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Back home and it’s all over (for this year…)

This entry is part 29 of 29 in the series RTW via New Zealand

Back home and it’s all over (for this year…)
Manchester, United Kingdom

Manchester, United Kingdom


Hmmm, I am not sure I am a fan of BMI. I know we’ve been flying premium economy on all thee longhauls and I know we’re now back in ‘monkey’ class (well what did YOU think the ‘M’ code on the economy ticket stood for?), but they do seem quite cavalier.

OK, from the beginning; on arriving at Heathrow we walked what felt like halfway back to Manchester along various corridors following the ‘transfer passengers’ purple signs, through passport control, security checks, a ‘secure’ bus ride from Terminal 3 to Terminal 1, more security checks… until we were spat out where BMI had left us waiting for our Air NZ flights a month ago. We swapped our Virgin-issued boarding cards for BMI-issued ones at the transfer desk and it wasn’t long before we were down at gate 8, which seems to consist of multiple actual gates leading to various BMI aircraft. About 30 mins from flying time they decided the Manchester flight would go from gate 7, which wasn’t really a gate but a cunning set of stairs disguised as a gate. This lead to a bus that drove all the way round the airport to an Airbus 320 with ‘Star Alliance’ seemingly crudely stenciled on the side (they really do need to hire a graphics designer). We had to climb up steps in the rain to the aircaft too – no civilised departure fingers for us BMI monkeys. We were now past our alloted take-off time and it was obvious we were sat on the apron waiting for a free slot, which luckily did show up about 20 mins later. The flight itself was fine and short. The aircraft was full of people of a certain age and older plus a large man of the cloth. It turned out this was a church congregation returning from a pilgrimmage to the Holy Land. I noticed a woman across the aisle praying as we lifted off and as we landed, whilst the woman next to me was definitely fidgety on both occasions too. Now call me cynical, but WTF have they got to be worried about, eh? They’re obviously saved already, they have just been on a pilgrimmage, surely they’re going to be well in with the Big Man? Unless of course there’s something they ain’t telling us?

But anyway, either the prayers work or Airbus Industry do their job or something like that and we land safe and sound back at good old cold, wet, dark Ringway. Did I say ‘good old’? Slip of the tongue! We’re finally back on terra firma after the last flight. By my calculations we’ve flown something like 24,000 miles on this circumavigation. Would I do it again? To be honest with you, I’d have quite happily hopped straight on board the Air NZ 747 bound for Los Angeles and flown back the other way! The bank manager wouldn’t have liked it though.

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Back in Blighty (and it’s raining)

This entry is part 28 of 29 in the series RTW via New Zealand

Back in Blighty (and it’s raining)
London, United Kingdom

London, United Kingdom


Well Virgin Atlantic got us to Heathrow without too much fuss. I have to confess that their Premium Economy isn’t quite as nice as Air NZ. The food is definitely a couple of notches lower. I think the seats are slightly more comfortable though, maybe? They are definitely wider BUT the legroom is less. Does that mean that New Zealanders are generally tall and slim whilst Brits are a race of fat dwarves? Will you stop looking at me when I say that!? In addition Virgin’s TV screen doesn’t rotate as far which makes it really hard to see when the guy in front has his seat right back unless I too have my seat right back. I don’t mind too much as theres nowt I fancy watching anyway. Also shortly after we became airborne a weird vibration set itself up
with an epicentre somewhere around my seat. One of the stewardesses
noticed herself and it concerned her enough to fetch the first officer
from the cockpit to ‘reassure’ me. Now I wasn’t mithered that much, it
was more a minor irritation than anything and soon after we reached
cruising altitude it faded away anyway, so I think the first officer
was probably overkill. Hell, I’ve flown on Boeing 707s back in the day
and every seat was like that! However, the good thing is it did keep me
knee deep in solicitous stewardesses for the rest of the flight! Unlike Air New Zealand’s elaborate breakfast meal, requiring the aircraft’s passengers be woken 3 hours out, Virgin give us a ham and egg muffin and a cup of tea/coffee in a paper cup. They therefore kept us in darkness (not necessarily asleep in my case) until just under 2 hours from home. They don’t wake us up with a hot towel either, tight gits. We circle for ages – we must be in a holding pattern – before they finally let us down at Heathrow. Back in England again and of course its raining!

