After the excitement of Hobbiton, we took a day off in Tirau. We opened the door to our motel room, letting in the sunlight and letting out the cigarette smell, and just lazed around for the entire day, cropping photos, playing with the internet, and snacking. Aaaaaaaah!
Here’s a gallery of snacks we saw in New Zealand:
I remember "Aero" from Melbourne. The rest of these are new to me...
Have you been bicycling dozens of miles every day for a week, plus hiking, swimming, and kayaking? Then you get to eat CANDY ALL DAY! (Well, along with other healthier things of course.)
I remember “Aero” from Australia. The rest of these were new to me.
These are two things we DID NOT get at the snack shop.
I think there is something lost in translation here – or perhaps gained in translation. Heh heh heh.
Do not touch the giant pythons!!!
There really are snakes in New Zealand: Big yummy ones!
Turns out my friend Andy was traveling at the same time:
Andy:
Hey, man! Are you off gallivanting about the countryside?
Me:
Why yes I am!
Whazzap mah man?
Andy:
Ah-ha! I’m actually leaving Manchester right now. I sent you messages on hangouts. :-). Where are you?
Me:
I’m in Taipu, New Zealand!
The sun never sets on the british empire!
Andy:
New Zealand? I don’t serve New Zealanders.
Me:
Oi, we serve ourselves, mate!
We just cycled to Hobbiton and took 10000 photos
Andy:
That sounds awesome! I want to do that!
Hi, Kerry! The place I ate at last night was out of the leg of lamb and the steak and ale pie, so I had to settle for roast pork and Yorkshire Pudding.
Me:
Well at least you didn’t get argued into eating Bubble ’n’ Squeak
Andy:
I’m here for work, but I missed a connection so I’ve been “stuck” in Manchester for two days. It’s been “horrible”.
Me:
Wow those air quotes are almost as big as the mosquitos in this room! (We have to keep the door open for as long as possible, to git rid of the cigarette stink in the walls.)
Manchester eh … I assume it’s been dark->foggy->raining->foggy->dark, for the last 48 hours?
Andy:
With about 15 minutes of no precipitation, but blistering cold wind, yes. My old Michigan layered-dressing skills came right back.
Me:
Nice! Did you have flashbacks to working in the department of corrections and beating off hippie chicks with a stick?
Andy:
Of course!
So, it’s warm and humid there, with a fog of flying insects?
Me:
Sort of, but the fog is made of small birds, and it’s divided every 1/2 mile by an enormous cyclist-torturing hill. In the north it’s tropical like Hawaii and you get sun-showers all day. We’re in the lowlands now and it’s almost exactly like California between Monterey and Bakersfield, except NOTHING is flat ANYWHERE. There is literally NO flat ground in NZ. The closest you get is the molten mud-pools but they’re not technically “ground”.
Andy:
Okay, so this is costing me like £9,000,000.27 per text. I have free international data, but not text. I just wanted to make sure you’re alive. :-)
Me:
Alive and kickin’ it!
We did leave the hotel room once, to get a huge meal at this awesome cafe:
The Loose Goose had a nice selection of ciders, and gluten-free toast for my breakfast plate! Mmmmm.
That evening we watched one of my favorite animated movies, The Cat Returns, and went to bed early.
Next morning: A bus ride 86 miles east, to Whakatane!
Early versions of our itinerary had us taking the shuttle up to the town of Rotorua and then bicycling down to Whakatane from there, since it was mostly downhill on the map. But the “mostly downhill” shown by the elevation graph just isn’t enough information: A spot-check along the highway using Google Street View revealed that the highway narrows as it runs along the shore of Lake Rotoiti and Lake Rotoma, to the point where there is absolutely no curb at all, with sheer cliff on one side. YEAH, NO.
By day 11, Kerry and I had described our route to probably a dozen different curious New Zealanders, here and there along the way. A number of them responded by shaking their heads and saying “Yeah, no.” I think this is some kind of local catchphrase. A colloquialism?
Pretty hard to miss the Tirau tourism center when it's shaped like this.
The bus departs from the Tirau tourism center, which is shaped like this. No joke. I think the tongue is a giant piece of industrial rubber flooring.
Once we arrived, we reassembled our bikes and checked in. The hotel clerk had some bad news for us: Our scheduled tour of White Island was probably going to be cancelled due to rough seas. Bah! Well, perhaps the weather would clear up in time for the “dolphin encounter” snorkeling trip the day after that.
We went walking out around the town to pass the time, and spotted a thai restaurant. Optimists that we are, we asked the waitress – a young woman who turned out to be the daughter of the owner – if she could make us a thai iced tea. She went into the back and brought out her mother, who said, “you’re the first customers we’ve had who even know what a thai iced tea is! Where did you learn about it?”
We explained that we loved to eat thai food back home near San Francisco, and that almost all the thai restaurants there had it on the menu.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I have the ingredients in the kitchen, since we use it for our family meals. I’ll make you some from that.”
