After exploring the green city of Wellington we headed inland past the volcanoes of Tongariro, to the massive crater lake Taupo and up to the karst country of Waitomo, famed for its glowworm caves.
Day 57 – Zealandia in Wellington
The weather forecast’s have not been the most accurate, but they’re generally ballpark, so when we saw that there was rain forecast for the following afternoon we quickly hopped in an Uber to get to Zealandia in time to join the 11am tour.
Zealandia is a great place, lots of research has gone into the fencing and nearly 9km has been put up around a patch of land only 3km from the centre of the City. This fence is cat, weasel, possum and rat proof.
A massive trapping mission has eradicated these predators from within the fences. In the 225 hectare park, based around two retired reservoirs, native plants are being replanted and a number of endangered native species have been reintroduced. Many of these, like the Saddleback, have been brought in from small islands where they are still able to survive.
These guys are so serious about protecting these ground nesting birds and animals that they check your backpack on the way in to make sure no rats etc have snuck into your bag! There is a massive team of volunteers who check the fences, manage the plants and take visitors like us on tours. We got the lovely Paula (originally from London!), who took our tour group of 9 around for two hours, taking us to the main spots where they know species will be found. This was great for birders like Aiden and I as we would not get to see some of these species anywhere else on the mainland in the wild. We saw the Kaka, one of their parrots, the Taheke, a large flightless bird, the Giant Weta, a large insect which can survive being frozen, and the Tuatara, the rare reptiles we met yesterday which are remnants of the dinosaur times to mention a few.
Some of the species are fed a supplementary diet to ensure their survival and breeding success. What’s nice is that the park is creating a ‘halo’ effect, with some of the bird species spreading out beyond the fences and breeding successfully. There are a number of these parks across New Zealand apparently, using this fence design to create predator free parks, almost like they used to be (although without the Haast Eagle which is extinct). People are even starting to believe that they can potentially eradicate these predators across the mainland!
Our tour took us on a slow meander up to the top dam, which was mostly emptied after they realised that there was a fault line running directly under it!
After our tour finished we had lunch in the café, it’s one of the sources of income to keep the park going, sources everything locally and uses sustainable materials so we had to! Great food too.
After lunch we decided to do some of the other tracks around the park, which go much further up than the dam. We took the ‘Round the Lake’ track after the dam, which was a lovely meandering path up and down through the forest. An actual real trail, not gravelled or tarmacked underfoot. We got back to the entrance in time to catch the last shuttle bus to the Wellington Cable Car and Botanic Gardens. We didn’t actually venture into the Gardens, we’d already walked over 10km by this point, and had another 2km to get home. Instead we checked out the view and started the walk down the hill, through Wellington.
We’d crossed the strait with as little food as possible to keep the bags empty, so we stopped at one of the few shops we saw on the way for some overpriced beans and bread.
Day 58 – Mt Victoria and Te Papa in Wellington
Despite a reputation for being the windiest city in the world, the day dawned sunny and fairly calm. Having a short hair cut means that you need to either grow it out whilst travelling, or get it cut every few months. I’d figured that I’d do it on the North Island before we went into SE Asia as I was more likely to get a hair cut that I liked, with no language barrier etc. Wellington seemed like a good place as we were staying in the city for a few days and there were plenty of options. Unfortunately, most of them are closed Mondays and the ones I called only had space at 3pm, right in the middle of the day and any activities we’d be doing. Then one had space right then. That should have been a warning but I was getting desperate, so headed the few hundred metres around the corner.
My hairdresser was a lovely lady from Thailand. I thought she’d understood what I wanted, and to be fair to her I did ask her to cut it to about half length on the top, which is possibly what she did. Either way, it’s officially the worst haircut I’ve ever had. By a long way. No close up pictures of me for a few weeks! Hopefully this isn’t a sign of things to come…
I arrived back at the hostel looking like a hedgehog and ushered everyone out for our day’s plans – a walk up Mount Victoria and then an afternoon in Te Papa Museum. It was only one km or so to the base of the hill, with a little park at Pirie Street for the kids to play in for a few minutes.
We headed up the track to the saddle, stopping off to check out the film site for Lord Of The Rings where the hobbits were hiding from the Black Rider just off the road.
From The Saddle, we took the Te Ranga a Hiwi track to the top. This was officially the kids favourite walk ever! On the way to the top (around a km) we passed a treehouse, rotting log area with Weta to find (which we used as our picnic stop), climbing ropes, logs to run along and ‘hunt’ flies, tall logs to walk on and a super fast slide.
