Photo Report of New Zealand Trip
Jun 11th, 2023, 01:01 PM
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Photo Report of New Zealand Trip
Hello everyone. I grew up in New Zealand but have spent most of my life living in Spain. I consider myself Spanish by this point, regardless of my kiwi blood… it had been 15 years since I last went to NZ! But I have family there and thought it was high time I paid them a visit.
Even though I spent a month in NZ, most of that was visiting family and doing mundane everyday life things. So this trip report is going to be quite short, just a few days in Auckland and Wellington, the ferry trip to the South Island and a couple sites in the south. Because there don’t seem to be many reports about New Zealand here on Fodors (at least compared to the Europe forum), I hope it will be helpful despite its brevity!
I have gone overboard with the photos, so this is more of a photo report
A rainbow at the airport. Marvellous first impression of the country!
I arrived to NZ the way most people do: by plane to Auckland airport. New Zealand is very strict with its entry restrictions. All fruit and veggies and meat, wooden objects and other things must be declared. I'd filled out the form on the plane but they made me fill it in again at the desk because it has to be done in pen only. They had a dog there sniffing all the bags as well. The lines were long so it all took quite a while.
I exchanged some money just in case but went to the little shop to buy a converter and my card worked alright. I stepped outside to find the bus and, after seeing no signs, turned right back around to find an information desk to point me in the right direction. The information desk was empty, a sign saying something like "we don't stand around here, try to find us", so I walked up and down until I found someone in a uniform. She led me outside and pointed me down the road to the bus stop, and then I was on my way.
On the bus to Auckland
The bus journey into the city was quite complicated. I think there are express buses but they were more expensive and only went to the Sky Tower, from where I'd have to take another bus considering my heavy bag. So I thought taking a bus that stopped at Karangahape Road would be better. I had to buy a card for the bus at the airport shop and then take a first bus (bus 38) to the Onehunga Bus Centre and there change to a different bus. It was a little stressful though, because the trip was long and I had no way of knowing the route, I didn't know whether I'd already passed the stop accidentally. The speaker on the bus wasn't very clear and it seemed to skip some stops entirely. Eventually I asked a girl sitting nearby and she said I was okay, so I waited patiently. Everyone got off at the Bus Centre, apparently.
The next bus into Auckland I sat next to the driver so I could ask questions to him just in case, and I was dropped off at Symonds Street-Karangahape intersection.
My dinner at Gorilla Kitchen
Some of you familiar with Auckland might be shaking your head in dismay at my location, and you'd be right to do so. Karangahape road, as I soon learnt, is a hub of crime, drugs and homelessness and really not the place where you want to be staying the night (or the day, probably). Alas, my hostel was Haka Lodge Auckland, so I walked down the street, avoiding the eyes of any dodgy characters, and did my check-in without major problems. I went out for an early dinner as soon as possible because I didn't want to be walking home in the dark.
The standards of quality of hostels in New Zealand are ridiculously low. They're very dirty and guests have alternative ideas of dormitory etiquette. I would like to note, just for clarification to anyone staying in a hostel, that it is not appropriate behaviour to wank in a dormitory where your (female) bed neighbour can hear you (there are bathrooms for that), and if you leave the room but accidentally forget your phone with your alarm inside and it rings for 20 minutes, at least take care to turn it off the following night. Adding to that the indiscreet but dubious nighttime trade going on in an alley right outside my window and the 4am rubbish truck, I can't claim that it was a comfortable stay. But it was just for two nights so I stuck it out.
The following day I woke up around 8am and headed off to Albert Park. The Auckland University is right next to it and they have a square with cafes and takeaway, so I bought some breakfast at Tart Bakery, where they sell vegan snacks. They'd only just opened and hadn't received their delivery yet so didn't have many options to choose from.
Breakfast sandwich eaten at a bench in the park.
One of the things I missed the most about living in New Zealand is the nature. NZ is so green and rainy, which is a change from life in Spain.
As soon as they opened, I was ready to visit the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, right next to the park. If I remember correctly, the entry was free for the main gallery but fees may be required for temporary expositions. They had some interesting portraits of Maori people from the 1800s. I eavesdropped a little on the guard telling some visitors that, while these paintings seem to be a tribute to Maori at first glance, the artist always painted the Maori as depressed and sad rather than as people with their own power and strength, as opposed to how he painted Europeans.
More Benin bronzes? They follow me everywhere! It seems like they're quite popular to talk about nowadays. I see them mentioned everywhere in the news and online and in books this past year, far more often than they used to be. Not that I mind it, I'm a big fan of Benin bronze art, but I wonder if people will ever talk about other precolonial African artefacts beyond just these heads. Anyway, this artist apparently had a studio in Auckland with a Benin bronze. They made it all the way to New Zealand...
The museum gift shop was also pretty cool. They had lots of books on art and photography, these lamps with famous paintings printed on them, a plaster skull that worked as a bowl, socks that were folded like different foods, etc. And some DIY wooden models of native birds that are ubiquitous to seemingly every shop in New Zealand.
After the museum I headed for an early lunch at Revive Vegan Cafe. In Europe the clientele of most vegan cafes is often young women and some fewer hipster guys (though "hipster" isn't used nowadays, I guess) with their partner. I was surprised to see that this vegan place was mostly full of business men on a lunch break!
Lunch was a selection of multiple salads, I could choose three, and hummus on top.
After lunch I headed off to the second site of the day, the Auckland War Memorial Museum, passing through another park (Constitution Hill?) where it suddenly started raining. I hid under a tree for a while and continued my way when it stopped shortly after. A few steps beyond the park it began to pour heavily and I ran across the street to find shelter under a porch.
A lot of New Zealanders don't carry umbrellas, they just slip their hood on if it starts to rain. That's what I started doing too in the South Island, when it rained practically every day. You just get used to it.
Unfortunately all of the nice trails up to the museum were closed due to construction or landslides so I had to take the less scenic road up. When I saw the building in the distance, it was separated by a large hill of grass. Despite technically being a kiwi, I have forgotten many things about life in NZ, and I wasn't sure whether I was allowed to step on the grass. There was nobody around to imitate. In Spain you don't usually step on grass; it takes a lot of effort and water for grass to grow in Catalonia! In the end I took the shortcut through the green because the road did a long loop to get to the entrance, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I finally spotted another family trampling on the grass as well.
The museum is free for those living in New Zealand, not for New Zealand citizens. You need to show proof of a NZ address. I have NZ citizenship but don't live there, but somehow I managed to convince them to let me through gratis!
Even though it's called the "War Memorial Museum", most of the displays aren't about war. I started with the big lower floor which is all about the Maori and other Pacific islands.
