wanganui

We’re staying in Wanganui tonight, on the western coast of the bottom third or so of the North Island. We found a cute little Victorian hostel on the river, and finally broke down and got a hostel discount card. Every hostel seems to try to have something to distinguish it from all the others, and this one has a trampoline, and a music room with a piano and guitar.

We pretty much only cared about the kitchen tonight, though – we made a wonderful curry with chicken, onions and butternut squash – and fresh parsley, which we’ve been incorporating into every meal since buying it yesterday! – over rice, with fresh local avocado as an appetizer. Delicious!

snow

Lucy was excited to find snow on our drive, so we stopped to touch it and take a few pictures. Here’s a picture of me, in flip-flops and a parka, trying to make a snow-angel in packed-down snow+ gravel. Maybe not the best conditions…

taupo

Today’s picnic lunch spot was on the banks of Lake Taupo, near Taurangi. It’s the biggest lake in New Zealand, so we’ve been driving along the banks for at least an hour or so. We shared our lunch area with lots of hungry birds, including some black swans that would come right up to our bench to beg.

The lake was beautiful even in dreary weather, and I’ll have to plan to come back, maybe to do one of the float-plane rides or to go sailing or windsurfing.

zorbing

Well, we didn’t wake up at 7 am as planned…but we just barely made the 10 am check-out time, if you don’t count breakfast. Another hostel guest made a wonderful lemon-sugar thing, sort of cross between a pancake and a crepe, and kindly shared one with us while we were making our beans, eggs & toast creation.

After a hearty breakfast (perhaps not the best idea?) we took off in the Pulsar for the Agrodome. The Agrodome is home to a variety of examples of Kiwi tourism creativity – in addition to the ever-present bungy, there’s Zorbing – rolling down a hill inside a giant inflatable ball, the Hydro-Jet - a super-fast jet boat that goes as close to the falls as possible, a free-fall simulator, and the ‘Swoop’ – three people are zipped into a sleeping bag on a stretchy cord and dropped from a crane.

We opted for Zorbing, a very gentle introduction to adrenaline sports. Sabrina, Lucy and I went hydro-Zorbing together…after changing into quick-dry clothing, we got a ride up the mountain in the back of the official Zorb bus – an adventure in itself.



Here’s how Zorbing works: There’s a giant inflatable ball with a hole in it. If you choose hydro-zorbing, the attendant fills the ball with a few inches of water, hot in winter and cold in summer. You dive through the hole head first to get in, Then the attendant zips up the hole in the ball, and you push on the ball to get started rolling. Then you roll down the hill, fast. It’s a lot of fun – the water lets you slip around a little bit, and you get completely soaked.

stone soup

At the Polynesian Spa, we met three UNC-W students who’d been studying abroad in OZ and were taking a short road-trip to the best surf spots on the North Island before returning home. They were cooking a chicken dinner in their camper after the spa, and we just happened to have some fresh veggies in the car, so we decided to pool resources.

Dinner was fabulous – especially since we didn’t lift a finger! The guys cooked up potatoes – boiled then pan-fried with parsley, chicken wings with 3-cheese sauce, and a broccoli/cabbage/onion stir-fry. Not too bad for a camper kitchen!

it’s opposite day

I had my first go at driving on the left side of the road – I’m so glad we opted for the automatic car, because I had enough trouble adjusting to the new turn signal/windshield wiper configuration!

As long as I just pay a little extra attention, driving’s not too bad…except when there are too many round-abouts.

polynesian spa

Sabine, the FGV receptionist, told us about the Polynesian Spa, a Conde Nast top-10 spa/health resort down the road, open til 11 pm. We’d planned on just cooking dinner and crashing for an early morning departure, but this sounded intriguing so we decided to try it out.

For $17, we got entry into 7 hot mineral water pools – 4 acid, 3 alkaline, fed by the hot springs. The spa was great – the pools were all slightly different temperatures, and a couple of them looked right out onto Lake Rotorua. Going at night was great – it wasn’t too crowded, and the lake was pretty at night.

rotorua – fgv

We arrived in Rotorua around 8 pm, and pulled out the Lonely Planet to find a hostel. There was a Base hostel (same as ACB, our Auckland one), but another smaller one caught our attention since the book said it might be considered the best hostel in NZ.

The Funky Green Voyager (FGV) was a lot like the Rarotonga Backpacker’s – a homey little “shoes-off” hostel with cozy shared spaces, including a sunroom and living room with an open fireplace. It didn’t have everything the 10-story ACB had, but I like the smaller ones better, I think.

sheep!

