Volcanoes and Caves: Rotorua, Waitomo, and Tongariro

We left the Coromandel and drove along the Bay of Plenty before heading inland to Rotorua. Here is a bunch of volcanic/geothermal stuff, like spas and hot pools. And the whole town smells of sulfur. Lovely, really. We planned to do some walking around town, as this area is very Maori and you can visit some of the villages, but it was raining pretty good. We limited our visit to the local pub Pig & Whistle, where we got a giant sandwich, a cold Guinness (why was it cold?!?), and a blah house-made lager (Swine Lager). We attempted to understand the rugby highlights on the tvs, but really there are just some rules we don't quite get. Like the big push pile: why do they kick the ball? I thought it was for picking up and running. Whatever...

After our rainy stop in Rotorua we headed southwest and found a place to stay in Waitomo. This is yet another place that Hilary actually remembers, and we booked a cave tour with the company she used in 2003. The next day we got in their van and drove out to the cave, donned our wetsuits, and crawled in a hole. Waitomo apparently means "wet hole". The real claim to fame here are the glowworms, fly larvae with glowing poo that live in the caves. Our tour spent several hours underground and we visited several caverns with the glowworms, floated/swam around in the cold water in our super-thick wetsuits, and spent some time tubing down the dark passageways. It was a good time. No pictures of this, sorry.

After our complimentary hot shower, we booked it out of Waitomo to make it to Taupo and the Huka Honey Hive before it closed for the day. There we tasted lots of NZ varietal honey, including Manuka, Pohutakawa, Rata, and some other flowers I don't remember. We had actually picked up a 500g jar of Manuka honey in Tutukaka (at the gas station!) when we first arrived, and after the taste tests we decided it wasn't the best the islands have to offer. We got 1 kg of Rewarewa honey (it's apparently aka honeysuckle), which we decided we liked best. Then we moved on to the mead tasting. In addition to the apiary, there is a meadery affiliated with the shop and they have tons of different kinds of mead. Unfortunately, they limit the tasting to 3 samples, and each sample was about 1/4 oz, or not enough to really taste it. And you can imagine how long it takes to empty a bottle 1/4 oz at a time. We actually asked how long the bottles had been open (they tasted a little stale) and the tasting lady told us that they keep for months in the fridge after you open them. Perhaps our definition of "keep" is just different. The mead was unremarkable, though probably more due to the circumstances of the tasting than anything else. We didn't buy any. The highlight of our honey trip (besides our giant jar of honey) was the ice cream. We got a scoop of Pohutakawa honey ice cream, which was absolutely delicious.

After the Honey Hive kicked everyone out at closing, we finished our ice cream and drove down the east side of the lake. Nice lake, very wavy. We made our way down to Ohakune, apparently the carrot capitol of NZ. This adds carrots to the list of "something-capitols" we have visited, after kauri, kumara, and sheep shearing. The giant statues are kind of endearing. We got a site at the Top 10 Holiday Park there, which is pretty pimped out. They even have a "spa" and a gas grill. Fancy.

We had a down day since the weather on the mountains was rainy. Slept in, went to the supermarket, and had a couple of really great meals. Poached eggs on toast with chard and bacon and our Tamarillo vinegar; and grilled chicken with sage-spiked smashed kumara, grilled mushrooms, griddle bacon, and salad dressed with Tamarillo vinegar. We eat well.

Today we got ourselves up at 5:15am and made for Tongariro National Park. This park holds three active volcanoes: Tongariro, Ngauruhoe, and Ruapehu. Ngauruhoe is better known as Mt Doom from LOTR. There are lots of walking tracks, and we did the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. Hilary had also done this walk in 2003. This time Hil started from Mangatepopo (the place everyone starts at), thus our early start to try and beat the crowds. Aaron drove to Ketatahi (the other end) and started there; the car keys were swapped in the middle.  The 19.4 km trek took us each about 5 hours, Hilary a little less since she was going the easy direction (less vertical climb, more gentle slopes). It was a bit cloudy/foggy, but great hiking weather. Very good walk, though much more built up in the last several years with stairs and erosion-reducing rubber strips and boardwalks. Less exciting as a wilderness track that way, but it should last longer.