We were very grateful and excited. I actually did a little dance in my seat!
The tea, and the rest of the meal, was excellent. While we chomped we saw this out the window:
Sometimes you gotta do some shoppin' in Whakatane, so you drive your Belarus 611 tractor into town...
Sometimes you gotta do some shoppin’ in Whakatane, so you drive your Belarus 611 into town…
The weather stayed windy and grim well into the night, and we weren’t optimistic about our chances of a White Island tour the next day. We consoled ourselves by watching The Venture Brothers and taking a bath in the absolutely gigantic bathtub that came with the hotel room. Rough life, o woe is us! Etc.
YOU BEST CHECK YO SELF BEFORE YOU WRECK YO SELF, YKNOWHMSAYIN'?
YOU BEST CHECK YO SELF BEFORE YOU WRECK YO SELF, YKNOWHMSAYIN’?
Today we set out for Hobbiton, on a lovely 13-mile route zig-zagging past farms and pastures. Our tour was scheduled for late in the day so we had plenty of time to look around.
Well, it looks like it might be tai-chi, and I’ve done it before, but in this case I was just posing for the camera. Check out that beautiful countryside in the background! Sometimes it reminded me of California wine country, but less constricted by walls and highways. The hills can really stretch out and get a good roll going here.
Caution while crossing. Your mother will guide you. She knows how important safety is, having apparently lost her left hand crossing the road earlier...
Also, beware Crawford Road. Once you go in, there's no exit.
“Caution while crossing. Your mother will guide you, while she searches for her severed left hand.”
I've often wondered... On a farm, trees often have a clear space beneath them that's a very exact height. Is this because the farmers groom them that way, or because they grow that way naturally, or because the animals nibble off all the low-hanging leaves?
If it's the animals doing it, then you could actually figure out what the tallest animal in a field is by the size of the gap...
On farmland, trees often have a clear space beneath them that’s a very exact height. I assume it’s because the animals nibble off all the low-hanging leaves. This means you could actually figure out how tall the tallest animal in a field is, just by looking at the trees.
Kerry and I both had the same thought when we saw this bike: "If this were Oakland, that would be gone in 20 minutes or less."
We're city-folk, ayup...
Kerry and I both had the same thought when we saw this bike: “If this were Oakland, that would be gone in 20 minutes or less.” We’re city-folk, yup…
FREELOADER!!!! Get off!
Our picnic stop attracted a FREELOADER!!!! No free rides! Get off!
Kerry and I were mystified by these clinging dust clouds, until a local explained that they were dumping massive amounts of lime on the hillside to fertilize the soil and re-grow the grass.
Kerry and I were mystified by these clinging dust clouds, until a local explained that they were dumping massive amounts of lime on the hillside to fertilize the soil and re-grow the grass. Here’s a video of us coasting down the road, with lime distribution happening to our left:
When the wind’s at our backs, we barely have to pedal. If only every day was like this…
And, if only every day you could meet a grumpy long-haired long-horned old goat by the side of the road, and feed him snacks! Check out the video:
Bread! Bread bread bread give me the BREAD. I am the goat, so bread is mine.
OOF! As soon as the goat realized Kerry had bread to feed him, he wriggled his way through the fence and barreled into her, knocking her down. I grabbed one of his horns and held him in place, and Kerry was back on her feet in a few seconds, no injuries.
It's a good thing that a goat's strength isn't proportional to his smell, or I would have never been able to hold him!
OOF! As soon as the goat realized Kerry had bread to feed him, he wriggled his way through the fence and jumped at her. Kerry’s reactions are quick, so she fell backwards before the goat could make contact, and I grabbed one of his horns and held him in place. Kerry was back on her feet in a few seconds, no injuries.
It’s a good thing that a goat’s strength isn’t proportional to his smell, or he would have been unstoppable!
Nom nom nom nom tasty bread is there any more? More? More more more more
This is MY cabbage! Take a step near it and I will CLOBBER you!!
“This is MY cabbage! Take a step near it and I will CLOBBER you!!”
When she saw us paying attention to the goat, the owner came out of her house with some cabbage we could feed him. She also told us a few stories about him. The general theme was: “Don’t try to mess with the goat!” “Ouch, I got injured!” “Hey I warned you didn’t I?”
It was a very lovely visit. But Hobbiton awaited! So we left the goat chomping cabbage and rode on.
The most important thing here is that you be alarmed!!
The details of the message can be buried in grass, for all we care...
The most important thing here is that you be alarmed!! (The details of the message can be buried in grass, for all we care…)
Even if the trees weren't trimmed this way, I'm sure the passing trucks would beat them into shape pretty soon!
Even if the trees weren’t trimmed this way, I’m sure the passing trucks would beat them into shape pretty soon…
These sharp little things fall off the trees. You don't have to throw one very hard to injure someone... Which Kerry found out the hard way. Sorry Kerry!
Breaktime! Nom nom nom nom nom.
Stopping for a snack and an awesome view.