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Bye-bye USA

This entry is part 27 of 29 in the series RTW via New Zealand

Bye-bye USA
San Francisco, CA

San Francisco, CA


Last day in San Francisco and an epic bout of packing and repacking after another fine (but final) breakfast at The Home Plate. I think they were sad to see us go because we’ve been pretty regular customers there in the last 4 days. We finally checked out of Day’s Inn around 9.30am, which was far too early to return the car (1pm) so we decided to re-visit the Presidio park – there’s a lot of it we didn’t see the first time as we didn’t have a map or our bearings or anything. The park itself is a lot bigger than we thought – a heck of a lot bigger. We had a good drive round looking at the restored military buildings – now all leased to commercial organisations, but still kept the way they would have looked when the place was a military barracks. In particular we were on the lookout for a bronze Yoda – apparently the HQ of George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic company is here, but alas we didn’t see it. The roads are such a warren it’s hardly surprising. Maybe I should have googled it the night before?

Somehow we found ourselves down by the seashore under the Golden Gate Bridge again. It’s hardly surprising, it’s such a magnetic place. Once again the weather was being exceedingly kind with with sunshine and temps in the 70’s. We were happy just to while away an hour here, buying drinks from the Park Services Warming Hut (no need for a warming from the fogs today), and watching the passers-by. However it quickly struck us that the joggers were overwhelmingly female. Hmm, it’s a Tuesday morning – all I can think of is that rich husbands are out earning money and bored wives are burning off the frappacinos with a circuit of the park.

Eventually we have no choice but to hop in the car for the last time and fire up Jane the SatNav girl and see if she can find her way back to the airport. I fully expect her to take us back the way she brought us, but no she has different ideas and chooses a completely different freeway that worryingly makes no mention of the airport until the last 5 minutes. Nevertheless she steers us straight into the Hertz garage and we’re back at SF International with the car checked in and waiting for the AirTrain to take us back to our terminal in no time.

This is our first flight by Virgin Atlantic, so we’re quite pleased when the check-in lady is happy to give us boarding cards for the Manchester shuttle as well as the Heathrow flight and more importantly, checks our baggage in with MAN stickers on. Whoo, we won’t see them again until Manchester (hopefully), which is bloody handy since I am sure mine reads 23kg on the scales! Looks like Virgin are flying us out on an A340 Airbus – a lot bigger than the A330’s that Air NZ were using and I hope faster. Finger’s crossed this is a nice flight – see you in London.


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A walk in Muir Woods (and along the seashore)

This entry is part 26 of 29 in the series RTW via New Zealand

A walk in Muir Woods (and along the seashore)
San Francisco, CA

San Francisco, CA


Another fine morning and another fine breakfast at ‘The Home Plate’. Far fewer customers than yesterday, which means it must be a local Sunday treat for some. Never mind, we’ll be back tomorrow, but for the last time.

Today the plan was to follow another of the popular guided tours but doing it ourselves at our pace instead of the ‘all on: all off’ of the tours. Also at $49 each these tours are hardly cheap when we have a car sat idle. Anyway first trip out was to Muir Woods, which is right next to Mount Tamalpais State Park and the closest giant redwood forest to San Francisco. It’s about 11 miles from our motel north along Hwy 101, which means it’s over the Golden Gate Bridge, yay! I’ve already crossed it twice in a tour coach, but does it count if you can’t see it? So it was straight out over the bridge, trying to take in the views whilst not accidentally changing lanes (very tricky) amongst quite heavy traffic. From the bridge it was off at Hwy.1 and follow the frequent signposts. No bother to do. Hwy.1 is quite narrow and twisty and has speed signs for 25mph and even 15mph bends. I couldn’t but reflect that the average New Zealander would be taking the road at about 60mph with the cellphone in one hand and probably a coffee cup in the other.