Opoutere and the Coromandel Peninsula

One of the places Hilary actually has a specific memory of from her previous travels in NZ is Opoutere, on the east coast of the Coromandel. So we drove there to visit the YHA Opoutere hostel, where we got a parking spot for a couple of days. Opoutere is situated on a bay with a river coming in, and the hostel is near both. Very pretty. On our way across we stopped in Thames (on the west side of the peninsula) and picked up some local catch fresh fish for dinner. Yum!

In Opoutere we took the kayaks (free!) out on the river one day, through the mangroves in the bay and over the shallows (sometimes too shallow, with more pushing than paddling). We rode the tide in and paddled among the mangrove and pohutukawa trees. The river got less exciting when the surface got gummed up with pollen and we couldn't see into the water anymore. We turned around at a low bridge and rode the tide out back into the bay. It was really windy and pushing us back to shore despite the running tide, so we turned around after a bit and came back in.

Later that day, right before low tide, we took a trip out to the sand flats at the end of the estuary to go hunting for shellfish. There is a bird sanctuary on the sandspit at the edge of the bay, so we had lots of company looking for things to eat. Lucky for us, the 15-month ban on shellfish collecting in the area was lifted the day before, and there were tons of cockles to be had. We didn't find any pipis though, other than dead ones; we figure the algae bloom that caused the ban might have taken them all out. We collected almost the daily limit of cockles to add to our dinner.

The cockles were great eating. 100% opened when we steamed them, and they were very fresh and salty tasting. No sand or grit at all, just delicious. Another couple had gone snorkeling for green-lipped mussels in the high-current area between the bay and the ocean. They collected the biggest mussels we've ever seen, quite beautiful. We were jealous, but after eating our cockles decided that we had a great meal too.

The next day we took a trip up the coast to Hahei. We took a short walk to Gemstone Bay, where there is a snorkeling trail. This time we arrived about half-way between the tides, and even at low tide there would be plenty of water here. The trail was ok, mostly fish and not a lot of coral/anemones or things like that. Cold water too, brr. Upon returning to Hahei we decided to snorkel some more near some rocks just off the very beautiful beach. Here we found more interesting stuff to look at, including crazy orange coral, crabs, urchins and a bunch of camouflaged fish among the rocks. The water was a bit colder here though, and we headed down to Hot Water Beach just down the road.

At Hot Water Beach a bit of lava is just underground and at low tide you can dig yourself a spa pool in the sand. They're not kidding about the hot water either, our first attempt got us a pool that was burning hot, even after the addition of much sea water, and we were forced to abandon it. Folks walked by and inspected it after we left and they all jumped back, the water was so hot. You could even see bubbles coming up through the sand. Our next hole was much better, though still very hot it was not scalding. We left the side toward the ocean open so that the waves washed in some cool water. It was a fun experience, though crowded and sulfury.

We liked the Coromandel. If we have time at the end of the trip, we might come back for more shellfish. Maybe then we'll go get ourselves some mussels too.

Some exciting things about New Zealand

Thought we'd mention some of the odd things we find exciting now that we've left South America and are in New Zealand.

Potable Water
Potable tap water is just about the most exciting thing ever. Water comes out of the wall, and you can drink it. After months of going out and buying bottled water, making sure we have enough water, rinsing our toothbrushes with bottled water, and otherwise worrying about water, we LOVE potable tap water. We can also now eat raw veggies and salads. Score!

Speaking English
We got fairly good at Spanish, at least for "standard" conversations like getting a hotel or taxi, ordering food, talking about our trip or where we're from. Long conversations were not really possible as we lacked sufficient vocabulary (and the ability to use past tense for all but a couple words), but we got along. In New Zealand, we can just open our mouths and words come out. And people understand! It's been fun. The first few days we kept answering questions in Spanish, but by now we're back in the swing of English.

A Car
Wow, having our own transportation is great. We don't need to plan ahead for bus schedules and which towns we can actually reach. We can just drive. And if we don't like the town we find, we just keep going. Miss something? Turn around! Public transit may be cheaper, but having our own car is totally worth it. Driving on the left side of the road turns out to be no big deal, too.