Break time! Let’s chomp some snacks and look at stuff…
Are you excited? I'm excited!
The first highway sign pointing the way! Are you excited? I’m excited!
Cloudy weather, but oh well. It'll still be awesome, even if the pictures aren't perfect!
We made it to the visitor center, where we’ll catch a shuttle into Hobbiton. Cloudy weather, but oh well. It’ll still be awesome, even if the pictures aren’t perfect.
The Hobbiton gathering area was awash in Japanese and Chinese tourists, each with approximately 3.5 cameras, including the obligatory cellphone screwed onto the end of a selfie-stick.
The Hobbiton gathering area was awash in Japanese and Chinese tourists, each with approximately 3.5 cameras, including the obligatory cellphone screwed onto the end of a selfie-stick. I felt right at home among them, fiddling with my own avalanche of camera gear.
This was the only item I saw in the shop that looked cool enough to buy, but then I imagined it sitting at home on a shelf, and realized I might as well leave it here on this one.
Ten bazillion shirt designs on display...
We took a look around in the gift shop but, to our surprise, there wasn’t anything particularly special for sale. Lots and lots of t-shirts and exactly the same things you could buy online. I was hoping to find something novel to send to the nephews back home. Dang.
About half an hour later, we got in line, and were the first to board the shuttle. It glided across the road and over a hill, arriving at an official-looking gate.
One of our guides has to jump out and open the gates.
One of our guides had to jump out and open it for the bus.
Too late, maaaan, I'm already waaaay digging it.
In case you're wondering, the electrified wires are to scare all the grazing sheep away.
The sign reads, “before you dig, see site management.”
Too late, maaaan, I’m already waaaaay digging it.
In case you’re wondering, the electrified wires are to scare all the grazing sheep away. Nothing to do with corralling small children. Though I wonder… Do the Hobbits try to escape?
If it rains, they have an army of umbrellas standing by...
If it rains, they have an army of umbrellas standing by…
Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy! (Can't you tell I'm excited in the picture?)
Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy! (Can’t you tell I’m excited in the picture?)
The first thing you see stepping around the corner...
Here’s the first thing you see stepping around the corner. The guide took one look at my Twoflower-style Hawaiian shirt, my huge camera, and my even bigger grin, and pointed at me and said “You. Go first.” So I walked ahead of the group and got to stand and compose this nice shot with nobody in the foreground.
The perks of looking like a dork. Perhaps I reminded him of that dorky actor in the video that Air New Zealand shows you when you’re preparing for takeoff.
We have arrived!
We have arrived! The tour has begun!
Very excited photographer; can't decide what to point at first!
Very excited photographer; can’t decide what to point at first!
Check out this little video panorama Kerry made, to set the scene:
Lots of things to check out here!
Hobbiton is maintained like a farm. All the gardens are real, and all of the produce on display is grown from those gardens.
Hobbiton is maintained like a farm. All the gardens are real, and all of the produce on display is grown from those gardens.
The attention to detail is very impressive, especially since all the plant life is genuine.
For example, the trees are all heavy with fruit this time of year, but you won't find a single one on the ground, since that would imply an absence of hungry hobbits. It really does feel like they all just stepped out of sight for a moment as you happen to be wandering through.
The attention to detail is very impressive, especially since all the plant life is genuine.
For example, the trees are all heavy with fruit this time of year, but you won’t find a single one on the ground, since that would imply an absence of hungry hobbits. It really does feel like they all just stepped out of sight for a moment as you happen to be wandering through.
IT'S JUST SO CUTE!!!!
It’s all just SO CUTE !!!!
This pond was here before set construction began. During filming, a handful of frogs moved in, and made so much noise they had to be relocated.
This pond was here before set construction began. During filming, a handful of frogs moved in, and made so much noise they had to be relocated.
I've always enjoyed little self-contained idyllic scenes, left unpopulated, as though one could step inside them any time.
I’ve always enjoyed little self-contained idyllic scenes, left unpopulated, as though one could step inside them any time.
This environment totally reminds me of walking around the Santas Village amusement park, back in Scotts Valley in the 1980's.
At times, this environment eerily reminds me of walking around the Santas Village amusement park, back in Scotts Valley in the 1980’s…
Some of these scenes remind me of a very old fantasy computer game called "Below The Root" that took place in a forest of enormous trees with houses built into them. Fun times...
… And at other times, it reminds me of a very old fantasy computer game called “Below The Root” that took place in a forest of enormous trees with houses built into them.
Every dwelling is decorated for a particular occupation and it's fun to guess what they are. See the drying rack on the right? This is probably the local herbalist.
Every dwelling is decorated for a particular occupation and it’s fun to guess what they are. See the drying rack on the right? Perhaps this is the local herbalist?
I really started to wonder… What would be the logistical problems of a dwelling built into a hillside, instead of over it? Would you have problems heating the place? How would drainage and insulation work? And since I’m from California, how would it fare in an earthquake? (Very badly, I suspect…)
And yet, with all the drawbacks… Wouldn’t it just be SO CUTE ???
