Double Whammy

Two updates in one day!


As it was around noon when we arrived in Whitianga, we had plenty of time to check out the town. First stop: the library! Not because we wanted to get some books (we already carry around more than enough of those), but because we were hoping to find some free internet. Unfortunately they didn't have a wireless network, but they had some computers you could use for about half an hour. While Jasper did this, I set about to smash his record in Pinball (the stupid little game you get with every version of windows). We ran into the couple that gave us a ride there, and met them again at the supermarket. When we eventually got back to the Holiday Park, Jasper got busy trying to smash the record I set earlier (and he did) while I tried to get my journal up to date (my non-electronic one).
That evening we made pancakes, we make pancakes a lot, and watched the Big Lebowski on TV. This took a while because advertisers here seem intent on having one minute of commercials for every minute of programming; the movie took about 3-3.5 hours.
The next morning we set out for Hahei where Steffi (one of the girls we travelled around Northland with) was working. We didn't have any cardboard for our sign so we asked the manager of the camp if perhaps they had some for us, he said he did and came back with the tiniest bit of cardboard I'd ever seen. Not wanting to seem ungrateful we took it and thanked him as we made our way to the ferry. Because this ferry was for pedestrians only I was concerned we weren't going to be able to find a ride. When we disembarked on the other side of the river we realised we forgot our cardboard, further increasing my worries about finding a ride. We tried to stop the few cars that came by as we walked along the road but none of them showed any sign of stopping. Hahei was 13km from the ferry, so I figured that if we couldn't find a ride we'd at least be able to walk there and hopefully arrive before sundown. When we got to a cafe there was a man working outside and we decided to ask if he perhaps had some cardboard for us, since the walking was very tiring and the sun was burning holes in our heads (though my hat helped for me). He did, and we quickly made ourselves a sign. We flashed the sign the first car that came past and it stopped on the parking lot a few meters further up the road. Not daring to hope they stopped for us, we figured they were just people going to the beach and we were in no hurry to walk towards them. As we got close however a girl got out of the car and told us it would probably be a tight fit but that she was willing to take us to Hahei. Very relieved we opened the trunk and saw that it was already pretty full. We only managed to fit Jasper's backpack and our smaller bags in there and had to take my guitar and backpack on our laps. When we got to Hahei the girl gave us a quick tour of Hahei saying "Don't blink or you'll miss it". She pointed out to us the place where Steffi was working and then dropped us off at the Holiday Park. We met up with Steffi and headed out to the beach and up the path towards Cathedral Cove. Steffi was glad to see us as she didn't know anyone in the town and was bored to death. However when we told her we wanted to walk towards Cathedral cove straight away her happiness subsided a bit (it was an hour and 20 minutes walking, one way) as she wasn't too fond of walking. We made it to Gemstone Bay after about 15 minutes and decided to rest there a bit and explore. It was a lovely place and amongst the rocks you could find tons of crabs and small fish. I jumped from stone to stone, trying to reach a rock that was a bit off into the sea, and every time I jumped I heard something fall into the water. It took a while before I saw what was causing the sounds; everytime I approached the hiding place of crab, and it saw me coming, it would release its grip on the rock and fall into the water. After this discovery I suddenly noticed crabs everywhere I looked, and I even found some sea urchins as the rocks led me further into sea. After a while I decided it was impolite to let the others wait too long and headed back. As me and Steffi didn't bring our cameras we decided that we'd walk to Cathedral Cove some other day. After some shopping in the local mini-market we made dinner and met up with Steffi at her place. She had a house that could fit a family of 5 all to herself and it all looked really nice. The miniature TV seemed a bit out of place though, though that didn't stop us from staring at it.
The following day we headed to Hot water beach where it was apparently possible to find warm water just by digging a small hole on the beach. It was about 5km south of Hahei so me and Jasper figured we could walk it, but Steffi wanted to try hitch-hiking (we weren't sure if this was because she didn't want to walk or because she wanted to experience hitch-hiking) so we let her make a sign and told her to hold it up for passing cars while we walked. She was a bit too shy to try and stop the cars at first, feeling as though it were something to be embarrassed about, but when she finally did hold up the sign, the first car we came across stopped and picked us up (though they nearly left me behind as the woman behind the wheel drove off before I was in the car).