They had a long row of European-style paintings of Maori people which I skimmed a little because I'd just seen many of the same artists in the Gallery that morning, but I appreciated the marae (above) and many of the statues.
The sections on other Pacific Islands had the name of the country / islands projected on the floor. I didn't see it at first but it was pretty cool once I noticed it. They even had some info on the Moriori which I'm very interested in because of their pacifist history and culture.
And there was this nice big model of a Maori town, their crops and forest, boats and swimmers, an abandoned town nearby.
After my tour of the first floor I went to see a couple of T-Rex they've recently installed. This is a temporary exhibition that moves around the world so they were quite excited to have them here, including one of the few confirmed female T-Rexes. As it turns out, we can only tell if they're male or female by taking a bone sample: those who've just given birth have a different bone density or nutrients or something of the sort.
I've never cared much for dinosaurs but on my way to NZ I read a book called The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte, which was fairly interesting. The focus of the book is on the T-Rex, not much on other dinosaurs, and I would've liked a bit more on other species, but I learnt a lot about palaeontology overall, evolution of dinosaurs and birds, the extinction, continent formation, etc. and took away some memorable facts (like how new dinosaur fossils are found every week). Animals were so different back then that it's somehow difficult to wrap my head around it all. I don't say this often, I like my books short, but I would've enjoyed reading more. So after reading the book I had a newfound appreciation for dinosaurs and birds (birds are considered dinosaurs. Not "descended from", though that too, but still technically dinosaurs. We can't say dinos are extinct). In NZ I took a liking to Mynas especially, the yellow beak and legs really stand out... very dinosaur-ish!
After that I looked at a map of the museum and decided where I wanted to go next. Volcano room it was.
A really cool lava lamp.
Auckland is built on volcanic land with several volcanoes in the vicinity, so an eruption is a possible threat. They had a simulation of what would happen if a volcano erupted in Auckland that very day. We went into a room set up as a house living room, with a screen acting as a window with views over the bay. I dropped down on the couch and after a while the TV turned on with breaking news. There was imminent threat of an eruption. People were interviewed in the streets, some didn't believe anything would happen. Others had packed their bags and were evacuating, the highways packed with people fleeing the city.
Going into the living room...
Out of nowhere, an earthquake shook the whole room, jolting the couch roughly. We stared in horror out the window as a volcano emerged from the middle of the bay. The TV signal cut off... and the volcano exploded, the entire room shaking so strongly that I had to hold onto the cushions. A wave of ash came thundering towards us, crashing against the house and breaking the glass.
We all died, obviously.
In the simulation living room.
It was a very thorough simulation. It only lasted some five minutes but it was quite nerve-wracking!
That's what the wave of ash looked like through the window. It was very scary. (Photo at the museum, of the Mt Pinatubo 1991 eruption)
The rest of the volcano area had all sorts of displays on anything vaguely volcanic-related. Explanations on why and how volcanoes erupt, a replica of a Pompeii victim, videos and testimonials of past disasters from around the world, volcanic moons and planets, the positives of volcanoes, a real-size model of the Laetoli footprints, a pink dinosaur toy someone secretly put in front of the cam at White Island... Anything you can think of, it was there.
I spent so long in the volcano room that I had little time for much else. I discovered another dinosaur room, with moa skeletons and stuffed kiwi birds. A guard came in and told me the museum would close in 15m, so I should start heading for the exit. I ran through the museum (speed-walked more like, no running in museums!) and made it to a zero. It's a Japanese plane from WWII and I've always wanted to see one. I briskly walked through the WWI section and then I was out of time.
The hall of the museum had some Greek statue replicas.
Since it was getting late, the greenhouse next to the museum was also closed and I wasn't able to go inside...
Trying to get a peek into the greenhouse...
Behind bars.
The museum wasn't far from my hostel so I decided to walk back. My experience with local buses the day before had convinced me not to try it again. I went downhill to the Symonds Street Cemetery, at the end of Karangahape road.
Farewell Auckland Domain park!
The cemetery is very beautiful and has quite a bit of history, with a Jewish section, Catholic, Anglican and Presbyterian. Some of it has been destroyed to make room for a large motorway but it feels fresh and quiet when you're along the trails. There are longer trails but it was getting dark and I didn't want to get lost after sunset there.
I was later told that you don't want to be there at night or in the evening because there have been a few crimes there and it's a frequent spot for drug dealers. In hindsight, it's true that the people gathering as I was leaving seemed like the sort.
Since I enjoyed my dinner the day before I went back to Gorilla Kitchen, though I regretted blindly choosing a burger, possibly the least exciting option ever to be found when eating out, though falafels and hummus are becoming a close second with how overdone they are, I wish to see vegan restaurants add some variety to their menus in the future. I decided on some fake fish and chips for the second night.
Very nice! I'd never tried any of the fake fish stuff before, you can't get that at supermarkets in Spain, so it was interesting to see that the texture was quite similar to the real fish and chips.
For breakfast the following day I had a pie. I was a bit hesitant to try it because I hated them as a kid. But it's part of the New Zealand experience and I had a friend in kindergarten who was obsessed with them and would eat them every day, so I had to try and understand what it was about them. It was a mushroom pie bought in one of the uni cafés.
And, dare I say, it was very nice! The dough was my favourite but the inside mash was nice and warm and very comforting.
I didn't do any sightseeing my second day. I had to walk to the Sky Tower and I was on a bus then, heading off to visit family. Long-distance buses in NZ have very limited legroom. As a tall person, I couldn't sit down properly and had to sit with my legs splayed or occupying the seat next to me the entire journey. Thankfully, the neighbouring seat was empty so I could drop my bag there and not worry about taking up space, but it's something to keep in mind.
That was my single day in Auckland! I never made it to Mount Eden, so a second trip might be in order one day.
Even though I spent a month in NZ, most of that was visiting family and doing mundane everyday life things. So this trip report is going to be quite short, just a few days in Auckland and Wellington, the ferry trip to the South Island and a couple sites in the south. Because there don’t seem to be many reports about New Zealand here on Fodors (at least compared to the Europe forum), I hope it will be helpful despite its brevity!
I have gone overboard with the photos, so this is more of a photo report
A rainbow at the airport. Marvellous first impression of the country!
I arrived to NZ the way most people do: by plane to Auckland airport. New Zealand is very strict with its entry restrictions. All fruit and veggies and meat, wooden objects and other things must be declared. I'd filled out the form on the plane but they made me fill it in again at the desk because it has to be done in pen only. They had a dog there sniffing all the bags as well. The lines were long so it all took quite a while.
