I got woken up at 12:30 AM by the guy next door. A businesswoman came to visit him, and she sure wasn't the Avon lady. After all the moaning, groaning and belly-slapping stopped, she took off and I was able to get some sleep.
I headed off at 7:00 AM - it only took me an hour to get to Rotorua and I paid $45 per night for a motel room (unfortunately there are no motor camps in town). After getting unpacked, I rode about a third of the way back south to Taupo to visit the Waiotapu Thermal Wonderlands.
This was an area of thermal activity similar to the Craters of the Moon. The eighteen square kilometer area is covered with craters, vents, and boiling mudholes. It has the largest 'terrace 'structure in the southern hemisphere. Water from a boiling spring carries lime silicates down to the local stream. The silicates then settle in broad terraced sheets. It was very unusual looking. I saw some craters full of birds' nests: starlings and mynahs use the warm soil to incubate their eggs. The pools are various colors due to minerals in the water. After a while, the stench got to me and I left.
I rode back to Rotorua and turned onto a crappy gravel road to the Waimangu Volcanic Valley. This was part of a 17 KM rift formed in 1886 during the Mt. Tarawera eruption. I walked for about an hour (mostly downhill) through a bush area full of various boiling mudholes and geysers. One unusual feature was the 'Frying Pan lake.' This lake was created from a volcanic crater formed in 1917. The lake's average temperature is 55 C or 131 F. The top of the lake is covered by wispy veils of carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide: it looked like something from prehistoric times.
After walking for 45 minutes, I reached the dock for the 'Ariki Moana,' an old fishing trawler refitted to carry passengers. We then took a forty minute cruise around Lake Rotomahana where we passed a cliff full of steam vents.
I rode back to my room in Rotorua. I'd heard that Rotorua is sometimes called Rotten-rua because of the constant rotten egg smell. I can believe it. I was getting a bit sick from the smell.
I arranged to go a 'hangi,' a Maori feast and dance ceremony, at the THC Hotel. There was a huge feast of Maori dishes. Eel tastes and looks like salmon. I tried seaweed, which I liked, and sow thistle, which was kind of dry and tasteless.
There was then an hour of traditional dancing. One rather cute dancer kept looking at me (or so I thought). Then she pulled me up on the stage as a 'volunteer' for a dance. Oh, great.
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I arranged to go on a 'River Rats' trip Wednesday at 12 noon on the Rangitaiki river. To kill time I headed on the bike to the Rainbow Springs Farm Show. This is an attraction that features NZ animal life, including kiwis, and a sheepdog show. When I got their at 9:00 AM it was still closed. I walked a block over to the Skyline Gondola, where a pod carried me to the top of a 900 meter hill. There was a fairly decent view of Rotorua. I spent a while there, then headed back to town.
I got picked up by 'River Rats,' probably NZ's biggest white water rafting company. They gave me a forty minute ride over old logging roads in a diesel Daihatsu van (Daihatsu seems to be very popular in NZ).
We were fitted out with neoprene wetsuits, wool sweaters, helmets, and life jackets. Besides me, there was an Aussie guide, a Kiwi guide, a German doctor named Karl, an English doctor named Tim, and a kiwi child care worker named Yolanda. We spent about two hours rafting down a 14 KM stretch of white water river called the Rangitaiki. The river was rated a grade 4 level which I gather is moderate. There was another river called the Kaituna that is rated as 5+ and contains a seven meter waterfall!
This white water rafting is great - it was like a roller coaster in water! Afterwards, the guide told me that I should try rafting in British Columbia: the rivers have fewer rocks and more volume for speed.
As we drove back into Rotorua, it started pouring rain. The forecast was for the rain to continue the next day. I debated whether to stay in Rotorua for another day or head to the Coromandel Peninsula.
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I woke up to find it was partly cloudy, so I rode out while the weather was still good. I headed east on the lake shore and then turned north on Highway 33. It was very typical North Island flat farm land.
