NEW ZEALAND

From summer to winter

Most often you plan long trips in advance, according to a carefully planned yearly schedule. Or you go on a journey following a sudden desire (and most importantly - the opportunity!) to visit a certain place. And sometimes everything happens by fate's will. In the summer of 2009, my whole family found themselves in New Zealand, immersed in educational programs. In early August, I decided to visit my relatives and, of course, take advantage of the convenient opportunity - to dive, not into the depths of the English language, but into the depths of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of New Zealand, which impressed Jacques Cousteau himself. Along the way, I wanted to see the country and its people, because island nations are as unique as they are self-sufficient.

My usual route is from winter to summer. This time I went on a "winter" dive in summer. Our August is winter for the Southern Hemisphere. The local temperatures and the long journey didn't scare me. New Zealand's winter is rainy and reminds me of our not-so-bad October: during the day +12-14 degrees, at night +2-6°C. Sometimes it's warmer.

The path from Khabarovsk to the islands went through Seoul - one of the main aviation hubs of the Asia-Pacific region. I've been to this airport so many times and have never been disappointed. The transcontinental Seoul-Auckland flight is quite long: 12 hours in the sky over the Pacific Ocean.

I was warned in advance about the features of passport and visa control on the islands, and was advised to follow the official dress code: suit and tie. It would be easier that way. Are you joking?! I can't imagine a trip without my reliable, well-worn "National Geographic" backpack! In short, no dress codes. And the entry control turned out to be tougher than in the States! Filling out documents and the interview took a lot of time. Fortunately, the customs officer was a nice lady. Learning that I came to visit my student son and also to dive in the north, she helped me fill out documents for the equipment I was bringing in and spoke enthusiastically about diving.

The border guard directly asked about my money. "Do you have a card, sir? Traveler's checks?" I had to show him the thousand dollars I had just received at the exchange office. The sight of cash immediately made an impression. "All the best! Goodbye!" The local currency rate is 0.7 to the American dollar. They charge at least 5 dollars commission for each exchange operation, so it's only profitable to exchange large amounts. Credit cards are accepted everywhere.

Public transport on the islands works literally by the hour. At each stop there's not only a route schedule, but also a display showing the time remaining until the next bus arrives (you'll only see this in the metro in Russia!). There are surprisingly many bus routes. The price per trip varies by district, stops are only on request. You just pull a rope stretched through the cabin, the driver gets the signal and stops. In some places, the ropes have been replaced by buttons, but ropes are more authentic!

ПI spent a couple of days in Auckland to acclimatize and look around. I was glad that the time difference with Khabarovsk was minimal. Auckland is located in the northern part of the North Island on a narrow isthmus, so you can never predict the weather in the city. Suddenly a sudden rain hits with a gust, then half an hour later the sun shines again. And this scenario can repeat. Weather forecasters are quietly going crazy.

On the very first day, the question of renting a car came up, since we were going to travel around the country, plus I needed to get with my equipment from Auckland to the dive center, which is almost 200 km away. In the city center, they were asking from 110 to 160 dollars per day for a Ford Focus hatchback. And this is off-season! My son advised trying car rental in the student town. The exact same right-hand drive Ford Focus in good condition cost only... 40 dollars (including insurance!) per day. Cars are given out with an empty tank. The owner offered to fill up gas with a 20 percent discount. Gas is expensive - 37 rubles per liter.

Traffic on the islands is left-hand. I expected difficulties, but after half an hour I was able to get used to it. No special problems for a driver who has experience driving both left-hand and right-hand drive cars, well, except for turns... I liked that there are no conditions for dangerous situations on the road. There aren't many highways. Usually three or four lanes near cities. On highways everyone drives 100 km/h. There are no unreasonable speed limits. In Russia, overtaking bans have been introduced. But in New Zealand they did it simpler: you drive on a two-lane highway and you know for sure that in 2 km there will be a section with a third lane for safe overtaking, 1 km long. This way they win both in road construction and in safety.

Preparing for the trip, I bought electronic maps of New Zealand for the navigator. Outside the city, GPS works great, but in Auckland it's complete chaos because of the strong signal delay. I hear: "Turn left!" I turn, and there's oncoming traffic!

Parking in the city is a sore subject. Cost - 4 dollars per hour, payment by card or cash for each hour separately, receipt on the windshield. From 6 PM to 8 AM parking is free, but already at 6 PM all parking lots are packed! Everything makes you think: "Use public transport!" Once I was fined the maximum for improper parking in a private lot - 40 dollars! The fine can be paid by phone, online, or at a bank.

