New Zealand Day 5: It's a long trip to Wellington

Alright, so it's been ridiculously hard to keep this writing thing up with my uni work and life and everything, plus the fact that our New Zealand trip happened so long ago now it's just been really hard to finish. You've probably all lost interest in this by now, buuut I figured that now I've got some time on my hands, might as well finish what I started.

April 15th

Turns out that the guy who worked at OGO was also staying at Crank, our hostel, so I had a nice chat with him over breakfast before we checked out and got on the road for the day.

The plan for the day was to leave Rotorua and head south through Taupo to Wellington, with various stops along the way.

Stop #1 was Huka Falls, between Rotorua and Taupo. There was a bridge to walk overtop of the falls which was pretty cool.

Our second stop was at DeBretts Hot Spring Thermal Spa in Taupo. On our way through the town we passed by a pavilion that held an outdoor ice skating rink. People had on helmets and were skating in tank tops and shorts, it was pretty cool. We were able to get a really good price for the DeBretts mineral pools so we decided to relax there for an hour or two before continuing on.

We grabbed a bite to eat at the scenic lookout on Taupo Lake while watching people paragliding then started back on the long trip south to Wellington.

We decided to take a secondary highway down to Wellington to avoid taking the same route back the net day and to maximize on the amount of the country we would get to see. BIG MISTAKE. The one piece of advice that I give to you while travelling New Zealand is to stick to the main highways! When you hear people complaining about the crazy roads down there, they are 100% telling the truth.

Winding road from the safety of a lookout

I started out driving up this winding road that kept going up and up. The two land road suddenly dropped down to the size of a one lane, but still carried two directions of traffic. I couldn't see around any turns because of either bushes and trees, or sheer rock cliff. Driving ridiculously slow for fear of colliding into another car coming round the bend, we made it to a lookout where Heather, the most experienced driver of us all, took over. It was still slow going, and about halfway through we noticed a car on our rear. We pulled over to let him pass. Turns out it was a BMW convertible. We figured that there was no way that a Beemer would be up there without knowing exactly what he was doing, plus if we could follow behind him, then his brake lights would let us know when there was a car coming round the bend. We decided to keep up with him, and man, he was crazy! He obviously took this road a lot since he was going 50 most of the way though this crazy windy road through the mountains. One lane wide, vertical cliff up n one side, vertical cliff down on another. The plan worked remarkably well.   Terrified, we passed by a couple cars with the help of our warning car up front. On one particularly steep cliff, another car came whizzing by us in the opposite direction. We swear there could only have been inches between us and the tire was just about to go over the edge. Ali was in the passenger seat and happened to look over the edge. She shut up, went pale white, and stared straight ahead for the next few meters. After the car had passed and we were on slightly safer ground, she turned to us and told us what she had seen. A car. A car, off the cliff, held in the midst of tree branches like those crashed planes in the movies. THEN the only radio station that would come in clearly started playing Eye of the Tiger. We took that as a sign that we were going to get through this, so we pressed on. Ali was literally praying for our survival the whole way. The BMW guy was our hero. Eventually he pulled too far away from us, so we let him go. But thanks to him, we got out of that terrible terrible road just as it was getting dark. Icing on the cake? Bottom of the mountain was a cemetary. Juuuust awesome.

BMW guy who was our hero

Ali's drawing of what she saw over the cliff
(those are the tops of palm trees waaaay in the distance)

We got to Wellington soon after and found Trek Worldwide Backpackers, our hostel for the night. We did a quick McD's run for dinner (Every country has a slightly different McDonald's menu. In New Zealand they had Super large, full meals that you could buy. Ex: The Chicken Chomp: $9.90 for a McChicken, 10 McNugget bites, a sundae, small fries and a small drink). We were too exhausted to do anything that night, even socializing with our roommates took much effort, so we decided to be lepers, checked our internets, and went to bed.