I exchanged some money just in case but went to the little shop to buy a converter and my card worked alright. I stepped outside to find the bus and, after seeing no signs, turned right back around to find an information desk to point me in the right direction. The information desk was empty, a sign saying something like "we don't stand around here, try to find us", so I walked up and down until I found someone in a uniform. She led me outside and pointed me down the road to the bus stop, and then I was on my way.
On the bus to Auckland
The bus journey into the city was quite complicated. I think there are express buses but they were more expensive and only went to the Sky Tower, from where I'd have to take another bus considering my heavy bag. So I thought taking a bus that stopped at Karangahape Road would be better. I had to buy a card for the bus at the airport shop and then take a first bus (bus 38) to the Onehunga Bus Centre and there change to a different bus. It was a little stressful though, because the trip was long and I had no way of knowing the route, I didn't know whether I'd already passed the stop accidentally. The speaker on the bus wasn't very clear and it seemed to skip some stops entirely. Eventually I asked a girl sitting nearby and she said I was okay, so I waited patiently. Everyone got off at the Bus Centre, apparently.
The next bus into Auckland I sat next to the driver so I could ask questions to him just in case, and I was dropped off at Symonds Street-Karangahape intersection.
My dinner at Gorilla Kitchen
Some of you familiar with Auckland might be shaking your head in dismay at my location, and you'd be right to do so. Karangahape road, as I soon learnt, is a hub of crime, drugs and homelessness and really not the place where you want to be staying the night (or the day, probably). Alas, my hostel was Haka Lodge Auckland, so I walked down the street, avoiding the eyes of any dodgy characters, and did my check-in without major problems. I went out for an early dinner as soon as possible because I didn't want to be walking home in the dark.
The standards of quality of hostels in New Zealand are ridiculously low. They're very dirty and guests have alternative ideas of dormitory etiquette. I would like to note, just for clarification to anyone staying in a hostel, that it is not appropriate behaviour to wank in a dormitory where your (female) bed neighbour can hear you (there are bathrooms for that), and if you leave the room but accidentally forget your phone with your alarm inside and it rings for 20 minutes, at least take care to turn it off the following night. Adding to that the indiscreet but dubious nighttime trade going on in an alley right outside my window and the 4am rubbish truck, I can't claim that it was a comfortable stay. But it was just for two nights so I stuck it out.
The following day I woke up around 8am and headed off to Albert Park. The Auckland University is right next to it and they have a square with cafes and takeaway, so I bought some breakfast at Tart Bakery, where they sell vegan snacks. They'd only just opened and hadn't received their delivery yet so didn't have many options to choose from.
Breakfast sandwich eaten at a bench in the park.
One of the things I missed the most about living in New Zealand is the nature. NZ is so green and rainy, which is a change from life in Spain.
As soon as they opened, I was ready to visit the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, right next to the park. If I remember correctly, the entry was free for the main gallery but fees may be required for temporary expositions. They had some interesting portraits of Maori people from the 1800s. I eavesdropped a little on the guard telling some visitors that, while these paintings seem to be a tribute to Maori at first glance, the artist always painted the Maori as depressed and sad rather than as people with their own power and strength, as opposed to how he painted Europeans.
More Benin bronzes? They follow me everywhere! It seems like they're quite popular to talk about nowadays. I see them mentioned everywhere in the news and online and in books this past year, far more often than they used to be. Not that I mind it, I'm a big fan of Benin bronze art, but I wonder if people will ever talk about other precolonial African artefacts beyond just these heads. Anyway, this artist apparently had a studio in Auckland with a Benin bronze. They made it all the way to New Zealand...
The museum gift shop was also pretty cool. They had lots of books on art and photography, these lamps with famous paintings printed on them, a plaster skull that worked as a bowl, socks that were folded like different foods, etc. And some DIY wooden models of native birds that are ubiquitous to seemingly every shop in New Zealand.
After the museum I headed for an early lunch at Revive Vegan Cafe. In Europe the clientele of most vegan cafes is often young women and some fewer hipster guys (though "hipster" isn't used nowadays, I guess) with their partner. I was surprised to see that this vegan place was mostly full of business men on a lunch break!
Lunch was a selection of multiple salads, I could choose three, and hummus on top.
After lunch I headed off to the second site of the day, the Auckland War Memorial Museum, passing through another park (Constitution Hill?) where it suddenly started raining. I hid under a tree for a while and continued my way when it stopped shortly after. A few steps beyond the park it began to pour heavily and I ran across the street to find shelter under a porch.
A lot of New Zealanders don't carry umbrellas, they just slip their hood on if it starts to rain. That's what I started doing too in the South Island, when it rained practically every day. You just get used to it.
Unfortunately all of the nice trails up to the museum were closed due to construction or landslides so I had to take the less scenic road up. When I saw the building in the distance, it was separated by a large hill of grass. Despite technically being a kiwi, I have forgotten many things about life in NZ, and I wasn't sure whether I was allowed to step on the grass. There was nobody around to imitate. In Spain you don't usually step on grass; it takes a lot of effort and water for grass to grow in Catalonia! In the end I took the shortcut through the green because the road did a long loop to get to the entrance, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I finally spotted another family trampling on the grass as well.
The museum is free for those living in New Zealand, not for New Zealand citizens. You need to show proof of a NZ address. I have NZ citizenship but don't live there, but somehow I managed to convince them to let me through gratis!
Even though it's called the "War Memorial Museum", most of the displays aren't about war. I started with the big lower floor which is all about the Maori and other Pacific islands.
They had a long row of European-style paintings of Maori people which I skimmed a little because I'd just seen many of the same artists in the Gallery that morning, but I appreciated the marae (above) and many of the statues.
The sections on other Pacific Islands had the name of the country / islands projected on the floor. I didn't see it at first but it was pretty cool once I noticed it. They even had some info on the Moriori which I'm very interested in because of their pacifist history and culture.
And there was this nice big model of a Maori town, their crops and forest, boats and swimmers, an abandoned town nearby.
After my tour of the first floor I went to see a couple of T-Rex they've recently installed. This is a temporary exhibition that moves around the world so they were quite excited to have them here, including one of the few confirmed female T-Rexes. As it turns out, we can only tell if they're male or female by taking a bone sample: those who've just given birth have a different bone density or nutrients or something of the sort.
I've never cared much for dinosaurs but on my way to NZ I read a book called The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte, which was fairly interesting. The focus of the book is on the T-Rex, not much on other dinosaurs, and I would've liked a bit more on other species, but I learnt a lot about palaeontology overall, evolution of dinosaurs and birds, the extinction, continent formation, etc. and took away some memorable facts (like how new dinosaur fossils are found every week). Animals were so different back then that it's somehow difficult to wrap my head around it all. I don't say this often, I like my books short, but I would've enjoyed reading more. So after reading the book I had a newfound appreciation for dinosaurs and birds (birds are considered dinosaurs. Not "descended from", though that too, but still technically dinosaurs. We can't say dinos are extinct). In NZ I took a liking to Mynas especially, the yellow beak and legs really stand out... very dinosaur-ish!