Even though we were early at the woods, we ended up quite a long way back in the parking lot. It felt like there was going to be a lot of people there, which is not so good. However, once we’d paid our 5 dollars at the entrance station the car park noise and people quickly thinned out as we entered the redwood forest proper. Apparently redwood trees are the tallest living things, and some of the trees in these woods were over 250 feet tall and 1000 years old. The trails through the woods were easily accessible boardwalk paths, a bit like we saw in the Kauri forest in New Zealand. However instead of one walk there was a choice of routes ranging from the shortest 25-min walk to longer 3 and 4 hour walks. I was determined to get out to the so-called Cathedral Grove which is the largest single stand of trees and actually on one of the shorter routes. It’s also where an international meeting was held that brought to life the idea behind the United Nations at the end of the second world war. The woods were beautifully looked after and there were a small army of rangers and volunteers flitting hither and thither with barrows of tools and soil and seedlings off to do some maintenance somewhere. It’s also unusual as they don’t allow pets or even food and drink into the woods. They take it pretty seriously. The trees themselves – well, words don’t really do them justice. One one hand it’s just a lot of very big trees, but on the other it’s a kind of spiritual place. They do a nice hot chocolate at the ranger station as well!

From Muir Woods we returned a different way under a blazing Californian sun round the mountainside and back on to Hwy. 1 to Sausalito. This is a very posh little town full of yachts and mansions overlooking the city from the other side of the bay. The main street runs along the foreshore of Ric*******s Bay and is lined with little cafes and shops selling more upmarket tat than you’d find at Fisherman’s Wharf. The views across the bay were also pretty stunning. The whole town if famous for it’s artist community, many who used to live afloat in the marina. Alas I think the town is a victim of it’s own success because most of the boats there now are more likely to be owned by dot.com millionaires than Bohemian artists. We spent the afternoon here, inc. a late lunch at a little cafe where I tipped the waitress entirely too much purely because of her resemblance to Keira Knightley. I wonder how many others do the same?

Eventually we left Sausalito and allowed Jane the SatNav girl to take control for the first time today. She got us back across the bridge very quickly indeed (requiring a $6 toll fee this time for southbound traffic) but I’m afraid I have to report that she threw a hissy fit after she brought us down Lombard Street southwards. The trouble is Lombard Street has a median with trees and bushes in and our motel can only be accessed going northwards… She went very quiet as I sailed helplessly past. I got her out of her mess by doing a U-ey 2 blocks down. Girls and maps, eh?

Tomorrow afternoon we fly out of ‘fall’ in sunny San Francisco to winter in cold and rainy England. Been a long journey and a lot of miles – something like 31,000 km so far and another 9,000-odd tomorrow. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.


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A walk in the parks

This entry is part 25 of 29 in the series RTW via New Zealand

A walk in the parks
San Francisco, CA

San Francisco, CA


Well the clocks went back last night but even so, we weren’t up right early. Judging by the people leaving the motel, going for breakfast, etc, we weren’t the only ones either. The forecast was for a warm and sunny day and they weren’t kidding – even at 9am it was warm enough for shorts. I had to remind myself we’re in the Northern Hemisphere again and it’s November the 1st. We walked 200 ft. down the road to ‘The Home Plate’ for breakers, a tiny little breakfast/brunch cafe that is widely mentioned in the local press. It was packed, but we got in and had a nice breakfast indeed.

The plan today was to explore the two big SF parks – Presidio Park and Golden Gate Park. Now to confuse matters, the Presidio overlooks the Golden Gate Bridge and Golden Gate doesn’t. Clear, eh? Anyway, to the Presidio first. It was a straightforward run from the motel, remembering to turn off Hwy 101 at the last min or be swept over the bridge. We did it ok. First port of call was Chrissy Field (that’s a place, not a person). A one-time airfield it’s now part of the park. It’s right by the water and stretches all the way to Fort Point, right under the bridge. We spent quite a long time there just soaking the sun, watching the men, sea lions and pelicans fishing and trying to keep out the way of the joggers and cyclists (of which there were trillions). I think it was a pretty unusual day weatherise and sight-wise because joggers (who are presumably locals) were stopping to watch the pelicans and take in the view. I now have a vast library of pelican pictures -alas no sea lions because there were a little too far out for the camera’s reach.

