29th March to 18th April 2018

We spent three nights in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, staying in a converted warehouse apartment booked through Airbnb, right in the centre of the city, the streets busy with bars and restaurants. The apartment belonged to two guys and, having passed a relaxing morning chatting, they headed off for the Easter weekend, leaving their amazing apartment to us.

We spent a couple of days exploring Wellington, the wonderful Te Papa museum and the botanical gardens and an evening out on vibrant Cuba Street, before catching the Northern Explorer train. This runs from Wellington to Auckland across the centre of North Island three times a week, mostly carrying tourists, and has a commentary through headphones, in English and Mandarin, giving information on the history of the countryside through which we were passing.

We had arranged to stop off at two stations along the route, the first stop being at National Park station, in the Tongariro National Park. We planned to walk the 19.5 km Tongariro Alpine Crossing which is ‘New Zealand’s most popular one-day trek’. I had booked a couple of nights in the Chateaux Tongariro Hotel which ‘exudes a timeless elegance deeply rooted in New Zealand’s heritage….. where you can soak up mountain views and classic 1930s atmosphere in our welcoming lounge, savouring High Tea, classic cocktails and live piano music around the crackling fire’……

…. and after dropping off our bags in our very comfortable room, thank you, we headed down to the lounge for tea and scones (with jam and cream, of course). Our waiter was from the Cotswolds, in New Zealand for a working holiday.

The next morning we were up early to get the shuttle to the start of the trek. We were not alone. It was Easter Monday and the busiest weekend of the year to do the trek; there had been 3000 walkers the previous day.

The path was initially on a boardwalk to protect the marshy habitat, before climbing up through a steep rocky terrain to beneath the active volcano, Ngauruhoe (which is Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings films). It is a stark, dramatic landscape which passes the Emerald Lakes, boiling mud pools, and the still-active Red Crater.

Towards the end of the trail it descended steeply through an open, alpine landscape before finally plunging through rainforest. Although we’d really enjoyed it, it was a relief to be collected at the far end of the track by the shuttle bus and to be taken back to the hotel, as my toes were sore and blistered by then. The shuttle bus operators keep a note of everyone that they drop off at the start and ensure that they pick everyone up at the end. The young female driver told of how, as it was getting dark, she had to go in search of a missing party and carry out a rather unfit and overweight woman for 3 km on her back.

The next day we boarded the train for the two hour ride to our next stop, Otorohanga. Nearby are the Waitomo Glowworm Caves and our next hotel, the Waitomo Caves Hotel, where The Queen had stayed during her visit to New Zealand in 1953. We suspect the faded and tatty decor had not been updated since then.

The Waitomo Caves riddle the area and a number of companies offer tours to different caves, mainly to see the glowworms. These are in fact the larvae of a species of fly, which live in the roofs of the caves and which glow to attract prey into the sticky threads that they spin and which hang down from their nests. Our guide described them as cannibalistic maggots which pooed light.

We joined a small guided tour and drifted in a rubber boat along an underground stream. When all torches were turned off it was an incredible sight, the ceiling of the cave alight with thousands of pinpricks of tiny lights, like the night sky.

The following day we went abseilling 100meters down into a cave, a particular challenge for me as I’m not good with heights. The entrance to the cave was a narrow crack in the hill, with the cave dropping deeply below. It seemed a very long way down, and it was… I tried not to think about it but to concentrate on the trees and vegetation growing on the sides of the chasm.

At the bottom we scrambled along a narrow path and over huge rocks, admiring the limestone formations, a big eel which lived in the underground stream and more glowworms. The way back was by climbing up a wobbling 30 meter ladder… terrifying and exhausting.

We had yet to see a kiwi, in fact most New Zealanders have never seen one in the wild since they are shy, nocturnal birds, and in Otorohanga there is the Kiwi House and Native Bird Park. Here a greater spotted kiwi and two brown kiwis are kept in dim light conditions during the day, so you can watch them run around their enclosure and feed. They are busy little creatures who can apparently be quite aggressive and attack the keepers.

Back onto the train and on to Auckland and another Airbnb. We spent a day sightseeing, a walking tour around the city and up the Sky Tower.

The Sky Tower, at 328 meters, is the tallest tower in New Zealand but considerably shorter than the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai which is 828 meters.

….you can do a Sky Walk around one of the platforms on the outside of the top of the tower, or bungee jump from it…..

…… it’s a long way down, but you get a great view of Auckland from the top.

Back to the marina and after another week of work on the boat and cleaning and tidying, as well as socialising, it was time for Vega to go back into the water after over five months on the hard …

It was great to be out of the dirty boatyard and back on a pontoon in the marina. The work continued with a new sprayhood being fitted, a top-down furler for our cruising chute, trying to fix a knocking on the propellor, security covers for the hatches etc etc. Around us other cruisers were getting ready for the trip north to Fiji and Tonga once the cyclone season in the South Pacific is over, usually in May.

In the meantime we had arranged to visit friends in Sydney. To be continued………