After that I looked at a map of the museum and decided where I wanted to go next. Volcano room it was.
A really cool lava lamp.
Auckland is built on volcanic land with several volcanoes in the vicinity, so an eruption is a possible threat. They had a simulation of what would happen if a volcano erupted in Auckland that very day. We went into a room set up as a house living room, with a screen acting as a window with views over the bay. I dropped down on the couch and after a while the TV turned on with breaking news. There was imminent threat of an eruption. People were interviewed in the streets, some didn't believe anything would happen. Others had packed their bags and were evacuating, the highways packed with people fleeing the city.
Going into the living room...
Out of nowhere, an earthquake shook the whole room, jolting the couch roughly. We stared in horror out the window as a volcano emerged from the middle of the bay. The TV signal cut off... and the volcano exploded, the entire room shaking so strongly that I had to hold onto the cushions. A wave of ash came thundering towards us, crashing against the house and breaking the glass.
We all died, obviously.
In the simulation living room.
It was a very thorough simulation. It only lasted some five minutes but it was quite nerve-wracking!
That's what the wave of ash looked like through the window. It was very scary. (Photo at the museum, of the Mt Pinatubo 1991 eruption)
The rest of the volcano area had all sorts of displays on anything vaguely volcanic-related. Explanations on why and how volcanoes erupt, a replica of a Pompeii victim, videos and testimonials of past disasters from around the world, volcanic moons and planets, the positives of volcanoes, a real-size model of the Laetoli footprints, a pink dinosaur toy someone secretly put in front of the cam at White Island... Anything you can think of, it was there.
I spent so long in the volcano room that I had little time for much else. I discovered another dinosaur room, with moa skeletons and stuffed kiwi birds. A guard came in and told me the museum would close in 15m, so I should start heading for the exit. I ran through the museum (speed-walked more like, no running in museums!) and made it to a zero. It's a Japanese plane from WWII and I've always wanted to see one. I briskly walked through the WWI section and then I was out of time.
The hall of the museum had some Greek statue replicas.
Since it was getting late, the greenhouse next to the museum was also closed and I wasn't able to go inside...
Trying to get a peek into the greenhouse...
Behind bars.
The museum wasn't far from my hostel so I decided to walk back. My experience with local buses the day before had convinced me not to try it again. I went downhill to the Symonds Street Cemetery, at the end of Karangahape road.
Farewell Auckland Domain park!
The cemetery is very beautiful and has quite a bit of history, with a Jewish section, Catholic, Anglican and Presbyterian. Some of it has been destroyed to make room for a large motorway but it feels fresh and quiet when you're along the trails. There are longer trails but it was getting dark and I didn't want to get lost after sunset there.
I was later told that you don't want to be there at night or in the evening because there have been a few crimes there and it's a frequent spot for drug dealers. In hindsight, it's true that the people gathering as I was leaving seemed like the sort.
Since I enjoyed my dinner the day before I went back to Gorilla Kitchen, though I regretted blindly choosing a burger, possibly the least exciting option ever to be found when eating out, though falafels and hummus are becoming a close second with how overdone they are, I wish to see vegan restaurants add some variety to their menus in the future. I decided on some fake fish and chips for the second night.
Very nice! I'd never tried any of the fake fish stuff before, you can't get that at supermarkets in Spain, so it was interesting to see that the texture was quite similar to the real fish and chips.
For breakfast the following day I had a pie. I was a bit hesitant to try it because I hated them as a kid. But it's part of the New Zealand experience and I had a friend in kindergarten who was obsessed with them and would eat them every day, so I had to try and understand what it was about them. It was a mushroom pie bought in one of the uni cafés.
And, dare I say, it was very nice! The dough was my favourite but the inside mash was nice and warm and very comforting.
I didn't do any sightseeing my second day. I had to walk to the Sky Tower and I was on a bus then, heading off to visit family. Long-distance buses in NZ have very limited legroom. As a tall person, I couldn't sit down properly and had to sit with my legs splayed or occupying the seat next to me the entire journey. Thankfully, the neighbouring seat was empty so I could drop my bag there and not worry about taking up space, but it's something to keep in mind.
That was my single day in Auckland! I never made it to Mount Eden, so a second trip might be in order one day.
Last edited by Peter_T; Jun 11th, 2023 at 01:14 PM.
Jun 12th, 2023, 08:13 AM
#5
Thank you for all of the photos. Ir looks damp! I did carry a folding pocket umbrella but with crowded sidewalks it's mostly for dashing to a shelter when walking in a park.
Yes that hostel was an unfortunate choice wasn't it! For those planning a future Auckland overnight, we used the Auckland Rose Park hotel in Parnell. Obviously way more than a dorm bed but a good value across from the Parnell Rose Garden.
I lost $20NZD in the kiosk at the airport trying to buy a bus card when I had a free day in Auckland between domestic and International flights.
I wound up using the airport bus which is now called Sky Drive Airport Express (not Sky Bus!) and is operated by Ritchie's. You do not need to reserve, it's possible to buy a ticket from the driver with a credit card. More info here SkyDrive
Uber is widely used in Auckland and taxis accept credit cards. I sprang for a taxi the night I flew in with a later arrival so I could go door to door in the rain and it was about 85 NZD.
Yes that hostel was an unfortunate choice wasn't it! For those planning a future Auckland overnight, we used the Auckland Rose Park hotel in Parnell. Obviously way more than a dorm bed but a good value across from the Parnell Rose Garden.
I lost $20NZD in the kiosk at the airport trying to buy a bus card when I had a free day in Auckland between domestic and International flights.
I wound up using the airport bus which is now called Sky Drive Airport Express (not Sky Bus!) and is operated by Ritchie's. You do not need to reserve, it's possible to buy a ticket from the driver with a credit card. More info here SkyDrive
Uber is widely used in Auckland and taxis accept credit cards. I sprang for a taxi the night I flew in with a later arrival so I could go door to door in the rain and it was about 85 NZD.
Jun 12th, 2023, 11:09 AM
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What a TR, Peter! Very well-done. That simulated ash wave was incredible in the truest sense of the word.
We have dear friends who moved to Hastings (near Napier) but its not clear whether we could now at our age handle the looooong flight.
Good for you for going back.
Maybe buy some Tawari honey?
I am done. the NZ
We have dear friends who moved to Hastings (near Napier) but its not clear whether we could now at our age handle the looooong flight.