When I got to Te Puke, I ran into some confusion. Two side roads criss-crossed the main road in a six-pointed star pattern, like an asterisk. When I got near it, it had 'Give Way' signs painted on it and a car came up on the left at the same time, so I stopped. (Of course I had the right-of-way!) Some impatient moron behind me started honking his horn. I got going. The moron pulled up on my right, a zit-faced teenager. He started wailing on his horn and gave me the middle finger. I was tempted to return the favor, but decided I screwed up and deserved it.
I then got into Tauranga during rush hour. Tauranga has about 75,000 people. Somehow I got through several roundabouts without getting lost (applause please). I then came up to a very surprising obstacle: a toll booth! It was the first and only one I saw in New Zealand.
I pulled to the far left of my lane, put the bike into neutral, hopped off, and started hunting for a 50 cent coin. Geez. After pulling maps, wallet, keys, etc. out of my pockets, I finally find some coins. By this time, a woman had stopped her car partway in the lane. I waved her past me. I then walked up to the toll booth guy (who was glaring at me for taking so long) and handed him a $2 coin. I got my change, put away my maps and wallet, donned my gloves, walked back to my bike, hopped on and put it into gear. It stalled. Oops, forgot that damn sidestand! I restarted the Kawasaki. Hurray! I was finally through after a lengthy production.
Going through Tauranga, some loser in a work van with a trailer kept cutting me off. He was obviously doing it on purpose: I caught him staring at me. Maybe he was sore from waiting behind me at the toll booth? Finally we got to the city limits and started going up a long hill. I passed by him and waved good-bye.
For quite a long way I was riding through peaceful hilly sheep country. Bor-ring! Looking at a map, the road north from Waiki looked more twisty than the road west. It turned out to be a wise decision: the road soon became very twisty and fun - the rival of roads on the South Island.
When I got to Whangamata (pronounced FANG-a-mata), I got lost. I ended up on a road in the right direction labelled 'Heavy Traffic Route.' I thought this was the route for heavy traffic - wrong! This was the route for traffic that is literally heavy, IE big trucks. I was riding the EX500 on yet another stretch of crappy gravel road when along came a big lumber truck. I dodged over to the side almost dropping the bike in the shoulder's loose gravel.
I eventually found the tarmac highway and headed west on Highway 26A to Thames. I got to Thames, refueled and found a cabin. It was a dump, and the owner wanted $20 for it. A rip-off by Kiwi standards, but I was tired and needed to rest. Today's ride was about 360 KM over four hours. That sounds pretty slow, but there was a lot of twisty stuff slowing me down. Okay, okay, it IS slow. As I unpacked my bags, it started raining a heavy drizzle.
I looked over the maps and realized I didn't have enough time to go either up the Coromandel Peninsula or to the Northland, and then make it to Auckland by Saturday afternoon. If the bike hadn't been delivered two days late I could have gone all the way to the northern tip. Damn!
I walked into Thames - it was a tiny town with not much of excitement. I stopped by a Honda dealership. I told him I paid $500 NZ per week for the rental and he shook his head. Most NZ dealerships will do a guaranteed buy-back: they will buy the bike back minus any depreciation and repair costs. I could have bought a decent used 500 CC bike for about $2000 to $2500 NZ, then sold it back after three weeks and lost maybe $500. Grrr.
{I wrote the next bunch of stuff while contemplating the fact that the trip was coming to an end, and I felt a little 'blue.'}
The trip felt like it was winding down. After the South Island, the North Island was really pale in comparison. I'd been on the North Island for a week and had had only one good day of riding (today - but it was marred by Tauranga's toll booth and idiot commuters) and the first couple of hours out of Wellington. Certainly nothing I'd rode could compare to the Queen Charlotte Drive or to the west coast of the South Island.
Napier and Wellington were big disappointments. Taupo was fairly nice. Rotorua was very commercial, but the Maori Hangi, the thermals, and the river rafting were great.
The EX500 had performed very well. My only complaint was that it was a street bike. If I were to tour NZ again, I would insist on having a dual-purpose bike. I didn't feel very confident riding the Kawasaki on gravel. Even putting more dirt-friendly tires on the same bike would have been a vast improvement. I would also recommend that anyone else coming to NZ do this same tour in the opposite direction, IE. from north to south.