Not being a Gringo
In South America, we were marked as tourists from a few hundred yards. It's not really avoidable, we're very white. This isn't really a problem per se, but it does get old being an obvious outsider. In New Zealand, you can't tell we're foreign until we start talking. Even then, we're not that far out since English is our first language.

International Cuisine and/or Cooking
Nothing against local fare, but we're used to having access to all sorts of food, from Cambodian soups to Russian pastry to African stews, not to mention whatever we can cook up. The food in South America was not bad, but it got monotonous. And we didn't always have access to a kitchen, so we had to eat out a lot. Chicken, rice, and potato for every meal is not really satisfying long-term. We got to Auckland and got sushi, Indian tandoori wraps, vegan chocolate-mint cake, and whatever else we could find. And we found Asian supermarkets, farmers markets, and pretty much whatever produce could be found. We stocked up on our traditional kitchen staples and have been eating well lately off the local produce and steady access to kitchens. So far, we haven't eaten a potato despite finding the Peruvian blues in Kerikeri. Our spicy soup with local catch fish, however, is excellent.

Plumbing
Now, it's not like South America didn't have plumbing. There were pipes and water indoors and all that jazz (minus the potable part, but we covered that already). What were missing were a few important features we take for granted in the US. First, U-bends. Admittedly, Ecuador and Peru had these. Bolivia didn't, which perhaps isn't too surprising as it's on the lower end of the development scale. However, Chile and Argentina were strangely lacking as well. What we can't figure out is why anyone would not install one, given that they're pretty inexpensive and trivial to add to even existing fixtures. Who wants to smell sewer all the time? The less important thing we missed is robust plumbing. Nowhere in South America could we flush paper. Again, this is not really a big deal once you stop forgetting about it, but it's rather nice to have that ability.

The Northlands

Spent the last week in the Northlands, which is the skinny peninsula north of Auckland. The first half of the week we were in Tutukaka, doing some diving and snorkeling and failing to find the local shellfish which you can harvest somewhere in the mouth of the Ngunguru River. Not much in the way of pictures of all that, but it was a good time visiting the Poor Knight Islands, and Hilary dove a wreck a few miles offshore. If we have time and money at the end of the trip, we might go back to Tutukaka and jump in the water again.

After we left the Tutukaka coast, we drove to the Bay of Islands and stayed a few nights in Paihia at the Waitangi Holiday Park. The day we arrived we took a walk along the path from Haruru Falls to Waitangi. For the next day, we signed up to visit Roberton Island, which sounded like a great place. There were hiking trails and a snorkeling trail in one of the two lagoons on this deserted island 20 minutes offshore, and they told us the water in the lagoons was warm and we didn't need wetsuits. [ocean temp is about 19 C.] Well, don't believe what they tell you. The island is not deserted, sporting several houses and a fleet of private boats constantly landing new people on the beach. The "lagoons" are actually tide pools, and we got there at 10:30 and left at 2:30--low tide was at 1. So the whole time we were there the "lagoons" were dry. We walked along the snorkeling trail, which at that point consisted of some pointy rocks and a couple of oystercatchers looking for food. Not exactly what we signed up for. We did snorkel in the bay, but of course the water was cold and we didn't stay in long. There was one hiking path to the top of the island, and we did walk up that. After that, we were just stuck there until the boat came to get us. We parked ourselves in the shade of a tree and ate lunch, then hung out while the wind whipped at us. It was very pretty, at least.

We left Paihia and stopped in Kerikeri for the Sunday farmer's market. It rained on us, but the market was really nice and we picked up some beautiful veggies and mushrooms and a flat of eggs, and a bottle of Tamarillo vinegar. Guess what a tamarillo is...it's a tomate de arbol which we encountered as juice and trees all over Ecuador. [they're native to South America but grow it in NZ now too.] Go figure! It's good in vinegar too, so we were happy to get some. We drove more north and stopped for lunch overlooking Doubtless Bay. The rain seemed to slack off so we decided to try for the north tip of the island and drove all the way to Tapotupotu Bay near Cape Reinga (which is not actually the northernmost point in NZ, but it's close).