The symbol of Auckland is the Sky Tower with all the attractions that lure tourists: an observation deck with a transparent floor, casino, restaurants, shops, hotel. The view of the city from above is stunning both during the day and at night. That's why many establishments place their advertising on... roofs. I noticed that entertainment in New Zealand has a slightly extreme character: rafting on mountain rivers, horseback riding, races on scooters and sailboats, bridge jumping. The Sky Tower is no exception: if you want - skywalking (walking along the very edge of the observation deck roof) or base jumping from a height of 195 meters. The jumper first poses for the crowd, hanging at the level of the observation deck, and then covers the distance to the ground at a speed of 70 km/h.

Everywhere in New Zealand there are special stands with brochures, guidebooks, and even reference books. Take and use them! I haven't seen this anywhere else. So there are no problems with choosing routes - you can always find something suitable.

I liked the Auckland Zoo with an artificial river. There's plenty to see: every creature in pairs, lots of birds. I was surprised to find that I spent 4 hours on the tour, and almost everything was at a run! The country and people, whose nickname is "kiwi," treat the birds of the same name with care. I found a couple of birds that lead a nocturnal lifestyle in a special dark enclosure, they could only be seen in infrared light. Strict silence and no cameras!

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ПI was amazed by the Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT), filled with schoolchildren. It's understandable! Pure physics! Plus magnificent old artifacts: cars, combines, tractors, trams, trains. Examples of old houses and former way of life. A classroom from the last century with old desks where you can sit. A working steam pumping station from 1911, running on coal with a real stoker. An old tram takes you along a line of about 7 km to a hangar filled with British aircraft of the 20th century. I've never seen such huge seaplanes! You can't go inside the exhibits, but you can look through the portholes. Besides the tram, there's also a railway with a working steam locomotive.

In the Auckland Museum, much space is devoted to the natives - Maori, who make up only 14 percent of the country's total population. Entire sections of the museum are dedicated to the First and Second World Wars. It would seem that New Zealand was so far from the theaters of war, but the exhibits - photographs, documents, weapons, awards and more - testify to the opposite.

Food service in Auckland is not cheap. There are all the fast food chains (Burger King, Starbucks, etc.), you can also go to inexpensive "student" cafes. But places where you can have an excellent dinner need to be searched for. The best are Italian, downtown. At a Japanese restaurant, I paid 148 dollars for dinner for four. And that's for the cheapest sushi by Japanese standards! The average check in New Zealand comes out to 35-40 dollars. Local beer is quite good!

Strange, but in a country where there are pastures with deer, llamas, sheep, horses everywhere - meat is very expensive! Regular steaks are one and a half to two times more expensive than in the States! Maybe sheep are needed as a landscape detail or only as a source of wool? A mystery.

There are no problems with hotels in August in New Zealand - it's off-season. Local hotels have their own features - most often you're offered not a standard room, but apartments with bedrooms and a well-equipped kitchen. For apartments with three bedrooms and two toilets, I paid only 90 US dollars per day!

It would seem, winter, cool (12 degrees during the day), but in buildings there are no plastic windows or heating systems. No air conditioners! Unlike Japan, where heated blankets are popular, New Zealanders use heated mattresses. At the head of the bed there's a control panel, you set it to "3" and enjoy life! You can use the mattress as a heater, just remove the blanket. In the toilet on the ceiling there's something like a heat curtain - another heat source if it's very cold at night.

From Auckland my path lay north to the town of Tutukaka to the dive center "The Poor Knights." According to the navigator, 2 hours 40 minutes drive. This is a resort town on the northeast coast 29 kilometers from the city of Whangarei. Why there? Because diving at the Poor Knights islands has long been considered the best in New Zealand. Jacques Cousteau himself considered the Poor Knights islands one of the 10 best dive sites on Earth, and the prestigious British magazine "Dive" named them in 2002 "the best subtropical diving in the world."

Poor Knights. Where does such a strange name come from? It turns out that on November 25, 1769, Captain James Cook sailed past and gave the islands the name of a dish popular in England and Europe - Poor Knights Pudding, which has come down to us as French toast. In 1845, a certain J. Pollock bought the islands from the Maori tribe. In 1882, the government purchased the islands at auction. Since 1967, the Poor Knights islands have been part of the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park, and since 1977 they have been considered a nature reserve, receiving the highest degree of state protection.

The Poor Knights islands, like the entire northeast coast of New Zealand, are of volcanic origin; they arose 10 million years ago. Poor Knights consists of two large islands (Tawhiti Rahi and Aorangi), several small islands and separate rocks in the sea. The islands lie at the edge of the continental shelf with its waters rich in plankton. This nutritious "soup" washes them and largely determines the underwater diversity there.

