Earthquakes and volcanoes

Dear readers :-)

I’ve been on this great adventure now for 83 days meaning that I’m having a gap of about 22,68% of what’s going on in YOUR life :-). It’s nice you’re reading my blog but sometimes I feel like I have no clue what’s going on at home. I do read the newspaper... but that doesn't mention anything about your life :-)

One day I woke up, I turned on my internet-connection and all of the sudden I had about 15 messages from people all over the world asking if I was OK? That’s funny and weird at the same time. I thought people started to forget I was out here but then I got all these messages asking if I was fine after the huge earthquake in the night of 13-14 November 2016. (Thank you for your concerns!)

That night I was staying in the garden of a youth hostel. You know how things go there from time to time; people have a drink or maybe two and they might get drunk. I was asleep when all of the sudden I woke up because I thought some drunk guys were shaking my car. Not really knowing what was going on I felt back asleep again pretty quickly.

That morning when turning on the Internet on my phone I realized that this shaking weren’t drunk guys… it was the earthquake!! I was about 700km away (Turangi) from Kaikoura where the earthquake stroke hardest but I did wake up and felt it! I can only imagine what it must have been like in Kaikoura.

At first the newspapers announced this earthquake as being a 7.2 earthquake but in the end they decided it was a 7.4 earthquake. Actually it wasn’t one earthquake but it was several smaller ones and two major ones at the same time. That is also the reason for the big amount of aftershocks. There were about 400 aftershocks!

In any case, if you ever want to get more info again on these earthquakes then this is a good website:

https://www.geonet.org.nz/quakes/felt/severe

The chance of this happening again is pretty big. As New Zealand is located on different earth plates the country will most likely shake again. New Zealand and Japan are both islands in the same situation. And, did you know that the biggest earthquakes ever didn’t occur in Japan or New Zealand? Chili gets some pretty big earthquakes now and then. And then there’s Sumatra, an island part of Indonesia. Do you remember the big tsunami in 2004? For some reason everybody immediately thinks of Thailand after mentioning this tsunami. As a matter of fact the tsunami killed many more people in Indonesia (130.000+) where in Thailand this number is much lower (5.300). I think it might be because there were more western people in Thailand then in Sumatra. Sumatra get’s a lot of severe earthquakes!

Anyway, I was trying to make a point here. You all know how I’m doing because I’m writing a blog :-). This seems to be a one-way thing. Even after sending about 15 postcards to several friends, only 2 responded! It’s not because I’m having “the time of my life” here that I’m no longer interested in your life, you know. So after reading this post, don’t hesitate to mail me or leave a message under this post. I am interested in how you’re doing!

During December I’ll “work” in a youth hostel. Meaning: I will change the sheets of the beds and do some cleaning in exchange for a free bed, nice people around me and Wi-Fi :-). I hope to have some Skype-meetings with you then! And I want to be clear about this: I will not earn any money in this hostel but I am SO happy to know that I won’t be celebrating Christmas and New Year alone. At least I hope the hostel isn’t totally abandoned at that time, haha. That would be horrible.

Besides this earthquake I had some other exiting things going on in the last few weeks. After leaving Napier I headed towards Taupo. Taupo is a lovely city. I have to admit, arriving in Taupo… homesickness hit me very hard. I spend 2 days not doing anything. Sometimes I have to be creative to find new things to do because traveling is also expensive! It’s hard to find free fun things to do. Sometimes the highlight of my day is doing laundry...

YOU: Don't complain, you're traveling! In New Zealand!

ME: I know, I know... having the time of my life. But sometimes even that time is plain boring you know! Going on holiday is one thing, but going on holiday for a very very very long time... that's the same as eating spaghetti every single day. At one point, you'll get bored of the spaghetti, I'm sure :-)

At home I watch a lot of television but most of the time here I don’t have a television around me, or Internet and in worst case not even electricity. I started reading books.

Yes, you read that correctly. Books. And they're not travel guides.

Because what else can you do on a rainy day? Yeah I could walk around or move to another place again but at some point that gets boring as well. So I finished one book already (Eat, pray, love by Elisabeth Gilbert). Everybody around me in Indonesia was talking about that book and it sounded like a nice one so I read it and it was OK.

Even buying books is expensive here! One book would cost about 22-25$ which is about double as much as what you would pay for the same book in Belgium. Going to a library isn’t really an option as I’m moving around all the time.

Yesterday I had a great idea and I went to about 5 “op shops” (kringloopwinkels) and there I found a new book to read for the full 2$ (1,5€). If I don’t know what to do on a rainy day, then I have 600 pages left.

So, we were in Taupo before I drifted off to reading books, haha. In Taupo I heard a lot about the “Tongariro crossing”. It’s a one-day hike on a nice mountain close to Taupo. Ok, it’s one hour away. Usually when people say that it’s nearby and it’s 1 hour away I reply by saying: In 1 hour, you can cross my country. Anyway, it wasn’t that far ;-)

Because of some nice Facebook groups nowadays I got in touch with Charlotte from the Netherlands. I was very happy to have found somebody who spoke Dutch because I really started missing that. The next day we met and we decided to do the one-day hike together.