At Tapotupotu we got a "site" at the DOC campground and set off on the walking trail toward the lighthouse at Cape Reinga. Not half an hour after we started, it began to rain on us. We hid under a bush for a bit, then continued on to Sandy Bay when it was a little less rainy. We were rewarded by some sun when we got to the Bay, and jumped in the water to play in the waves. The beach was great: gently sloping to the sea, all sand and no rocks, and super clear water. At one point we noticed a sting ray at our feet and had to leave the water to avoid stepping on it and getting stabbed. The tide was rushing in and we decided to head back before the beach was totally underwater. On our way back, it rained again, but was sort of dry while we cooked dinner next to our car back in Tapotupotu.

The next morning we made the short drive to Cape Reinga and walked down to the lighthouse. There you can see the Tasman Sea meet the Pacific Ocean. It doesn't sound like much, but actually you can see the two bodies of water collide and the waves run into each other. There is all kinds of churning and whirlpools, and waves breaking against seemingly nothing. It's quite chaotic and impressive. You can also just make out some offshore islands to the northwest, which apparently a Maori chief once swam to. Considering he'd have to swim through the crazy smashing waves from two oceans, that's basically a superhuman feat.

Also at Cape Reinga is a sacred Maori site: the tree where souls climb down to the water for their journey to the spirit world. It's quite the tree, hanging off a cliff on this tiny spit of land sticking into the ocean. No pictures of course, out of respect to the tapu.

We drove down the west coast and stopped for lunch in the Puketi forest. Cool forest, but at the time it was occupied by a family illegally camping on the beach with dogs blocking the trailhead [dogs aren't allowed in the parks since they kill kiwi] and a suspicious-looking naked guy in the picnic area. We didn't stay long. After lunch we drove into the Waipu forest and visited Tane Mahuta--the tallest kauri tree in the world at 51 m. We had mentioned in the US that we were getting less and less impressed by this or that big tree, but the kauri in NZ are huge. This one is maybe 2000 years old and not only really tall but also very wide. From the ground you can really only see trunk, hopefully the pictures convey some sense of how huge this tree is.

We looked into the camping in Waipu, but decided that Trounson Karui Park seemed like a better bet. It's a "mainland island" which seeks to keep out all non-natives through aggressive trapping and baiting (with poison) to restore the natural ecological balance. We got a parking spot in their campground and took a walk through the trees, full of kauri and other cool NZ trees. The strange NZ birds were all around and chirping/grunting/hooting. Nice park. After dark we went back into the forest to see if we could spot a kiwi, which are nocturnal. Trounson is home to a decent population of kiwis, and we actually caught a glimpse of one as it scurried away from us in the dark. We also saw lots of glowworms (which don't move and are much easier to find as they glow), but didn't see any of the nocturnal carnivorous snails. Ah well, Hilary would probably have stepped on the snails anyway.

After a cold night in Trounson, we headed south again. Our last stop in the Northlands was a couple wineries near Auckland: Coopers Creek and Kumeu River. The wine was good and we got a few bottles to go with dinners for the next few days. Off to the Coromandel!

Kia Ora! Welcome to New Zealand

Our flight was delayed an hour, and our bags got wet in BA and stewed in the plane for 15 hours, but we made it to Auckland without incident. And now we're in New Zealand!

Our first order of business was to buy a car to drive around in. Since it's early summer, there are lots of cars to buy in the backpacker markets. Yes, there are special car markets for backpackers looking to buy a car for a few months. Go NZ. Our hostel (K Road City Travelers) was right in downtown, so we walked a few blocks to the closest car dealer and looked around, as well as checking out the fliers pinned to the board at the hostel and the internet boards. We test drove a few little Mazda Familias (there are lots of weird models here, mostly imported second-hand from Japan). We contacted a guy from the internet board about a Subaru Legacy and met him the next day for another test drive. We decided we liked the Legacy and arranged for a pre-purchase inspection from a local mechanic the following morning. The inspection turned up some obvious points (two bald tires, wobbly side mirror) we had noticed ourselves, and some more serious bits (overworn front right wheel bearing, leaking radiator) that would cost a pretty penny. We bargained down the price to account for the repairs and handed over a giant stack of cash--all $20s, non-sequential. And now we've got a car! His name is Larry, apparently.