We arrived at Hot water beach earlier than planned (the hot water didn't appear till 2 hours before low tide) and so to pass the time we just dug a giant hole, thinking that maybe once the time was right hot water would start to flow in there. When after an hour there was still no hot water in our pool we asked some guys who did have hot water what they did to get it, and it turned out that it only works if you dig your hole at the right place. After digging holes all over the beach and finding cold water every time we decided to dig our hole in front of the guys who found hot water as there was definitely hot water there. As we started digging and found hot water however, we found out why it was called "Hot water Beach" and not "Warm water beach". The water was steaming, almost boiling, and digging the hole was painful enough, let alone sit in it! Amazed at how long the others had been sitting in this water we asked them how they could possible hold out for so long and they told us the trick was to find the border of the hot water stream and let in some cold water as well. Indeed, after following their advice the water was a lot more tolerable and cool enough to sit in, but still warm enough to let severe sunburn go by unnoticed. When me and Jasper went into the ocean afterwards a man in front of us suddenly called to us exclaiming that there was a stingray in the water. We quickly made our way to him and as we came close we noticed a large shadow moving over the ocean floor. It was a huge stingray swimming around only 5 meters from shore. Staring at it in amazement we followed it out into the ocean, making sure we didn't get too close to its sting.
On our way back to Hahei we took an exit a bit further up the beach, because that way we didn't have to walk as far to reach the road. Though this was a shorter way to the main road, we soon found out that chances of getting a ride along that road were slim to none. The main trick behind hitch-hiking is standing on a placed where you're visible and where cars can stop without problems (the other main trick is probably to try and avoid looking like a hobo) and this road forced us to walk in the grass and there weren't any places for cars to stop at all. So we just continued to walk, occasionally flashing our sign to passing cars, though I figured there was no way we were going to get picked up. After about 15 minutes of walking with sun boiling the sweat off our backs, I suddenly heard Jasper and Steffi yell and as I turned around I saw a car stopped in the middle of the road and Jasper and Steffi were hurrying towards it. We managed to get a ride after all.
That night we had celebratory pancakes. Like I said, we eat pancakes a lot.
We had booked 2 dives for the following day, but we later found out that there was no ATM in town and we didn't have enough cash on us to pay for them. After unsuccessfully trying to pay for it using our bank cards we asked them if we could change it to just 1 dive. They said that we could do that or, if we wanted, they could drive us to an ATM in between dives and let us pay for the second dive after we got the money. Since we weren't really looking forward to travelling with only a small amount of cash on us, we accepted and suited up for our first dive. This was going to be our first dive without guides or instructors and we had to rely solely on each other for navigation and in case of emergency. We were nervous, really nervous.
When we had our wetsuits on, our air supply set up and our fins and masked packed, we climbed into the boat and sat beside the other divers. When we were all aboard the manager of the dive shop pulled us to the beach with his tractor and launched us into the ocean. He got on the boat and steered us to a small bay in the middle of an island. Me and Jasper did our final checks as the other couple jumped into the water, when we made sure everything was as it should be we got into the water with a backroll off the side (since we had only done the Giant Stride way of getting in the water on our other dives this was a bit scary). The dive went without problems despite me being the navigator (Jasper didn’t have a compass) and we saw some amazing stuff. Lots of fish, a huge starfish, a group of small squid and something that looked like a bit white flower floating in the kelp (we aren’t sure what this was and the others didn’t seem to know either, though the manager thought it might have been a migrating anemone). When we were heading back I was a bit worried as I wasn’t sure how far back we had to go. Eventually I thought we might have gone too far and Jasper thought we weren’t even close to the boat yet, but since our air was running low we decided to just head up and see where the boat was. As we slowly swam up to the surface we found that we were only about 5 meters from the boat; we were quite pleased with ourselves.
Before the next dive the wife of the manager quickly took us to Whitianga and we withdrew enough money for the next week or two.
As we were going for the second dive we were a lot more relaxed, even though we went to a different dive spot. This one was basically just a big rock sticking out of the water and the manager told us that the best marine life would be around that rock.This meant we didn't have to worry about navigating as we could just follow the base of the rock all the way around.