I also have more pictures of the bridge than any human will ever need, but at least we could see it today. From Chrissy Field we climbed in the car up to the Golden Gate overlook, where we arrived at a time not much later than we had the day before. A somewhat different view from this point today! More Golden Gate Bridge pictures in the collection. We then drove down the other side to Baker Beach, which was notorious at one time for being a nudist beach. Alas today it is nothing like that, but if offered yet more good views of the bridge, only from the other side!

A straight run out of Presidio Park on Lincoln Blvd and 25th Avenue took us directly to Golden Gate Park. It was quite difficult to find our way round this as they seemed to have closed off the underpass that links the two halves together where it is bisected by Hwy.1. By accident we found ourselves out on Point Lobos again. Never mind, the views were even better today. I made plans for lunch at the Cliff House, but one look at the queues (where were all you gits on a foggy Saturday, eh?) and we hopped back into the car and scuttled back to Golden Gate Park. This time we successfully crossed Hwy.1 into the other half of the park and managed to find a parking place at Stow Lake for a late lunch.

From there we drove down to centre of the park where the Academy of Sciences, the de Young Museum and the San Francisco Botanic Garden are located. The whole area was rammed with people and cars, so we splashed out for a parking place in the underground garage. Oooh, $6.50 it cost for the afternoon. We took the elevator (ok, the lift) up to the Academy of Sciences – I wasn’t sure what this was, but turned out to be a natural history museum, planetarium and aquarium in one. £24.95 each to get in. Nah, not that bothered to see yet another big fish tank. The de Young museum had the Tutankhamun exhibition – you know the one that was at the O2 in London a couple of years back? I dread to think how much tickets were here in SF… ah, $32.50, I just googled it. Glad I didn’t bother. I saw it back in 1972 at the British Museum and we queued for hours and hours (when I were a lad, etc, etc). That left some nice walks and the Botanical Gardens. Obviously we partook of these.

You should know by now I am not much of an expert on Botanicals, but even I thought the SF garden was scruffy. They did have quite a few labels and quite a few varieties, but Wendy wasn’t much impressed with their garden maintenance. They did say that there had been a serious drought in California for the last 3 years, but it looked to be that the dearth was more to do with weeding and tidying than watering. One of the first things we came across was the Australia and New Zealand gardens, so it was, in the words of Yogi Berra a bit like deja vu all over again. After a while we retrieved the car and let Jane (my bossy SatNav girl) guide us to Fisherman’s Wharf for some tea.This she did by taking a very exciting route indeed – shades of Steve McQueen (except at 30mph in a Ford Focus rather than 80mph in a Ford Mustang).

Still, it’s been a lovely day with 70 degree temps and I have a definite tan line where my wristwatch was. Tomorrow is forecast to be even warmer. With any luck we’ll be heading out further afield and the crowds will be back at work. Here’s to tomorrow!


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Long day in San Fran

This entry is part 24 of 29 in the series RTW via New Zealand

Long day in San Fran
San Francisco, CA

San Francisco, CA


Today we have been on an all-day tour with Tower Tours, with the idea being to get as much out of the city as possible in the small time we have here. The shuttle picked us up outside our motel at 8.20am on the dot and took us to the staging post at the harbour. There we boarded a bigger bus with more people and set off at 9am. The city itself was cloudy and cool this morning and the harbour was shrouded in fog. The bad news is that it made the Golden Gate Bridge invisible. I can tell you that we have stood at the Golden Gate overlook and that we have crossed the bridge not once, but twice, but I haven’t yet seen it! The driver promised to go back if the fog lifted but sadly it hadn’t by the time we left the bus. I’ll have to have a crack myself later.

