After three successive poor flights (bumpy landings and plenty of turbulence) my flight from Hong Kong touched down in Auckland on the 16th January for what is for now the last leg of this trip. From the air the North Island looked great, green rolling hills, forests and beach after beach. You hear all sorts of stories about NZ customs turning people away for seemingly trivial reasons and a total restriction on any items entering the country that are muddy or look to be carrying contagions from abroad.
Going through passport control, a young clerk looked at my landing card and queried the amount of time here, explaining about the trip he held an uncomfortable silence for a few moments before simply saying “Awesome! Enjoy New Zealand”, a good start and it’s just gotten better from there.
Being driven from the airport to a Couch Surfer’s place on the coast, the first thing you notice is how crisp and colourful everything looks. It’s the flip side of such strong UV light, you burn in 10 minutes when the sun’s shining but the natural greens and blues take some getting used to. Having spent almost two full days flying and waiting in airports with very little sleep, it was a good job my bike wasn’t due to arrive until the 18th giving me time to get caught up, some insurance/breakdown cover sorted and a new mobile sim card to keep the cost of calls down.
The 18th rolled round in no time and the day I was worrying about had started. I’d seen online and having spoken to a Kiwi in Nepal, had it confirmed, that cargo inspections by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) could be a painful process. They inspect each consignment for dirt and will quarantine or return any shipments that look to contain something harmful to the local flora and fauna.
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| Menzies Cargo, where my bike was delivered off the plane |
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| Taking the crate apart, all present and as should be! |
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| Getting to work re-assembling it |
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| Readt to roll! |
After hassling the cargo company for details of where to go to get my bike released (most people use an import agent, but it’s not necessary), customs stamped my Carnet into New Zealand in under an hour and a MAF inspection was set up for the next morning . My worries were firstly the crate was untreated wood, something you’re not supposed to bring in according to a complicated website, and also that my bike would somehow have a clump of mud stuck somewhere despite hours of cleaning before crating it up.
Luckily my MAF officer David was satisfied with the briefest look into the top of the crate to confirm all was OK. Maybe I just caught them on a good day because that’s far from most people’s experience. After that, I had some space outside a Government run holding warehouse to build the bike up and was free to ride out. A warehouseman called Colin came past and offered some invaluable help with a couple of other workers to hoist my bike up by hand so I could get the front wheel back in which is always a pain. Not only that, but Colin got me a coffee and left me some details of his family home where I could call in on my way south. After really just a couple of days New Zealand was looking a bit special.
Visiting central Auckland while my bike was in with Experience Motorcycles for a major overdue service meant I could get in a visit to the Sky Tower and downtown. Sky Tower is one of a group of towers across the world that you can go up for views and a high level cafe. Being New Zealand, you can also abseil down off the top to the ground (you buy a ‘quickest way down’ ticket. If you’re completely crazy). I love Auckland, not many New Zealanders do, but they have a fairly skewed impression of what ‘congested’ really means. It’s incredibly relaxed, rush hour traffic builds up but keeps moving, the streets are wide and pedestrian friendly. The city centre has a clean and fresh looks that suggests it was all built in the last 10 years.
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| Auckland Sky Tower from below |
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| At the top on glass floor panels! |
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| Auckland from above |
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| From ground level |
Meanwhile... my bike had been getting a thorough going over and now had a new seal to stop the persistent oil leak, an oil change, new brake pads, two bolts that hold the sub-frame in place removed (they had sheared off on Indian pot-holes) the holes re-drilled and new ones put in place and a host of other bits and pieces. All in all, baring a front tyre that needed replacing, it has never ridden better.
The next two days were spent staying with my parent’s neighbours in their son & wife’s beautiful house in West Auckland where we all took in a classic and hot rod car show one day and a trip to Kelly Tarlton’s aquarium the next. Amongst driving around mountains, meals out, BBQ’s and many glasses of wine from the village winery, the days flew bye all too soon.
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| Kumeu car show - a plane trike! |
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| Kumeu car show |
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| A Dodge Challenger |
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| A big R1200gs with sidecar |
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| A poor condition Triumph amongst the show-Harleys |
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On the walk home - a 'homes for sale yard'. Buy one and they
transport it to your site and plug it in, ready to move in! |
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| Penguins at Kelly Tarltons |
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| Penguins at Kelly Tarltons |
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| Sea Horses |
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| The Lusseys family |
Having arranged a new front tyre which completes my bike’s refresh, it’s time to get out and see some of New Zealand!
Taking the road south from Auckland to get to the South Island while the weather is good is fraught with difficulties. The problem is, people are just too damn friendly and won’t let you get anywhere! I stopped at Pukeno for an ice cream with Colin from the airport after which an elderly couple spotted my Yorkshire stickers on the bike and re-told their family history of coming from Thirsk, for at least an hour.
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| Riding gravel roads |
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| Riding gravel roads through the countryside |
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| We took an ice-cream, but not this one |
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| Colin from the airport |
My plan was to head down the west coast and call in at New Plymouth for a nights CouchSurfing (hotels are incredibly expensive so this is a life-saver!) which turned into two because there’s a lot to see and the family I was with had five really friendly and bright kids who loved the opportunity to get out around town to their favourite places with a stranger. The town’s park had a festival of light on which was an incredible effort involving music, hanging lights and creativity that created a beautiful place which half the town had turned up to enjoy.
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| Camping by the coast on the way to New Plymouth |
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| Sand near Port Waikato |
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| The coast at Port Waikato |
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| Typical roadside post boxes |
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| Lights up in New Plymouth park |
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| More lights |
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| Playing light through a fountain |
I could go on about every small detail about why New Zealand is so excellent, but really I need to get onto do the next post about the Tongariro Crossing walk which is just awesome. That’s the problem with New Zealand, you do something which is awesome and plan to write and write about it, then the next day something more awesome happens, and the day after and the day after... then you go walk the Tongariro, known as one of the world’s greatest one day hikes. People say the North Island isn’t really what New Zealand is about, if that’s so, I just can’t imagine what the south is like!