Just think, you could grow produce on your outside walls, as well as your roof!
Our intrepid tour group!
It’s amazing how much variety the designers managed to cram into such a small chunk of land.
It looks appetizing... But the bread is made from colored cement!
It looks appetizing… But this bread is made from colored cement! Sits out here all year-round.
In fact, it’s a pretty close rendition of Terry Pratchett’s “dwarven bread”.
Wood decorated too look aged, using a combination of yogurt, wood chips, vinegar, and paint.
This is new wood decorated too look aged, using a combination of yogurt, wood chips, vinegar, and paint.
I've no idea if this is actual honey, but there were actual bees crawling all over a few of the jars.
I’ve no idea if this is actual honey, but I assume it is, since there were actual bees crawling around on the jars.
I'd say these were supposed to be beehives, but elsewhere in Hobbiton is a beekeeper's house with some boxes out front that have removable sections of honeycomb. So... If not beehives, what are these?
I’d say these were supposed to be beehives, but elsewhere in Hobbiton is a beekeeper’s house with some boxes out front that have removable sections of honeycomb. So… If not beehives, what are these? Bird houses? Special hives for Middle Earth “giant bees”?
Hobbits need to build better ladders if they're going to avoid injury!
Hobbits need to build better ladders if they’re going to avoid injury!
Kerry is better at framing shots than anyone else I've met!
Practicing my pottery skills!
More fabulous framing by Kerry.
Bilbo's house!
The central Hobbiton attraction: Bilbo’s house!
We made sure to take plenty of photos around it.
The other big attraction was the Green Dragon Inn, where the tourguide invited us to sit down and have a drink. We had the cider and the ginger beer, then mixed them together. The result was fantastic!
Here we are, basking in the warm glow of Hobbiton!
I know for a fact the cider stain is genuine. Heh heh heh.
Check out all that fancy design work!
One of the trees in this shot is actually artificial. Can you spot it?
Hobbiton was gorgeous, and worth the price of admission. And for us, it was the high point of a lovely day spent riding through the same scenery that encircled the attraction for miles around. I think it would have been a lesser experience taking a car here. But I’ve been a bike snob for most of this century, so of course I would think that.
Heading home from Hobbiton, plotting to return again soon...
On our way back to Tirau and our hotel we were already plotting about the next visit, and what our nieces and nephews would think!
Bursting into song about the wonders of New Zealand.
"The Russian fort is woody / In this town that's full of goodies / The butterflies, they flutter by / And farts come from their bootys"
Not bad for a first draft.
Bursting into song about the wonders of New Zealand.
“The Russian fort is woody / In this town that’s full of goodies / The butterflies, they flutter by / And farts come from their bootys”
Not bad for a first draft? At any rate, it is conclusive proof that I am 100% CLASSY.
Gator #1 invited Gator #2 in for tea, but it was a TRAP!
Here’s more evidence! (Gator #1 invited Gator #2 in for tea, but it was a TRAP)
Anyway, the reason I’m all dressed up in sun-protective gear is because Kerry and I bicycled over to the Hamilton Gardens to spend the first half of the day snapping photos, disturbing insects, and bothering waterfowl, such as these:
Leftover cicada skin, anchored to a leaf.
That’s a cicada skin, left behind on the underside of a leaf after the insect molted and crawled away. And of course, a duck, being ducky.
Hamilton Gardens was, and is, an amazing place to be a photographer. You’re probably saying, “but I can see gardens all over the world; why would I want to waste my precious time in New Zealand walking around a garden?”
Perhaps some of these pictures will help explain why!
The place is a feast for the senses, and that feast has multiple courses. There are themed and curated gardens, kept carefully behind partitions, and large open sections that grow a little more improvisational and merge slowly across each other.
(You’re probably looking at those pictures of thistles and saying, “he totally cranked up the saturation. There’s no way those colors are real.” Nope. That’s how they looked, my friends.)
And now we visit the Hamilton Gardens!
We didn’t pay much attention to the signposts, and just wandered around. I have no idea how many of these plants are native to New Zealand, or even to the same hemisphere.
These bees are busy bees!
The Monarch butterflies were familiar, though! I grew up in a town called Santa Cruz, and during part of the year we could see them hibernating at Natural Bridges State Beach. (Check out this Forestry Service article about their migration routes.) Monarchs were brought to New Zealand from North America, and seem to have a pretty good foothold here, despite the cold winters.
We caught these two doing ... uh ... relations. Eventually they took off and completed the deed in mid-air.
As long as her proboscis could still reach the flower, she didn't mind me messing with it.
Taken with an iPhone 6. Unbelievable.
Monarch on an artichoke!
They were very busy drinking nectar, so as long we we didn’t interrupt them, it was possible to get incredibly close. Check out this iPhone video:
Now that is close! By the way, that loud hissing sound you hear is the cicadas, scattered throughout the foliage and talking to each other. It’s intense, but after a while it fades into the background and you stop noticing it.