The weather was clearing in the rest of the city though and by 10.30am we were in the sunshine. The tour basically took in all the major SF landmarks, some of which we had heard of, some of which we hadn’t. There’s pictures here of a lot of them. Main things I noticed were that; Haight-Ashbury was a lot smaller than I thought it would be – did the countercultural revolution really start here? Some of those streets are STEEP, yikes. Aren’t San Franciscians laid back drivers? Are those people in Halloween costume or do they dress like that all the time?

At 12.15 the driver dropped us at Pier 33 for the ferry to Alcatraz. This was included in the tour, so we had time to collect the tickets and have some lunch before the ferry left at 1pm. The crossing to ‘The Rock’ is only about 10 mins, but gives some lovely views of the harbour, including a Golden Gate Bridge slowly emerging from the fog. On Alcatraz a group of Civil War re-enactors are doing some re-enacting (the island was a military garrison and fort before it became a prison). There is a 1/4 mile uphill hike to the cellblock, but they have a wee electric train thingy for Wendy, which is good. Not so good for me, forced to walk. The whole tour round the prison is self-guided with an audio commentary. It’s very, very good indeed and takes about 2 hours to go round. Some of the views across the bay are also pretty spectacular. The fog has of course completely gone by now.

We catch the 3.30pm boat back to the harbour, which gives us time for an amble down to the Hard Rock Cafe at Pier 39 and tea. Groan, too much food there. It’s also Halloween, so all the staff are in fancy dress. We are served by a cheerleader, which is nice (for me, anyway). We time it perfectly so we only have to wait 10 mins or so for our shuttle back to the motel. 10 hours exactly we’ve been gone and one of us at least is pretty jiggered. Wendy is apparently tired too!


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Same Friday, different continent

This entry is part 23 of 29 in the series RTW via New Zealand

Same Friday, different continent
San Francisco, CA

San Francisco, CA


Well despite the aircraft going technical for 10 mins before take off, we dropped lucky with that flight – there were just us two between three seats so we had both length and girth (oo-err) this time. I slept most of the way, so for me it seemed like a really short flight over the Pacific instead of a 12-hour sit-in-the-dark-a-thon. Wendy said she slept a good deal too. Maybe we’re getting the hang of these long-hauls. Somehwere about 10pm Auckland time we crossed the International Date Line, which sort of made it Friday 30th morning all over again. It doesn’t pay to think about it too much I find.

We arrived 30 mins early at San Francisco and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I am going to say controversial stuff now, but American immigration was fast, the guy on the desk was chatty, friendly and cheerful and our cases were among the first dozen off the aircraft. This contrasts with everything I have been used to at New York or LA in the past. Mind you, I have never had all my fingerprints scanned to enter a country before! We then had to catch a wee train thingy (a bit like Hong Kong but free) to the rental car place – all the hire companies are in a big building together, side-by-side. It’s super efficient. We even kept our baggage trolley right up to the car boot (sorry, trunk). We’re with Budget car rental here and the lady on the desk was really helpful. She even offered us a free upgrade to a Beetle convertible, however given the amount of junk, sorry luggage, we have I thought it best to stick with the trusty Ford Focus.

I’ve chickened out this time and borrowed a satnav and frankly it’s been worth it every single inch of the way. The Budget car lady had put the motel in and the airport car return place, so basically we followed the bossy British voice to Days Inn on Lombard and it was pretty much a doddle (apart from the amount of traffic). I thought traff was a bit heavy for a dinnertime Friday, but when we got to the motel all was explained – apparently the Bay Bridge is ‘broke’ today (stop me if I get too technical here) and all the traff is heading over the Golden Gate. Unfortunately Lombard feeds directly on to Hwy 101 over the Golden Gate… say no more.

Anyway we didn’t hang around long in the motel. Instead we took the car down to Fisherman’s Wharf as it was such a lovely day (about 21 degrees C too – not bad for the end of Oct!) and did some exploring. Walked the length of the Embarcadero and down Pier 39 for a look at the treasure (ahem) shops the tourist stuff and the sea lions. Everything seems so amazingly cheap after New Zealand. It was alright, very alright. Finally ended up in Bourdin Bakery (another ‘world famous’ place) having some of their sourdough sandwiches and fries for tea. The satnav brought us home again without a hitch and thats the end of a very long birthday for Wendy indeed!