When we started our hike it was very cloudy. After about half an hour it started raining and then there was a bit of wind and the further we got up that mountain, the colder it got! We were suggested to bring a hat and gloves. I thought; it’s almost summer! How cold can it really get? I imagined a nice hike like in the mountains in Switzerland in summer. With flowers and stuff. Like the happy guys in this picture:

I refused to believe how freaking cold it was. I really didn’t want to wear the gloves but at some point it got so cold that I really needed the gloves or I wouldn’t have been able to move my fingers.

Charlotte, who’s actually on a working holiday in Australia, didn’t have gloves. So I decided to share so we were wearing one glove each. It’s the least I could do after holding her up all the time. Sorry for that, Charlotte.

When we almost reached the top, all of the sudden the clouds started to fade away and we could actually see something! I mean, more then 2 meters around us! It was an incredible moment because we had been hiking for hours, not seeing anything, not really knowing where we were. When the clouds disappeared for a moment we could actually see the most incredible place we were at! We smiled at each other and were happy to get this view after all.

Maybe my stalling was good after all. Arriving a little earlier or later and we would have probably not seen anything. There were some people doing the hike the other way around and we saw only angry and sad faces. They didn’t see anything!

Quiet a bit later we were supposed to see the “two blue lakes”. At first there were clouds all over again but then we were lucky again and we saw them!

The hike was about 19,4 km and I was very happy to arrive at the end. I think we did burn some calories there but it was absolutely worth it.

People in New Zealand don’t really talk about hiking... they talk about "tramping". That evening an American girl said: We don’t really use the word “tramping”. We would only use it when you go to the woods and have to climb out some places with mud and get cold and dirty. I replied: Isn’t that what we did today? The girl said: maybe you’re, right!

Click on the pictures to see them full size.

There are some other typical New Zealand words. Like: “jandals”. It’s another word for flipflops, slippers, thongs, … :-)

I also noticed people in New Zealand say a lot of “Aaaaay” in this way:

The weather is good today aaaaay?
You won’t go to far aaaaay?
It’s all right aaaay.
In New Zealand people talk about jandals, funny aaaaay?

Later on I decided to go to Rotorua. Rotorua is quiet “stinkywinky” and smell like rotten eggs. Beh.

But it is one of the nicest cities I’ve seen in New Zealand so far! Rotorua and Napier both had something nice. There are some pretty buildings and some free hot springs in the city! Free hot springs as in: foot bathing. Anyway, it’s nice!

Rotorua smells bad because there are a lot of thermal pools. The city is built on a volcano.

YOU: A volcanon?!!!

ME: Yessss :-)

YOU: But, isn't that really dangerous?

ME: Yesss ME: In fact no... It's kind of a dormant volcano now I guess.

Yes, that’s the reason of the bad smell. It is also the reason of these incredible beautiful thermal spots like Wai-o-tapu.

Wai-o-tapu is a park about half an hour away from Rotorua. It’s has pools with incredible beautiful colors! If you’re ever in the neighborhood, it’s really worth visiting.

Many Maori people live in Rotorua. They are the original inhabitants of this country before European people invaded the land. There are other Polynesian tribes having similar roots as the Maori.

I decided it was very necessary to get to know something more about Maori-culture so I visited one of the Maori-villages. They made it a tourist attraction nowadays, anyhow I wanted to get to know this culture and this seemed to be the way to do it. I visited a village called, hold on: Whakarewarewatanga-O-Te-Ope-Taua-A-Wahiao. Yeah, I copy-pasted that. It’s not the kind of name you remember after visiting this place.

I had a very nice day there. The guide explained how cracks in the ground would occur over time and how they would use that spot to cook their meals (hangi food). The food has a bit of a ground taste. They use these places to steam the food, so usually they put the food there in the morning before going to work and when they get back there food is ready. They also use the thermal pools to make food, but that goes quicker. Depending on what you want to cook it can take 5 minutes (corn) up to a few seconds (fish). You can’t make meat in this place, as it would have some kind of chemical reaction and make some minor explosion, so let’s not do that.

They also use this water, transporting it trough small canals, for bathing. The water can be pretty hot so you have to be careful and that’s why they have the small canals, to cool down the water a bit.

As you know, I’m the queen of questions, so of course I had some questions for my guide. I’d like to share them (and the answers) with you:

Q: Are there people speaking only Maori and no English?

A: The Maori languages was banned for about 90 years, so it did disappear quiet a lot but there are in fact people still speaking only Maori. Many people learned speaking English in that 90-year period and some of them have gotten used to it and are a bit lazy to learn the language of their roots.

Q: Can a non Maori-speaking person learn Maori at school?

A: There are schools (of any level) in Maori so if you would want to, you could go to school only speaking Maori. You could also learn it as a second language in evening schools.

Q: How do you know your house isn’t built on a potential crack? I mean, the cracks that appear to make the hangi food.

