Winter 2019 - NZ7 Motorcycle Tour Start

NZ7   Motorcycle Tour Start

We all are supposed be driven from the Airport to the Hotel in Parnell, that was part of our tour package. Well, we are a day early and that is OK, but when we called for a pickup I was told I needed a coupon. A coupon? 

Somehow the communication was amiss. We emailed the rental office and they told us to just get a shuttle; someone will reimburse us we when get to the hotel. Well, we got to the hotel OK, we used a yellow bus Shuttle service, paid $ 44. -  NZ dollars for the two of us including luggage and were dropped off right at the Quality Inn Hotel in Parnell, a nice neighborhood street in Auckland. We have arrived, let the tour begin. Carol and I are looking forward to our deluxe tour.

Some of the Bikes

Ah, we never got a refund, but let’s start with the tour.

More Bikes

A whole bunch of bikes were parked in the parking lot and Carol and I, after checking in to the hotel, walked among the bikes looking at each one, not knowing which of those will be our ride for the following 2 weeks. Carol had asked for a F650 GS but we were told the 650 had a problem and she could have a F700 GS instead. Not a lot of change, except that Carol is familiar with a F650 because she owned one, but then had to make due with a bit of a foreign bike for her. 

I received, after signing all the paper work, a F700 GS as ordered but was warned that this bike cannot find neutral. I could shift from 2^nd to 1^st OK, but to find N was impossible. I know bikes have quirks and I managed just fine with this bike on the trip but why did they not give me a bike that is mechanically OK?

Checking Out His Bike

Ah, we asked for a GPS for each bike and the Rental office provided one for Carol and one for me. GREAT, except it was not a Garmin, not even a Tom-Tom, we received a rather cheap unit that worked OK, but … well, but it did not work exactly great. 

But, again, let’s start this trip slowly.

All OK

We had booked a room for one night before the tour started but when we checked in to the hotel
they housed us in an annex, not into the main hotel.

She's Happy

The reason given was that I did not pay enough for the first night to be in the hotel, I must have paid for a bargain basement room when I booked this one additional night. No biggy, just strange to me.  So after a one night’s sleep, we had to move our luggage to a different room, as the tour itself had a block of rooms in the main hotel.

First Room, Huge But Cosy

In order to save us hauling our riding outfit (suit jacket, pants, boots, gloves, etc) we had them shipped separately to the hotel weeks before. The hotel held this rather large box for us in their storage facility. While all the shipping worked well and it was no hassle, I would not do it again, it’s rather expensive to ship to NZ. I priced a UPS store in Canada to ship and they wanted close to $ 1000 Canadian dollars to ship via slow mail. Instead I went to the US and paid shipping via a regular Post Office US$ 244.35. Still not a bargain but with all our flights, it was more convenient not to have to be schlepping all our luggage during this trip.

New Room, Smaller But More Modern

We met most of the other riders haphazardly in the parking lot first. I do not recall being formally introduced to the people in charge from Te Waipounamu. Well, I knew Fred Rau, our tour guide for this trip as I had met Fred years ago at the Americade Rally in NY State. The reason we booked this trip advertised as Grand Deluxe was because Fred Rau was leading it, because Fred recommended this tour. I always thought of Fred as an astute man, he sure is a good writer. He used to be the editor for MCN (Motorcycle Consumer News magazine), a monthly. But I knew none of the New Zealanders who were walking around. Someone wanted my driver’s license, well, who are you?

View From Our Balcony Window

The paper work during the dishing-out of the bikes was a bit helter-skelter. Someone could not find the keys to my bike. The keys were in a pile, there was no prepared envelope for each participant. Someone had a top box but no key. Another bike sat in the parking lot without a key altogether. Strange organization, I thought.

We had a Welcome Dinner the night before we took off on our bikes. The menu sure was fancy. Here is what Carol ticked off on her menu, I still have this copy:

Lobby of the Quality Inn Hotel

  - Roasted vegetable couscous strudel on red capsicum reduction and served with mesciun leaves.
- New Zealand beef scotch fillet with roasted root vegetable and garlic-potato mash served with a rich port wine jus. 
-  Apple and rhubarb crumble served individually with vanilla bean ice cream.
-  Brewed tea or coffee

It did sound Grand Deluxe, right?

Chess By the Lake Behind the Hotel

Fred Rau gave a little speech. He explained to us all who he was, what he did all his life, etc. The speech was given with all participants present and during this speech Fred explained that he traveled a lot in his life-time, was exposed to many people, many nationalities, etc. The one nationality he did not like was German, he said. The Germans just drive him up the wall. Hmmm, do they? I put up my hand and told him I was of German descent!  Fred for the moment did not know what to answer, so he paused and then said: “well, I can make jokes about Germans because my last name is Rau”.  I let it go, no use talking about this any longer but I now knew this man’s mind set.