We also hired an underwater camera from the store and were eager to test it. We made a few pictures of each other in silly poses which was easy enough, but when we tried to take pictures of fish we found that photography underwater was devilishly hard and the pictures all came out fuzzy. When we were swimming through the kelp I noticed a large crayfish hiding in a crack in the rock and tried to point it out to Jasper, but he wasn’t paying attention to me and just swam on, heading straight for it. When he got close enough I tapped him on the arm and pointed at the crayfish. He couldn’t see it because there was too much kelp in front of it and wondering what I was pointing at swam a bit closer to push the kelp aside. As he did this he came eye to eye with the huge thing and got the biggest scare of his underwater career. When I tried to take a picture of it, I noticed that the batteries were almost flat and sure enough, 5 seconds later the batteries died. No more fuzzy pictures for us. Other things we saw that are worth mentioning are: a lovely little nudibranch, a big school of fish that swam right past us and a funny anemone that was attached to a leaf of kelp.
When our air started to get a bit low I wondered where we were, I had no idea which side of the rock we were on or if we were even still swimming around the same rock, so I decided to go up and see where the boat was; Jasper quickly followed. When we reached the surface I stared straight at the boat, proving once again that I worry too much. After we got down again (which was a bit harder this time because our tanks were now a lot lighter) we swam for about a minute before we came across the anchor and soon after we decided to call it a day. When we explained what happened to the camera the owners were nice enough to give us a refund.
The plan was to walk to cathedral cove afterwards but since we were quite tired (and because you can apparently get decompression sickness, or bent as it’s commonly called, from doing strenuous exercise after diving) we decided to stay one more day and do it another time. Being too tired to cook properly we made some tortellini (they didn’t have anything nice in the store anyway).
The next day we walked up to Cathedral Cove with Steffi, on the way stopping at a nice little bay called “Stingray Bay”. We probably spent the better half of an hour looking around and climbing over rocks and into sea caves. When we eventually reached Cathedral Cove (which wasn’t all it was cracked up to be) we noticed it was already 4 o’ clock and we only had about an hour and a half to get back to the store before it closed (we didn’t have any food) so we headed back at a faster than usual pace, much to the displeasure of Steffi. We made it back in time and, lazy as we are, bought ourselves some more tortellini as well as some chips and beer to celebrate our last night in Hahei with Steffi.
After dinner we went to Steffi's and played some poker and made fun of Steffi as she had sand fly bites all over her arms (poor girl. . .). I also managed to almost double Jasper’s record with pinball (unfortunately the next day it was gone for some reason). Afterwards we said goodbye to Steffi (again. . . ) and went back to our tent. As we were reaching that fine line between sleep and consciousness we were startled by the sound of a siren. We looked at each other, unsure if we were about to be crushed by a tsunami or burned in a fire, or if it was just an alarm meant for the fire brigade somewhere in the distance. We didn’t hear any screaming people so we figured we’d be alright. A few minutes later the siren stopped and we could finally go to sleep.
We wanted to go to Hamilton the next day, but since this was quite far away we decided to just pick some towns on the way there and see how far we’d get.
We got our first ride within minutes, as we were dragging our sore bodies along the road trying to get to the nearest intersection. The guy (an American living in NZ) wasn’t going to Tairua (our first stop) but promised to take us to the exit towards it, where we’d have a much better shot at getting a ride.
We stood there for about 20 minutes when we suddenly heard a claxon being sounded behind us. It was an Australian couple in a campervan that saw us as they drove by and later decided they’d give us a ride and turned back to pick us up. They were really nice to us and drove us even further than Tairua, as we figured we might make it all the way to Hamilton at this pace. We got our next ride as we were still waving goodbye to the Australians. Jasper flashed our (unfinished) sign at the first car that came past, and sure enough, they stopped for us. They were two kiwi girls who lived in Wangamata (our next stop) and though their car was a bit small and we had to sit with almost all our stuff on our laps we were happy and the girls were nice. Once in Wangamata we stopped at a Subway restaurant to eat lunch and make our next sign; to Waihi. The girls told us we’d have to walk for a while to get to an intersection, which was the best spot for hitching a ride to Waihi. As we were walking along, Jasper wanted to make sure we were still going the right way and asked some people at a petrol station. They laughed and said that Waihi was indeed that way, but that it was a long way to walk. 5 seconds later a car stopped for us and took us to Waihi. This time it was a NZ tennis coach. After talking to him for a while we learned he was in a band and had songs that got airtime on the local radio, he let us listen to some of them and we had to confess that they sounded really good.
When we got to Waihi he told us that there was a huge gold mine almost in the middle of the town and drove us there so we could see for ourselves.