It makes me wonder: Do New Zealanders travel to places like North America and walk into the redwoods, and get disoriented because the forest is so very quiet?
The birds let us get pretty close too.
Anybody know what kind of bird this is?
Super-close-up photography with the iPhone! Faaaancy.
That’s me trying to blend in with the local foliage!
OAKTOWN REPRAZENT IN DA FOLIAGE YO
Serious camera action happening here!
OAKTOWN REPRAZENT IN DA FOLIAGE YO.
One of the newer exhibits was this tudor-accented topiary, groomed into precise tessellations, and decorated with carvings of mythic creatures and gods.
I think some of the carvings were deliberately made to look deranged, or cartoonish, to evoke Lewis Carroll’s poetry. I mean, look at that basilisk thing. Is it menacingly reptilian? Or adorably dopey? I can’t decide.
And of course, what mythic garden would be complete without Pan, frolicking in the bushes? (Trying to track down a nymph no doubt.)
Mad watch! Mad watch! MAD WATCH!!
Elsewhere in the gardens, the Lewis Carroll influence was obvious!
The heat from the gravel and stones in this particular garden was mesmerizing, and the desire to sit down on that bench and lose a few hours was intense. The place had a sense of comfortable timelessness to it, like it would remain early afternoon for as long as you cared to linger there.
By contrast, the “productive” garden area – full of edible plants, and decorated with signs discussing composting and suggesting recipes – brought feelings of growth and renewal. Everything in it looked like it was just about to be pulled up and chopped into a salad bowl, or stirred into a stewpot. Mmmmm!
It looked delicious and I caught a few fellow tourists reaching into the exhibits and plucking out onions, or tomatoes, or peas, and sneaking them furtively into their pockets or mouths.
Even the things that weren’t technically edible looked delicious.
This time, surprisingly, the good framing is by me, not Kerry. Hah!
Doesn’t that flower just look good enough to chomp? (As an aside, I’m very pleased with the framing of this photo. It’s on par with the framing that Kerry manages to get almost all the time. I don’t know how she does it…)
Azolla: Free-floating water ferns. Contains a nitrogen fixing bacteria (Abaeberia azollae). Used as a mulch on the garden, and also makes good chicken feed.
Azolla grows rapidly and is a pest to lakes, ponds, and waterways, so it needs to be contained - like in this bathtub - for garden use.
Azolla: Free-floating water ferns! They contain a nitrogen fixing bacteria (Abaeberia azollae), and can be used as a mulch on the garden, or as chicken feed. Azolla grows rapidly and is a pest to lakes, ponds, and waterways, so it needs to be contained – like in this bathtub – for garden use.
The “productive” area was even more saturated with insects than the other gardens.
Among the “productive” gardens was one of more local origin called the Te Parapara Garden. Here’s me pretending to be one of the wall carvings.
The guy on top is ... striking an interesting pose
Dig this: Te Parapara was originally the name of the pre-European Maori settlement in what is now the centre of Hamilton Gardens!
The section is part tribute, part reference, and has two sub-sections, one presenting the uncultivated food the Maori gathered from the forest and grassland, the other presenting the system they developed for organized farming of these and other tropical crops in a sub-tropical climate. When Europeans showed up in the 1840’s, this system was well-established in plantations all over the islands.
Speaking of tropical, another highlight for us was the tropical-themed garden. 200 different species of plants, according to the documentation, hardy enough to be grown outdoors but still giving the appearance of the tropics.
Lots of drip irrigation going on here!
The colors were intense, and many of the plants had a thickness and stiffness to them that made the garden feel as much like a sculpture or a carving than something grown from the soil.
I wonder what it would take to grow these in my back yard? I have a bunch of succulents there already – perhaps it’s time to add to the collection when I get back home?
This door was locked - but it looks so ornate and tempting!!
Even the doorways were interesting here…
…And each of them led to something new and unique, like this Italian Renaissance-themed garden with many pockets and sections to explore.
Having so many distinct styles so close together, but confined to their own sections, appealed to my OCD nature. It was like browsing a collection of trading cards or figurines neatly organized on a shelf. Sharpened borders, matching sizes, and no intermediate space becomes just as important a part of the structure as the content itself.
We ran out of time and only got a glance in here... Lovely area.
I assume this is why most of my plants back home are in pots. They’re all together in the garden, but they’re also distinct and – in a very real way – protected from one another. Plants will happily fight to the death for root and sun space, and I don’t want to lose any “weaker” species to “stronger” ones. I gotta catch ’em all!
Perhaps this is why I was so impressed by the Victorian Flower Garden:
All the plants seemed to be co-existing, even though they were placed together in what looks like a big tangle. I assume this is a combination of careful selection and careful grooming.
I see you!!!
The effect was lovely, and the open setting – colorful and layered without being overwhelming – made this garden my favorite, slightly outranking the Tudor garden with the weird topiary.
