Northland/Wharepapa Update!

Hello everyone! Its been a full week since we've had interweb access so I'm going to update our progress. Its long so I apologize in advance....

We left Auckland last Monday in our "spaceship" (also known as a campervan) and headed north to the town of Whangarei where along the way we stopped at a couple of wineries and made sure their wine was of decent quality! ;-) We spent the night in Whangarei (pronounced "Fangarei"). Our first night sleeping in the van was interesting. Remarkably comfortable and warm under the duvet but pretty cold once you throw the cover off. I'm pretty sure I woke up about 5 or 6 times being the light sleeper I am. That and that it has rained off and on since we arrived. (Sept 14th was our first full day without any rain)...

The following day we drove north and found to one more winery just outside the beautiful resort town of Paihia. Its not summer yet here so although the weather is nice (15-20 during the day when its not raining), very few tourists were in the area. The winery was amazing and we ended up enjoying a lunch on their terrace overlooking the vineyards. The interesting thing about wineries here is that there are palm trees growing around the property; something you don't normally see in other wineries around the world.

We spent the night in another motor camp just north of the area and had a wonderful mosquito experience. Pretty sure I killed about 20 or so mosquitoes before sleeping.

The following day we drove all the way to the northern tip of New Zealand to Cape Reinga. This is where the Pacific Ocean meets the Tasman Sea. Its very cool to see exactly where the two currents meet in the water and cause the waters to swell in every direction. The wind was also blasting here at about 60+ km/h so we didn't spend to much time as it got cold real fast. We drove back down the peninsula and stopped along Ninety Mile Beach. This stretch of sand is actually about 65 miles long. There are tours which start at the south end of the peninsula and drive all the way along the beach until near the top where they connect back onto the main road. Our van is not suited for the terrain but we parked just shy of the beach and walked out along a trail to the main beach. As we arrived at the beach I heard the sounds of engines behind us and we turned to find 5 Police SUV's barrelling down the trail at us. We "jumped" out of the way as they arrived. They stopped and talked to us and explained that they were doing some late day off-road training along the beach. Now at this point I have to add that the tide has come back in and almost any vehicle travelling on the beach would get caught in the water and....well that'd be the end of the vehicle. But these police officers appeared to relish the idea of doing 80 km/h down the beach in their modified SUV's.

We drove south until dark where we had to do an evening ferry crossing then find a camp ground to spend the night. Luckily we found a decent one close to the road and even luckier, we were able to get a decent meal at the hotel nearby. Just to point out, unless you are in the larger cities, most restaurants close by 7:30 outside of the summer and its almost too cold to BBQ at the camp grounds at night so we have been trying to time our dinners right when arriving in new towns.

The following day we drove south to an area which is home to the giant Kauri trees. These trees are the second largest to the giant Redwood Sequoias found in California. We took some perspective shots to show how wide the base of the trees are (13m circumference). But since they are only trees we did not spend too much time as it was raining (what a surprise). We continued onto Auckland where we ended up visiting one of the local climbing gyms. There is very little climbing north of Auckland and I was getting a bit ancy not having climbed in a couple of weeks. The gym was pretty large but after doing a couple of routes we quickly realized the route-setting was not exactly "top-notch". Robin was done after a couple of routes and I followed suit not long after. Since climbing there, I have heard that the route-setting at most NZ gyms is pretty craptacular. After this experience we spent the night just south of Auckland.

This leads us to Friday. We headed south to our first climbing destination; South Wherepapa. This was about a 2.5 hour drive from Auckland. We arrived at a cafe/lodge called Bryce's and this place is clearly the hub of all climbing in the area. Bryce is the owner of the place and he knows every nook and crany of not only the local climbing scene, but almost every crag in NZ. He has a gear store which is probably the best stocked anywhere in NZ.. Luckily we did not forget any gear in Canada as the cost of gear here is at least double what you'd pay for it at home. We decided to spend two nights at the lodge and Bryce hooked us up with all the Beta we needed to get to the first crag calld Froggart Edge. My descriptions will not do any justice to this place so we will hopefully post some pictures soon. The area is in active farmland (as are most climbing areas in NZ) and the rock is a volcanic ignimbrite with tonnes of tendon snapping pockets. We parked and had access to 6-7 different walls within 5 min walking distance. The routes looked pretty exciting and we took note of the "starred" climbs in the guide for the next day. That night we cooked a great pasta dinner and I was able to sample of the phenominal meat pies from Bryce's cafe....damn good!!!

The following morning it was a bit wet early on but by 10am it had dryed out and just before leaving for the crag (3 min drive from Bryce's) we met Sally who is a gear rep and was looking for a partner for the area. She was originally from Auckland and new the crag very well. She joined up with us and off we went to Froggart. We started with a bunch of classic climbs and I had to get my pocket pulling power on pretty quick. The grading in NZ is done using the Australian grade scale (10-3?) and I've seen a couple of differing conversions to the Yosemite scale so I'll just use the local scale. We did a couple of 17's and 18's and then moved onto Monsterpeice Theatre (20) which starts off on a hard slab and moves right into an AWESOME roof section (Tony..think Brokeback Mountain at LH). At one point I had about 25 feet of rope run out on the slab to the roof and Robin was "not too happy with me about it" as a fall would have been a mild disaster . After this we moved over to another wall and I flailed on a classic layback route (Mister Daddy Long Legs) (beta intensive) and then sent the last classic of the day.
That night we had a great BBQ with steak and veggies!

The following day we visiting another crag which was a bit further away. After a muddy walk in we found the rock to be wet and mossy. Clearly it had not been visited by anyone since last fall and was looking a bit rough. If we had been with a "local" it would have been easier but we opted to pass on climbing here just in case we ran into any problems. That and we couldn't see some of the anchors as the forest runs right into cliff with no pathway. The rock is amazing and would be great later in the season. We ended up returing to Froggart and Robin was able to send a couple of routes now that she had been able to get a feel for the type of climbing. I went back to Mister Daddy Long Legs and sent it first go. Felt pretty good after good. There were other people there on the last route we wanted to do and we ended up bailing as there were a couple of them waiting in line to TR the route. We may be back though....
We left the crag and headed back to Bryce's for a snack and said our goodbyes to Sally and Bryce although I'm quite sure we'll be seeing them before our trip in NZ is over.
We drove to Rotorua which is a resort town built on geothermal vents and found oursevles a motor camp which has heated mineral pools at our disposal. I'm sure we'll make use of them at some point today.

That is pretty much it for the past week! Sorry its been a long post but not having access for a week meant we had a lot to tell! We're hoping the rain has subsided a bit more and we see more sunny days than rainy ones but we prepared for all weather!! Hope all is well with everyone and we'll try to post some pictures soon.

L8r
AC (and Robin)