Kia Ora! New Zealand Diary, Day 1

Over the Christmas & New Year 2011-2012 holiday period, my dear wife (DW) and I spent 15 days vacationing in the beautiful island nation of New Zealand. I will present a series of posts about our experiences there--a sort of diary, but no promises that the posts will be daily. I hereby commence with:

Day 0: Travel
We began our relaxing vacation in near panic, attempting to ensure our luggage conformed to the international carrier's weight restrictions. Fortunately, our flight left late in the day, so we were able to arrange our things and get our luggage checked in several hours before the flight, so that we didn't have to be at the airport quite so early for the flight itself. We flew on an Embraer Regional Jet to LAX, where we were bused from the "commuter terminal" for such small airliners to Terminal 5. Once there, we learned we would have to exit the terminal and walk over to the (Tom Bradley) International Terminal--about 100 yards. The frustrating part was that we were then told we had to wait in line to check in at the international carrier, and go through security again. The good part was that I found a Pink's Hot Dogs in the terminal, and the prices were not much more than I would expect to pay at Pink's itself. Mmm, Polish dog with kraut!

After that, it was the old story of passing security, waiting in the gate area, and a long flight where we could sleep uncomfortably. That flight landed in Nadi (pronounced Nahn-ji), Fiji, where we again had to verify our check-in and pass security. A few hours later, we finally landed in Auckland and made it to the hotel, where we promptly crashed until the next morning.

Day 1: Tolls
We started with the included continental breakfast, and were then shuttled to the car rental shop where we picked up our beautiful, sparkling white 2002 Hyundai Accent 5-door hatchback, with a 5-speed manual transmission. Don't get me wrong. It had four wheels and air conditioning; what more did we need? There was even plenty of room in the covered boot for all our luggage!

When we were planning, we had decided to visit the Goat Island Marine Reserve for some snorkeling. We told the rental clerk about our plans, and he said, "There is only one toll road in New Zealand, and you're going to be on it." It cost NZ$4 to go up and back, and then we learned there was a way to go to avoid the toll. It's just that it probably would have taken another hour each way.

Our lunch attracted some attention

When we reached the portal beach to Goat Island, we had a look at the dive shop where we'd planned to rent snorkel gear. We then drove the 1.5 km out to the park on the bluff at the end of the road to have a look at where we would go. We had brought our lunch with us, so we ate it while considering what we wanted to do.

Nice weather for ducks, though!

We decided the day was a little cold and windy for us; wasn't it supposed to be summer? We'd seen a couple of wineries on the way to the area, so we decided to visit one or two of them rather than snorkeling. They were small operations, very friendly people, but overall very similar to wineries in the Napa and Sonoma valleys of California. We didn't taste any of the wines.

After heading back south on the toll road we'd already paid, we traveled through Auckland, after which the Motorway (freeway) turned into regular two-lane highway, which became a 4-lane boulevard as we passed through Hamilton. We were on our way to take a ferry across the Cook Strait in two-days' time, so we didn't linger long in any town until the evening approached, when we arrived in Taupo.

Now, Taupo both sits on the shore of the largest lake on the North Island, and is a college town. You can just imagine the row of little cafés, restaurants, and bars at the corner where the highway meets the lake and turns to follow the shore. We found one where the music wasn't much too loud and the food wasn't much too overpriced. DW had fish and chips, and I had a steak sandwich: an 8 oz. rib steak, grilled medium well, on a French roll with lettuce, onion, and mushrooms. It would probably have been best to eat it with knife and fork, but I was ravenous and picked it up like any old sandwich. Delicious!

After supper, we went looking for lodging. Nothing near the lake was as inexpensive as we wanted, so we started driving down the shore. When Highway 5 turned east away from the lake, we took the right fork, Highway 1, to stay on the lake, as we were headed for Tongariro National Park south of Lake Taupo. About a half-hour out of town, we came across a little fisherman's lodge where the rates were reasonable, run by a very nice older couple. It consisted of an L-shaped row of rooms on an elevated platform, with parking spaces underneath. The room itself was simple and spare, but very warm and comfortable. After all, Lake Taupo is a mountain lake, and even in summer it gets quite cool when the sun goes down.

Not too long after sundown, we heard some noise from the room next door. We poked our heads out, and found out a couple of teenagers decided instead of staying in the room with their parents they would carry their large air mattress down to the back of the pickup truck they were traveling in and sleep there. We helped them to negotiate the stairs and load it into the truck, laughing all the way.

The next morning…ah, but that's another day, and shall wait for another post!