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Hei konā rā Aotearoa

This entry is part 22 of 29 in the series RTW via New Zealand

Hei konā rā Aotearoa
Auckland, New Zealand

Auckland, New Zealand


Well this morning is Wendy’s birthday so Happy Birthday Wendy! Carried some cards and some pressies all the way from the UK and she was happy to have them. I am happy now too ‘cos they aren’t in my case anymore. This is the last day in NZ, but we don’t fly out until early evening and so don’t want to get back to the airport too early. It’s a beautiful day (typically) so we decided to investigate the Hamilton Gardens by the river for a couple of hours. This is apparently famous, though as always, fame is relative.

It’s located just off Hwy 1 about a mile south out of town, so is easy to find. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of entry charge, so that’s gratifying at least. We wander round the gardens for a bit. Not many labels, not many varieties again, though the different types of gardens are lovely to see. Weirdly it sort of turns it’s back on the river and we can’t do more than get glimpses of it through the trees and from the follies. All too soon we have to make tracks north for Auckland. It’s about 100km from Auckland, but once we leave the urban sprawl it’s fast expressway or motorway, so you can do it in a little over and hour. Before heading in we stop off at a service station for a bacon roll. Well, this is prime pork and ham country, so it seems unfair not to.

The car is dropped easily with just a cursory check that I haven’t turned it into a typical Kiwi car. I’ve not mention these before ‘cos I might start ranting, but basically I haven’t found rural New Zealanders to be the best drivers in the world. Essentially their philosophy seems to be that as the country is so empty, I am therefore unlikely to hit anything – yet car after car (inevitably a white Japanese saloon which appears dubiously maintained) will have dents and scrapes on it, which sort of spoils that theory. All over the roads are signs telling them to slow down. The typical Kiwi driving technique seems to be get on to the unrestricted road and hold it at 110km/h (speed limit is 100km/h) regardless of obstacles or how wet the road is, etc, etc. If they come up behind a slower-moving car (usually me at 100km/h) they will park their car 5 feet from the back bumper (or ‘the full Audi’ as we like to call it in the UK) and hold it there until a passing place presents itself. I’d love to look up their accident rate – I bet it’s not edifying reading given the low traffic density.

(Note: I looked it up. According to the World Health Organisation the UK has a road death rate of 3.7 people per 10,000 of the population. New Zealand has 9.1/10,000. That’s more than double the rate in a country roughly comparable in size but with less than 1/10th of the population. I told you they were **** drivers).

OK, sorry, I also told you I’d rant. Change of subject. Even though we’re a massive 5 hours before our flight and it’s not even up on the departures board yet, because we’re Premium Class they let us check in and offload the cases. Both are 21Kg, within a whisker of each other which is well within our 30Kg long-haul quota. We may have to ditch some stuff before attempting to board the Manchester shuttle. Ominously the girl attaches ‘heavy’ tags to them both, so that’s our warning, eh? However, Wendy’s carry-on luggage is tiny compared with the stuff some of them take (I have a laptop and a camera rucksack, so I’m guiltily as anyone). I reckon there’s room for manoeuvre there.

Well, looks like we’re being called up to go through security at the gate. Ah well, Hei konā rā Aotearoa (or goodbye New Zealand).


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Highs and lows as we move ever closer to home

This entry is part 21 of 29 in the series RTW via New Zealand

Highs and lows as we move ever closer to home
Hamilton, New Zealand

Hamilton, New Zealand


Today has been a day of both climatic extremes and literal highs and lows. Firstly the climate: I am going to complain to the New Zealand Tourist Board because we have been here for 3 weeks and it hasn’t hailed. Not once. We’ve had everything else, so what have they got against hail? As for the highs and lows; it’s not often you can claim to have scaled Mount Doom and been underground on the same day.

