Feels strange that the semester is coming to an end ? Going to miss this! #studyabroad #farewellparty #linneaandgustav
Sipping champagne and betting on horses. Not the typical Tuesday #melbournecup #wewon #linneaandgustav
Had a wonderful weekend in Port Stephens ? #thatview #linneaandgustav
I’m making a lamp shade out of wood. Because what you can do with a laser cutter is freaking awesome. #lasercutwood #futuredesigner #linneaandgustav
I’m making a lamp shade out of wood. Because what you can do with a laser cutter is freaking awesome.
#lasercutwood #futuredesigner #linneaandgustav
Auckland (27 – 28 September)
We started our Tuesday by skyping with Gustav’s parents, which was Monday evening for them in Sweden. After the Skype call, we went up to the dining room where Latimer served us breakfast.
We had two choices of getting croissants or toasts and flavoured yogurt or natural yogurt. We went with croissants and had an array of marmalades to choose from. At breakfast, we shared the table with one of the other house guests that were staying with Latimer. He was a German guy called Flo who was traveling around the world one country at a time. He had been on long stays in both India and Australia previously and was going to the U.S. after New Zealand. To finance his travels, he was doing freelance web development and programming.
Together, Flo, Latimer, and we discussed a bit of everything. Politics, cultures, and travels. It was very nice, and we had breakfast for probably more than an hour.
After breakfast, we headed out towards the city centre. We were walking and had dressed according to the weather forecast, which turned out to be completely wrong. Instead of cold weather, winds, and rain, we got a day filled with sunshine. It was nice but would have been more pleasant if we had dressed for it.
Our first stop was the Auckland Domain, which is a big park close to the centre. We got a picture with the Auckland War Memorial Museum but decided on not going in. Instead, we had some fika and went for a walk in the park along a path called “Lover’s Walk.”
We continued towards the city centre. On our way, we walked past another campus of the University of Auckland and at this campus a lot of people were dressed in colourful capes with suits or dresses under. As we got to a park on the other side of the campus, it was packed with more people dressed like this. So, it seemed like there had been a graduation ceremony earlier and these were the graduates and their friends and families. We still don’t know what the different colours of the capes represented.
From the park, we went to the wharf, where we found a collection of shops similar to the Re:start mall in Christchurch. Although similar, there were fewer in Auckland but an interesting concept to have shops in containers. Among the shops, we found a sushi place with good deals. Seated at a nearby table, we rested our legs and ate our late lunch.
We walked along the wharf past the harbour and got to Silo Park, which seemed to be another area they were replanning. This area playgrounds and basketballs courts amidst the old industrial silos and warehouses.
Next to this area was Auckland Fish Market located, Linnea thought that it would be interesting to check it out. After stepping in, she walked the ten meters straight through because the smell was too much.
From there we headed to the nearest bus stop as it was starting to get late. At the bus stop, we concluded that they didn’t seem to have the signaling system as in NSW (where you need to signal or wave to the bus driver for them to stop). But lo and behold, when our bus came it just ran past us because just that bus route required you to signal the driver. In their defense, in the last second before the bus ran past us we could read “please signal driver” on the bus itself (which seems like a stupid place to put that text). We weren’t the only ones annoyed by the bus drivers inability to stop, which was evident by the swear words uttered by one of the other persons at the bus stop.
Twenty minutes later, the next bus arrived, and this time we waved and flared with our arms like our ride home depended on it. The bus stopped, we paid and got seated. The bus had a display that showed the upcoming stops, a map, the weather, the latest news, and a few ads – unlike the displays on the buses in NSW that only shows the video feed from the cameras onboard the bus, which is quite useless.
The bus tour went well, and we got off at the right stop with just a hundred meters to walk to our accommodation. For dinner, we fried the last of our camping sausages and ate them with bread. We spent the evening packing our bags, talking to Latimer and just relaxing.