I just saw my first sheep since landing in NZ! Lots more to come, I’m sure…

road-trip

Sabrina’s headed to Wellington next, Lucy’s going to Picton, and I’m off to Blenheim. Wellington’s at the south of the North Island, and the ferry goes from Wellington to Picton on the northern part of the South Island. From Picton, Blenheim’s just a short busride away.

We’re all renting a car together – Lucy’s going to teach us how to drive on the ‘wrong side of the road’ and we’ve decided to leave a day early to spend some time at town along the way – probably Rotorua, Taupo and a couple of others. Sabrina has an interview in Wellington on Wednesday afternoon so we’ll plan to be there then, and Lucy and I will continue southward after.

Photo: Our little Nissan Pulsar and a ‘cell phone tree’ – they have these trees here that look like the fake-tree cell phone towers back in the States.

air new zealand cup

Auckland was playing the Manukau Counties in the Air New Zealand Cup today, so Sabrina and I decided to make it our first rugby match since it was close by and relatively cheap.

‘Our’ team won in a landslide – 39-5. I can’t say I learned a whole lot about rugby since we didn’t have anyone to tell us what was going on, although we did get a lesson from the Barcelona rugby boys (fellow housekeepers Daniel and Javi), who said all we needed to know is you pass back and kick forward and try to get over the line.

Rugby is violent. Apparently the game doesn’t even stop for paramedics tending to players on the field…that’s dedication. Or stupidity, one of the two.

i'm alive, really!

Sorry for the lack of posting lately - this week has been super busy. Tons of fun though. In an hour I'm off on a 4-day road trip, final destination is expected to be Blenheim on the northern part of the South Island for 2 weeks of vineyard work. Things could change, though - flexibility = fun!

Posts coming soon: krishna fest, minus 5 degrees, kiwiburger, air nz rugby cup, the simpsons, and more!!

I'll work on them in the car when it's not my turn to drive, and upload at the next good internet place.

tea

Lucy and I wandered up to a cute little tea/sandwich shop on Karangahape Road (K-Road) and spent the afternoon reading magazines and collaborating on a giant crossword puzzle. A nice, lazy day.

I took this picture looking down from the top of Queen St., at K-Road. It doesn’t do the hill justice – we’ve been walking up and down this hill at least once a day, it’s quite a hike! Definitely don’t need a gym membership here.

kiwiburger

Finally got up and moving today around lunchtime, and decided since I'd slept through breakfast this would be the ideal time to try the legendary Kiwiburger. We're right across the street from a McDonalds, so I got it take-out so no one would look at me funny for taking pictures of it in the restaurant!

The jury's still out on the Kiwiburger. I think this is partly because I took an industrial-strength sore throat drop this morning - definitely not something that would be OTC in the States. Apparently the numbing action, which is intended for use after oral surgery as well, can last up to 4 hours - great. I think the taste-buds are out for about that long too. So, I wasn't at 100% for the taste test. But I think my overall opinion is that if you think you'd like a cheeseburger with eggs and pickled beetroot, then you'd probably like it.

I'll give it another go sometime when I'm feeling better - and super hungry!

the simpsons movie

Since we didn’t get to see the movie last night, and the weather was terrible today, Gareth and I decided to catch the afternoon showing of The Simpson’s Movie. In addition to closing annoyingly early, movie theaters here have another quirk – assigned seating, complete with ushers. And this wasn’t even the ‘gold class’ option, which includes your own armchair seat, separate from everyone else, and a cold drink.

The movie was entertaining, and I tried Nando’s for the first time afterwards – a semi-fast-food Portuguese flame-grilled chicken chain that’s apparently all over the UK/OZ/NZ, but hasn’t made it to the US yet. Or maybe it has, by another name – it’s kind of disorienting to see stuff here in the same packaging but with a different name (like Minute Maid orange juice, which is …something that starts with a K, I’ll look for it next time I’m in the store).

I’m getting sick, so maybe I should go look for that OJ now!

minus 5 degrees

Gareth came back from his two-day North Island bus tour today for about a day and a half more in Auckland, so we thought we’d catch the Simpsons movie. Unfortunately, everything here closes way earlier than it should (most stores close at 4 pm, not that you’d know that since they don’t list their hours anywhere!), and the last movie was at 9:15 – we missed it.

We’d both been interested in going to ‘minus 5 degrees,’ a bar where everything is made of ice, kind of like the ice hotels in Scandinavia, so we went there instead. Cameras were strictly verboten – which meant I had to leave mine at the front desk, eek! – so you don’t get to see a picture of us sitting on deerhide-covered ice benches amongst ice sculptures, in our bar-issued fur-trimmed parkas, carefully holding glasses made of ice with two layers of gloves on our hands. We were able to get a picture looking in from the bar next door, but there wasn’t a good place to steady the camera and it needed a pretty long exposure even w/high film speed, so it’s kind of blurry. You get the idea, though.