Anyway to start at the beginning, there was a terrific rainstorm in the night whilst we were at Wanganui. It was calmer but still raining the next morning and still quite cool with it. We set out fairly early because there were a lot of miles to cover to our intended overnight stop of Hamilton, plus the decision to go via Wanganui rather than Palmerston North meant that we’d be taking the high road rather than safe, boring Highway 1. The signpost out of town simply said “Highway 4. National Park 105km”. I thought that sounded a bit generic, after all one thing NZ isn’t short of is National Parks. However, a quick look at the map showed there was actually a place with the name National Park, right on the edge of Tongariro National Park. Could be confusing? Nevertheless we set off into the rain in that direction.

The first thing that became obvious as we climbed away from the coast is that the overnight rain had been pretty widespread. Most of the rivers were in full flood and there were rockfalls and waterfalls down all the sides of the hillsides. It could have been quite scary if I had slowed down enough to look! We did stop at one point where the Wanganui River was thundering over a vast waterfall below. This is the same sedate river in the sun I’d photographed the day before. Hwy 4 steadily climbed and the car thermometer steadily dropped as we did so. Soon the rain looked suspiciously like sleet. Hmmmm. Then the ice warning symbol on the dash lit up and the sleet looked suspiciously like snow! Yes, it was snowing, and fairly heavily too. It wasn’t settling though and cars coming the other way were snow-free so I know we weren’t heading into trouble.

Before long the eponymous town of National Park showed up. I had had it in mind to stop there for a cuppa, but frankly it looked dead and deserted (and closed) plus the sleet/snow was falling heavily, so we pressed on. Somewhere over to our right, lost in the cloud, was Mount Ngauruhoe, which apparently served as Mount Doom in the film ‘Lord of the Rings’. Sadly there was nothing for us to see but the swirling white.

However we hadn’t gone much more than 10 mins from this antarctic wilderness when suddenly we drove through a gap, popped out the other side of the hills and the weather changed almost as if a switch had been flicked. The sun shone brightly and there were white fluffy clouds in the sky. The temperature rocketed almost a degree every kilometre. We’d been thinking it would be rain all day but the NZ weather hadn’t failed to produce another sunny sky. We stopped at Piriaka Lookout to see the (what I think is) the same Wanganui River being all peaceful and lovely again. Incredible. Just down the road was the town of Piriaka, where the ‘Stagga Inn’ served a lovely cup of tea and a scone.

Just beyond Piriaka we swapped to Hwy 3, and only a little further again and just a few kilometres off this highway was Waitomo. Now I wouldn’t go out of my way to get here, but being just down the road it seemed rude not to stop and visit. Waitomo is primarily famous for caves – some of them deep, some of them scary but the one I wanted to see was called the glowworm cave. Unfortunately only one of us decided to brave the underground, ahem. After being relieved of quite a lot of money, a guide took a group of about 8 of us into the cave. The first 30 mins of the tour comprised easy walking on flagged cave floors into various caverns and chambers filled with the usual limestone flows, stalactites and stalagmites – so far all very Derbyshire Peak District. Eventually though, we were led deeper into the gloom (and it was very gloomy indeed) and boarded a flat-bottomed boat. In absolute silence we drifted along an underground stream through caverns who’s ceiling was covered in millions and millions of glowworms. It was like drifting under constellations of stars – it was pretty marvellous and worth the entry fee for that. Eventually the boat drifted out through a tunnel entrance to the cave several hundred feet below where we had originally entered on the road above.

After some lunch in Curly’s Tavern it was back on the Hwy 3 for a final push to Hamilton for the night. We’d come through Hamilton on our epic drive from Pahia to Rotorua and hadn’t really liked the look of it much, being heavily built-up and industrialised. This time we tried to get closer to the city centre on the river. The first hotel to catch our attention was the Ventura Inn and Motor Lodge. I have to say this was the best value of the hotels (leaving aside all the special deals I got for the Copthorne’s) we’ve been too. $109 for a massive room plus bed and breakfast. It’s very, very like a Travelodge in the UK – in fact I reckon the owner has definitely visited Travelodge as some point! It was just a block away from the main ‘happening’ street, Victoria Street. When we drove down later for some tea we were gobsmacked to find the whole semi-pedestrianised street was jumping with people. So much so we had trouble parking. Restaurant after restaurant open and busy after 7pm! I have never seen New Zealand so lively outside of Auckland. Typically of course it was our last night, so we had to leave the fun and games and go repack everything for the next day. Oh and I only got an hour on the parking meter!