Good for you for going back.
Maybe buy some Tawari honey?
I am done. the NZ
Jun 19th, 2023, 04:59 PM
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Enjoying your trip report. I've only been active on the Europe forum, but I am now dipping my toes into exploring New Zealand. I've been assigned to a work project with New Zealand colleagues. We are museum professionals. So it is likely in my future to get to visit and I want to start learning everything I can. I hope to tack on some other explorations to a work trip. Appreciate the museum reports you've included.
Jul 5th, 2023, 02:34 AM
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Hi everyone! Thank you so much for the comments, it's nice to know so many people are reading this trip report!
Thanks @mlgb for all the information. I am more of a backpacker so I'm sure your comment will be useful for those preferring a proper trip (and a decent hotel
). I will add that usually you can buy a ticket from the driver in the local buses, as far as I understood, at least, but this was stopped due to Covid. I don't know if/when they'll pick it up again, or the status on other buses.
@zebec You're right, New Zealand is so far from the rest of the world that getting there takes a while, with at least 2-3 layovers from Europe, plus an additional domestic flight to Hastings. Plane tickets to NZ are also very expensive... It's difficult to make visiting the country a habit, unless someone lives nearby! My grandparents keep talking about moving back to England, but they've been saying that for years!
@Adelaidean Hello! I'm happy to see you here in the Oceania forum as well!
@magsrose I also visited Te Papa in Wellington and a couple other smaller/less famous museums. I hope the reports of them will be useful to you!
@magsrose Yay! I'm glad you found it helpful. My Catalonia report was a bit all over the place with just random day trips, so I wasn't sure whether it was worth posting. I might pick it up again if I do any other excursions this summer.
Thanks @mlgb for all the information. I am more of a backpacker so I'm sure your comment will be useful for those preferring a proper trip (and a decent hotel
). I will add that usually you can buy a ticket from the driver in the local buses, as far as I understood, at least, but this was stopped due to Covid. I don't know if/when they'll pick it up again, or the status on other buses.@zebec You're right, New Zealand is so far from the rest of the world that getting there takes a while, with at least 2-3 layovers from Europe, plus an additional domestic flight to Hastings. Plane tickets to NZ are also very expensive... It's difficult to make visiting the country a habit, unless someone lives nearby! My grandparents keep talking about moving back to England, but they've been saying that for years!
@Adelaidean Hello! I'm happy to see you here in the Oceania forum as well!
@magsrose I also visited Te Papa in Wellington and a couple other smaller/less famous museums. I hope the reports of them will be useful to you!
@magsrose Yay! I'm glad you found it helpful. My Catalonia report was a bit all over the place with just random day trips, so I wasn't sure whether it was worth posting. I might pick it up again if I do any other excursions this summer.
Jul 5th, 2023, 02:39 AM
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I don’t have much to say about my stay with my grandparents, the two excursions I had planned (Cape Kidnappers and a Maori fort) didn’t happen, and they live in a small town with little to see. But since my sister lives on the South island, we did stop in a couple places on the way to/from the airport, namely Haumoana, Hastings and Napier.
Lots of wineries in Hawkes Bay. I wasn’t overly interested, but my grandparents recently had some family over from England who enjoyed visiting several of them.
My grandparents used to live in Haumoana, I visited them once when I was 12, so we mostly did a walk around the town, showing me how things have changed in the years since.
Walking around Hastings and Haumoana made me realise two things about NZ that I didn’t pay attention to as a kid: 1) the corrugated steel roofs are very popular. No tile roofs to be seen. 2) Road constructors love cement. The roads are incredibly (unnecessarily) wide, not only the main street but also the side streets and residential areas. I was surprised to see NZ roads have taken after the US model of bigger-is-better rather than the traditional UK/EU style of nicer-if-packed. I imagined NZ to still have many things in common with the UK, and while gardens and TV series are distinctly English, I felt a lot of politics and architecture are increasingly influenced by the US.
I used to walk through there every day to go to the beach.
Memorial park. I was there for Anzac day, so WW1 is all people talked about during several weeks. That, too, is different from Spain, where elders carefully try to avoid any mentions of their Civil War experience (and WW2, if they were from the División Azul) and Franco isn’t talked about much. Whenever the topic of war and dictatorship does arise in politics, there’s always the sentiment of “why must old skeletons be dug up? Let the sad past go”.
Nice garden! I loved the swing and the huge tree.
And nice mural too! My grandpa said the lady who lives in the house had been slowly building this mural as a hobby over many many years. She still had a section of the wall to go, so plenty work for more years to come.
We walked along the beach and then a little trail along the river. My grandpa decided not to visit the beach, he's too old to be walking on stones, he said, and the waves were quite fierce. My sister and I had to run across the beach in some sections, when the wave was out, before it came crashing back in to trap us. Then there was a house/trailer next to the beach with an angry dog that chased us, and the man had to come out and call the dog back. But he glared at us as he did so.
We couldn’t go to Cape Kidnappers, seen there in the distance, because the cyclone from earlier this year destroyed a lot in Hawke’s Bay and there was a rockfall or something, making the trail inaccessible.
The road ends in the water... Ready for a chitty chitty bang bang transformation!
Along the river, back to the car.
There was a kid on an electric scooter who zoomed past, and I laughed as my grandpa cursed at the youngsters and their scooters... I have to say, I love my scooter
My country doesn't have the best (or any, really) bike paths, and the cars don't like to mind out for them on the road, but there's something relaxing about them all the same. So fast and smooth.
My future house, maybe?
It was, all in all, a nice walk around a medium-sized town!
This is the sort of scenery from NZ that I remember from my childhood. It looks like the fields in the town where I grew up. We’d go over and around fences to school, played in the paddocks, climbed all the trees, did cross-country running with the school through mud and a river and fields that look just like this.
Lots of wineries in Hawkes Bay. I wasn’t overly interested, but my grandparents recently had some family over from England who enjoyed visiting several of them.My grandparents used to live in Haumoana, I visited them once when I was 12, so we mostly did a walk around the town, showing me how things have changed in the years since.
Walking around Hastings and Haumoana made me realise two things about NZ that I didn’t pay attention to as a kid: 1) the corrugated steel roofs are very popular. No tile roofs to be seen. 2) Road constructors love cement. The roads are incredibly (unnecessarily) wide, not only the main street but also the side streets and residential areas. I was surprised to see NZ roads have taken after the US model of bigger-is-better rather than the traditional UK/EU style of nicer-if-packed. I imagined NZ to still have many things in common with the UK, and while gardens and TV series are distinctly English, I felt a lot of politics and architecture are increasingly influenced by the US.
