We’re back on the road after a week on the beach. This time we get to drive. On the wrong side of the road even. Apparently, the thing to do in New Zealand is to rent a camper and drive around the islands. Everyone we had talked to along the way had recommended that plan, so we went along with it too. The campers here are known as campervans, although the one we got was just a van. The company we ended up with was named, appropriately enough, Hippie Camper. It is nice to have our own transportation for a change.

After a day in Auckland, we set off to explore the North Island. As usual, we are trying to see too much given our limited time. Five days still allowed for a few highlights. The first day we stopped to see the kiwis, both the fruit and bird varieties. The fruit are primarily grown in the Bay of Plenty region. It’s far enough north that they get a lot of sunlight, and the massive orchards supply the world with “healthiest fruit”. Both gold and green varieties are grown in the same orchards. We hadn’t seen the gold ones before, they are relatively new, a little sweeter, and apparently quite popular in Japan. There is also a third type that is only available for a couple months a year, I guess they don’t store as well as the other types. Kiwi berries are about the size of grapes with a smooth skin, which is also eaten. Otherwise they look and taste just like the green kind, only sweeter.

The kiwi birds were also interesting. They are an endangered species so we didn’t get to compare the taste with the kiwi fruit, but we did visit a egg hatching and chick raising center. There are no indigenous mammals, snakes, or kiwi predators. However, there have been many introduced since Europeans settled here, as a result the kiwi eggs and chicks have a very low survival rate. On the order of five percent. The strategy that the Kiwi people have come up with is to go dig up a few nests in the forest, steal the eggs, incubate them until hatching, feed the babies until they get to be one kilogram, then release them back to the same forest. The birds are very strange creatures, with several mammal characteristics. Unlike most birds, they have a lower body temperature, forward-facing eyes, bone marrow, no tail, and a semi-flexible beak. Unfortunately we have no pictures of the live birds because the people running the operation said the birds get bothered by getting their picture taken. They also only come out at night, and move around a little too quick to get a photo without using the flash.

After the kiwi visits, we headed south across the North Island toward Wellington. We stopped at Tongariro national park for an afternoon hike to a nice waterfall. This is also the area used for Mordor in The Lord of the Rings films. Luckily the forces of evil were not present that day, which allowed us to have a nice picnic lunch in the park. The scenery was also nice outside the park. Rolling hills, lakes, and endless fields of grazing sheep were common sights along the road.

In Wellington we did the usual downtown tour and enjoyed the perks of being in a city. We were in Auckland long enough to have fish and chips at the city’s oldest pub, and stop by the US consulate to get more pages for Mike’s passport. In Wellington we took time to walk around the harbor, visit the Te Papa Museum, the Weta Cave (movie prop and model studio), walk by “the Hive” or parliament building, and enjoy the coffee and cafes before getting on the ferry to the South Island.

Tags: cars · food · hiking · museum · New Zealand · wildlife