Where am I?

The rain doesn't stop through Cambridge, nor in Oxford. Yes, I'm still in New Zealand.

I reach Taupo around lunch time, but the rain is still bucketing down. The storm drains remind me of Foster City, but these are more stylish.

Taupo sounds like Tahoe, and that's no accident. They're both mountain lakes, but Taupo is the result of a gargantuan volcanic explosion, not so terribly long ago. So it's like Crater Lake in Oregon, only much bigger. From the air, it looks like africa.

After a tolerable pinot noir and a bite of fresh fish, I decide that the weather might be better in Napier. So I continue on the highway, south-east. There are some semis sharing the road, so I pull off frequently to take pictures. There's a pretty little waterfall coming down from the lake. You don't think it's so little? Visit Iguazu.



Driving on, the sun comes out. I stop to take pictures of sheep, grapes, and bait. Look, I've never seen a BP station selling bait before. The girl behind the counter seems pretty insecure about: I half-expect her to try to confiscate the camera.

I arrive in Napier as the sun sets.



Have I mentioned why I'm in Napier? Besides the restraining order, barring me from Wellington? No? I guess you'll have to wait until tomorrow. It's on Hawke's Bay, which looks quite a bit like Monterey to me, but that isn't the reason. I check into the Bella Vista motel: it's a local chain. The price is a new high at NZ$110, but that's still cheap for the US, and it comes with internet access. Ah, this is why I brought the Airport Express: there's nothing like wifi in a tiny motel room. So I check email and post, before going out for a beer. Napier seems to be deserted tonight, but there are rednecks - excuse me - fishermen at the Thirsty Dog (no pictures). On the way there, a love-lorn local accosts me to ask "why do they do it?". This is deep philosophy: there are, perhaps, as many answers as there are people. I tell him that, and advise another beer.

I get a pizza from a local chain called Hell, and an illegal bottle of Argentinian Malbec. This is possibly the worst meal I've had in New Zealand, but it's still pretty good. And if I'm bored, there's always tango. No, really.

Why am I in Otorohanga? Aside from its proximity to the Waitomo caves, it's more or less nowhere. Except... it's the site of the Otorohanga Kiwi House (and native bird park). These friendly folks maintain kiwis in an indoor environment, which swaps day for night so that the (nocturnal) kiwis are awake at the same time we are.

I'd like to see a kiwi, but staying up late for a nature walk sounds like a lot of work, and there's no guarantee that you'll actually see any kiwis. Given my track record of seeing bears in Yosemite, the Kiwi House sounded like my best shot.

I'm doing my best to hang onto my jet lag, but it's slowly slipping away. By now, getting up at 06:30 is a little harder, but still feels like getting up around 10:00. This gives me plenty of time to pack up and get out of the motel by 09:00, when the kiwi house opens.

In fact, I get there at 08:30. The rain is pouring down, so I read the Lonely Planet guide in the car, trying to decide if I want to spend tonight in Taupo, or push on to Napier (the Art Deco City). I have to pass through Taupo either way, so I decide to stop there for lunch, and decide then.

The rain doesn't stop, but the kiwi house opens on time, and I wander in. The first room is the kiwi room: it's dark, but after a while my eyes adjust and it looks more like a moonlit night. There's a large glassed-off enclosure for the kiwis, and an L-shaped corridor around it. The kiwi area is separated in half by a fence with netting, and I start to see kiwis.

There are two in the room: Atu, a great spotted kiwi, and Rod Stewart, a northern brown kiwi.



Kiwis are pretty big - about the size and weight of a small house-cat. So you'd think they'd be easy enough to photograph. I knew the darkness would be a problem, and naturally the Kiwi House doesn't allow flash photography. But they are fast - on foot or standing still. In the second picture below, you can see Atu's beak in three different places at once. The camera's EXIF data shows that happening within a 0.320-second exposure, if I'm reading it correctly.

I quickly find out why the netting is in place: it seems kiwis are territorial, and when Atu and Rod get close to the fence at the same time, Atu attacks. Kiwi fight!

Rod is supposed to be blind, and didn't seem to know that Atu was there, or what was happening to him. But he didn't really stay away from the fence, either. There's no real blood: Atu just pokes Rod with her beak, whenever he's in range.

The kiwi fight is fun, but after a while I move on to look at the geckos. These are also nocturnal. Here's a leopard gecko, and another gecko whose name I didn't catch.



The Kiwi House also takes in injured birds, and keeps them or returns them to the wild, if possible. The rain was still coming down, so most of the birds had enough sense to stay dry. I saw some falcons, and a harrier, but they wouldn't come out for pictures. Here's an owl with OCD, though.