A: Well, you don’t. You have to keep watching it. The wood in the bathroom in my house is starting to rot because of a crack. I might have to move my bathroom.

I really liked that day. There was also a little performance of traditional Maori songs and dancing. I hope to be able to upload my own movie here (no, that didn't work), if not, check out this link:

I had a little Hawai-feeling here. Nice, isn’t it?

After visiting Rotorua I headed towards Hamilton. I visited Hamilton and the same day I went away again. I didn’t like the vibes in the city and everything seemed expensive. There weren’t any pretty things to visit at first sight.

I should tell you a bit more about driving. The maximum speed limit on any road here is 100km/hour. Yep, also on the high ways. There aren’t many high ways. Even though it’s a large country (I mean, bigger then Belguim) there aren’t many high ways. There are a lot of “national” routes but all of them have the speed limit of 100km/hour. I think it’s a bit strange because some of these roads have a lot of scary curves. They are the kind of road that would have a speed limit of 70 or 50km/hour in Belgium! So I drive slow compared to New Zealand people, haha. I feel more comfortable that way. Also my car is in fact just really slow. There are a lot of “passing lanes” so I guess it’s OK.

There aren’t many trucks here! Which is absolutely fine by me, haha. Some roads have many trucks and when you see them, many of them are “double trucks”.

So, now you know. 100km/hour maximum. I saw the same thing in Japan by the way.

I feel like I haven’t been very clear on the topic of “sleeping in my car”. Let me introduce you to the backpackers-life:

When backpackers arrive in New Zealand, you have 3 options to visit the country.

1 Buy a car and drive it

2 take an expensive bus

3 Hitchhiking

Number one seemed the easiest one for me. Now you do see some backpackers driving around in a regular car. They usually have a tent and camping stuff. Most of the backpacker-cars are a little bigger then a normal car. They are the multi-seat kind of car. The “family” car. Most of these cars are imported from Japan as they also drive on the “wrong” side of the road (and have a 100km/hour speed limit, haha).

Usually the back seats are taken out of the car and some wooden frame is constructed so you can put a mattress in there and actually sleep in a “bed”. You could think of it as a very mini campervan.

YOU: you have a bed?!!

ME: Yes....

There is a double-sized bed in the back and under the bed I can store my stuff.

I have to admit it is useful but not always as interesting as you think. At night I have to crawl in the bed and when I’m in the car I have to try to pick up my shoes and then slam the door so it’s actually closed.

On the other hand it’s very convenient. You can go wherever you want whenever you want to!

I don’t have a fridge (no electricity) so I have to eat my food before it get’s bad or I have to buy small portions (which is difficult in this country). I have no toilet, but public libraries have, haha. I have no Wi-Fi but McDonalds (and most public libraries) have! So, whenever you go to McDonalds or a public library, there is a big chance you see some other backpacker cars. That's where I am right now; "Matamata public library" :-).

I studied interior architecture so I had a creative idea and I “made” my own shoe-closet, haha!

After seeing this, you will never look at a car's door the same :-)

Backpackers tend to have no money because traveling is expensive. Most backpackers are younger than me. I’m quite an old lady here in the backpackers-world. There are of course people of my age but many of them are between 18 and 24 years old. They haven’t worked a lot, or saved a lot of money so they live on a tight budget.

The other day I got to meet two German girls. (Yeah, German, how is that possible? Haha). They just finished high school and started traveling straight away. They will try to find a fruit-picking job here.

They allowed me to take a picture of their car.

YES, that’s right! The two girls sleep on a one-person-sized-mattress! Without sheets... (they have sleeping bags)

I asked about their budget and for now they each had 700€, after buying this car. So they said they stopped eating meat because it’s expensive. They hadn’t bought cheese in the last weeks, because it’s expensive and they kind of live on pasta. I shared some of my chicken and cheese with them. They own less stuff than me for sure! So if you think I am the brave girl here, then think again! Do you also remember there are people walking trough the country?

Backpackers also tend to look for free or cheap campgrounds. Some cities have no free campgrounds and mostly the free campgrounds aren’t even in the city, they are in the middle of nowhere… of course.

I’ve camped in these free campgrounds a few times. There usually no kitchen, no shower and only a “long drop’ toilet. If you don’t know what a long drop toilet is then think of it as a 80-year old toilet… without flush. Just a "hole" actually. These free camps are pretty basic, haha.

I try to combine free campgrounds and the cheaper ones (8-10$ per night; 5-8€) to have a shower once in a while :-). Some of the free campgrounds have showers… but only cold water. I like showers with warm water.

In some cities it’s impossible to find a cheap campground so then you HAVE to go to the expensive one or drive a long way. Sometimes I go to the expensive camps. They have kitchens and if you’re lucky also Wi-Fi! If there’s no kitchen, I have a gas cooker… It’s something but it’s not like a real kitchen so that’s why many backpackers live on “Asian noodles”; cheap and quickly fixed.

Me on a free campground with the long drop toilet...