Auckland

Back again. Thirteen days after I first set foot in New Zealand, I was back to the beginning, where it all started to explode delightfully. While the idea of spending new year’s eve atop a misty mountain or beside a babbling brook was hopelessly tantalising, the logistics of having to return to Perth on the first day of the new year (how inglorious!) forced us to seek more practical options. City-esque options. Like Christmas in Christchurch, all over again.

Getting to Auckland pushed our north island odometer beyond the 1,000 kilometre mark. Close to a thousand miles in the south island, and a little over a thousand kilometres in the north. And I’m starving for more. More sheep, more rolling meadows, more glassy lakes, more turquoise, more mountains, more strange-sounding towns, more mini-republics.

Auckland’s most imposing sight, and most likely the first thing you’ll notice about its skyline, is the unimaginatively named Sky Tower. This is the tallest building in the southern hemisphere, and while it’s not exactly a thing of beauty, most Kiwis are shyly proud that their country holds this accolade, transient though it may be.

I was, however, hugely wowed by the fact that there are over forty extinct volcanoes within the Auckland region. A closer look at the landscape, glancing beyond the urban decks of apartment blocks and high-rises, reveals a delightful number of slender, graceful cones in one direction, confronted by a few chubby mounds on the other side.

It was to one such chubby mound that John and I headed first. Mt. Eden is one of Auckland’s highest natural… um… highs, a quaint, old extinct volcano that is now a much-loved, popular picnic-ground/lolling-park for the locals. And as with every grassy patch in New Zealand, this one had its faithful regulars – chirpy tourists, freckled sunbathers, hungry cows, and the athletic types, who insisted on sprinting up and down the steep flanks of the crater with utter nonchalance, and, undoubtedly, the express purpose of making us feel comprehensively lumpy and unfit.

Trundling down the hill and towards the city, we caught closer glimpses of the Sky Tower and the shopping/entertainment complex below, SkyCity. Among the myriad attractions and facilities it has to offer, the most blatantly touristy is something called the Sky Jump, which involves a 192-metre suspended, controlled drop in about 11 seconds. And jumpsuits, lots of screaming, and manic photo-clicking by Japanese bystanders. John and I watched, staring into the sun, grinning infuriatingly.

An epithet often used for Auckland is ‘City of Sails’, and while the reasoning behind this is not immediately obvious, a quick hop across to the various Prince/Princess/King/Queen/Court-Jester jetties reveals a rich assortment sails, fluttering atop equally opulent yachts. Luckily enough, the day we chose to explore the bay was also the day the Russian training sailing vessel, Pallada, docked in Auckland as part of its voyage around the world. Not insanely eager to get aboard yet another boat, we were content to take a ridiculous amount of photographs from the pier, surrendering to unabashed touristy-ness.

Wellington may be the capital of New Zealand, but Auckland is easily its busiest and most populous city. Its resemblance to Melbourne is compelling, and in a lot of ways, it could very well be in Australia (yes, I do know that that statement will earn me a lynching in either country). Wild, unkempt, arty, and oozing attitude, whether it’s the vivid architecture, unusual art, the potpourri of its residents and their boisterous, outgoing nature, or its charming disarray of urban beauty.

Auckland really does know how to bring in a new year. Its streets overflowed with bars and pubs open till the wee hours of the morning, each promising an unforgettable kickstart to 2008. The Sky Tower promised to shower the city with an endless bouquet of fireworks, backpackers with in-house pubs hosted theme parties, while yachts and cruise ships had soirées of their own. Not quite the party animals, John and I decided to participate in the simplest kind of revelry – a public celebration at the Aotea Square, a free and alcohol-free gathering in front of the town hall, complete with a countdown and an unobstructed display of the Sky Tower fireworks. It felt like we were shedding fifteen odd years, with the effortlessness of a duck shrugging water off its back.

Along came midnight, and with it, a cascade of cheer, good humour, and uninhibited celebration. Most merely yearn for a good reason to be happy, to shed their melancholy, and, even if it’s only for a few moments, feel unreasonably optimistic. Fireworks can make you feel like that.

At the end of it all, we walked back to our backpackers, among the throngs of euphoric revellers, all hooting, cheering, clicking photographs, munching on doughnuts, hopping a little, skipping a bit. Such mirth! Such unfettered electricity! There are truly very few things in the world as uplifting as a happy people, and I guess bringing in a new year in a treasure of a country as New Zealand, is reason enough, more than anyone would ever need, to be so helplessly ecstatic.

Waitomo Caves

The Tongariro Crossing took the wind out of us. A shrill, cold, gusty punch in the guts. So when we woke up the next morning to brilliantly sunny skies in National Park village, we knew we had to leave quickly, before a profound sense of regret for not waiting a day to do the Crossing in such perfect weather swallowed us whole. Still, bolt though we did, we couldn’t really avoid glancing up at the deliciously blue sky now and then, and sighing forlornly. Hindsight is such a slippery bastard.

We covered the 144 kilometres to Waitomo in less than two hours, with the inland route offering the standard fare of tiny towns and lots of sheep. Bolstered by a scrumptious breakfast at a highway café, we tore into Waitomo, eager for the next adventure. Not entirely educated about what it had to offer besides the numerous limestone caves, we were only mildly surprised when we discovered that Waitomo was the veritable one-lane town, even more so than National Park village. Still, differences exist – while National Park has a more rugged, country-Western sort of feel to it, Waitomo is more… upmarket. Definitely more yuppie. National Park belongs to the grubby, down-n-dirty trampers, Waitomo is for the adventure-elite. It offers manicured “adventure activities”, complete with a “coffee-break and warm showers” at the end of the “adventure”.

I don’t do it justice, though. It really is a good place to head to for a day, for some truly wonderful spelunking and underground sights. Waitomo’s claim to fame is its Glowworm Cave, which, amazingly enough, is host to thousands of glow-worms, dogged long-term residents despite the innumerable unwelcome human guests they have to tolerate each year. The cave in itself is unremarkable (by cave standards, that is. Not that I’d know any better, but hey, I’ve seen pictures! Spectacular photographs of caves in… er… other places!), with the regular assortment of stalactites and stalagmites. The magic begins later, however, when you hop onto a boat and paddle along an underground river, face upturned. A few seconds for your eyes to adjust to the darkness is all it takes, and suddenly, a night-sky descends upon you, in all its fluorescent-green glory. You’d be forgiven for drawing fictional constellations of your own in your head – the resemblance to a star-studded sky is uncanny. There are other glow-worm caves elsewhere in New Zealand, but the one in Waitomo is the most densely populated.

Cave sights apart, there were other… eccentricities to contend with. Most significantly, there was definitely something oddly creepy about our tour guide, a Kiwi named ‘Savitri’. While her pronunciation of her own name was baffling, to say the least, there was also the disconcerting way in which she stared at each of us like we were alien marauders from a neighbouring galaxy. Most unsettling, however, was the tone she adopted with the kids doing the tour. Anyone knows I’m not a devoted fan of children, but I’m miles away from this woman’s mastery of the art of veiled loathing. While most of her conversations with the yell-ey mites on the tour were civilised and gentle, she’d slip in the odd evil-sounding reproach with expert guile. Something like, “Now kids, you really do need to behave, or you wouldn’t want to disappear somewhere within the black, underground river, would you? Hmmm?” Followed by a saccharine smile. I kid you not.