The views from the top were well worth the climb, especially on a clear day like ours. Wellington is easily visible from the top; a really green city with lots of hills. We could see the Interislander docks, our hostel, the Zealandia fences and Te Papa from here!
We headed down on the ‘Lookout’ trail to the coast, before walking along the front to Te Papa.
Te Papa is a super new and modern museum, with loads of interactive screens and exhibits, so it was generally great for the kids. The earthquake/volcano section was very educational and allowed us to teach them about tsunami waves, plate subduction and movement and experience an earthquake. There was a good section as well on how people have changed the land.
In other areas we found this massive blue whale heart and some confetti art…
We’d decided to eat out properly (rather than as cheaply as possible) and the kids voted for Italian so we headed to Ellen and Blair Street, a couple of streets over from Te Papa, where there are tons of restaurants. We chose Napolini’s where we could get Evie a pizza and us some pasta. Very yummy 😊.
Day 59 – North to Lake Taupo
Sleep was a little broken in the night by the storm which hit. Gale force winds and heavy rain do not go well with windows which can no longer be latched closed, like the one in the bathroom which banged open at some point in the night. It had to be wedged shut with the bin in the end. Ah the joy of hostels!
After a leisurely start, Chris left to pick up the car from the rental company round the corner. We used Bargain Car Rentals again – they’re so cheap! Like last time the pick up was not smooth, and they noticed that one of the indicator lights was broken. Chris agreed to take it to the garage across the street to get it fixed, but they didn’t actually have the right bulb in the end so he had to take it back and get another car. Their only other one, it was at least marginally better than the other one. Our initial car was a champagne colour, with dirty beige seats and so many dents you could hardly see what shape it was originally! Our theory is that as we’re dropping it off at another rental office they could get rid of the worst car from their fleet!
Either way, Chris turned up in ‘Stormy’ (continuing our latest tradition of naming the cars after weather), we loaded up and got on the road for a long drive North to Lake Taupo in the centre of the North Island.
The drive out of Wellington was initially picturesque, with green hills, blue seas and small towns. After a while things got pretty flat again though. Especially on our way past Palmerstone North. We decided against elongating our journey with a drive through but John Cleese once said “If you wish to kill yourself but lack the courage to, I think a visit to Palmerston North will do the trick.” Unsurprisingly this didn’t go down well…!
The hills returned after Palmerston, getting very bumpy after Taihape, but so did the rain. The sunny spells interspersed with quick showers we’d been having gave way to general rain. We’d be passing ‘Mt Doom’ from Lord of the Rings on our way, but at this rate it’d be obscured in cloud and rain. Nooo!
We were right – not only zero visibility, but as we drove past the volcanos it was snowing! So that’s gale force winds, heavy rain, sun and snow, all in 12 hours. Welcome to New Zealand!!
As we came down the other side, the skies cleared and we arrived at the southern end of Lake Taupo in the sun. We had to make a stop in the supermarket for food (now that we have a car to carry it around) so we didn’t get to our house for the night until about 6pm, passing the Huhai Steaming Cliffs on the way. We knew from our trip to Te Papa that this lake is a flooded crater from a super volcano which erupted 25,000 years ago. These steaming cliffs are proof that it’s still active. Apparently there’s too little larva for a super volcano and not enough time for it to fill in our lifetimes. Phew!
With rain forecast for the whole of tomorrow, we decided to head out down to the lake shore, which was only a few hundred metres away from us. We found the world’s tiniest beach on the shores.
We found a path alongside the shore to follow and found a second beach area, marginally bigger then the last. The black sand and large amounts of pumice rocks were more evidence of the volcanic past. Aiden loved the pumice and they both had fun throwing large, super light rocks into the lake and watching them float. That’s not what rocks normally do!
Back to our ‘bach’ (New Zealand’s term for holiday cottages). It’s old but spacious, with lots of cooking equipment and a massive box of toys for the kids. They were in heaven and could not have been happier about our impending day stuck here by rain.
I had harboured some hopes of heading out to do the Tongariro Crossing by myself tomorrow, but with temperatures below zero and snow/sleet forecasted in the town below, it didn’t seem like a good idea after all!
Day 60 – a rainy day on the shores of Lake Taupo
The rain fell pretty much all day, although rather frustratingly the sun was out a lot, but it never stopped raining. And every time I thought about venturing out for a quick walk the heavens would open and rain, or sometimes hail, would start falling again.
