Powered by Tofu » New Zealand

#30: Walk To The Grocery Store

poweredbytofu — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:56:33 +0000

I’ve pretty much been walking to the grocery store since I started traveling. ;) I probably did most of my international grocery shopping in New Zealand and Greece though. New Zealand was an easy country to carry around a food bag and actually cook in the evenings, while in Greece I was buying more snack items like Bake Rolls and Laughing Cow cheese. So I originally put this on the list referring to walking from “home” to my closest market. But I’m still going to consider this one accomplished.

Back To Asia

poweredbytofu — Mon, 05 May 2008 22:54:48 +0000

Asia, take two. What a long day! I woke up at 3:30am to take the shuttle to the airport. I got to Melbourne around 8am, just in time to sit at the airport for five hours. Ahhh, airport fun! So what do I do in an international airport with five hours to kill? Coffee, sudoku, reading the Financial Times, Wii Sports in the electronics shop, Jelly Belly pear jelly beans, pretend shopping, reading, pancakes with maple syrup, 1/2 hour Internet, more Wii, and suddenly it seemed like I was being rushed onto the plane. ;) An hour into my JetStar flight to Bangkok, I decided to pay for the movie player. After that, time went pretty quickly. I watched No Country For Old Men (sad), Charlie Wilson’s War, and The Bucket List. A good use of $12, I’d say. After what felt like several days of travel, I was in Bangkok. I grabbed a taxi to my hotel and crashed.

Country Leaver

poweredbytofu — Sun, 04 May 2008 22:54:44 +0000

I slept in this morning, before heading to the Auckland airport for my flight down to Christchurch. I took the $5 bus into town. It’s kind of nice visiting the same town again. I know where everything is and it’s all so easy on the second loop through. I walked to Pac’n Save to get three boxes of muesli (granola) bars for SE Asia, did some last minute errands, did laundry, and then packed for Thailand.

Farewell New Zealand. I’ll miss you.

Walking Waiheke Island

poweredbytofu — Sat, 03 May 2008 22:31:20 +0000

I never give big cities a chance. After breakfast, I walked down to the docks to see if there were any spots on the ferry left to Waiheke Island. There was still room on the 10am ferry, so I ran back to the hostel and grabbed my backpack. First, I took the bus around the island, and then went back to the town center, where I looked at shops, walked through the art gallery, stopped at the info center for a map and the bus schedule and then got wedges at a cafe. For the afternoon, I decided to walk out to one of the closer wineries. It was a nice walk, a few sprinkles, but generally a pretty walkable day. The winery ended up being closed for a private function, and it was already 3pm, so I kept walking up around the hill to the next vineyard. There was an amazing lookout on the way that looks back over to Auckland. I stood on the picnic table and took pictures of the sea, the Skytower and the islands. Very cool. The winery ended up being really busy, but I did a tasting when there was a gap. It was only $5 for 7 wines. The Chardonnay was amazing, Rose kind of blah, and the reds so-so, but two were good. One of the descriptions was “with a hint of pencil shavings” hmmm… clever or cliche, I found it rather amusing. After the tasting, I walked back down the road and then took a side trek (track) over to the beach area. It was signed, but totally not a path, so it felt like I was walking through someone’s farm land! I arrived back in the central town area just in time to grab the bus back to the 5pm ferry. What a fun and relaxing day. When I got back to Auckland, I got take-away pizza for dinner and headed back to the hostel to eat. As I sat down in the cafe, I looked up and happened to be staring across the room at my favorite Irishman! I just can’t get rid of him! It was really nice to end New Zealand with a friendly face.

Big City Life

poweredbytofu — Fri, 02 May 2008 22:21:09 +0000

I had breakfast at Replete Food and people watched. I could totally live here. After checking out of the hostel, I wandered around, and did some shopping. I ended up buying a blue tank top and a hat (for Thailand) at a surf shop. At noon, I caught the Stray bus headed to Auckland.

I officially hate cities. I’m feeling a little down this evening. It’s raining, I’m tired, I’m alone in a big city, and I’m leaving New Zealand in two days. This happens every now and then, but I’m totally in a funk this evening.

Wai-o-tapu Thermal Wonderland

poweredbytofu — Thu, 01 May 2008 22:07:42 +0000

We booked a tour to the Wai-o-tapu Thermal Wonderland for this morning. It was fantastic. I took way too many pictures of boiling mud, the geyser, sulphur pits etc. Nerd day out! Seriously, though, it was great. After the bubbling mud, we stopped at the geyser. Oh and buzz kill, they put soap in the geyser at 10:15 every morning, which is why it’s on a precise schedule. After watching the geyser, we did the 1 1/2 hour walk through the “wonderland,” before heading back to Rotorua. We grabbed lunch a cafe and then watched Whale Rider, a movie about the Mauri people.

Around 4pm we walked to the bus station and soaked our feet in the thermal spring at the info center while we waited for my bus. It’s been really nice traveling in a little group of three, but it’s time for me to leave New Zealand, so I’m headed back to Taupo and then up to Auckland. And then there was one… for real this time.