Our last day in New Zealand started much like the first one with a tasty breakfast and nice company. As our flight was leaving at 5 pm, we had some time to spend before going to the airport. Latimer was so kind to let us leave our bags there until we had to go because otherwise, the check out time was at 11 am.
We went out towards a nearby park called Cornwall Park and One Tree Hill, which is a small mountain located in the park that’s quite famous because of it giving the name to the TV series. On our way to the park, it started raining. We had brought umbrellas, but our shoes were the real problem as they were starting to get wet all the way into our socks.
In the park, there were both sheep and cows. Linnea wanted to pet a lamb, but none of them seemed to be too trusting of humans and started to run away as soon as she got near.
For the most part, there was a path for pedestrians along the road in the park, but when we got to the main road leading up One Tree Hill, there was no path for pedestrians. After walking a bit up the hill on the road, we decided to turn back because of our wet shoes, the lack of a path, and the weather (which also meant that the view from the summit would probably be limited).
Our next stop was a Chinese restaurant called Golden Jade. We ordered noodle dishes with veggies and chicken for Linnea, and pork for Gustav. It was alright, but it was pretty much bathing in a soup of broth.
When we had eaten, we headed back to the house to get our bags and ordered an Uber to the airport. We got a really nice driver that took us on a smooth ride there even though there was some chaos on the highway. We ate some fika (before going through the security check), and checked in with Virgin Australia that was flying us back to Sydney.
Once again we had to fill out a card with information about why we were leaving the country, which was very similar to the form we had to fill out when leaving Australia to New Zealand. When it was filled out, we went through the security control without any problems.
In the duty-free shop, we looked for something to spend our last New Zealand dollars on. We settled on New Zealand’s favorite brand of chocolate and 2 litres of liqueur (Bailey’s Irish Cream and Swedish Absolut Vodka, of course). After shopping, we headed to our gate, which was packed with people. But thankfully, we found two available seats where we could relax before having our rows called for boarding.
For the first time, we were not seated directly next to each other but had the aisle between us. Gustav sat in the middle of a family of New Zealanders. They were a bit noisy and had the weird attitude of feeding their youngest child only candy and soda, even though they had pre-ordered food for all of them. But at least they offered us the child’s ordered dessert when he didn’t want it because he had already eaten two chocolate bars.
The flight was otherwise quite uneventful. We listened to audiobooks or podcasts. Gustav solved a sudoku puzzle in the in-flight magazine. Towards the end of the flight, we had to fill out yet another form. This time it was the same form we filled out going into Australia, so it was easy to fill out.
We landed in Sydney at 5:45 pm, so even though we flew at 5 pm and had flown for almost four hours it was almost the same time as when we left. (Yes, we know how time zones work, it’s just fascinating.)
We got through immigrations and customs easily, but we had brought back a few things that we were required to declare. We had boots that we had worn while hiking, seashells from the beach, and the book with the wooden cover that Linnea had bought. Since we knew about the strict rules, we had washed off our boots and the seashells before leaving New Zealand. The customs officer was very kind, and after hearing that we had cleaned our boots, he only asked to examine the seashells. After his inspection, we were free to leave and bring everything.
We went to the train to Central. When arriving at Central, the next train to Newcastle was the first for the evening to be affected by track maintenance. So, it would only go to Wyong and from where we would have to take a replacement bus.
We were quite tired already since our brains thought it was 9-10 pm. To top things off, the train didn’t arrive at the platform on Central. So everybody was called to go to another platform and get on the train there instead. Everybody was rushing, and it was hard to get ahead with our two big bags. But we managed to get on the train and get seats to sit. After a 15-minute wait, the announcer once again called out. This time he was announcing that the other train had arrived and that everybody should go to it instead.
At this point, we started to get quite annoyed with the circus which is public transport in NSW. Since everybody on the train only cared for their own skin, we were left last because of our bags. When we got to the other train it was completely packed, which wasn’t shocking since it was almost half as long as the other train and at this point, it had been collecting passengers for much longer than it usually does.