I had to say that I was disappointed somewhat in my own riding skills. I'd heard people talk about doing six or seven hundred miles in a day. My longest ride was from Te Anau to Fox Glacier: about 330 miles in seven hours, and I was exhausted. Now mind you, that included many very curvy mountain roads. I don't think it would be wise for me to ride with a group; I would just slow most of the other riders down.
I was wondering if I should tour NZ again. When I got to the North Island, I was very happy to think I might come back in a year or two to tour again. Now though, I thought I would just stick to the South Island for the next tour. Maybe I was just getting homesick.
{Note: after transcribing this from my journal, I don't know what the hell I was *****ing about! Now that I've been back in Canada for a week, I'm already longing to return to NZ for another tour. A few days of riding again with 80 KM/H butt-headed Volvo drivers has made me realize how good riding in the North Island was. I must have had some kind of male PMS when I wrote those last few paragraphs!}
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I took my time packing and getting ready to go. I slept quite well. I rode out under partly cloudy skies. Very smooth straight roads through gentle country farms. I got to a single lane bridge (with a traffic light!) spanning a wide river. After waiting several minutes, the light went green and I got to cross.
The road stayed the usual two lanes until it joined Highway 1: then it turned into the four lane highway with overpasses that I am used to in Canada. The level of traffic steadily climbed as I approached Auckland. Soon I was watching for signs to Mangere, the suburb where my motel was. After quite a while, I pulled off and found a quiet sidestreet so that I could look at my map. Whoops - I'd overshot the turnoff by several kilometers. I figured out the route to the motel and found it after about ten or fifteen minutes. Although there were many cars on the road, nobody seemed to act like a jerk (unlike Tauranga)!
I got a room and unpacked. Today's ride was perhaps 1.5 hours from Thames. It was okay but not exciting. I don't know my way around Auckland, so I decide to take a bus downtown.
On the way in, a car got crunched right behind the bus. We were in the inside passing lane on a four lane stretch of motorway when there was the sound of a car wreck. The three ton truck behind us had some bozo try to pass him on the inside shoulder! Just as Mister Bozo passed, the truck and the car reached an overpass. The idiot car driver got crushed between the right fender of the truck and one of the overpasses' cement pillars. The driver of the bus pulled over and radioed for help. It probably did no good: the car was crushed like a pop can. The roof and floor were touching in spots, and blood and petrol were all over. I didn't hear anything on the news, but I don't see how anyone could have survived.
I took a bus tour from downtown. We started by riding around the downtown core while the driver pointed out famous landmarks. We then went over the Auckland Harbor Bridge. It originally had four lanes, then had two more lanes clipped onto each side by a Japanese engineering firm. The nickname for this bridge is the Nippon Clip-on. One unusual feature is that the concrete barrier or divider is moved twice a day for each rush hour. A fancy machine rolls out on the bridge, lifts each concrete barrier section, and moves it two lanes over. In the morning, there are five lanes into town and only three out. In the evening it's five lanes out and three in.
We paid a short visit to Mount Eden, an extinct volcanic cone. It has excellent views of the whole city and harbor. The crater is a very distinct bowl-shape perhaps 100 meters wide.
We then went to Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World. This was amazing: an acrylic tunnel leads for 300 or 400 meters through natural looking tanks of seawater. There are about 1500 sea creatures, including many fish, sharks, lobsters and sting rays. It is incredible - it seems as though you are walking around underwater.
We also paid a visit to the Auckland War Memorial Museum. The museum contains a lot of memorabilia from the World Wars, including an actual RAF Spitfire, a captured Japanese Zero, and a captured German V-1 buzzbomb.
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I got the bike cleaned as well as I could and headed to Graeme Crosby Motorcycles. It was fairly easy to find. I parked the bike and went in. After handing over the helmet and saddlebags, I spent about twenty minutes talking to one of the sales guys. They had a fleet of twenty bikes for rental: EX500s, Kawasaki ZX-7s, and Yamaha XT600s.
I said that I'd rather have had the XT600 for the gravel roads. He laughed and said, 'We Kiwis like riding our street bikes in the dirt - it adds a bit of excitement!' He added that the XT600s are very popular with Germans because they like the 'macho' styling rather than wanting the dirt capabilities.