The dive center "The Poor Knights" in Tutukaka is literally carved into the rock on a peninsula in Tutukaka Bay. This place is loved by bikers from Auckland who come there to drink beer and relax on the coast. Nearby is the best restaurant in Tutukaka. There are many yachts in the bay on winter moorings. New Zealanders themselves say that the best season in the Kiwi country is all 12 months! Nevertheless, the best time is March: the calmest not-cold sea, the most sunny days, good visibility.

The dive center has 5 boats: a large "vessel" for about 20 people, and four smaller ones, for 6-8 passengers. The center can easily serve 50 divers a day. PADI training system, 5 stars. The center has its own compressor station, tanks are filled to 210-220 units. Aluminum tanks, 12-liter, YOKE. Nitrox is available. Equipment: suits (double "sevens"), computers, flashlights. There's a small shop with a good selection of diving devices.

It's believed that water clarity and temperature in the Poor Knights area are higher than in other places on the New Zealand coast. In August the water is 16 degrees at any depth (in summer, in January - up to 22°C). At the same time, only some instructors dived in drysuits. Most - in wetsuits and masochistically froze incredibly. I couldn't look at them without horror and compassion. Underwater visibility 15-20 m, although New Zealanders claim visibility in winter up to 40 m. Depths around 20 m.

In good weather, it takes 40 minutes to reach the Poor Knights islands. The volcanic origin gave the islands many underwater (and surface) caves, tunnels, walls, arches. The islands are washed by a warm current from the Coral Sea. There are about a hundred dive sites there - you could dive them for a month, which people apparently do. There wasn't a day when I dived with the same people. I didn't meet anyone from Russia. There were Japanese, a Canadian, an Australian, New Zealand divers.

I spent three days in Tutukaka, doing two dives a day. Arrival at the dive center at 8:00, boat to the islands leaves at 8:30. Return to base around 4 PM. On board coffee and instant soups, you can buy a good ready-made lunch box at the dive center for 7 dollars.

On the first day there were 10 of us, so we went out to sea on a large vessel. There are practically no corals, since the waters are still cold and ideal for brown, red and green algae. Therefore, in the underwater landscape there are vertical walls, forests of algae or sandy gardens. In the thickets of kelp we found a carpet shark, we came across stingrays, which are also numerous in those places. A great variety of beautiful nudibranchs, anemones, sponges, sea squirts. Small fish, and there are about 120 varieties of them, are shy (this is also noted in guidebooks), they don't let you get close, it's not easy to photograph them.

I wouldn't say that the "underwater pearl of New Zealand" impressed me greatly; after all, it's inferior to its Pacific "neighbors" - like Fiji and Bali. Perhaps it's because of winter, since bright tropical life migrates to the Poor Knights area with the East Auckland Current from the east coast of Australia in summer. Although, even in winter there's something to see - for example, huge scorpion fish and blue-eyed triplefin - I've never seen such anywhere! Unfortunately, I never came across a sunfish.

Sometimes whales come to Poor Knights. They were seen a week before our visit. In summer, turtles come there. A landmark place on the islands is Rikoriko Cave. The entrance to it is a narrow throat in the rock where a boat can enter. The cave is a stone hall, about a hundred meters high with amazing echo - a real cathedral built by nature!

On the second day we went diving together with a Canadian. Our instructors - a guy and a girl - didn't go on the second dive. They weren't interested in us - they were in love, we just got in their way. We met fur seals. They're curious, constantly spinning around.

On the third day it was windy and stormy, and although few people gathered for diving, we were given a large boat. In the open sea it was rocking seriously, fortunately you can take shelter in any bay - there are plenty of them. A real storm broke out on the fourth day - the sea trip had to be canceled.

The motel in Tutukaka has 30 rooms (1-3 bedrooms, kitchen). There's a children's playground, tennis court, mini-market, parking for cars and boats, pool and table tennis tables. At this time of year you can easily choose a room with a good view of the bay, where dolphins come every evening. By the way, you can also stay at a hotel in Whangarei, the dive center organizes free bus trips from there, you'll just have to get up early.

In the mornings, pheasants and ducks wander across the motel lawn. Signs everywhere - "Don't feed the wildlife!" Once, out of the kindness of my heart, I treated two seagulls. Immediately the whole flock flew in - about 50! What started then! On the slopes of the hills, divided into private pastures, flocks of sheep wander - a typical New Zealand landscape. In this pastoral there's a place for golf.

The very relaxed diving cost me 112 US dollars per day (90 dollars for two dives + fins and BCD rental + lunch).

