The World is my Travelogue

Some random pictures I have taken of Mt Ruapehu over the past few years

What are you waiting for? You know you want to come to NZ, go to Ruapehu & have a TPunk meetup  

Whilst on the topic of doing random blog entries I thought I might do one about Akaroa – yep the tiny French settlement near Christchurch.  

On our second visit to Christchurch I decided that I really wanted to make it to Akaroa since we didn’t go the first time, so we asked at our hostels reception and managed to secure a booking for a bus to take us over the following day – if you have a BBH card make sure you mention it cas I saved $5 just for my bus fare alone, regular fares are around $35 return trip and stop off at a few places on the way - we stopped at a really pretty beach (I can’t remember the name) but the beach was incredibly flat and it didn’t have sand but had heaps of flat stones instead! Apparently it can get pretty rough there though, but it was pretty nevertheless. We stopped at a gem factory (?) not really a factory, more like some guys workshop, but it is quiet interesting, we also stopped at the cheese factory and got some free samples on the way home.

We made it to Akaroa after about 1.5hours I think I was – found a bakery to eat lunch and then began wandering around to see what the town had to offer. If you have come by bus it is likely that you will get picked up around 3-4PM, I advise you to take your time looking around as we went around and saw everything we wanted to see and then found ourselves waiting for the bus for nearly an hour, admittedly we didn’t do any of the longer walks which I would have liked to have done if we were staying overnight and didn’t have to catch the bus, and we also only had quick looks in the shops as we didn’t really feel the need to purchase anything.  

We managed a few of the quick walks which were mentioned in one of the brochures at the Information Centre, including walking out past the Lighthouse and to an old French Cemetery, both of which were nice easy walks.  

On our way back from the walk to the Lighthouse we noticed a small boat which was being pulled out of the water, it appears that the boat got a hole in it and started to sink whilst it was tied up to the wharf. This appeared to be an exciting event in sleepy Akaroa as all the locals and tourists gathered around to see what was going on. 

All in all I really enjoyed our time in Akaroa although I do think we should have stayed a night and gone swimming with the dolphins, done a jet boat ride and done some of the longer walks – if your pressed for time definitely try to make it to Akaroa for at least a few hours, grab some lunch have a quick stroll around carry on to your next destination…

Next up we may be lucky enough to get an entry about Christchurch…      

Pretty Self Explanatory really, just thought i’d add some pics of Lake Taupo - these are taken from Kuratau which is round the other side of the lake than Taupo Town, about 5 minutes away from Turangi and 2-3Mins from Tokaanu.

Since I’ve had nothing exciting to add by the way of trips lately I thought I would write a little ditty about Wanganui, my hometown.  

Wanganui has gotten a bad reputation in the media recently due to a lot of violence – mainly gang related, but don’t get me wrong it is a lovely town even though most young people say they want to get out of here more than anything, I guess they don’t understand that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side! 

I wouldn’t suggest spending a week here if you are wandering our lovely country, although it is definitely worth having a look around for a few hours or even stopping overnight to breakup your journey in the North Island.  

The photo’s throughout this entry are ones I took on my walk to work one day last year;  

So what can you do in Wanganui?  

Take a stroll around Virginia Lake, set in the trees a walk around the lake will take you under half an hour – take some bread to feed the ducks, geese and swans.  There is also a small walk-through bird aviary, the winter gardens and a café.  

Poke around at Queens Park, a lot of history resides here – as does our local Library, Museum, Sergeant Gallery and War Memorial Hall, to be honest I have only been to the Library so I can’t comment on any of the other stuff, one day I will make it to the other places! Give me a buzz and let me know what the other places are like if you’ve visited.  

Take a ride on the Waimarie, a restored paddle steamer. The Waimarie takes you on a return journey on the Whanganui River to Upokongaro and back – check their website for times, there is generally at least one sailing per day and the return trip takes around 1 hour. There is a bar on board, and some sailings serve meals as well.  

Cooks Gardens hosts a number of sporting events throughout the year, including, athletics, rugby and motocross (yep the trucked in a lot of dirt to host this!) –there are also concerts occasionally held here.   Just down the road from Cooks Gardens is the Royal Wanganui Opera House, it’s a nice building, and usually is advertising some event or another which is to be held there – I still don’t like the place from having Ballet performances there when I was a little tike, hmmm.

Kowhai Park is over the bridge from the central city, a nice place to rest for a while, release your inner child on the playground – or if you have kids let them burn some energy. There are free BBQ’s in the park so bring along some sausages and bread, send me an invite and have a BBQ lunch or dinner.  Everything in the park is free except the kid’s train which goes around; last I heard it was about 50cents to have a go. Next to Kowhai park is Riverlands Fun park, which has mini golf, go karts and bumper karts – all of these do cost, so if your penny pinching I would give it a miss and just spend some time at Kowhai Park.  

Durie Hill – Boasts two towers, the main Durie Hill Tower gives great views over Wanganui. It is a must see in Wanganui, take your camera and count the steps on the way up. You can get to the top of Durie Hill by driving, walking up the stairs or walking through a tunnel and taking a very old elevator to the top. (Costs around $1 each I believe). Up the top of Durie Hill is a smaller lookout tower is not enclosed on the walk up – take it from experience, if heights scare the bejebus out of you, just go up the main tower, the views are no better from the smaller one, and there’s something about the comfort of being enclosed while climbing a tower!  

Well that is properly about the excitement which is my hometown of Wanganui! So get yourself to the River City, it’s a great gateway to a number of amazing locations in NZ – 2-2.5 Hours from Wellington, the capital city, 2 hours from New Plymouth – less to Mt Egmont, 1-1.5 Hours from Mt Ruapehu, 2.5Hours to Taupo, 3.5 Hours to Rotorua. What are you waiting for? Come hit me up for a Beverage or two!