He also told me that they do buy-backs, but it works out to be cheaper to rent if you want the bike for less than a month or so. He told me that they recommend riders do a complete circuit of the circumferences of both islands (like a figure-eight), starting and finishing in Auckland. He also pointed out some twisty roads on a map of the North Island and says too bad I missed them all except Whangamata to Thames!
I walked out and took a final photo of the EX500. I noted the odometer: 3471 kilometers. I had put 2981 KM or 1787 miles on the bike (about the same distance as San Francisco to Dallas).
I headed downtown and wander around. I met a chip vendor who spoke good English, though her Kiwi accent sounds a bit strange. It turned out that she moved here from the Netherlands only three years ago and has learned her English since. Talking to her, I find out that in those three years, she's never been to the South Island! I tried 'kumara' chips. (Kumara is a type of sweet potato.) They didn't really appeal to me so I fed them to the pigeons.
I then took a tour bus to the Montgomerie Sheep Farm. This is a small-to-medium size farm an hour's drive from Auckland. We had a barbecue steak lunch. The owner then showed how his 'eye' dog is used to herd sheep. We then went into the shearing barn and watched him shear a sheep. (Hey, it was a lot more exciting than it sounds.) The farmer then explained a little about the sheep wool business: he had 2000 sheep that he shears twice a year. He would get maybe 30 large bales of wool per shearing, and currently the auction will bring in $600 NZ per bale. That works out to $36,000 NZ per year. Not a whole lot of money when you work in the expenses: that's why they do the tours.
Tomorrow night I would fly home, leaving me one final day in Auckland.
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I woke up and packed. Keeping only my camera and maps, I checked out and headed downtown. After a quick breakfast, I went on a Fuller's Harbor Cruise. This was a three hour cruise in the Auckland harbor. We went north to Davenport (northern Auckland). The catamaran then headed to Rangitoto Island, the recent volcanic cone in the harbor. In the 1950s, there were only a couple hundred cabins on the island. The NZ government bought them from the owners, but allowed the owners to continue using them. The catch: the cabins were demolished when the original owners died. There are only a few cabins left now. In another twenty or thirty years, all the houses will be gone and the volcano will be back to its original state.
The island was covered with green bushes and trees that have found footholds in the volcanic rock, similar to the hillsides of Milford Sound. I spent twenty minutes walking around before returning to the catamaran.
The cat then headed west and made a quick loop underneath the harbor bridge before heading to dock. I then found a bus to the Auckland Zoo. It was a fairly good zoo, with all the animals in pens that are meant to resemble their natural habitat. There was a display called 'Aviary of the Forest.' It was a huge wire mire mesh tent that contained many trees and bushes. It also contained a small brook and pond. The aviary contains several species of threatened birds, and the zoo has had much success in captive breeding.
I walked next door to the Museum of Transport and Telecommunications (MOTAT). It is a collection of buildings containing a mix of exhibits. I found it annoying as it didn't seem to be very well-organized. One building had a '28 Harley with a factory sidecar (cool), an old BSA with a wooden sidecar (cooler), and a '27 P&M Panther, a British-made BIG air-cooled 600 CC single (coolest)!
I then caught the tram back to the zoo. A society at MOTAT maintains some of the old trolley cars that were shut down in the 1960s. There's still an 1800 meter section of track running between MOTAT and the zoo. Currently they are just starting to restore an old double decker tram car.
I then headed back downtown to the Maritime Museum. This was just recently opened. It was an extremely good display of NZ's history of sailing and boating. There were several original and replica outrigger canoes. There were also many items related to shipping and sailing. The Steinlager II (winner of the '89 Whitbread) and the NZ2 (from the America's Cup) are mounted outside on permanent display. Oh yeah, I also saw a 1929 'Indian Motocycle Company' outboard engine! It was a small two-stroke opposed twin engine. Neat!
I grabbed a quick meal and then stopped by the motel to pick up my duffle bag. I then headed to the airport for the twelve hour flight to Los Angeles.
{On the plane} Take-off was very good. It seems very sad to leave New Zealand behind.
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