So because of this, we were only left with the space in the vestibule of one carriage. To top things off, in the cramped space, we were probably seven people, one of which probably was suffering from substance abuse since he was antagonizing all the other passengers. After a few stations, we hurried to the next vestibule in order to escape his antics.
From there on, it was calm and on the bus from Wyong, Gustav was nodding in and out of sleep. When we got to Hamilton, the last train to Waratah had already gone. Fortunately, the last bus towards Mayfield was just a few minutes away, so we hurried to the bus stop and managed to catch the bus.
We got home at 11 pm and were very tired since it was 2 am in our heads, so it was an easy thing to go to sleep.
/ Gustav & Linnea
NZ Road Trip – Day 8 (Keeley Reserve – Auckland, 26 September)
We started our day by packing up our belongings from the storage compartments in the campervan into our bags and disassembled the bed, which we hadn’t done for the whole trip.
We left Keeley Reserve at 10:45 am with our only two goals to be at the Airbnb in Auckland at shortly after 1 pm and at latest be at the Apollo return location at 2:30 pm.
We drove for one hour, at which point we stopped to eat. Our lunch was only about 30 minutes, but it was long enough for our schedule to start going off plan. Our next stop was one hour later at a dump station to clear out the toilet waste cassette and to empty the grey water. We left the dump station at 1:30 pm and drove towards the Airbnb to drop off our belongings.
We arrived there at 1:50 pm and were greeted by our host Latimer and his cheerful dog Digger. After walking a few turns between the van and the house we had finally managed to get everything inside. When we drove off to Apollo, it was already 2:10 pm.
We had to be at Apollo at 2:30 pm. To top things off the traffic was dense and in turn driving there became a bit stressful. Because of the short time span, we skipped topping up on diesel as we thought it was more important to arrive there on time. Fortunately, when we arrived at Apollo, they commented that there was a diesel station right next to their lot. So, we filled up and returned our dear travel companion to Apollo without any remarks on its condition.
In total, we had driven 1478 kilometres and used up diesel worth NZ$165. Since we had the campervan for a relocation, we had a fuel allowance for NZ$250. So, we could have driven a bit more, but most importantly we got money back for the amount we spent on diesel.
We ordered an Uber, left Apollo and went back to our accommodation in Auckland. Our Uber driver was a guy about our age studying chemical engineering, although he seemed to be more interested in programming and computer science outside of school. We got back to the house at 3:20 pm; it was a very charming and big house located between the city centre and the airport.
We got settled in and talked a bit more to Latimer; he suggested that we could go to Mount Eden if we wanted to go for a hike and he also suggested a few different places we could go to for dinner. We also took some time to pet and play with Digger, who made us feel very welcome. He was really energetic, but he was limping a bit because of a previous injury, Latimer told us.
So, we set out for Mount Eden. On our way there, we took a shortcut across one of the campuses of The University of Auckland. The architecture was of a style different from the universities both in Linköping and Newcastle.
Mount Eden deserved its name, and it took some time to climb it, but the path (or rather road) leading up it was in good condition. On our way up, we found a swing mounted on a tree. Linnea couldn’t help it but had to try it out.
When we arrived at the summit and saw the crater, we realised that it was not just an ordinary mountain, but a dormant volcano. This turned out to be the case of most mountains in Auckland, but as long as they are dormant it does not matter that much.
The view from Mount Eden was really amazing. We could both see the accommodation, as well as the city centre. There were quite a few people at the summit, some of them seemed to use Mount Eden as their running track, which is a feat to admire.
From Mount Eden, we headed down towards a nearby road packed with restaurants. On our way there we checked out a few of the ones that Latimer had suggested, and we decided on going to Circus Circus, which was a circus-themed restaurant.
We ordered a Chicken Caesar Burger each and a bottle of cider to share. The meal was really good, and we were really content with our choice of restaurant.