We both wanted to stay longer, but we had a bus to catch. There were three or four sections that we just didn’t have time to see. It would also have been nice to set down a little picnic blanket and have lunch somewhere. Nope! Got to get going.
There is so much of New Zealand to see – including dozens of things Kerry and I already know about and deliberately decided to skip – that it’s unlikely I’ll ever return to the Hamilton Gardens to finish my tour. Plus, the sections are always in flux – their contents are literally growing. A return visit would not be a return to the same sights as before. So if you think you can skip it just because you’ve seen my pictures, well, it just ain’t so!
Kerry and I returned to the Albert Court Motor Lodge and fetched the rest of our luggage from the garage near the office, which the clerk had graciously let us use for our visit to the gardens. A while after that we were riding the bus out of town, towards Tirau. This would provide us a flatter approach to Hobbiton than the route we’d originally planned.
Tirau turned out to be a collection of shops strung out along Highway 1 where it briefly merges with Highway 27 and Highway 5, with a few motels scattered in like eddies in a river. Like speedboats in that same river, big trucks would come roaring up and down the highway through town at all times of day or night, with little regard for pedestrians or the wake of noise they left. We went out for dinner and watched them zooming by as we ate.
Kiwis think this drink is awesome, but to us it tastes obnoxious.
We've decided the "L&P" stands for "Lemon and Puke".
Out of curiosity, Kerry bought a popular local drink, called “L&P”. Kiwis think this drink is awesome, but to us it tastes obnoxious. We’ve decided the “L&P” stands for “Lemon and Puke”.
Our motel room reeked so much of cigarettes that we had to keep the windows open and even move the bed closer to the windows, but at the same time the noise from the trucks was punishing. Sleep wasn’t easy.
But who cares! Today was amazing, and tomorrow we’re going to Hobbiton!
Even without the reconfiguring, our schedule always included one very long bus ride from Waipu down to Hamilton, so we could get off the northern peninsula of the island and reach the interior, close to the Hobbiton movie set. Kerry and I had to see Hobbiton, of course. If we went all the way to New Zealand and then skipped it, we would be beating ourselves with sticks at the end of the trip — and when we got home our friends would probably beat us with sticks too. And it would serve us right! Hah!
Ready to load up!
We got up with plenty of time to spare, and packed up the bikes lazily. We both knew we’d just be going half a mile and then re-packing them underneath a bus. In seven days we’ve had to switch our gear between:
planes
kayaks
bicycles
hiking trails
a shuttle
a boat
and a bus
… with four hotels and a post office in between. Sometimes it feels like it’s the gear that’s on vacation, and we’re just chaperoning it along. “Here, let me fluff that pillow for you, camera. Is that seat comfortable enough, repair kit? Be sure and give me a good Yelp review after your trip.”
(As an aside, it’s day 7, and we’ve already been personally reminded by employees at two establishments to go online and review them on Yelp. That service has quite a foothold here.)
The bus churned and rumbled way, waaay up into the hills along Highway 1. We never even considered cycling on this part of the highway, and I was very glad for that. We could have been squished by this very bus! I dashed back and forth between the windows on either side, giddily snapping photos, but afterwards I looked at them and almost none were usable. I was countering the motion blur by shooting at 1/8000-second, relying on the amazing sensor in the camera to keep the photos from being grainy, but every time I saw a pretty scene at the roadside it flew out of range before I could compose the shot. I am spoiled by bike touring in multiple ways.
No idea what this is, but I am amused by the design!
No idea what this is for, but it's pretty cute!
Vaguely disturbing ... But tasty.
I caught a few interesting things, but after an hour or so I just put the camera away and chatted with Kerry, and then listened to The Amazing Maurice And His Educated Rodents while she took a nap. I’ve discovered a third thing that causes her to instantly fall asleep next to me: Riding a bus. The first two are watching tv, and reading fiction out loud to her. (Non-fiction doesn’t seem to work.)
After many hours, we arrived in Hamilton, and set out to accomplish the day’s mission: We were going to visit Diesel, the Rototuna Countdown Cat. Yes, that’s right, we’ve traveled thousands of miles around the curve of the Earth in order to roll up and visit a cat that lives in front of a supermarket. We’re perverse individuals that way.
We had to ride pretty far north from the bus stop – also the opposite direction from our booked hotel – to get to the right Countdown supermarket, and when we got there, one of the clerks told us that the owners of Diesel had in fact moved away at the end of last year and taken the cat with them. This was pretty disappointing, but the side-trip turned out to be worthwhile, because the very same shopping center had a pet store in it with another kittycat wandering around outside!
Welcome to the shop! My name is Ginger Boy! I'll show you around.
“Welcome to the shop! My name is Ginger Boy! I’ll show you around.”
These are some of my favorite things! Actually everything in here is mine, and it's all my favorite! Let me show you more!
“These are some of my favorite things! Actually, everything in here is mine, and it’s all my favorite! Let me show you more!”