When he dropped us off on a road that would take us to Hamilton we found a nice spot to stand and make our sign, and it wasn’t long before we got our next ride. This time they were two students from Hamilton who went to Auckland for a day to celebrate one of their birthdays. They weren’t going through Hamilton unfortunately but they were going to pass by there and told us they knew a place where there were bound to be many people heading to Hamilton. The ride took about an hour and the car was possibly the smallest one yet, having to carry most of our stuff on our laps again our legs were really starting to get sore, and though the guys were really nice we were glad when we could stretch our legs again.
When we made our way to what seemed like a good spot we realised that we didn’t have any cardboard left to make our sign on. Instead we cut off a part of a previous sign that seemed usable still and wrote our destination on there. When it was finished, the writing was so small that we doubted the people driving by could read it. Since we were standing next to a house Jasper decided to go in and ask if they had any cardboard for us. But though they had a friendly dog and two cuddly cats, there was nobody home and we had to find another solution. Since one of our signs was still unfinished and the letters on it were pretty thin, we decided to try and write over them with really thick letters and pray it was readable. The result looked decent enough, and 2 minutes later we had our ride to Hamilton.
At about 5 o’ Clock, after 7 hours and 5 rides we finally arrived in Hamilton. We weren’t really sure what we were going to do there, and every single one of the rides we had that day exclaimed “Why would you want to go there!?” when we explained to them what our final goal was, but at least it was a big city where they would have cheap internet, an ATM and a decent store.
The guy dropped us off at the YWCA because I’d read in my lonely planet they single and double rooms for 25 dollars a person. When we got to the front door we found it was closed and though there was a bell beside it, we were unsure if we should ring it or not. We decided we were probably supposed to ring and a few seconds after we did a big Maori woman with an unfriendly face opened the door, asking us what we wanted. We asked her if it was possible for us to stay the night, she told us she’d check and slammed the door closed again. After she had us check in and responded quite rudely to a few of Jasper’s questions she showed us our rooms. Mine was on the ground floor and Jasper’s on the first. The rooms looked like prison cells, even though they were big enough, but we were glad to sleep in a normal bed again. After dinner we headed into town and went looking for an internet cafe. It took us a while to find one, but when we did the internet proved to be really cheap. On the way back we were startled by police racing by with their sirens on, apparently chasing some guy in a pimped out car.
The next day we packed all our stuff, made our biggest sign yet and started walking towards the exit for Raglan. As we were walking along a van stopped in front of us (we weren’t sure why, because we weren’t using the sign yet) and the guy asked where we were going. He exclaimed that we were going the wrong way, and that we should just throw our stuff in the car and he’d take us to the right exit. When we got out again, we held up our sign and almost immediately managed to get a ride, from a Maori woman this time.
When we got to the campsite in Raglan and pitched our tent we headed to the lounge room to unwind. Here we met 2 Canadian couples who offered to give us a ride to the beach and one of them claimed he was a decent surfer and promised to show us the basics. The next day we hopped in one of their cars, rented some boards (extra big beginner ones for me and Jasper) and headed out to the beach. The water was pretty rough, with mostly whitewash and as the tide came up the waves followed each other so quickly it was really hard to get back to a good spot. Me, Jasper and Mark (one of the Canadians) were too cheap to rent wetsuits and I expected to freeze my ass off, but the water was actually not cold at all. I managed to stand up and catch some whitewash a few times before we decided to head to the next spot.
This spot didn’t have a beach and the waves crashed on rocks so we beginners decided to skip this dance and let Jeff (the other Canadian) go out on his own. He managed to catch some nice waves even though he was pretty freaked out by the big rocks the waves always seemed to push him towards.
Afterwards me, Jasper, Mark and Rachel headed to town to return our boards and get some kebab (though I thought it was more like a tortilla than a kebab). After the kebab Mark asked us if we had some meat pie yet, we hadn’t so we of course had to get one of those too. After the pie we were all craving ice-cream really bad so we of course had to get some of that as well. Mark and Rachel were pretty full and said that they wouldn’t need any dinner that night. When we told them we were making pancakes they laughed, when we told them we were really making pancakes they looked at us with big eyes asking us how we could eat so much. We told them we always eat that much, they wouldn’t believe we eat an entire loaf of bread with the two of us every single morning. I have to say I’m a bit surprised we aren’t humongous by now.