We headed back to the house and spent the evening relaxing without the fear of the room getting cold (like in the campervan).
/ G&L
NZ Road Trip – Day 7 (Rotorua – Hobbiton – Keeley Reserve, 25 September)
We got up at 8 am and had bagels with egg for breakfast. After breakfast and packing up, we drove off to the Redwoods, a redwood forest in Rotorua where we went on a short hike. Both the trees and ferns felt huge compared to what we’re used to.
As time was ticking on, we went back to the car, where we ordered two pizzas from a nearby Domino’s. We drove to the pizzeria and picked up our pizzas which we ate in the car. Linnea ordered a Beef and Caramelised Onion Pizza, and Gustav ordered a Hawaii pizza. In hindsight, Linnea would have gotten rid of the caramelised onion as the sweet tasted weird on the pizza.
When we had eaten, we drove off to our afternoon activity, a guided tour through Hobbiton, the movie set where they filmed parts of the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogy. We arrived a quarter before our “check-in” time at the Shire’s Rest and got our tickets and brochures. From the time we had eaten our pizza until we got to Hobbiton, it had started raining.
The tour started at 1:30 pm with a bus ride onto the farm where the set was built. During the ride, our tour guide told some stories about the farm and how it came to be the film location of the two Tolkien/Jackson movie trilogies.
We got off the bus when we arrived at the set. The set for filming the Shire where the Hobbits live was built into the hills on the farm. The set was deconstructed after the original LotR trilogy and then rebuilt for the Hobbit. The second time they built it with the Hobbiton tour in mind, so they used materials that could last for a longer time.
The walking tour took us around the whole set. The different hobbit holes are at different scales depending on the perspective they were filmed from. It’s fascinating how small the hobbits are actually supposed to be, and a human would probably have to crawl to get into a real-size hobbit hole.
Anyway, the tour guide was a really nice woman from New Zealand. She helped us take some pictures, so we got some pictures of the two of us without having to take a selfie. The props and attention to detail on the set was amazing, and the tour was still nice even though it rained throughout the whole tour. The main irritation of the rain was that people kept unknowingly poking you with their umbrellas, which was both annoying and made you wet.
The tour finished off in The Green Dragon, which is a pub in the film and movies that have been reconstructed for the tourists. At the pub, we got cider and huddled up around the open fire. While sitting at the fire, we got some unexpected company from some Asian tourists that first posed in front of the fire for pictures. Then one of them, a man in probably his fifties or sixties, sat down without any warning on the armrest of the chair Linnea was sitting in and put his arm on her shoulder and then had his friend take a picture of them.
That unexpected event then prompted a discussion with four other persons we just met who turned out also to be studying in Sydney. They were all international students as well, from Norway, Germany, the US, and the UK. We talked to them for quite some time both at the pub and at the Shire’s Rest, after going back with the bus. We exchanged contact information, so hopefully we’ll meet up in Sydney.
We headed off in our van to our sleeping place of the night, a freedom camp site called Keeley Reserve. We got there, only after driven past it twice. First, because we didn’t think the exit would come that soon (don’t trust google maps completely). The second time, because all the oncoming traffic made it dangerous to cross and exit on the opposite side.
We parked, made dinner of the food we had left and then we watched Now You See Me 2. When it was finished, it was dark out, and because of that and the rain, we stayed in the van for the rest of the evening.
/ G&L
NZ Road Trip – Day 6 (Whakapapa – Rotorua, 24 September)
We woke up to the sound of raindrops hitting the roof. Before making breakfast, we went to the showers in the amenities building. The earth outside our van had really started turning into mud, but with the right shoes that don’t matter. Taking a hot shower in the cold morning makes you want to face the day ahead of you.
Back in our van, we ate breakfast and packed up. We drove off but stopped at the visitor centre right next to the campsite. They had several exhibits there, and we got to know about the different eruptions of the volcanos in Tongariro National Park. We saw a stuffed kiwi, and we got to know that possums are regarded as pests in New Zealand because they hurt the tree flora and spread tuberculosis.