My best favorite thing is the food thing. Now you may pet me while I eat. That's two best favorite things at the same time, which is also my favorite thing.
(Nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom.)
“Welcome to my apartment! My best favorite thing, is the food thing. Now you pet me while I eat, and that’s two favorite things at the same time!”
(Nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom.)
“Then afterwards, we sit and watch the Zebra Finches! If you want one, they’re only five bucks each.” (Ginger Boy was right, they’re fascinating. I took a short movie of them darting around.)
After that visit, Kerry and I ate some mediocre fush’n’chups and cycled back across town to the Albert Court Motor Lodge. Hobbiton was only two days away, but before that we were going to explore the Hamilton Gardens! Fancy stuff! But before that: Lots of sleep.
We got a decent amount of sleep, and it was all downhill into central Whangarei to catch the shuttle directly to Waipu. This would mark our first diverging from the schedule we’d meticulously prepared over the previous two months. We would be skipping the Waipu caves and their dark ceilings, sparkling with glow-worms, but we would also be skipping another several thousand feet of hills, as steep as the ones that punished us on that first day of riding. Now we knew our limitations, and we knew this was a necessary change.
The bicycles fit sideways into the luggage compartment under the bus without any acrobatics, and we piled our bags around them, except for our backpacks which we were too paranoid to relinquish. My rough estimate is that we were carrying about $11000 worth of gear in those backpacks, mostly in the form of camera lenses. That’s pretty absurd, especially since we could have left half that gear at home and barely changed our enjoyment of the trip.
The green countryside scrolled by, and we found ourselves in Waipu before my stomach had a chance to notice it was on a bus and get upset – a childish behavior that it picked up years ago when I was riding commuter shuttles to work. We stepped off into an early autumn day with a fresh breeze and just a hint of ocean salt, and a few minutes later we had our gear reassembled and were riding back down the main street of Waipu, looking for our hotel, and for a place to get snacks.
Whoever's been shooting at that sign has had consistently bad aim...
The motel room was cheap, but dingy and cramped. The single-pane window opened directly onto a parking space. All the usual hardware was stacked in a corner – television on top of VCR on top of mini-fridge, unplugged and dusty. We stripped the bikes down, hauled the bags inside, then hauled the bikes in after. The room was now incredibly cramped, but we didn’t care – it was time to go out and get snacks!
The restaurant across from the hotel was excellent. Actually, it was as good as the hotel was bad! We ate burgers and salad, and drank cider at a spacious table. Encouraged by the weather, we decided to go out riding and see what else we could find. What we found was a pastoral paradise.
We rode out through a ragged patchwork of lush green fields, crisscrossed by slow rivers along soft banks of mud and sand, and threaded by dirt roads with deep ruts and high shoulders of tangled late-summer grass. Dark horses, cream-colored sheep, and speckled cows meandered their way along, nibbling on grass or lounging in the sun, between fences of rusty wire and wooden posts. Across all this blew a steady coastal breeze, fresh but not cold, weaving into the trees and carrying the scent of the sea, and higher up, carrying along an army of fleecy white clouds, sailing like galleons in the sky. It was like riding around inside everyone’s collective hallucination of the perfect day in the countryside. A living daydream, filling up every kind of sense.
It was a feeling like the one I felt in western Kansas, on a particular day when I was bicycling there three years ago. Not exactly the same; the Kansas air had been warmer, and pungent with the smell of old grass and wet soil. A Halloween smell. Waipu was bringing me a younger, lighter smell – something like Easter. Looking around, I would not have felt surprised to see little pastel eggs tucked into the hollows of trees, and peeking out from rabbit holes.
Savoring this vivid impression, I stopped by the side of the road and dug a chocolate bar out of my saddlebag. A hundred feet away, Kerry pedaled up to a horse behind a low fence, but it saw her coming and backed nervously away, intimidated by the combined size of bicycle and rider. Kerry chastised the horse for being a scaredy-cat, and giggled. “Silly horse,” I said, talking casually over our headsets. “Doesn’t it know that bicyclists always have snacks?”
Once again, all the effort of hauling these awkward bicycle contraptions around felt absolutely worth it. We were traveling within, not just passing through.
We pedaled around the area north of town, then came back and made a left turn, headed towards the sea. The road curved around and undulated over a few gentle hills. Nothing intimidating like what we saw the day before, thank goodness. We stopped in a random spot, peed behind some bushes, then flopped down in the grass and chomped through a bag full of bubble gum. This is how a day of cycling is supposed to go! Not a death march, but a long string of roadside picnics.
Industrious NZ spiders!
“I’m still getting used to the idea of spending an entire day riding a bike,” Kerry said. “I mean, not pedaling the whole time obviously, but… It’s strange being ‘in transit’ for so long, you know? I’m used to riding a bike to get somewhere. So I get this feeling of impatience, like, we should just never stop, and pedal hard, so we can hurry up and get to the next town, the next thing. But I know that’s not the right way to think about it, so I’m pushing back against that idea in my head. That’s taking effort, but I think I can get there. We’ll see. Still, it’s good that we’re doing other stuff too and not just bicycling day after day like some of the trips you’ve taken.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t expect you to like bicycling as much as I do. You’d have to be as crazy as I am; and that’s pretty crazy. But I’m really happy you’re here with me.”