I used to walk through there every day to go to the beach.
Memorial park. I was there for Anzac day, so WW1 is all people talked about during several weeks. That, too, is different from Spain, where elders carefully try to avoid any mentions of their Civil War experience (and WW2, if they were from the División Azul) and Franco isn’t talked about much. Whenever the topic of war and dictatorship does arise in politics, there’s always the sentiment of “why must old skeletons be dug up? Let the sad past go”.Nice garden! I loved the swing and the huge tree.
And nice mural too! My grandpa said the lady who lives in the house had been slowly building this mural as a hobby over many many years. She still had a section of the wall to go, so plenty work for more years to come.We walked along the beach and then a little trail along the river. My grandpa decided not to visit the beach, he's too old to be walking on stones, he said, and the waves were quite fierce. My sister and I had to run across the beach in some sections, when the wave was out, before it came crashing back in to trap us. Then there was a house/trailer next to the beach with an angry dog that chased us, and the man had to come out and call the dog back. But he glared at us as he did so.
We couldn’t go to Cape Kidnappers, seen there in the distance, because the cyclone from earlier this year destroyed a lot in Hawke’s Bay and there was a rockfall or something, making the trail inaccessible.The road ends in the water... Ready for a chitty chitty bang bang transformation!
Along the river, back to the car.
There was a kid on an electric scooter who zoomed past, and I laughed as my grandpa cursed at the youngsters and their scooters... I have to say, I love my scooter
My country doesn't have the best (or any, really) bike paths, and the cars don't like to mind out for them on the road, but there's something relaxing about them all the same. So fast and smooth.My future house, maybe?
It was, all in all, a nice walk around a medium-sized town!
This is the sort of scenery from NZ that I remember from my childhood. It looks like the fields in the town where I grew up. We’d go over and around fences to school, played in the paddocks, climbed all the trees, did cross-country running with the school through mud and a river and fields that look just like this.
Last edited by Peter_T; Jul 5th, 2023 at 03:28 AM. Reason: Formatting
Jul 5th, 2023, 03:09 AM
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My sister and I bid farewell to our grandparents and took a flight down to Wellington. We had a long trip ahead to make it to her home in the South island. It seems most people get around by plane since NZ doesn’t have high speed trains for long distances.
One thing that surprised me about the airports is that there’s no baggage check for local flights. Napier-Hastings is a tiny airport, I remember the waiting room from when I was a kid, and there’s only a single door/gate for all flights, some check-in machines, a restaurant, and a carpeted arrival area. There seemed to be a new flight arriving every 15m, usually from Auckland or Wellington, occasionally other cities, spaced out enough that there’s a constant but quiet influx of people passing through the airport. It was a very easy trip.
Air New Zealand gave us a snack and a lolly on the flight, and soon we were landing in Wellington.
We had a tight connection so we had to run to catch a bus to the harbour. We didn’t stop for the giant eagle statues and Gandalf in the airport, but I was able to enjoy them on my return trip. Because my sister used to live on a ship in Wellington harbour, she knows the area well, and I followed after her like an anxious duckling. The bus, which was discounted for a few weeks all over Wellington as an incentive to encourage the use of public transport or something of the sort, dropped us off in front of Wellington central station and we passed through the platform, came out the other side, crossed the big road and arrived to the ferry terminal just in time to check-in our bags under the ferry.
The ferry's restaurant, and the Beehive in Wellington (the parliament) seen through the window. They do free tours which, as I was told by a bus driver later, are highly recommended!
The small group of walk-on passengers (most people drove their cars onto the ferry) were all guided onto the ship, and we scampered to find the best spot for the journey. My sister insisted we spend the trip outside in the hopes of spotting some dolphins, but we stuck around inside for some food until we left the bay area.
There was some vegan food on the ferry, such as a fruit platter and this snickers slice. I had so many sweets and pudding in New Zealand...
This is where I must say I adore ferries. My first ferry experience was with Grimaldi Lines. In high school we did a school trip to Italy from Spain, bussed around famous places like Florence, Pisa and Venecia before being dropped off in Rome for the ferry ride back home. It was an overnight trip, each room had four beds (no windows, we were paying for the cheap option).
However, the teachers had made a severe miscalculation in handing out our rooms: they’d sorted the beds by alphabetical order! As you can probably imagine, asking teenagers to sleep with their name-buddies wasn’t going to fly, and the students in my class despaired at having to swap all the keycards. You see, our rooms were far apart, not in a line, and who knew where our friends were located on the ship. I like organising things, so I took charge and told everyone to sit down in their hall while I tracked down all the students of our class and went about swapping cards. The ferry was like a grid-maze of endless long halls, and I learnt it by heart in that first hour. My job over the next day, as the person who was most familiar with the ferry, was to find any lost students and pass on messages for the teachers.
Since then, ferry trips fill me with excitement, and I always want to run around everywhere, see every nook and cranny. Besides that Italy-Spain trip, I’ve only been on a couple short 5 or 10-minute trips in Japan (Miyajima, Sakurajima), so the idea of a 3h journey in NZ sounded very fun.
I waved at the other ferry as we passed them, but my sister said I mustn't, the two companies are rivals! I went with the Bluebridge ferry there and Interislander on the way back though, and was happy with both of them. But check the ferry terminals in Wellington, because one of them (Interislander, I think) is very far from the city centre.
After our “lunch” we headed outside and let ourselves be blown around for the remainder of the trip. The decks are very windy and the passengers inside have a great view of the landing, so everyone inside gets a good show of the brave souls outside waddling around like penguins. We had to hold onto the railing and try to drag ourselves against the wind to the safe (non-windy) side, with scarves wrapped around our faces to shield ourselves from the cold and dry wind. All covered, that is, except our eyes, so we were squinting at the water, thinking every piece of drifting wood was a potential seal in the distance.
Red Rocks. You can take a bus / walk from Wellington and see the seals there, if it's the right season. But be careful you don't accidentally step on them, they look like rocks sometimes.
The roof has a giant yellow spot.
The winds changed depending on the direction of the ferry, so we spent some time on the roof, the sides, the front. The clouds covered any good views of the North Island as we were leaving Wellington, and then it was open seas for a while, but the most scenic area, in my opinion, was arriving to the South island. The ferry enters the sounds and then there’s rocks, islands and coastline on both sides. My sister has boated around the sounds a lot so she told me of different excursions she’s done, walking trails and secrets of the area.
That is where we saw our first (and unfortunately only) seal, bobbing about in the water in front of the ferry. My parents have been on this ferry a couple times and they’ve seen lots of dolphins both times. I only saw three but it may have been an illusion, because they jumped once, perfectly coordinated, and then disappeared never to resurface. They were the same colour as the water (grey) so I can’t say for sure if I actually saw them or if my mind fabricated it in order to make me happy.
