New Zealand by www.born2travel.it

if you want to know more or see all the photos visit:

05.03.09 Auckland (NEW ZEALAND)

We set foot in Oceania! The continent where I had never been!

We hire a car and a van and, with automatic transmission and left-hand driving, I throw myself into the Kiwi roads! Following the city map we get lost several times and with left-hand driving it often became an undertaking to follow the signs… We stay at the Auckland Lodge, a wooden building with a British/colonial look. There are backpackers from all over the world; I even meet a girl from Tahiti, French Polynesia, and, admiring her, I ask: “What does it feel like to live in paradise?”

We leave our backpacks and run to the Auckland museum. The part dedicated to the Maori, the indigenous people, is interesting. Their history, their art, their tools… I was struck by the collection of bags woven with hemp threads from all the islands of Oceania: Marquesas, Solomon, Vanuatu, Kiribati, Fiji etc. As always happens to me, while I admired them I imagined scrawny but strong men with long beards and their private parts covered only by a cloth, or enormous women with necks adorned with flower garlands placidly working these bags…

Wandering around the city we notice that many walk or jog barefoot and when later, curiously, I talk about it with the baker, he replies candidly: “We like to feel completely free!”.

06.03.09 Taipa (NEW ZEALAND)

Having left Auckland we head north… Many bends take us to the Waipoua Forest, famous for the “Kauri”, a species of sequoia. A half-hour trek to the very ancient tree whose trunk has a diameter of 14 metres, said to be 2000 years old. Two thousand years ago, when Jesus was born in Israel, in this corner of the world a little plant was sprouting…

After so much wandering we finally reach our destination: Kaitaia. The hostel is nice, surrounded by greenery with a very large, well-stocked kitchen, but we decide to eat out, at the “Sea Dragon”! Fish and chips for me!

In the evening I drag the group to an amusement park; I expected one of the classic American ones with hot dog or candy floss stalls, instead it was very bare; then again, what could I expect from a little town forgotten even by the maps?

07.03.09 Kerikeri (NEW ZEALAND)

The Cape Reinga lighthouse is very evocative; besides marking the northern end of New Zealand, it's thrilling because it's the meeting point of the Tasman Sea with the Pacific Ocean. I was struck to see those waves crashing against others coming from the opposite side. What a marvel nature is!

At the sand dunes of “Te Paki” we meet a group of London boys and girls throwing themselves from the top on little surfboards and speeding down these sandy mountains… It was fun to climb them and then ford the little stream barefoot to return to our cars. The rest of the day passed grinding out kilometres and kilometres in this immense green patch; at the end of the day the odometer will tell me that I drove for 350 km!

The girls cook, preparing the big dinner; Paolino takes a shower; Mimmo checks his email; Bruno leafs through “Classic Kiwiana” found in the hostel and I relax and enjoy these unforgettable moments!

The hostel hosting us for this night: “Farm Hotel” is very unusual, all in parquet, a real house, kitchen, little sitting room and a few rooms for visitors. Run by a young German couple who “landed” here about a year ago while travelling, they must be our age, and since then they've been running it on behalf of the owner..

08.03.09 Whitianga (NEW ZEALAND)

This morning from Paihia we boarded a boat for a little island with an impossible name: “Urupukapuka”. Walking on those grassy meadows with the sheep pastures as a frame and the picturesque Bay of Islands in the background, the bay of the hundred islands at the far north of the country, where in the 14th century the first Maori landed. They arrived from Polynesia, on thin outrigger canoes, guided by the navigator Kupe, who christened New Zealand “Aoteratoa”, the island of the long white cloud.

The school trees that never let themselves be hugged but that offer you shelter both from the sun and the rain as well as rest after climbing the hill…

Whitianga is truly deserted…. Even finding a little place for our dinner was hard work and in the end we stop at a little Thai restaurant.

Yet another hostel! They always amaze me… So far we've slept every night in a different town and this thing suits a gypsy like me…

[ continues on: ]