Because of the rainy and foggy weather we decided not to go on a hike in the area, and we weren’t even able to see the Ruapehu volcano that otherwise makes up the backdrop of Whakapapa Village. Instead, we drove north out from Tongariro National Park towards Lake Taupo and Taupo.
In Taupo, we filled up on diesel after making a loop in the roundabout because we weren’t allowed to make a right turn at the gas station. We stopped again for lunch at Huka Falls where we met a lovely local couple with whom we shared the park table. We ate soup and finished off with a cup of coffee.
After lunch, we hiked from Huka Falls along the river down to a hot spring Linnea had heard about from a friend back home. Although we didn’t feel like bringing swimmers with us, since it was a long walk back to the car and the pools we had waiting for us at the campsite in the evening was enough bath time for that day. When we got to the spring, there were several other people bathing. Linnea took her shoes off and dipped her feet in, the water was really warm and nice.
We headed back to the Huka Falls and watched them more closely. Just as we came, there was a jet boat loaded with tourists that raced up to the biggest drop in the fall and they did a couple of laps in the waves beneath it and waved at us.
Driving back onto state highway five, we headed towards our stay for the evening Rotorua. There we had booked a night at the Top 10 Holiday Park, a big chain of campsites that are all over New Zealand apparently. All was well when we got there, the guy at the office was friendly and instructed us how to get to our spot that was right next to the pools. He also made a call to the local stand up paddle boarding agency, since Linnea hadn’t been able to reach them earlier during the day. Unfortunately, they weren’t operating at the moment because of bad weather.
Again, we could see that companies should be clearer how they operate during winter in NZ. Also, as Swedes, we kind of laughed at them for calling 15 degrees and a bit cloudy bad weather. People in Sweden wear shorts when it’s like that in spring.
We got to our spot and plugged the campervan in. We heard a sudden fizzing noise, but nothing happened. We tried again. Still nothing…
After a while, we walked back to the office and asked if they could help us. A woman came out and tried their test-plug in the power outlet and said that nothing was wrong with it. She said that we could try another outlet of a different model at another spot and see if that worked. It didn’t.
She then told us that we had to call our rental company and make them help us because there was nothing more they could do. And we also had to drive our car back to the first spot because we couldn’t stay in that one.
We were both really annoyed by this since we thought that surely they must have a spare cable that they could borrow us for one night if ours didn’t work in their outlet. After all, we had paid more than 50 dollars for a single night at a POWERED spot. But nope, the single thing you need to get power to a campervan they didn’t have. So we called Apollo, and they simply said that surely we should be able to lend a cable, and if not we could buy a new one at a store and they would reimburse it once we handed the van back in.
We asked the staff at the office for the nearest store where we could buy a cable, and a woman said that there were one just across the street that should have them. Notice she said should instead of that she knew it.
We walked to the store called MEGA. Fortunately, they were still open although it was a Saturday at five o’clock. After asking several people and closely scanning the electronics isle, we concluded that they had no camping cables. We felt cheated and walked back to the campsite. Once there we gave our cable another go, and what do you know, this time, it worked! So we fixed our cable all by ourselves, thanks for nothing Top 10 Holiday Park (more like bottom ten from our experience).
Now when we had power, we decided to eat, but before that we went to the geothermal pools that were located on the campsite. There were two pools, one at 38 °C and one at 40 °C. It was really nice and relaxing to sit in them, but the water in them had a yellow tint (hopefully) from the naturally occurring sulfur and the eggy smell that it brings with it. The smell was only noticeable for a while.
When our fingers started to feel like raisins, we got up and took a shower to get rid of the smell. After showering, we made dinner and watched some youtube clips as the wifi connection actually seemed to manage it. Then we went to bed one hour earlier than usual as New Zealand was changing to daylight savings time during the night making our night one-hour shorter.
/ L&G