We drove out of Auckland the next morning, and arrived in Tutukaka, near Whangarei. Gas is over $2/l, yikes. That's about US$6.20/gallon. Good thing NZ is a lot smaller than the US and we won't be driving that far, even if we go all the way down and back. We scheduled car repairs in Ngunguru and signed up for some diving with Dive! Tutukaka. Our "site", which for us is just a spot to park the car, is at the Tutukaka holiday park and just a few blocks from the marina. We geared up the car in Whangarei, and now we've got the week to spend in Tutukaka playing in the water. So far NZ is rather pretty; we'll try to actually take pictures and post them up. If you've been to Hawaii, it looks kind of like that.

South America, a retrospective

Here's a little map of our route.

Countries visited: 5
Furthest north/south: Quito (0.25 S) / Buenos Aires (34.6 S)
Furthest west/east: Piura (80.6 W) / Buenos Aires (58.4 W)
Highest spot visited: Sol de Manana geysers (southwest Bolivia) 4900 m
Highest spot spent overnight: Laguna Colorada (southwest Bolivia) 4300 m
Highest spot hiked to: Pasachoa (near Quito, Ecuador) 4200 m
Highest spot seen briefly through a bus window: Aconcagua (Chile/Argentina border) 6962 m

Best wine: Chilean Carmenere with Rodrigo in Santiago (thanks!!!)
Least favorite wine: Peru (yes, all of it)

Best accidental food order: Tacu Tacu (Lima)
Worst accidental food order: Cow Lung (Lima)--same meal!

Favorite cities: Cuenca, Ecuador; Arequipa, Peru; Sucre, Bolivia
Favorite country: Ecuador
Favorite volcanoes: Tungurahua (Ecuador) for the name (throat of fire) and Cotopaxi (Ecuador) for the view
Favorite museum: Nazca, Peru
Easiest accents to understand: Ecuador, Bolivia
Hardest accents to understand: Chile
Worst border crossings: Ecuador into Peru & Bolivia into Chile
Easiest border crossing: Peru into Bolivia (other than the $270 in visa fees)
Prettiest money: Chile

Lessons learned: always wear skirts for bus travel, always have your towel, ordering random food at restaurants not knowing what it is is fun, organized tours are usually not worth it, make friends with other travelers because you will be seeing them again, ... we'll think of more on the plane.

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is our last stop in South America! My, how time flies.

BA was a subdued spot for us. The heat followed us from Mendoza, and most days it was at or above 100 F, and in the 80s at night. Thankfully our room had a/c, or we would have been unconscious most of our stay. Instead we tended to hide inside from about 11am to 6 or 7pm, except for small excursions to the market or to buy an empanada. Luckily BA is all about night life, so restaurants often didn't open until 8pm and we didn't really miss much during the afternoon siestas in a nice cool room. We did find this at a market:

It's a mango! Apparently an Argentine mango. The lady at the market told us it was very good, with lots of flesh and a small seed. Then she charged us several dollars for it. On the plus side, the seed was small and the fruit was really tasty.

Besides the heat, our budget for this part of the trip was nothing but fumes. We stayed local and cooked most of the time, avoiding the expensive tango shows and fancy restaurants. Our hostel Tercero del Sur is in the San Telmo neighborhood, which is a pretty nice spot to be. Most of the roads are cobbled, there are lots of antique shops and old buildings, and there are tons of pizza joints, including a chain with fairly cheap and decent food across the street. Italian influence is big here. The guys behind the counter even shout at each other like Italians. San Telmo also has a historic mercado, mostly full of tourist trap junk, and a Sunday craft fair that stretches for over a mile. The streets are lined with tables and people relaxing with a beer (always Quilmes). Several parillas are in the area, and we had our best beef since Santiago. And there was a tasty Indian restaurant around the corner. Not a bad place to be stuck.

We also wandered into the downtown on several occasions. There is a pedestrian strip lined with shops and eateries (and also Starbucks and McDonalds). The main square has an incredibly pink building. And the waterfront docks/locks have been turned into a pretty swanky section with high-rise condos and top-end restaurants, all across from the ecological park and the river. The fancy pedestrian bridge is the Puente Mujeres. If it looks a lot like the art museum in Milwaukee, it's because the same guy designed it.