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Back over the ditch and heading uphill

This entry is part 20 of 29 in the series RTW via New Zealand

Back over the ditch and heading uphill
Wanganui, New Zealand

Wanganui, New Zealand


A bright, clear and cold morning in Picton and with a ferry sailing at 10am, no rush to get up and get down to the docks. However, they still like us there an hour before the sailing, so 9am we were waiting. Unfortunately there didn’t seem to be a boat. As we got closer to the 10am sailing, the lack of a boat became somewhat discouraging! Compared with the outward trip, there seemed to be fewer people in the queue – only about 40 cars instead of the 100+ last time. At 9.45 we were chuffed to seethe good ship ‘Aratere’ turn up. They then began unloading. Off came trucks and train wagons as well as cars, which makes it sound a lot bigger that the outward boat, but it turned out she wasn’t, only carrying about 350 passengers to the ‘Kaitaki’s 1000+. Eventually they started loading, starting with the railway wagons – when it came to our turn, they put us on the same deck as the railway stuff. We all had to reverse on to the ship, which had a couple of drivers in a tizzy so a harbour official had to do it for them. I noticed the official chosen for this job was a pretty girl, which sort of guaranteed no Kiwi men would fail to give it a go.

Anyway, backed on to the boat, we then had to negotiate a tangle of hawsers and chains to get to the exit and stairs/lifts to the upper decks. Much better seating on this boat – looking at the specs ‘Aratere’ seems to have been built in Spain for InterIslander Ferries and is Wellington registered. No rebadged SeaFrance boat this time. We finally set sail about 45 mins behind schedule, which wasn’t too bad in the end. By the time I’d got a couple of drinks and a choc brownie we were out of Queen Charlotte Sound and saying goodbye to South Island.

The whole crossing was pretty uneventful and the Cook Strait pretty calm. In no time we seemed to be docking at good old Wellington again. The skies were still blue, and had been all the way across. The forecast in the ‘Dominion-Post’ newspaper was pretty dire for North Island and even the boat captain had warned up it was cloudy and raining in Wellington. IT WASN’T. Overall we’ve found the weather forecasting to be pretty dire in NZ as a whole. There hasn’t been a single day without some sunshine in it so far, and today for example, it’s been sunny he whole day despite the forecasters. Whether this is due to the fickleness of the NZ climate or the crapness of the forecasters, I don’t know.

Anyway, we were straight on to Hwy 1 and heading north before you know it. Bye-bye Wellington, maybe see you again? The original plan had been to stay on Hwy 1 all the way north, which would mean retracing some of our route down. Looking at the map we decided to branch off at Palmerston North on to Hwy 3 and head through Wanganui and Waitomo. It would mean not crossing our outward tracts until the very last day’s drive in to Auckland airport, and after all, that’s what we are here for. With that in mind, we made a quick 100 clicks to Bulls for a tea break. Yes, the town is called Bulls, and do they milk it. Even my AA atlas which gives points of interest says ‘Many humorous signs’ next to Bulls. See the pics for examples. The good news was this tiny town also had many open cafes even though it was past 2.30pm! Incredi-bull (groan).

It was only a short hop from there to Wanganui, our stop for the night. We quickly got checked in to the Acacia Park Motel at the side of the Wanganui River. This has even bigger rooms that the night before. I think we’ll soon be having a house to ourselves if this goes on much longer. Took a wee walk by the river then headed into town in search of some dinner. The town is quite old and really elegant and I managed a daily fix of Art Deco. We ended up in a Mongolian restaurant of all places – it looked pretty cool and indeed turned out to be just that. You chose your own raw ingredients, like a supermarket pile-in salad, then handed them to the chef who cooked them on a huge hotplate whilst you waited. Was pretty nice. That’s about it for today – tomorrow it’s a big-mile day to put us within striking distance of Auckland. Hopefully thee’s still be me for a diversion or two though.