The day before the actual tour there was a ‘test ride'. Fred (Rau) led us out of Auckland into the surrounding area to just loosely give us an idea of what this tour is all about and how our bikes handle. We were a large group, a total of about 18 paying guests; a total of 16 bikes, including Fred’s. It was an OK test ride, despite all the traffic lights we had to get through and the group kind of stuck together, so the result was a ‘go’ for tomorrow’s take off and the total tour throughout the North and South Islands of NZ.

We are off to experience NZ, hold on to your hats.

Winter 2019 - NZ6 Waitomo Glow-Worm Cave

NZ6   Waitomo Glow-Worm Cave

Advertising For Waitomo Caves

I had an unusual experience today; we had pre-booked this tour on line because we were told it is a very, very busy spot and the cave can only handle so many tourists per day. The visitor center, the parking, etc. sure gives it a touristy look and we were a bit surprised when, at check in, we were asked if we wanted an earlier tour. 

Cave Entrance

Well, yes, of course we would take the earlier time slot, the 2^nd of the day. We had booked for 10 AM but now our tour started at 9.30AM. It was a guided tour, the ushers and the guides were working for the cave system and there were strict rules.

 NO touching of the worms, NO photos and NO talking is allowed inside the cave. 

Some other rules, like no flashlights, no standing up in the boat etc. were almost self-explanatory but dealing with the general, international public it needed to be said. You’d be surprised at what people do when left on their own. There were a lot of Asian travelers among us and from my experience they seem to have their own rules when it comes to behavior. 

We had a limit of about 10 people on our tour; otherwise the group would have been too unwieldy. Yet there were many groups and guides and the whole of our tour was well choreographed. Each group was allowed a certain time span in different sections of the cave. I never felt rushed, never felt left out. It was a very good set up considering the number of tourists who wanted to see the glow-worms. 

Picture of Us Photo Shopped Into This Picture

The best part was our boat ride on an underground lake with our guide propelling, pulling us along, hand over hand, on ropes that were attached to the ceiling of the cave. No motor was used; we were just pulled along by those ropes by the guide. All we had to do is gape open-mouthed at the multitude of glowing worms all above and around us. The feeling was as if we visited a new universe, visited a new star system with new stars. All those stars were glimmering in the blue/green colors using their seductive lights. It was magical, something akin to an other-world experience. The sounds around us were just the very small ripples the boat made in the water. Nobody spoke, all were in awe. How alien this experience was. Here we are, the human race, watching little bugs eat each other in total darkness. Sucking the life juice out of misguided, lost moths for example, yet we, the humans gape in awe. This was eerie, disturbing yet fascinating.

Also Photo Shopped But It Shows the Hanging Sticky Snares

Actually, the name “worm” is a misnomer. This bug that glows is not a worm at all but more accurately a maggot of a specific fly that only lives in New Zealand. This maggot, during the pupae stage has the ability to glow and attracts its prey with the light it produces. Sticky string-like snares surrounding the bug catch the food it feeds on. This glow-worm is really a predator, living off what it catches during its special stage in life. The article below is a good article if you want to know the whole life cycle of a glow worm.

Exiting the Cave

On our tour through this rather large cave system we saw literally thousands of glow worms. The cave system was pitch black and dark, I could not see the hand in front of my face, and I tried it. Were it not for the boat, the ropes, the guides we would have been totally lost in this underground system of nooks, caves and waterways. The whole tour lasted about an hour gliding along the top of the water and we slowly, after some time, saw our exit approaching. Very subdued light filtered into this cave from the exit point. The transition from total darkness to daylight was slow. Our exit was a covered overhang on the outside of a mountain. We stepped off the small boat onto a ramp and our tour ended in a section of wild forest, NZ forest, with a path ambling up to the proper exit, to the reality we knew, the modern world all around us again. 

Making Our Way Back to the Entrance

Our past hour in this special ‘universe’ of the Cave seemed a bit outlandish, strange, primitive, delightful yet disturbing. For any moth or other small flying gnat or creature entering this cave, it is a trip towards death; certain death for those unlucky enough to be caught in this underworld. You will be snared up in a sticky mess of strings and then some alien being will suck the life juices right out of you.    

It was the twilight zone….   Eerie! 

I am glad I saw it…once!   

It really took me some time to shake off this darkness experience.

Leaving the Waitomo Glow-Worm Cave

 Carol wanted to see the shop inside the visitor’s center, I think she noticed that someone took some pictures of us during the tour; I guess she needs a souvenir from our Glow-Worm Cave experience. 

So around noon we were done with our cave visit and now had to drive back towards Auckland Airport. We have to return our rental car, and then get to the hotel in Parnell, a suburb of Auckland. We booked a room at the Quality Inn, one day ahead of the start of our motorcycle tour.

This motorcycle tour will now take over in my blog for the next 2 or so weeks.