“Awww,” she said, and gave me a hug.
We rode on, and about a half mile later we rolled around a corner and found the water – a long shallow inlet with pasture on either side, sweeping out to connect with the deeper ocean, kinked by a few bars of white sand, and with a thin crest of surf sketching out the interface between the incoming waves and the receding tide. Just up from the shore on our side of the inlet was an old graveyard, the headstones bleached and weather-beaten in some cases and sharp and shiny in others, all behind a fence with a single strand of electrified wire strung along it in plastic brackets, to keep the cows from crapping on the dead. We parked our bikes and went strolling around.
You can tell we're only out for the day because the bicycle is lacking about 55 pounds of extra gear. (It's back at the hotel.)
You can tell we’re only out for the day because the bicycle in the picture is lacking about 40 pounds of extra gear!
Seeing this coastal graveyard and this blue ocean and these huge clouds brought a lot of other associations to mind. Some musical, some literary. Sting’s “The Soul Cages” echoed through my ears. Fragments of poetry by Robert Louis Stevenson. Images etched into my imagination when I read “The Sea Wolf” in the 7th grade. I felt detached from my own era, but it wasn’t a disorienting feeling; it was a comfortable one. This graveyard by the sea was telling me something.
“Here is an environment, a source of sensations, that you cannot make your individual stamp upon, no matter what you try. Even solid stone, etched with descriptions of who you were and what you did, and placed here, will simply wear away into an anonymous blob in a thousand years, and it will be millions more years before this place even begins to look slightly different, from exactly how it looked a million years before you passed through. Maybe the shoreline will have a different shape but it will still be the same shore. All the poems written, all the ships built and launched, all the perfect picnic days and garbage left behind in human history compresses down to a thought … an afterthought, even … and I could be anyone standing here. Or no one.”
“But is that really true? Humans do have a collective impact, after all. In seven thousand years we managed to create the Sahara Desert from grassland, with help from domesticated animals. Some people say that 15000 years ago the Great Plains was forested and only became grass because humans kept setting fires. Others say the forest retreated naturally as the glaciers melted away. And, we’re certainly good at mass extinction…”
Abruptly I realized I’d been staring at the same distant sandbar for an entire minute. I walked back to my bike and stowed the camera. Time to ride out for snacks!
Kerry chatted with a few people sitting around in lawn chairs, dangling fishing poles down into the water. They told her that if we wanted to swim at a proper beach, we should cycle only “a kilometer or so” down the road and we’d find one, along with a general store. That sounded good.
Of course, “a kilometer or so” turned out to be four or five miles. We were both rapidly coming to the conclusion that New Zealanders could not be trusted to give accurate estimates of distance. It’s probably not Kiwis in particular, it’s probably just people who drive cars and don’t bicycle. Back home, most people have at least tried bicycling. In New Zealand, people ride mountain bikes on tracks, but touring seems to be strictly for tourists. The idea of using a bicycle to get from one town to another seems absurd to just about everyone we’ve talked to here…
Eventually we did find a nice beach, and a nice general store. Many snacks were snacked upon.
I've never seen such a perfect demonstration of a beach forming from billions of discarded shells.
I’ve never seen such a perfect demonstration of a beach forming from millions of discarded shells!
How's this for a beach!
The Waipu Cove beach was littered with whole shells. I collected a few for a photo, then left them behind for kids to play with.
We collected a bunch of them and took a few photos, then left them around for kids to find. No sense hauling them back to the hotel.
As the afternoon moved on to evening, the shadows got deeper and more lush. Even though we were riding back the way we came, along the same road, everything looked different.
Whenever the temptation came upon us to stop and eat a snack, or take a photograph, we just went with it. The landscape seemed to be taunting us to find the right collection of buttons and switches that would capture the perfect photograph. Vacation with gadgets! Fun stuff.
Even the clouds got in on the act!
That's a pretty bunched-up stand of trees!
When we got back to town, I felt hungry and Kerry felt tired, so she took a nap and I walked over to the same restaurant, and went though the day’s photographs.
Waipu locals watching the cricket game
Kerry’s nap didn’t last long, though: A bunch of Waipu locals gathered in the pub to watch the latest cricket game. Their shouts and laughter went straight through the thin walls of the hotel. Minus one star!
Lots of places to go from Waipu!
In the original schedule, Waipu was just a handy town to spend the night after exploring the Waipu Caves, but it turned out to be a fun place to explore in its own right, and very restorative. Kerry and I went to bed feeling a lot more refreshed than we’d been the previous night in Whangarei.
Good thing too, since the next day we’d be stuck in shuttles for six hours!
