Maps and Cat Naps

Maps and Cat Naps
Hamilton, New Zealand

Hamilton, New Zealand

After a crazy first few days on the road, not necessarily in a bad way, just in a ‘we are way too unorganised to be doing this’ kind of way, we made our way up to Hamilton to couch surf and plan.

Obviously the Curries can’t just drive from one town to the next without stopping, especially if there are selfies with big things of NZ to be had. Starting where we left off in Australia, we had our map with all the big things marked and made it our mission to get a selfie with all of them. Amazingly this one afternoon drive had 3 of them. The giant Sheep Sheerer in Te Kuiti, the big apple in Waitomo and the big Kiwi Bird in Otorohanga. There is not much of mention in any of these towns aside from Te Kuiti, so here are some long awaited factoids for you…. Did you know that Te Kuiti is the Sheep Shearing capital of the world, in 2006 the largest sheep show in the world took place here with 2000 sheep, a world record breaking sheep sheer is equivalent to doing back to back marathons, there are currently 48 million sheep in NZ and in 1982 there were 70.3 million. Yup, I bet you will sleep better knowing that, if not you can count sheep, ha ha ha, did you see what I did there.

Anyhow back to Hamilton and we headed to meet our next host Susan and her cat Cleo. Just like every other time thankfully arriving here was turning up at an old friends, we were made to feel so welcome and at home and we were chatting like long lost friends in no time. We were visiting Susan mid-week so she was out at work and was kind enough to give us free reign of her beautiful house so that we could spread out our maps and get planning. To help us she even brought home a book she had been given as a gift of the top AA NZ sights to see.

We spent our time planning and being distracted by the adorable Cleo, who was so very helpful in lying on the map of North Island to ensure that I couldn’t plan to go anywhere other than Cape Reigna or the East Cape, size zero she is not.

Thankfully Susan has also traveled NZ extensively, which is more unusual than you would think for a Kiwi and she gave us an amazing amount of tips that we hadn’t yet picked up, especially a visit to the Gannet Colony at Cape Kidnappers and a trip over the White Island volcano from Whakatane. Planning our travels around the North Island we very quickly became accustomed to the pronunciation. In Maori ‘wh’ is pronounced like an ‘fu’ so you really do sound like you are swearing when you mention most names, our favourite being Whakapapa, yup replace the ‘wh’ with an ‘fu’!

So we had a fab, relaxing and luxurious time staying with Susan, she quite possibly has the most cosy and comfortable guest beds in NZ with more pillows than we knew what to do with.

Thank you so much Susan for you absolute kindness in opening up your home and giving us some lovely meals and great company chatting the nights away.

We tried to steal Cleo to keep us warm, but sadly she escaped 😦

Onwards on our new route map, northwards!