The first gold was found in 1862, in a few weeks (!) population risen up to 1500 people. There was a big chinese community coming from Canton area in China to find their luck. By that time, the average income of golddiggers was 7 times the one from a farmer in Canton china.
They had to live in a separate part of the city in extreme poverty.
The Car we got needed to be changed. After 250 km going to Glenorchy and then up the mountain Road to Cordrora the Tiida raised Alarm : engine overheated.
I checked and there wasn’t any cooling water left. Must be some leakage in the cooling circuit. Well, that’s coming with the age, also old men lose a drop sometime…
We got now a Hyundai i30, 180000km on the odometer, younger but less cubic capacity.
Jucy car-rental was extremely helpful and friendly while exchanging Cars, thumbs up !
we’ve left the chinese familiy and their chickens and hopped aboard of Flight JQ293 to Queenstown. As it was standby-ticket again we didn’t prebook hotel and car in advance, we did this just at the airport waiting for our flight. The girls at the check-in at Jetstar were superfriendly, and said “don’t worry about the overweight” – everything easy-going and laidback in here.
Unfortunately i did not get confirmation from billiger-mietwagen.de for the prebooked car one hour before takeoff, so i had to chat with the local rental company here in New Zealand about the status of my booking. As it was live-chat they wanted to get rid of me soon, but i was sticky enough to make them check in their reservation system.
“Computer says “No”” was the answer by them. They declined my reservation, did not have enough cars or somewhat.
Ok, then PLAN B – rent a car via Jucy directly. The booking was approved in about 20 minutes and they sent me a voucher for it. They rock!
I chose the “El Cheapo” car -class (granddaddies of hired cares with high mileage) with “Risktaker option” (basically no insurance) – you know, we’re going budget.
This is what i got:
a “pearl white” Nissan Tiida with fake rootwood and interior from the early 90ties, 280000 kilometers and 3 cupholders. A classic car for the elderly folks – i guess i buy myself a hat tomorrow to get an even more “authentic” feeling.
we’ve arrived at about 4pm at our hotel, so there was time to get around. We went to a little village called Arrowtown, had some nice steaks and beer there and did some walking. Arrowtown had its height at the time of Goldrush at the end of 19th century. There was a big chinese community there which tried to find gold in the nearby creeks. There is still an old “Chinatown” there where the settlers lived.
Oh yeah, i forgot our Hotel – its called “Swiss-Belresort Coronet Peak” – it’s a mashup of a 80’s swiss chalet and the hotel from the movie “Shining”. And it has a Bowling hall and Sauna/Spa.
Todays Monday, school for kiwi’s kids started again. They had 2 weeks of vacation. Must have been wonderful to drive only 30 minutes outwards from the city and to arrive at such beautiful nature to spend your holidays there.
This night it was heavily raining and the noise woke us up quite often. So we wanted to have a relaxing day on the couch as the morning was still rainy. In the end we managed to get up and wanted to drive to the most northern point of New Zealand (Cape Reinga). But that would have been ~350 km one way , forget it. We already have ~2300 km on our Mazda’s odometer. And driving here is different than in Austria, quite curvy and a lot of ups and downs.
So we decided to go to the Bay of islands, on the pacific side of the Northlands. Weather got better during daytime, so we’re lucky again.
Driving to Auckland we passed Hamilton.
Quiet city as most of the cities are quiet in here. Main Attraction is a botanical Garden site.
There’s a renaissance garden, an tudor garden, an exotic garden, an victorian garden, maori garden, chinese garden, herbal garden, kitchen garden and so on.
After driving from Turangi and a sleepover stay for one night in Auckland we arrived now in Whangarei. We’re staying at some Kind of Farm in the middle of nowhere. Our tiny private house is built on stilts and has a washing machine. We’re actually doing our laundry after more than 1 week of being abroad.
When the machine’s tumbling, the whole Appartment is shaking too because of the stilts.
Earthquake Safe housing in here.
beginner’s trails at Tangariro Nationalpark
After staying with Eilean for four nights, we had to leave just to see other places of New Zealand too.
So we went southwards ( ~200 km) to a small Town called Turangi, situated in between of Lake Taupo and a National Park called Tongariro, which main attraction is a volcano and a ski Resort.
Turangi names itself “The trout fishing capital of the world” – fly-fishing seems to be the main attraction for the locals there, beside cutting trees and breeding cows. We stayed there for 2 nights and did some hiking. Pictures will follow shortly, now it is just time for a cold kiwi Beer and to get some sleep as we are moving on tomorrow.
