From The Shire to Cape Kidnappers.....Six months of freedom.....New Zealand, Part3

Hello fellow travellers,

This is part three of the blog-series covering my six months journey through the world. Still in New Zealand, we will travel from the lush green hills of Bilbo Baggins home, The Shire, to some fearsome Máori warriors and onwards to thousands of gannets living near Cape Kidnappers. If you are interested in the other blog posts, you can find them here:

Part 1:
https://steemit.com/travel/@icountedzero/six-months-of-freedom-new-zealand-part1

Part 2:
https://steemit.com/travel/@icountedzero/from-mordor-to-the-shire-six-months-of-freedom-new-zealand-part2

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After we escaped the tourist hordes at the glowworm caves, we made our way back to Rotorua, were they offer tours trough "Maori viallges". As history has shown sveral times, europeans from the other side of the world suddenly showing up in a big boat is never a good sign. This is what happend in New Zealand around the 18th century, and in my personal opinion, it did not go well for the native Máori people. All over the country new settlers bought/stole/traded their land for cheap and pushed them back to "Máori villages", very similar to the native indian "reservates" i have seen in the states. It's still very hard for natives to get a decent education or get a proper job. (The Máori are not off as bad as the Aboriginal in Australia, as we discovered later in our journey) As we wanted to get a glance of the living conditions inside such a village, we joined a tour through the village of "TeWhakarewarewatangaOTeOpeTauaAWahiao"

The local cemetary

As this is a so called "thermal village" and the ground below is boiling hot, it is not possible to dig graves for the dead, so the locals "bury" them in stone coffins above the ground.

Pohuto Geyser on the border of the village

The namegiving Geyser has been taken away ("traded") from the locals a long time ago and is now a tourist attraction earning big (30$ entrance fee). The villagers are restricted from entering the area, and the path to the geysir is locked by a huge fence.

A free steamer powered by the surrounding geothermal activity

Around the village we saw a lot of these "steaming boxes" where the locals utilize the hot steam streaming out of the ground to cook food.( The sulfur in the steam adds a very distinct taste to the meals)

A pig head beeing prepared inside a natural steamer

Although "cultural dances" shown exclusively for tourists are not on our bucket list, we were persuaded to watch the daily performance. (it was included in the ticket anyway) In the end we were glad we had a chance to see it, as the locals performing did an incredible job, displaying various different dances, including the famous "HAKA war dance/shout" the New Zealandian rugby team is performing before every match. (Rugby is HUGE in NZ)

The brightly colored sticks are juggled between the performers while singing and dancing. It supposedly brings very bad luck if one of the sticks falls on the ground

A local performing the haka war dance

*The NZ rugby team, called "All Blacks" performing a "HAKA"

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Back in our mobile home, our trusty camper Eduard, we made our way to the Waikite valley, another region on NZs northern island with high gethermal activity. The camping place there offers a free ticket to the local hot baths, so we took the chance and jumped in.

Soaking in the hot tubs around Waikite valley

The actual offspring is several hundred meters away from the pools. Hiking there through the hot and humid forest is a really special experience, as despite all the hot steam, you can see the water bubbling up from the ground with around 98°C. Afterwards the water is cooled through several cascading stages, before it is split into different sized/tempered pools.

The whole forest is steaming around Waikite valley

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Dispite having seen a lot of geothermal wonders the last few days, we decided to visit the "Wai-O-Tapu" geothermal park before moving on, and we did not regret it. The park is full of bubbling "champagne" pools, boiling green lakes and around every corner there is a "Devils THIS" and followed by a "Devils THAT". (Devils pool/cliff/lake/bath/home/pond.... you name it :) )

The colorful and bubbling "Champagne Pool" at Wai-O-Tapu

The diabolic "Devils bath"

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Our next stop was at lake Taupo, famous for Sky Diving, Rope Swinging and other extreme sports our budget could not afford. The only thing we our purse actually could buy, was a tour at the local highwire course. (23 NZ$ pP) Still we had a great time.

Magdalena going for the trapeze

Me at the big swing. Gravity is heartless bitch

Very close to the park we stumbled across another attraction, the so called "HUKA" falls. These waterfalls dig their way through stone with an astounding 140000 liters of, crystal clear, water per second. Wealthier tourists hire a boat to ride close to edge, but, you are guessing right, we did not.

The thundering, colorful Huka falls

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Leavung lake Taupo, we travelled on to the mediterranean east of the nothern Island and made a stop at Napier. It was at Cape Kidnappers, close to Napier, when Captain Cook first set foot to New Zealand in 1769. The first trade with the locals went horribly wrong when the Máori tried to kidnap a sailor and got shot by the rest of the crew.
These days the Cape is famous for the worlds largest colony of Australian Gannets/Boobies (whoever named them boobies deserves a medal :) ) ashore. At low tide one can hike the 12 km (one way!) following, to the colony. It way more of an adventure than we thought.

We started our hike after several hours of waiting for low tide

The lady at the Napier department of conservation gave us some directions and told us to stay away from the cliffs, because sometimes parts of them break down, before we headed off. This good advice proofed to be quite difficult when following a three meter broad beach just below the cliffs. BOOM it went just a few meters ahead of us.

Staying "away from the cliffs" is important, but quite difficult

After lonley hike acommpanied only by some seagulls and boobies :) we came across a rather unusual (for us) animal blocking the way. As austrians we are very used to cows, sheeps and goats but we really had no idea how to approach this fella chilling on a rock we had to climb/pass to move on.

Just chillin'

A natural road block with a pretty relaxed guardian

After i climbed my way up the rock i tried to tresspass the seals territory, which was hardly noticing me and rather anjoyed the sun. It took me another 15min to convince my girlfriend to follow me, as she was very skeptical of our new "friend".

Finally we made to the colony

At the colony we felt like being part of a BBC documentary. 6500 nesting pairs were brooding their eggs at the moment and there was a constant cackling, landing and taking off. We took some time to soak in the amazing experience, before we left the boobies :) to themselfes and headed off for our long way back......

A LOT of Australian gannets

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In the upcoming posts we will sail across the "Cook Straight" to discover the wonders of the southern islands and find out that it gets cold again, if one is heading south for long enough. Follow us downhill-biking Queenstown, visiting the worlds biggest (and probably only) steampunk museum before meeting the worlds smallest penguin on the street in the middle of a town. If you enjoyed this post and want to support me and my work, feel free to Upvote/Resteem/Follow.
Thank you for reading.

Florian