I have arrived in Auckland, New Zealand! I will write more later.

Update:
I’ve left Auckland - I bought a bus ticket and rode to Whitianga (north of Auckland) after stopping for a couple hours at Cathedral Cove. My plan is to ride the bus around to 15 - 20 major stops around both islands, staying at hostels along the way.
Weather-wise, its nearly the complete opposite of what it was like in Japan: sunny and hot as hell. I hired a bike earlier and I’m riding around town. My next stop is to sample the so-called best hamburger in the world at the Blacksmith Kitchen. I have some photos and remaining stuff about Japan to put up soon as well. I’ll turn this into a proper post as well.

From Auckland, I hopped on the bus going east for a brief trip to the Coromandel. The first stop was Hahei, famous for its “hot water beach” - a beach which has hot springs running underneath it. When the tide is out, you can dig a hole in the sand and it will fill up with hot water. Unfortunately for me, the tide was in and I wasn’t able to spend another night in Whitianga. Next time!

Near Whitianga we stopped at Cathedral Cove and I hiked down to the beach there. Amazing place! The sun was beating down so i doubled up on the sunscreen and walked along the sand all afternoon…

From Whitianga I went to Thames, a nice town on the coast. I arrived in the early afternoon and it was a great day so I hired a bicycle and took it on the ferry across the bay. From there, my plan was to just follow the road and see where it took me. After about 30 minutes I turned onto another small road going up towards the coast. It led me up a long gravel path which dead-ended with a fence blocking off an overgrown path that looked very promising. I locked the bike to the fence and walked down the path to find a huge green field on a cliff overlooking the bay - and not another human being in sight for miles in any direction. I sat down in the grass and just looked out until the sun started to go down, then rode back to the hostel. After spending the night there (I stayed at “On the beach” - very nice place) I got back on the bus…

On the way to Rotorua we stopped for a couple hours in a town called Waitomo. Waitomo is famous for its caves, and several companies offer tours of them. The caves there are unique because they’re home to the glow worms. Glow worms are the phosphorescent larvae of a mosquito-like insect that use their glow to lure in other bugs. When they fly into the light they are trapped by the single sticky thread which hangs from each worm (you can see them in the photo below). I did a blackwater rafting tour - really fun! We all put on wetsuits and floated through the caves on innertubes.

(not my photos)

I got to Rotorua (Maori name: roto = lake, rua = second) in the afternoon and took a stroll through town. Not too much there, but it is known for its stinky natural springs which are all over the place. They are cool to see, but they end up making the place reek of sulfur.

Just outside of town there is an odd set of tourist attractions grouped together as “the Agrodome.” I took a bus out there to experience the Freefall Extreme - a giant fan-powered skydiving simulator. It was quite fun, but not much like the real thing…

The next day, a massive storm came through so I just hung out around the hostel and read.

On the way into Taupo I stopped at Huka falls to take some photos and saw that a Taupo Tandem Skydiving shuttle was there in the parking lot ready to take a load of people to the airport. On a whim, I hopped on the shuttle with a few other nervous folks. Shortly after, we were all returned because the weather had gone sour and there were to be no more jumps for the day. I was disappointed but vowed to stay in Taupo long enough to do a jump…

Just an hour prior to that we stopped at Taupo Bungee and I did my first bungee jump! 43 meters over the lake - scary as hell but I loved it.

I ended up staying for two days, at which point the weather cleared and I did a tandem jump from 12,000 ft. It was an incredible experience - I’d recommend it to anyone! Apparently Taupo is the cheapest (and busiest) place in the world to jump, and one of only a few sites that allow jumps from 15,000 ft. I was on the last plane of the day, so the sun was just starting to go down - the view was amazing.

And now I’m in Wellington! It reminds me of San Francisco quite a bit - it’s actually said to be San Francisco’s “sister” city. They have trolley-cars, a big bay, earthquakes and lots of hills and even a few homeless people. I’ll be here for the rest of today and then continue south to Picton and Nelson to do a hike and kayak though through the Abel Tasman park.

I’ve been taking plenty of photos, but have had poor luck finding places to plug in my laptop to upload them. I’m hoping that I can do it when i get to either Queenstown or Christchurch. I am keeping the travelogue map up to date, though. This location is at the top of Mt. Victoria which overlooks the entire bay.

Update:
I stayed in Wellington for two days and really enjoyed it. I think if I were to move to New Zealand, I would move there. I visited the Te Papa museum, hung out with some new traveling friends and had a great time all around.

I stayed in Nelson for two days to spend a day kayaking in Abel Tasman, which was beautiful. The day before, I got in touch with Jared Grippe - an old friend from Burbank who is also traveling through New Zealand. We went kayaking together the next day.

(these aren’t my photos, I still have yet to upload my own photos, but it looked just like this!)