From stormy Tutukaka along Highway No. 1 we headed south to Rotorua to relax at the hot springs. We stopped at a new, just-built motel in a room "with a view of the geyser." This geyser was found on the far edge of the garden. The motel has 12 private baths, a large pool with mineral water. There's an option for family recreation: a shallow pool with a slide for children and two baths with water at temperatures of 38 and 40 degrees. The motel owner said that the "real" springs are in the mountains and advised us to go there.

The springs recommended to us in Waikite Valley turned out to be wonderful: private spas and a large pool (35-38°C), 10 baths, family pool. Not many people. Comfortable. You could bathe all you want in the famous Te Manaroa mineral water! And what beauties of the local landscape - a view of the hills and the hot Otamakokore river. There's a camping site and a cafe in this wonderful place.

Of course, we couldn't pass by New Zealand's Kamchatka - the local geyser valley Wai-O-Tapu, not far from Rotorua. A very picturesque place, part of a large reserve in an active volcanic zone, shrouded in clouds of steam with a strong smell of hydrogen sulfide. In the valley, covering 18 square kilometers, there are waterfalls, hot springs, geysers, multi-colored (depending on the predominant minerals) lakes with characteristic names: "Weather Lake" (changing color depending on the weather), "Devil's Home," "Devil's Inkpot," "Champagne Lake," "Artist's Palette," "Opal." Around is a rusty forest with huge pines. The color is due to an orange pigment that replaced the normal green pigment chlorophyll in the local plants.

The main attraction for tourists is a geyser that "shoots" exactly at 10:15. We were warned: "Don't be late!" Well, really! Every day! Exactly at 10:15! What's the physics of the process? A hundred schoolchildren and tourists gathered for the daily show. At 10:10 a man came out and told about the history and features of the geyser. And then he threw two stones into the vent. The geyser bubbled and shot. Exactly at 10:15. Its activity didn't subside for 15 minutes.

I was planning to fly to Queenstown to go skiing. It didn't work out. Upon returning to Auckland, I saw an advertisement in a magazine for river and lake diving and became very interested. But it turned out that the base is located in... Rotorua! I didn't want to go back there anymore.

Auckland is called the "City of Sails." Two yachts SAILNZ 40 and 41, which raced in one of the world's oldest prestigious regattas "America's Cup," are based in its harbor. They take tourists on board and sometimes even organize pair races. All passengers are not just ballast, but real crew members - each is assigned a certain line and is given time at the helm. I booked a place for myself, but on the appointed day the minimum of 7 passengers wasn't reached. The guys apologized wildly and swore that tomorrow they would definitely go to sea. The next day the weather got worse, it started raining.

The yacht is racing, carbon fiber, with a single deck. The vessel is 24 meters long, 5 wide, displacement 24 tons, ballast 18 tons. All mechanics are manual, even hydraulics. There were 10 of us passengers. 8 people were placed in positions, and I played the role of photographer. On turns the heel seemed to reach 45 degrees. We went faster on tacks than downwind. According to GPS, the yacht's speed was 25 km/h. Everyone was invited to the helm in turn. The captain took a mini-interview with each person. There were Americans, one turned out to be a fisherman from a seiner who had never sailed, there was a British teacher, a lady from forest protection. Learning that I was from Russia, the captain ordered: "Russian, course straight for that warship!" Not quite reaching the cruiser, the captain said: "Turn away, we'll do without military conflicts." What did he mean?

In the main harbor there are many cafes, bars, pubs. In one of them they serve excellent mussels in delicious sauce, cooked in various broths.

One day I gave the initiative to my wife, who chose the route herself. On a catamaran we went to the pearl of Hauraki Gulf - Waiheke Island, famous for its red wine and olives, beaches and gorgeous views, entertainment for every taste. Essentially, it's a "dacha" island for Auckland residents. 35 minutes by ferry, and the city noise is left behind. Real estate there is very expensive: villas for 1-2 million dollars. The guide only talked about real estate prices. Newspapers, by the way, also write only about real estate. The island offers a panorama of Auckland. Well, and the local Onetangi beach - well, it's just like some Shamora!

I decided to make up for the failure with river and lake diving at Auckland's "Kelly Tarlton's" oceanarium. For 149 New Zealand dollars you can dive with sharks for 25 minutes. There were three of us diving. They easily gave permission to dive with a camera. Well, and before that they took us to places where ordinary visitors aren't allowed. We saw the entire water purification system, breeding complexes for lobsters and shrimp, etc. We dove and found ourselves in the company of 15 sharks: grey reef, broadnose, school sharks and a giant stingray, large fish. We posed a bit for the public. Overall, an interesting experience of diving in an artificial reservoir.

Recorded by Alexander Filimonenko