Overall, BA struck us as basically an American/European city. Not that we've ever been to Europe, but essentially BA is just another modern western city. The pockets of antiquity are of European heritage. There is even a statue of Cristobal Colon (Colombus). That kind of statue wouldn't really go over well in a place like Bolivia, Peru, or Ecuador with their sizable and vocal indigenous communities. BA felt like a place out of place for us, not really part of South America as we came to know it during the first 2.5 months of our stay. Chile felt the same, but Argentina really capped it. Not that it wasn't a cool city--there were lots of great places to see and food to eat--but it just didn't feel feel like South America, at least as we had come to expect it to be.

Mendoza, Argentina

Our bus trip to Mendoza started out a little strange. We got dropped off at the wrong bus station. Turns out the right bus station was only a block away, but poorly labeled and it took some time to find it lugging all our bags. Then our bus wasn't there. Turns out there was a mechanical problem and we were taking a different bus, which we then had to find on the far end of the terminal. The seat numbers had changed, so we didn't get the seats we wanted. Top it all off, the bus left late due to the whole swap thing, though that actually worked in our favor as we got there right when it was originally supposed to leave. It was an exhausting morning.

The bus ride was fairly uneventful. The highlight was perhaps the 30-turn switchback straight up the mountain pass near the Chile-Argentina border. We got some glimpses of glacier-capped mountains, though we weren't sure which one was Aconcagua.

We got to Mendoza and caught a taxi to our hostel: Hostel Alamo. We got dinner at a local place with fixed menu parilla dinners, but weren't too excited with the meal. The next day was New Year's Eve, so we stocked up on some food & wine before the holiday closures and attended the hostel bbq, complete with giant slabs of meat: beef ribs and lomo a la pizza. And of course there was wine, including our bottle from Rodrigo and some local sparkling. Turns out the hostel was full of not just Americans, but midwesterners, with a group from UW-Eau Claire and a woman from Minnesota. The meat was of rather low quality, however, and we ate a lot of the food we prepped ourselves.

New Year's Day was predictably slow. The streets were totally barren and everything was closed, so we spent some time walking around town. Mendoza has four smaller squares arranged around a central one in the downtown area. So we took the time to visit all 5 in one day, which really isn't much walking. However, it was really hot (almost 40 C) so it was more than enough walking to do in the middle of the day.

The next day it was also super hot, so instead of our intended transportation of bikes, we had to settle for a rented car to visit the finally open wineries (which all closed on the 31st and 1st). Our new Minnesota friend Heidi came with us to the wineries. We passed a lot of sweating, exhausted looking folks on bikes, so perhaps it's not so bad that we were forced to take a car. Our first winery visit, Trapiche, involved a long and lame tour for not such a small price. Truthfully the building was neat and included vintage rosewood ceilings and wood-block floors, but the tour was over long. The wine was ok. We did three more wineries and a stop for empanadas. One place had vintage hydrometers! The wineries were further apart than was convenient, despite the fact that we stayed in just one of the areas around Mendoza, Maipu. Overall the wine was ok to fairly good, but perhaps it was just our California-trained palates being prejudiced against Argentine wine.

The next day we stayed local, visiting Vines of Mendoza in town. We picked out a couple flights of wines and a plate of cheese and meat to snack on. The wines here were generally better than the ones that we tasted at the wineries, and the bottle prices startlingly low. We got dinner at a parilla, though were underwhelmed again by the Argentinian beef. Seems like folks don't expect you to order your meat anything but well done, and the cuts don't support any rareness at all. Serves us right for asking for medium? Visited the big park in town, full of locals running, biking, rollerblading, and swimming at the pool. Quite a nice park, too bad it was so frickin hot all the time.

Then it was our last day in Mendoza, and with Rachel. Checkout was super early, so we rushed to get out in time. Finished off the last of our food in the fridge, including a bottle of sparkling wine. Just after noon we had coffee with our Minnesota friend Heidi, and then we sent Rachel off to the airport. We went to the bus station soon after to catch our overnight to Buenos Aires.