Woke up on Sunday to discover the sun was shining! Great stuff! So me being me I decided we had to finish what we started and go do the rest of the Coastal Walk - this time we drove to where we started running back towards town on Saturday…

FYI - the Coastal Walk is 6KM long each way, so I didnt fancy walking all the way to where we had started then doing it and going all the way back!

It turns out we had almost made it to the Port anyway so it was only a short walk - maybe 1KM? Beautiful Views and it was here I remembered that New Plymouth had a Mountain (Mt Egmont/Mt Taranaki) - we hadn’t seen it yesterday because the whether was so crap!

So we had to wait around because we were picking up a motor for one of our mates brothers and hadn’t herd from the guy we were picking it up from, so we stuffed around got some lunch (from trusty Burger Fuel - I had to try a beef burger since I had chicken last night!) and sat in the car (it may have been sunny but it wasnt warm!) and read our books & magazines and relaxed by the ocean until we heard that we could go and get the motor.

Around 1.30 we had the motor and were on our way home via the Surf Highway - now this is something I highly recomend to do - you can see the Mountain & the coast basically the whole way (well we turned off at Manaia - so at least until there) I really enjoyed it just driving along and stopping at random towns (Stop at Opunake and have a look around, go to the lookouts and down by the beach!).

It was then that I had the clever idea to follow a sign that said Dawson Falls - being ignorant we didn’t know where they were at all and we ended up halfway up one side of Mt Egmont!! I am so glad we did this even though my thighs hurt for a couple of days after -I’m a short person and not very fit - the stairs to climb up and down to the falls were rather large!

We then decided it would be quicker to head back via stratford rather than go all the way back to Manaia and down to Hawera. And that was the end of the excitement for the weekend!

Ciao for now - Exams over the next couple of weeks so may not have updates or any more quick trips up our sleaves for a bit - although there are a few places I want to head off too for a weekened or day trip so we shall see. 

Hey guys,

It was our 4 year anniversary last week so we (ok well I once again) decided to go to New Plymouth for the weekend since we havn’t been there in a long time.

 All I wanted to do during the weekend was walk to Coastal Walk and come home via the Surf Highway - and not spend heaps of money cas I’m a cheaparse!

Saturday Morning we awoke and it was a crap day - yay for us, no rain though so once again can’t complain too much.

We decided to walk straight out the back of our motel through a bowls club and onto the part of the Coastal Walk which was right outside our motel (yes motel I wasn’t that cheap on our anniversary and splurged for a basic motel rather than a backpackers!) - a couple of KM later and we had made it to the town centre and someone was hungry so we made a detour to Brumbies (Bakery) to get some food then head back on our way - we managed to walk not far past the pools and Brad noticed that the rain in the distance was coming closer and closer very quickly… we were not prepared and didn’t have jackets or an umbrella so we started to run back towards town - it was only about 1.5KM away but by the time we got there we were pretty wet! We went to Crowded House for lunch (one of the only restaurants in New Plymouth believe it or not) - delicious food by the way for $15-20 for a meal can’t complain at that (see I’m not that cheap really).

 After lunch it was still crap but not raining so we made our way back to the motel and relaxed for a bit then decided to go for a drive, we went out near the airport and down by the port - we discovered that Paratutu was an actual place name - who would have known?! Took some nice pics which would have been a lot nicer if the day was nice!

Thats about it for our adventure today - except for the fact that we wanted to go to the Speights Ale House for tea - they had run out of food?! WTF? since they were changing the menu the next week - so we just went to Burger Fuel instead - gotto be better than McD’s!

Onwards to Sunday… 

My partner & I decided (well I told him) to drive along the Forgotten World Highway between Taumarunui and Stratford (most people tend to go from Stratford to Taumarunui) a couple of weekends ago on our way home from Taupo.

If you like green countryside it is definately well worth the journey, although we had a pretty crap day it was still a good trip - although quiet long when you factor in having to get back home from Stratford.

We started out at Taumarunui at about 10AM and began our journey on the highway - firstly filling up with gas (the signs saying no gas for 150KM - they are not shitting you at all, you are going to the middle of nowhere).

Our journey began in fog for around half an hour -still a nice drive so can’t complain too much! Now to warn you, there are signs saying there are lookouts and stuff and we are sure they pointed to nowhere - might may to try and pick up a map or something to find out where these places actually are.

We both agreed that the non-sealed section of the ’highway’ was the best part of our journey, including the 180Metre single laned Moki tunnel which is just drilled straight through the middle of a hill basically.

Don’t be afraid to go off down some of the side roads, we went down a couple and found a small waterfall and a train tunnel - both of which were worth the extra effort, although if you have been driving for more than 10 mins or so down a random road, unless you have a map it might pay to turn around, who knows where you will end up?!?!?!

All in all for the amount of time it took I will not be going back to do it again in a hurry, but it was some amazing scenery and I am glad I have crossed it off my list of things to do in NZ! 

Next Weekend: New Plymouth Coastal Walk & Surf Highway

So this is the inaugural first post - exciting stuff!

I can’t promise this will get updated all that much over the next year or so due to my study, business and work commitments.  

The Basics:

I’m Amanda, a 20YO from New Zealand, finishing my Bachelor of Business through correspondence whilst working as an Auditor - once the degree is finished (June 09 woop!) I am going to start seriously putting some plans into place for some decent trips around the world. (USA, Canada, Europe, UK & South America) so for now this blog might be lucky enough to get some of my travels in NZ and some planning crap for this trip