Seal and dolphin illusions aside, we did see heaps of gannets. They glide over the water, fly up in the air, then swoop down, submerging, gone… and I would look at that spot where they’d dived, waiting, waiting, and they’d finally, after a long while, come back out, with or without catch. More than aquatic life, it was a bird-watching journey.
It looks a little like Ireland, actually.
Another thing I love about ferries is the architecture / construction of it. The pipes and metal, secret doors, signs, oxidized iron, buttons, machines and handles… It’s so much fun, so many things to look at! I’ve watched a couple cruise series on Netflix this year, 1899 (which has unfortunately been discontinued, last I heard) and Alta Mar. They’re both historical, but they make me want to go on a cruise / ferry every time I watch an episode.
It's a strange feeling, because I’m not a boat person overall. I took sailing classes as a kid (vela boats, we call them in Spain) and learnt how to pull up the sail, sitting/standing on different sides, that sort of thing. My sister and I did the classes at the same time, each of us on a different boat, and the instructors would guide us out to sea and then abandon us to our own devices. They’d come to check on us with a speedboat every now and then to make sure everything was good.
It was maybe my third class when I suddenly found myself heading straight for the rocks, and in my panic I couldn't remember whether I was supposed to pull or let go of the rope to make the boat slow down. I had to slow down a little to be able to turn the boat, you see. So I tried both, first letting go and, when that seemed to do nothing, I tightened it. I couldn't notice any difference in speed, so I stood up to just turn the boat as it was. In my attempt, my boat tipped right over, throwing me into the sea with a hunk of wood about to crush me.
Little boat coming to help us get safely into the harbour.
I swam out of the way and waited for rescue (what to do in this scenario had not been covered in our short introduction to sailing), all the while imagining all sorts of things coming out to eat me from the depths under my feet. It's not like the Mediterranean is the most dangerous body of water in the world, and certainly not so close to the coast (if ashark approaches the beach in my area it makes headlines in the newspapers, we only have to worry about jellyfish and “spiderfish”) but until then I’d only swum out to the buoys, which are some 10m deep, and being further out felt like I was stranded in the middle of the ocean.
Later I learnt that I wasn’t the only one who ended up with a tipped boat that day. It had been particularly windy and the sea was dotted with helpless students flapping about uselessly in the water. I did a fourth class after that, but I never managed to shake the fear (to be fair, I’ve been scared of large open spaces like the underwater sea/ocean and space from before the incident), so I told my mum not to pay for another class.
Still, ferries are cool, what can I say!
Anyway, back to the trip report…
Alas, the ferry ride eventually came to an end. We stayed outside, watching the ferry park in the Picton harbour, and didn’t realise everyone inside had already left for their cars. When we went inside, the place was deserted, and we hurried to the bathroom and then downstairs. Thankfully, the passengers were still waiting there because the gate takes forever to slowly creak open.
Waiting to get off. People first, then trucks, then cars. The whole parking area smelled like sheep.
Waiting, waiting...
Waiting while looking at the ceiling...
Once off the ferry, a bus drove us a little aways to the bag pick-up spot, where all the luggage was sitting neatly in a pile. We found our bags and set off to find my sister’s car. She’d parked someone not very suitable, she said, and was worried someone would’ve broken in or the town hall would’ve taken the car away, but it, too, was sitting neatly where she’d left it.
After a plane and boat, we were off with the car, the final piece of the transportation triathlon, and hoping to reach her house before it got dark!
One thing that surprised me about the airports is that there’s no baggage check for local flights. Napier-Hastings is a tiny airport, I remember the waiting room from when I was a kid, and there’s only a single door/gate for all flights, some check-in machines, a restaurant, and a carpeted arrival area. There seemed to be a new flight arriving every 15m, usually from Auckland or Wellington, occasionally other cities, spaced out enough that there’s a constant but quiet influx of people passing through the airport. It was a very easy trip.
Air New Zealand gave us a snack and a lolly on the flight, and soon we were landing in Wellington.
We had a tight connection so we had to run to catch a bus to the harbour. We didn’t stop for the giant eagle statues and Gandalf in the airport, but I was able to enjoy them on my return trip. Because my sister used to live on a ship in Wellington harbour, she knows the area well, and I followed after her like an anxious duckling. The bus, which was discounted for a few weeks all over Wellington as an incentive to encourage the use of public transport or something of the sort, dropped us off in front of Wellington central station and we passed through the platform, came out the other side, crossed the big road and arrived to the ferry terminal just in time to check-in our bags under the ferry.
The ferry's restaurant, and the Beehive in Wellington (the parliament) seen through the window. They do free tours which, as I was told by a bus driver later, are highly recommended!
The small group of walk-on passengers (most people drove their cars onto the ferry) were all guided onto the ship, and we scampered to find the best spot for the journey. My sister insisted we spend the trip outside in the hopes of spotting some dolphins, but we stuck around inside for some food until we left the bay area.
There was some vegan food on the ferry, such as a fruit platter and this snickers slice. I had so many sweets and pudding in New Zealand...
This is where I must say I adore ferries. My first ferry experience was with Grimaldi Lines. In high school we did a school trip to Italy from Spain, bussed around famous places like Florence, Pisa and Venecia before being dropped off in Rome for the ferry ride back home. It was an overnight trip, each room had four beds (no windows, we were paying for the cheap option).
However, the teachers had made a severe miscalculation in handing out our rooms: they’d sorted the beds by alphabetical order! As you can probably imagine, asking teenagers to sleep with their name-buddies wasn’t going to fly, and the students in my class despaired at having to swap all the keycards. You see, our rooms were far apart, not in a line, and who knew where our friends were located on the ship. I like organising things, so I took charge and told everyone to sit down in their hall while I tracked down all the students of our class and went about swapping cards. The ferry was like a grid-maze of endless long halls, and I learnt it by heart in that first hour. My job over the next day, as the person who was most familiar with the ferry, was to find any lost students and pass on messages for the teachers.
Since then, ferry trips fill me with excitement, and I always want to run around everywhere, see every nook and cranny. Besides that Italy-Spain trip, I’ve only been on a couple short 5 or 10-minute trips in Japan (Miyajima, Sakurajima), so the idea of a 3h journey in NZ sounded very fun.
I waved at the other ferry as we passed them, but my sister said I mustn't, the two companies are rivals! I went with the Bluebridge ferry there and Interislander on the way back though, and was happy with both of them. But check the ferry terminals in Wellington, because one of them (Interislander, I think) is very far from the city centre.