Sweet As! Spa Day!

poweredbytofu — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:55:19 +0000

This morning we walked back to the spa park to swim in the river. It was rather murky and really warm. I ventured closer to the river where it was practically freezing, and then decided to stick to the mud area. A very fun morning! Everyone was going skydiving before we left for Rotorua. (Our Stray passes didn’t cover Rotorua, so we bought $13 tickets on Nakedbus.com instead.) Their dive ended up being canceled because of the weather, so we headed to Rotorua. Us girls got off the bus in Rotorua and Ireland continued on to Auckland. After checking in to possibly the nicest hostel in New Zealand, Treks, we decided to check out the Polynesian Spa. We grabbed our swim stuff and headed in to town. It was $20, but ended up being really fun. Each of the pools vary in 1 to 2 degrees, so if you travel in one direction, it just gets hotter and hotter, until you circle around to the first pool. It was overrun with Japanese and Chinese tour buses, but after an hour it cleared out a bit. It was fun checking out a natural spring spa and then the geo-thermal commercial spa, all in the same day.

Waiting For The Tongariro Crossing

poweredbytofu — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:47:30 +0000

We had an early start yesterday on the express bus to Auckland. We were only going halfway, to Taupo, but since it’s the express bus, it made only a few stops and no hiking. We made it to Taupo around noon and received the bad news that the Tongariro Crossing is closed, due to a storm. We decided to stay here a few days anyway, in hopes that it will re-open and we can hike it.

We decided to go hiking around Taupo while we wait for the crossing to open, but we woke up to pissing down rain, again. After breakfast, we headed in to town and checked in with one of the Stray drivers at Urban to see if there were any updates on the crossing. No good news. Then Sas and I decided it was clear enough to hike to Huka Falls today. But on the way back to the hostel we got drenched in a sudden downpour. We changed and then headed back in to town to find ponchos and got even more drenched! By the time we had found garbage bags, it had cleared up a bit. We walked out toward the falls trail. We passed a spa area, which we need to return to tomorrow. You can just swim in the warm, muddy creek that flows into the river. After several hours we reached the falls. It was a brilliant trail, right along the river. I could totally live on this river. We continued past the falls and ate our lunches outside of this heli-pad cafe. We considered hitching back into town, but decided to just take the same trail back. By the time we got back to town we were exhausted! After finding dinner, we met up with our favorite Irishman, who arrived in town today, and went to see a movie at the Taupo Cinema, followed by a second dinner at Hell’s Pizza.

The Pizza Thief

poweredbytofu — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 21:15:18 +0000

So this morning when I checked the fridge, two pieces of my leftover pizza were gone, and in their place were two $2 coins. I was mad that someone stole my pizza, but then I just started laughing, because no one ever steals food out of the fridge and compensates you for it. It had to have been JP because he was the only one who got up early, to go surfing. I’m pretty protective of my food, but the money idea totally cracked me up.

We arrived at the Picton ferry at noon, and ate our picnic lunches at the terminal. I slept most of the way over to Wellington. When I walked into the hostel, I bumped into my favorite Irishman in the kitchen. I hadn’t seen him since the first Queenstown stop, so we all went out after dinner. It ended up being pub quiz night and we placed 2nd!

Hey, Love, You Want Some Chicken?

poweredbytofu — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 20:51:24 +0000

So I’m standing in the coffee shop this morning, waiting for my take-away and “boo!” Amanda appears. They decided to not spend an extra day in ChCh, so we’re on the same bus again! So I’ve already done the the Christchurch to Kaikoura bus trip, and the deja-vu part is that we happen to have the same driver that I had last time too. After leaving Christchurch we stopped at a few places and arrived in Kaikoura around 11:30am. I ended up being the last person to check in at the hostel, and what do you know, they stuck me in a room with some old, creepy Scottish guy. I walk in and some old guy is in there, totally off his face, and it’s like 20 Questions time. “Do you have a boyfriend?”, “Are you traveling alone?” while creepily staring as I unpacked my bag to do laundry. After I got my laundry together, he’s like “Where ya goin’?” And I was like “to do laundry”. Creepy laugh, “I might just put some of mine in there too, heh heh heh.” Riiiiiight, so I dropped my stuff off at the washing machine and then went downstairs to get a different room. They asked why, and I said “because there’s a creepy old guy in my room!” :) Sometimes you just have to go with your gut. After lunch, I went down to the pebble beach and then we all watched a movie at the hostel. Oh and creepy Scottish guy was downstairs again. At this point, he’s drinking straight out of a wine bottle and saying “love, hey love, you want some chicken?” and laughing to himself. Now that he’s not my roommate anymore, I can laugh about it.

After the movie, we went out for dinner. I ended up with a gigantic pizza, so I have half of it leftover for tomorrow. :) Then we just hung out at the hostel all evening.