They also labelled all the native plants in the preserve. Here's how big a kauri tree gets in about 34 years.



The only animals you can really rely on, in the rain, are the ducks.



There are some oystercatchers, a spur-winged plover, and lots of birds that I don't see the names of. Sorry.

In the walk-in aviary, I hear some tuis or bellbirds, but all I see are some red-crowned parakeets. Maybe the green one is the female?

The rain is still coming down as I finish with the Kiwi House. As I start the drive north-west, I follow a sign pointing to Cambridge, which allows me to avoid Hamilton. From Cambridge I drive south-east again, and start to see more signs of autumn.

Next on the Kauri Coast highway is Tane Mahuta. This is the big one.



But what would a walk among the kauri be, without a wooden footbridge? Oh wait, there's something blocking the path. I hesitate to say anything bad about the NZ-DOC, so I'll assume that this is perfectly safe. Coming around the corner, I see Tane Mahuta. He's big. He's old. He's suffered some damage through the years.

After paying my respects, I climb into the Rattletrap and head north again. It's been a long day, and I have at least another hour of driving before I reach Opononi, where I'm spending the night.

Opononi and Omapere are two beach towns on the Hokianga harbor. They run together, more or less, and the Lonely Planet lists both together with the subheading "population 630". I believe that could be stretching the truth a bit: I never saw more than 63 locals. However, they're lucky folks: it's a beautiful spot on the map.



I stopped at the Opononi Lighthouse Motel (NZ$90). The charming ladies who run the place had refurbished it to modern standards, but kept the 1950s kitsch.

The view from the back was also pleasant, and the tea was Dilmah, of course. I'm beginning to suspect a trend: is this really New Zealand, or have I wandered off to Sri Lanka?



The day ended with a beautiful sunset, and I walked up the road to dine at a nearby hotel (seafood and coconut-milk curry, with a nice gewurztraminer). There wasn't much nightlife, so I woke early the next morning and found that the harbor was even prettier than yesterday.





So what's next? I haven't made any plans yet, but there's nothing else north of Auckland that really interests me. So I start driving south again, taking a few pictures along the way. At one point I stop to stretch my legs, and discover that the goat's got loose again.

As I wave goodbye to the last roadside kauri tree, I stop for gas and casually dump about a liter on my fleece jacket. The NZ petrol stations don't use vapor recovery nozzles, so it's easy to start the pump without getting the nozzle firmly into the tank. And for the rest of the trip, my jacket will smell like 91 octane unleaded.

After that, I enter Auckland traffic and get stuck for about an hour, working my way south toward Hamilton, where I stop for a late lunch. I decide that I can reach Otorohanga tonight, see the kiwi house in the morning, and then go on to Waitomo, Taupo, or Napier as the mood takes me.

I reach Otorohanga around 16:30, and check into the Palm Court Motel (NZ$85). It isn't as nice as the Lighthouse was, but it'll do. The sink is large, so I soak and rinse and soak and rinse my stinky fleece jacket. It doesn't help.

So I leave everything to dry, and go to the Thirsty Weta for a great peppercorn steak. I also pick up some yoghurt at the woolworth's, for breakfast: there's dilmah (again!) at the Palm Court, and the local yoghurt is mouth-puckeringly tasty.

Bursting with seafood chowder, I take my leave of the funky fish, table, and kitten to journey into darkest Waipoua. Around me I hear native drums.

Oh wait - that's just a Cal Tjader recording called "Soul Sauce". I have four or five CDs with me, as part of my regular travel kit, and my trusty Nissan Rattletrap has a CD player. I believe that this model is sold as the "Hamsterwheel" in the USA.



Yep... traveling as much as I do is worth it for the perks. Why, when I told the Hertz agent in Auckland that I was a "Gold" member with "#1 Club" status, he replied "Do what?".

The Rattletrap is an automatic, with a lusty 1.8L engine. Apparently they rent stick-shifts here, but I thought it would be wise to spare the much-troubled inhabitants of New Zealand the double scourge of having me on the proper side of their roads (mostly) while also trying to shift with my left hand. We'll save that for the next trip.

Anyhow, my Rattletrap and I are at the scenic vista above the Waipoua kauri forest. This area has been a forest sanctuary since 1952, when the NZ logging industry ran out of easily-felled kauri and into the brick wall of public opinion. That's a good thing: the logging industry in the US can barely manage to sustain weeds like cottonwood, plus various pines and firs, much less slow-growing ancients like redwoods or kauri.

Speaking of kauri, have we seen any yet? I have a vague idea of what the wood looks like, but are they those piney looking things over there? Or what?

