Haera mai!

So we need to fill you in on what’s been happening since our last blog which was in Russell.

Sunday 19th
We realised today that we have had the camper for a week now and we are still pretty high up the north island so best get cracking on the lower part if we are going to fit everything in. We both decided that although the Bay of Islands is lovely it was time to get going and start heading back towards Auckland in order to get to the lower half of the north island.
So let’s just say a reliable source (mum!) informed us of the Zion Wildlife Gardens in Whangarei which we happened to go through on our way south on Sunday. So after a quick tap on ‘Jane the GPS’ and we arrived at Zion which is in the middle of nowhere and not very well advertised or signposted so big thanks to mum for the ‘heads up’ on that one and ‘Jane’ for getting us there.

For those of you who may not have heard of Zion it is featured along with the owner Craig on the television show The Lionman, which sees Craig cuddling and playing with most of the cats in the park. Apparently the UK series is quite behind and although we are seeing some of the cats still as cubs on our show, they are in fact nearly 2 and a half years old now!

Admittedly I have only seen the show a few times and Mark even less but never the less when our guide asked us if we watched the show we both nodded and grinned enthusiastically!! This might explain his confused look when introducing the ‘stars’ of the show to us expecting the smiles of recognition but instead being met by our blank faces and nods!!

So after deliberating on which tour to go on (the park is set up so you take guided tours around which varied in content and price from a basic tour right up to a cat encounter tour where you can actually pat the cats!) and with the budget in mind we settled on the middle priced ‘The Works Tour’. This involved the full guided tour as well as seeing ‘Uncle Dalu’ (one of the experienced guides) hand feeding the Cheetahs and Royal White Bengal Tigers and then watching feeding time on the second part of the tour. An approximate duration of 2 hours all for £38.00 each which we thought was a bargain, especially as we ended up being the only ones on the tour!!

The tour was brilliant and we managed to get some good pictures which I’m sure you’ve all seen by now as for the first time since we left we have the pictures more up to date than the blog! The last lion we saw was Zion which was Craig’s first hand reared big cat and whom the park is named after. We found out that he was the lion used to model Aslan in the Narnia movies and he also did the ‘lion’ sounds in the film aswel so I was chuffed to see him! We also saw a black leopard (panther), a baboon(ess) named Foxy, a pair of Serval cats, some Barbary lions (which are thought to be extinct in the wild), some African Lions, Bengal Tigers, Royal White Bengal Tigers, White Lions and a pair of Cheetahs. The first animals acquired were from a Circus that was closing, hence the one baboon!
Obviously as we know from the show (!!) the last births at the park resulted in 7 cubs, 4 of which we’re from one lioness! They are still classing them as cubs until June of this year even though they are now 2 years old! The four white lion siblings are pictured together in our album. So all in all about 30 big cats and one baboon.

Interesting fact of the day: Cheetahs genetics are neither wholly cat or dog - they have physical characteristics of both species!

Needless to say we we’re pooped after we finished our tour which overran by 45 minutes so even more value for money!

We headed off south again and drove until Mark was tired and camped somewhere just north of Auckland.

Monday 20th
So after a quick stop in Auckland we carried on south to a place called Miranda which the welsh couple we met at the Rainbow Warrior memorial had recommended to us. The campsite was really nice and had its own outdoor thermal pool which was the main reason for the visit!

Nothing much to mention here. We had a nice soak in the pool that evening, making sure we didn’t venture there until the 8pm curfew when all the kids had to be out by!!

Tuesday 21st
Tuesday was even more boring than Monday! We checked out of the camp site and headed north again up the ‘finger’ of the north island to Hot Water Beach. The aptly named beach has two natural hot springs under the sands in one section of the beach. People rent a spade, dig their own little pool and warm their bums for 2 hours either side of low tide. Unfortunately we arrived the wrong side of the tide so as there is nothing else to do here other than that we headed for the campsite and checked in there making sure we knew the tide times for the next morning.

The rest of the day was spent reading and watching films on the archos! Not very exciting!

Wednesday 22nd
As check-out was meant to be at 10am, coinciding with the low tide at 9:45am, Mark went and sweet talked the woman in the office to letting us check-out at 11am instead so that we could come back and have a hot shower after the beach.

Waking up to ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’ theme song at 7am is not the idyllic way to wake up, needless to say Marks mobile nearly went out the window! After dragging ourselves out of bed and wearily putting our cosies on, I looked out the window to the grey and miserable morning we were spending at the beach. The joy! Did I mention we have been having horrible weather? Yea for the last few days it’s been raining pretty much all day…great weather for the beach aye! Never mind as we are up now we set off, coats and all, towards the beach wondering whether anyone else is crazy enough to be down there this early.

We hired our spade and set off along the beach in search of the hot springs. Realising only now that a) the sea is pretty rough today b) we are in fact the only people on the beach, and more importantly c) we have NO idea where the hot springs come up along the 2 mile long beach!! Hhhhmmmm….

So after walking for a few minutes and passing by a rocky area of the beach where we had to run around the rocks trying to avoid the sea, Mark decided to test the ground and see if the water underneath the sand was warm…..a few more test holes later and a Scandinavian chap going for a jog along the beach asked if we were looking for the hot springs. Judging from the look on my face that said ‘Why the hell else would we be down here digging holes along the beach?’ he quickly pointed us in the direction of the rocky area we had run past 20 minutes before hand and explained that the springs surface around there. Doh!!

When we got back to the rocks we then noticed the sand bubbling in a certain area and after digging our toes we realised that this was actually pretty hot so we started to dig and in no time had a little hole filling with hot thermal water. At least we did have a nice hole going until the wave came in and swallowed it up! This was going to be a tough job! Soon the place started filling up with people all digging in the same area or sticking their feet in our pool just to check the water was hot, obviously we looked like we enjoyed digging holes for the hell of it that day! Soon there were little holes and pools all over the place and ours had started to join with the persons next to us so we made a joint effort to make one big pool instead. Bad idea! This seems to give everyone the idea that it was a communal pool and before we knew it there was barely enough room to stick our big toes in! We English are way too polite! Mark muscled his way in and had a sit down just out of principal but I couldn’t be bothered to get wet for the sake of two minutes as we had run out of time before we had to go back and have a shower etc. then headed to Rotorua.