Ah well, the kids were happy with the toy box and the dvd collection.
The weather finally cleared around 5.30pm so the kids and I made a run for the beach (whilst Chris prepared dinner) as they were keen to play on it again. I left them there and wandered a little further down the coast along the path we’d found for some extra lake views.
Back home in time for dinner (and another film!)
Day 61 – Waitomo walks, caves and glowworms
The next day was dry. We had to clean this house before we could leave, so only just left at around 10am. The drive over to Waitomo was a good one, with lovely hills and pretty windy roads. All very green. Our route was pretty cross country as we headed west from the bottom of the lake and then north. It was a pretty long drive to get over to the Waitomo area with only a quick reservoir side stop for sandwiches along the way.
Our first stop was the Marokpoa falls. Someone had posted that they were the most beautiful falls in NZ so we thought they were worth a look. Could they be better than the Devil’s Punchbowl?
It’s a short trail down from the road to the falls, which were pretty nice, much wider and louder, although probably not better in our opinion…
A couple of minutes down the road there are the Peri Peri Caves. Another short trail up and over to a cave which you can go in. There are steps leading down into it and a couple of wooden viewing platforms. After making some echoes (we had the place to ourselves) and some shadow puppets it was back to the car.
Next stop was the Mangapohue Natural Bridge, which was definitely worth coming out this way for. At some time in the past this was a long cave. As the water eroded it’s way down and out, the roof destabilised and fell in on all but a 30m section. This has left a path on the side of the gorge following the river, which leads up to the arch section. It’s pretty remarkable that it’s still standing at all as it seems so unsupported!
Our final stop for the day was back towards Waitomo on the Ruakuri Trail. This promised to have a couple of tunnels and follows a river which goes through a cave so we thought it was worth checking out.
Being closer to Waitomo it was much busier, but great fun, with little windy paths climbing steps and descending down around through the native forest, at times going through tunnels and into caves to look at the river flowing by in the gorge. A really interesting trail which we all loved.
On the way out you cross a bridge across the river in a small gorge. Supposedly a good place for glow worms if you come back in the dark… an activity for the evening?
The kids were done with walking and we’d run out of time really to do the Waitomo Walkway as it would be 6km return so Chris drove back to Waitomo and the little museum they have in the visitor centre whilst I walked back along the walkway. It was initially hot and sunny and I was down to a strappy top (which is pretty much a first in New Zealand).
The walkway follows the stream that flows through farmland, mainly on its own path, but I did have to go through a cow field which was packed with heifers (young cows). Some immediately came over to see me and stand by the gate…
I’ve walked in the countryside a lot in the UK and never really had an issue with cows, but I’d never done it alone before and these ones were pretty feisty (some were running over) so I’ll admit to being a bit nervous. Plus I couldn’t see the way out of the field as it went over a low hill which made it hard to follow the normal rules.
With few other options (walking back to the car park and then along the road to Waitomo??) I waved my arms about and they backed up, apparently they were scared of me too. Time to be boss. After shooing them back from the stile I climbed in, talking loudly to them and waving my arms about – they backed up. Walking across the field was ok, although others started heading over and they were all following me. As I neared the other side of the field one came running at me but whirled about as I turned and shouted at it. Ah the power. Pretty relieved to be out of the field though!
The rest of the way back was pretty uneventful, except for the crazy bout of wind and rain for the five minutes that I tried to climb the lookout hill in the open. I wasn’t that desperate to see the view of Waitomo so wussed out and headed back down!
The kids were playing in the park at the end of the walkway in the sun which of course came out again as soon as I was back in the shelter of the trees.
Then we couldn’t resist the offer of a roast dinner for £6 at the restaurant next door to the hostel so headed there for dinner. Not quite an English roast, with a thinner gravy, but still pretty good.
All that was left to do was see some glowworms, seeing as that’s what Waitomo’s famous for! Being cheap and on a budget we headed back to the Ruakari trail, walking the 500m or so to the bridge by torchlight. There were glowworms everywhere, in the bushes and low cliffs all the way to the bridge and we could get really close to some and see the strings they use to catch their prey. We could also see some moving around.
No one else was here, which made it seem more adventurous as we walked back and forth on the bridge in the dark, using only the wooden rail to guide us. Well worth doing!
Next up was Rotorua with all its geothermal activity. We’re pretty excited about this place, follow us here. Or skip back to the end of our South Island adventures in Kaikoura and Picton.