current art deco capital status.  It’s a really cool city, and it really feels like a beach town.  The weather was crazy warm, especially after living with the cooler Wellington winds for six months, and I enjoyed every second of it.  After dinner we took a leisurely walk along the beach, and I felt like I was back in Florida on my annual family vacation.

The next day was devoted to wineries.  I got to pick all of the ones I wanted to visit, which was very exciting as I have become very interested in New Zealand wine during my stay here.  I got to visit several, including Mission Estate, Church Road, Te Mata, and Craggy Range.  The landscaping at these wineries is incredible, especially the bigger ones with impressive main buildings (such as Mission Estate’s old seminary).  I did wine tasting at each winery and took a history and building tour at Mission Estate.  I am a chardonnay drinker usually, tending to stay away from sauvignon blanc and the reds, and my tasting stayed mainly to that line.  I found some good rieslings, some good pinot gris, and I even discovered a new type of wine that is now my favourite: viognier.  It’s lighter than chardonnay and has only begun to be grown seriously in the region.  Very good!  The drive around to all of the wineries was also good, and we went to the beach at the end of it all.  The water was cold to me still, around 16 degrees, but that is apparently warm for the Kiwis who were splashing around.  I dipped my toe in to say that I did and then escaped back to the dunes to sit with Anna.

The next day (New Year’s Eve day) we drove back into Wellington, making sure to stop in Martinborough and at Palliser Estates, and really good and well-awarded winery in the region between Hawke’s Bay and Wellington (one that also exports to America!).  It was a fantastic trip in all.  I got to see a lot of the north island that I had wanted to see and was worried I wouldn’t have time to visit.  Mark and Anna were absolutely fantastic, paying for everything like it was a real family vacation.  They were really great for taking me around, for treating me to the trip.  I was really tired when I got back, too tired for a big New Year’s party, but it was worth it!