Luckily, someone's planted a memorial tree at the scenic vista, and the plaque says it's a kauri. That's good enough for me.



Does that help? I climb up into the lookout tower to try and spot more kauri. Didn't Shannon used to live in one of these towers?

We're very close to the west coast of the North Island, so we can see the ocean from here. I know we're looking west, because the sign says so. Or maybe it's just graffiti?

Back on the road, I realize that there's been a mistake. I'm actually in the California gold country, just outside Murphys. Ignore that fern growing in the red dirt.



Next stop is the Waipoua visitor center. They're fresh out of brochures, but they're willing to lend me a chainsaw. There's one under the counter in the kauri exhibit, just in case a tourist wants to try his hand at some amateur logging.



I demur, and drive onward. A few km to the north is a sign for "KAURI WALKS", so I turn left onto a gravel road, and park. There's a sign. It's gist is "That's a nice looking car you have there: it'd be a shame if something were to happen to it." I pay NZ$2 for that protection, and pull on my hiking boots, The trail map says that it's about 15 minutes to the Four Sisters, and another 15 minutes to Te Matua Ngahrer (gesundheit!). I later find out that they've timed this journey using a one-legged stoat.

After a few minutes walk through scrub brush, the forest begins. It might be a mistake to call it a kauri forest... the predominant flora seems to be the ubiquitous silver fern. But there are kauri trees, too. In fact, there are many more kauri in this forest than there are giant sequoias in our California groves. Soon, I'm seeing kauri everywhere. Here are the Four Sisters: since kauri reproduce by dropping fertilized cones, this is bound to be a common phenomenon. The amazing thing is that these four siblings have lived so long without choking one another to death. Humans manage this by living apart.



Kauri foliage is fairly distinctive: it looks more like eucalyptus that pine, and it's the most effective way to spot kauri from a distance.



There's plenty of junk growing on a living kauri, but look at what happens once it dies! It's easy to see how swamp kauri happens.

Walking on, we glimpse Te Matua Ngahrer for the first time. It's big. It's really big. Who wants to check the vital statistics against our specimens of sequoia giganticus? Walking back to the car, I realize that there are kauri all around me. I can now recognize them close up, from the bark, and quite a long way away, from the foliage. They are immensely tall and have very straight trunks: I suppose a tall tree must start out very straight, or else it'll topple over when still very young. Back in the parking lot, I notice two things. First, the man who blackmailed me into paying him to watch my car is gone. And there are much stranger folk in the forest than I. Normally I don't make fun of other people's failings, but - oh, who am I kidding?

Auckland is foggy this morning.



By 09:00 I had checked out of the Spencer and was zooming northward on highway 1. It leaves Auckland as a motorway, or freeway, but quickly changes into a one-lane, barrier-less, barely-paved country road. It's a little worse than highway 4 through Bear Valley, CA. On the plus side, it's sunny now.



Shortly I turn off 1 and onto 12, bound for Dargaville and the east coast. I stop at the Kauri Museum in Matakohe. It's devoted to the kauri trees themselves, and to the history of logging and kauri-gum gathering in the area. The trees themselves are huge: very tall, very large around, and very long-lived. As in any tree museum, there are labelled tree rings. The wood is really pretty: I suppose it's callous to mention that, since the loggers nearly wiped out the living population of trees. But it turns out that the wood is incredibly durable, and people still make furniture and bowls from "swamp kauri", dug up out of the ground after 30,000 years or more.

There's a vertical cross-section of a kauri in a long hall, to give some perspective. Kauri are cone-bearers, and the cones look vaguely like pine-cones. Did I mention that you can make furniture out of the wood?

Kauri gum is something like amber, but not quite as nice. I looked for some jewelry-sized pieces, hoping to make a new earring, but all the pieces I saw were too big and clunky. The gum was used as varnish, which explains some of the luster of the wood. Apparently it made for a fairly flammable varnish, though, so there's no demand anymore.



The museum includes a large room of nothing but kauri gum. Really. And it's on display in kauri-wood cabinets, which look very handsome.

That was quite a lot of kauri in one place. I resisted buying any in the gift shop, though, and drove on to Dargaville. It didn't look like a good place to stop, so I spotted a mention of the "Funky Fish" in Baylys Beach: "People drive from Dargaville just to eat here." And why not?

They have a nice garden, a massive kauri-wood(?) table, and a friendly cat (who apparently smelled the funky fish from next door). I had the seafood chowder and a glass of viognier: the cat promised to be my best friend if I gave her some chowder, but all she got was a drop of viognier. She's too young to start on a life of chowder-fueled debauchery. That was a busy day, and I've only just had lunch. Stay tuned....