Destination #5: New Zealand
It’s been a month since we left Atlanta. Adeline feels a little home sick. Flying every week is not an easy task. After a while, hotels, restaurants, and public transportation gets mundane. We don’t necessarily miss Atlanta but more of the comfortable and homey feeling we get when we’re home. Luckily, I have an uncle that lives in Auckland. His name is Peter. It was good to see a familiar face when we landed. We picked up our rental car and headed home. Uncle Peter was worried that I wasn’t used to driving on the opposite side of the road. Apparently, it’s not only America where Asians have a bad reputation for driving. No worries, I proved them wrong. We had home cooked meal that night with my aunt Cheng, cousin Janice, her husband Jason and their two beautiful daughters Caitlin and Ashley. We chatted the night away. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Uncle Peter’s family. The weather (it’s winter in NZ), family, and amount of food on the table made it feel like thanksgiving. We instantly felt better. It was a break away from the break.
Ps: The pictures below are from Mount Wellington which is right in Uncle Peter’s backyard. Pretty freaking cool!
The next day we took a road trip to the Wild Wild West.. I think it’s a made up name but it insinuated the rural north west side of NZ. We grabbed breakfast real quick at a local beach 5 minutes away from Uncle Peter’s beach house and headed off for our trip. Our first pitstop was the visitors center about an hour away from Auckland. Once we got out of the car, Uncle Peter shared a Mauri custom where he told us to hold the nutsack of the demigod to ensure continued fertility. He took a picture for us and started cracking up. I think we just got trolled. We headed off to our first trail called Mercer Bay Loop. It was a quick walk before we got to the coast and I must say the view was impressive! The only other place we could think of that have high cliffs off the water was Hawaii and it was not as epic as this. These pictures just won’t do it justice. The second spot we stopped by was Muriwai Gannet trail about 20 minutes away. It was another quick hike for some more awesome views. We wrapped up an adventurous day with a dip at the natural hot springs pool called Parakai Springs. After we were done sweating in 40F weather (yes, it was cold outside), we drove back to Auckland to meet up with Aunty Cheng for dinner. We took the chance to tour the city. I’d say that downtown Auckland is about the size of Uptown Charlotte. People here are as nice as folks back in Charlotte which reminded me that southern hospitality might not be a thing. It’s just that people from the north east America are just ruder than anyone else in the world so they made up this thing. After dinner, we picked up my cousin Justin who flew in from Wellington to join us for a road trip to Tongariro National Park.
We woke up at 7am and started our 6-hour journey down to Tongariro. Uncle Peter didn’t join us this time around. It was Justin, Adeline and myself. Our first stop was Rotorua for some breakfast and luge. Unless you’re a kiwi, I don’t think you’d know what a luge is. We had no clue it was so much fun. It’s essentially downhill racing on this little cart called a luge. I consider it as an environmental friendly go cart that can go as fast as 30mph downhill. Each downhill track takes about 5 minutes to the finish line and you’d need to take a cable car back up the hill. We brought 7 rounds. Adeline was pretty nervous at first but by the 5th round, we conquered the advanced track with flying colors. I’d say by then there wasn’t anything that she couldn’t do. She was drifting corners at 20 miles an hour. On the last round, Adeline and I took the scenic track to soak it all in. Up to this point, she hasn’t beaten me in a race so she was eager to do so. She started off strong and I was at least 5 seconds behind her. Through a couple of corners I still couldn’t catch up and I’d say that I was pretty impressed. There was a blind corner coming up and I was going as fast as I can to catch up. I drifted the corner and the next thing I saw was Adeline and her luge under a tree off the track. I don’t think I ever laughed so hard in my life. Instantly, I took out my camera to take pictures. It was hilarious! On the way to Tongariro, we saw so many moo moos. It was exciting at first but we became jaded a couple of hours later. The population of cows exceeds human in NZ. Pretty crazy. We stopped by Taupo to check out the fresh water lake as big as the island of Singapore to take a couple of pictures to finally get to Chateau Tongariro by nightfall. Justin told us that the chateau used to be a mental hospital which freaked Adeline out. In my opinion, it looks and feels more like the Grand Budapest hotel. I think Adeline set a personal record for the longest hug. She wouldn’t let me go all night. We both didn’t sleep well that night.
We were supposed to hike Mount Tongariro the next morning but we were convinced to do it the next day because of the bad weather. It was definitely an easy decision. I wouldn’t want to risk hiking up a 6000 ft mountain during a storm. Instead we went back to Taupo to check out geysers and volcanic activities. We grabbed a quick lunch and headed over to a park called Wai-O-Tapu. It was worth every penny of the $30 entry fees! The terrain, geysers, neon green pools were just out of this world. We’ve never seen anything like this. This prompted us to plan for a trip to Yellowstone next year! After Wai-O-Tapu, we went to a hot spring waterfall in Spa Park Taupo. It’s a pretty cool spot to take a dip. The waterfall was the only thing that’s hot. Once it hits the river, it gets cold really fast. It is winter in NZ after all. We changed into our beach shorts and bikini in 50F and jump straight into the pool beneath the waterfall. The water was pretty hot but to cool down all you have to do is stand up and the winter breeze will chill you down.
The forecast for the next day was clear skies and low wind. Finally we get to hike Mount Tongariro. We started the day early at 530am. Adeline and I didn’t get much sleep again because she seemed to think that we were in Shutter Island. We drove to the finish line and took a bus to the trailhead on the other side of the mountain. By the time we started it was 730am. It was a 19.4km trail (about 12 miles) and we took 7 hours to complete it. This was probably the best hike we’ve done ever. It’s just so rewarding because every hour we hiked, we saw something cool. The terrains were just so different that it did not feel like earth. It reminded me of The Martian (<3 Matt Damon). We saw more neon green pools, icy red mountains, thermal pools, and an active volcano. In fact, last week Justin told us a warning was issued because of the volcano's elevated temperature. I’m glad we did it and we managed to came home safely! This was definitely one of highlights of our honeymoon!
NZ was awesome. Can’t wait to come back for the south island!
