New Zealand (2011)

Mar 122011

It takes just a few hours to fly from Australia to New Zealand. I’ve even commuted there for work. This begs the question, why have we never bothered to go to New Zealand for a holiday?

Well, wonder no more.

It’s not that I intend to answer that question. It’s just that now we have made the trip, it’s no longer a valid question to ask. A valid question now may be, why did it take so long? The answer to that question is, “Stop asking so many questions”.

So on a sunny Saturday morning, Greig and I planted ourselves in a nice big comfy chair in the Air New Zealand Business lounge and started ordering drinks. Maybe the sun wasn’t yet over the yard arm in Sydney, but in New Zealand it was well and truly into the afternoon.

Auckland and Waitomo

By the time we landed in Auckland, it was late afternoon. Just time enough for us to find our way to the hotel via a very expensive taxi and go searching for food.This turned out to be hard to source in Auckland. Well, food that we were willing to eat anyway. There were lots of fast food restaurants in the centre of town, lots of dodgy looking Asian food restaurants with laminex tables, lots of grog shops and lots of karaoke bars. Far too many karaoke bars for my liking. We eventually discovered a nice restaurant hidden from view in one of the small laneways just behind the main strip.We spent a couple of days just wandering around the city. Exploring the back streets. Counting the karaoke bars. Then, once our legs grew tired, we hired a car and started exploring further. Apparently Greig has ancestry in Auckland. His Great Grandmother was born and lived part of her early life in Allendale House, Ponsonby before the family moved across the pond to Australia. Ponsonby is apparently the trendiest suburb in Auckland. Allendale House is apparently the trendiest address in Ponsonby. He’s almost New Zealand royalty!After finishing with Auckland we hit the road and started travelling south. We drove through green hills down to Hamilton and then on to Waitomo. Coming from such a dry country it’s always amazing when we travel in countries that don’t spend most of their time in drought.

We’d booked into the historic Waitomo Hotel, a 19th century “grand tour” hotel perched on the top of a hill overlooking lush green countryside. Now the Waitomo Hotel may not be exactly five star accommodation, but sitting on the balcony watching the sunset or sitting in the restaurant enjoying the local food and wine certainly make up for it.

The next morning we wandered off down the road to check out some of the famed Waitomo Caves. While we certainly have larger and more majestic caves back in Oz, we don’t have a glow worm cave. The Waitomo Glow worm cave is a sight to behold.

With the lights on, the glow-worms aren’t all that much to look at. Matchstick sized, they’re the larvae stage of a mouthless fly doomed to only a few days’ life once they hatch. At least they spend about fourty hours shagging before they die of starvation. Or exhaustion. Whatever. But with the lights out they’re incredibly pretty. Like thousands of stars in a night sky.