After our “lunch” we headed outside and let ourselves be blown around for the remainder of the trip. The decks are very windy and the passengers inside have a great view of the landing, so everyone inside gets a good show of the brave souls outside waddling around like penguins. We had to hold onto the railing and try to drag ourselves against the wind to the safe (non-windy) side, with scarves wrapped around our faces to shield ourselves from the cold and dry wind. All covered, that is, except our eyes, so we were squinting at the water, thinking every piece of drifting wood was a potential seal in the distance.
Red Rocks. You can take a bus / walk from Wellington and see the seals there, if it's the right season. But be careful you don't accidentally step on them, they look like rocks sometimes.
The roof has a giant yellow spot.
The winds changed depending on the direction of the ferry, so we spent some time on the roof, the sides, the front. The clouds covered any good views of the North Island as we were leaving Wellington, and then it was open seas for a while, but the most scenic area, in my opinion, was arriving to the South island. The ferry enters the sounds and then there’s rocks, islands and coastline on both sides. My sister has boated around the sounds a lot so she told me of different excursions she’s done, walking trails and secrets of the area.
That is where we saw our first (and unfortunately only) seal, bobbing about in the water in front of the ferry. My parents have been on this ferry a couple times and they’ve seen lots of dolphins both times. I only saw three but it may have been an illusion, because they jumped once, perfectly coordinated, and then disappeared never to resurface. They were the same colour as the water (grey) so I can’t say for sure if I actually saw them or if my mind fabricated it in order to make me happy.
Seal and dolphin illusions aside, we did see heaps of gannets. They glide over the water, fly up in the air, then swoop down, submerging, gone… and I would look at that spot where they’d dived, waiting, waiting, and they’d finally, after a long while, come back out, with or without catch. More than aquatic life, it was a bird-watching journey.
It looks a little like Ireland, actually.
Another thing I love about ferries is the architecture / construction of it. The pipes and metal, secret doors, signs, oxidized iron, buttons, machines and handles… It’s so much fun, so many things to look at! I’ve watched a couple cruise series on Netflix this year, 1899 (which has unfortunately been discontinued, last I heard) and Alta Mar. They’re both historical, but they make me want to go on a cruise / ferry every time I watch an episode.
It's a strange feeling, because I’m not a boat person overall. I took sailing classes as a kid (vela boats, we call them in Spain) and learnt how to pull up the sail, sitting/standing on different sides, that sort of thing. My sister and I did the classes at the same time, each of us on a different boat, and the instructors would guide us out to sea and then abandon us to our own devices. They’d come to check on us with a speedboat every now and then to make sure everything was good.
It was maybe my third class when I suddenly found myself heading straight for the rocks, and in my panic I couldn't remember whether I was supposed to pull or let go of the rope to make the boat slow down. I had to slow down a little to be able to turn the boat, you see. So I tried both, first letting go and, when that seemed to do nothing, I tightened it. I couldn't notice any difference in speed, so I stood up to just turn the boat as it was. In my attempt, my boat tipped right over, throwing me into the sea with a hunk of wood about to crush me.
Little boat coming to help us get safely into the harbour.
I swam out of the way and waited for rescue (what to do in this scenario had not been covered in our short introduction to sailing), all the while imagining all sorts of things coming out to eat me from the depths under my feet. It's not like the Mediterranean is the most dangerous body of water in the world, and certainly not so close to the coast (if ashark approaches the beach in my area it makes headlines in the newspapers, we only have to worry about jellyfish and “spiderfish”) but until then I’d only swum out to the buoys, which are some 10m deep, and being further out felt like I was stranded in the middle of the ocean.
Later I learnt that I wasn’t the only one who ended up with a tipped boat that day. It had been particularly windy and the sea was dotted with helpless students flapping about uselessly in the water. I did a fourth class after that, but I never managed to shake the fear (to be fair, I’ve been scared of large open spaces like the underwater sea/ocean and space from before the incident), so I told my mum not to pay for another class.
Still, ferries are cool, what can I say!
Anyway, back to the trip report…
Alas, the ferry ride eventually came to an end. We stayed outside, watching the ferry park in the Picton harbour, and didn’t realise everyone inside had already left for their cars. When we went inside, the place was deserted, and we hurried to the bathroom and then downstairs. Thankfully, the passengers were still waiting there because the gate takes forever to slowly creak open.
Waiting to get off. People first, then trucks, then cars. The whole parking area smelled like sheep.
Waiting, waiting...
Waiting while looking at the ceiling...
Once off the ferry, a bus drove us a little aways to the bag pick-up spot, where all the luggage was sitting neatly in a pile. We found our bags and set off to find my sister’s car. She’d parked someone not very suitable, she said, and was worried someone would’ve broken in or the town hall would’ve taken the car away, but it, too, was sitting neatly where she’d left it.
After a plane and boat, we were off with the car, the final piece of the transportation triathlon, and hoping to reach her house before it got dark!
Last edited by Peter_T; Jul 5th, 2023 at 03:25 AM.
Jul 5th, 2023, 10:30 AM
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'Don't dream its over......'
We all know that hit song. Peter, here's additional err, fun fact. The legendary bassist Gary Thain (Uriah Heep) was a Kiwi. His unique style of oh-so melodic runs made him join the ranks of other star rock bassists like Chris Squire, John Entwistle and Jack Bruce. Thain was by all accounts, a decent, feet-on-the-ground, normal kind of guy til he went to London. There, he achieved success with Heep but also became addicted to heroin. He eventually ODed after being kicked out of the band. The scene in the Spinal Tap movie wherein a player gets accidentally electrocuted onstage, was a direct reference to a similar incident that happened to Thain while his band was performing in Texas. He survived that but later succumbed to drugs.
Thain truly took bass playing to a whole new level and his demise was a tragedy.
Peter, do you have any fave Kiwi music?
I am done. the manuka
We all know that hit song. Peter, here's additional err, fun fact. The legendary bassist Gary Thain (Uriah Heep) was a Kiwi. His unique style of oh-so melodic runs made him join the ranks of other star rock bassists like Chris Squire, John Entwistle and Jack Bruce. Thain was by all accounts, a decent, feet-on-the-ground, normal kind of guy til he went to London. There, he achieved success with Heep but also became addicted to heroin. He eventually ODed after being kicked out of the band. The scene in the Spinal Tap movie wherein a player gets accidentally electrocuted onstage, was a direct reference to a similar incident that happened to Thain while his band was performing in Texas. He survived that but later succumbed to drugs.
Thain truly took bass playing to a whole new level and his demise was a tragedy.
Peter, do you have any fave Kiwi music?
I am done. the manuka
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Dec 31st, 2012 02:08 AM