The idea was pretty cool, although the experience felt a little too commercial/contrived especially with the imposed time limit. Definitely fun to try once – and I still want to see one of the ice hotels sometime.

roommates

We’re in a 4-person dorm, and we’ve had really good luck with roommates so far, with the exception of last night’s ‘Evil Roommate.’ We’re not even sure what her name was, because she wouldn’t talk to us except to tell us that we didn’t have to worry about putting up with her for long, she’d be leaving at 8 am to find a new hostel (this was already her second room in this hostel…).

Today we got another new roommate, Lucy, a dentist from Wales. She’s traveling on an around-the-world ticket, and has been in Buenos Aires, Brazil, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania and maybe some places in Asia since leaving last September.

We’re done with work for now! Bed-making for the past 2 days was actually a lot more fun – it’s a two-person job per bad, and usually 2 teams per room, so being around more people makes the time go faster, and you can actually see what you’ve accomplished.

housekeeping staff

For all my complaining, I’m actually really glad we signed up for housekeeping. In addition to the free housing, we’ve made some awesome friends from all over the world – Spain, Wales, Ireland, Vanuatu, India, Hong Kong, Korea, China, England, Germany, Brazil, Samoa and Australia are the ones I can remember, but I’m sure there are even more.

Our hostel, ACB feels like home now – nearly every time I go by reception, pop in to the kitchen, step in the elevator, or even walk down Queen Street I see someone I know and we get to talking about something interesting.

Photo: A goofy shot of five of us from housekeeping - Danny (India), Daniel and Javi (rugby players from Barcelona), Sabrina and me in the ACB elevator.

auckland at night

After the observatory, Gareth and I decided to head out to take some pictures in Auckland since he’d just found out that his Australian permanent residency had come through 6 weeks earlier than expected, so he’d have to report for work soon and skip his planned leisurely NZ tour. I definitely need to practice night shots some more, but this one of the Sky Tower and Auckland harbour turned out decent even without a tripod.

We saw K2, which won one of the America’s Cup races, in front of the Maritime Museum, and didn’t even realize what it was at first because it’s so massive that it looked like a work of modern art when you onl;y see pieces of it. I couldn’t even get ¼ of it in a picture!

southern cross

I went to the One Tree Hill Observatory with Gareth tonight to see a planetarium presentation on the southern sky and use the telescopes there. Somehow, despite seeing a comet only visible for a few days every million years/only from the southern hemisphere, I never managed to make it out to see the Southern Cross on the Antarctica trip. This time we saw the Southern Cross, the jewelbox, the moon through some high-powered telescopes (Zeiss?), and some really cool twisty-looking trees silhouetted against the night sky – those weren’t on the to-see agenda of the astronomers, but I liked them anyway.

four stars!

Our hard work paid off! ACB received a four-star rating from Qualmark, the highest rating they give to hostels – and two more stars than ACB has ever received. Guess they really must have liked the sparkly-clean ficus trees.

Now we can actually do our jobs (bed-making) instead of scrubbing!

pizza + a new friend

Our hostel bar was having an all-you-can-eat pizza deal, and since we’d sometimes deliberately walk past the Domino’s just to smell the pizza, we had to join in.

Our accents stick out like a sore thumb here, which can be annoying at times but is apparently a useful conversation starter. We were chatting with everyone else at the pizza party, and one of the guys we met was Gareth, a Welsh engineer who’d just arrived that day from. He and I had a bunch of interests in common – boats, DIY projects, d-SLR photography and of course world travel among them.

After pizza, Gareth and I walked down to Auckland harbour to work off some of the pizza and pick out our dream yachts – there were a ton to choose from!

Photo: Some of the smaller, more utilitarian boats in Auckland harbour.

krishna fest

In the interest of broadening our cultural horizons, and because we can’t resist anything with the word ‘Fest,’ we decided to go to the Krishna Fest advertised in the ACB lobby. The poster told us to bring an open mind and an empty stomach for a night of food, dancing and philosophy.

The name was a little misleading – not exactly a festival, more of a small gathering. We were met at the yoga loft by a nun, who asked us to remove our shoes and showed us where we could get ice water. At the time, we didn’t realize how useful ice water could be – we didn’t expect 1.5 hours of chanting and dancing, plus an hour of a philosophical discussion on “Happiness Equals _____.”

I was hoping the session would be more educational, but we got some time at dinner afterwards to talk with a British girl who’d studied at a London ashram for 3 years, and she filled us in on what had been going on. Dinner was fabulous – paneer, a vegetarian curry, naan, relish, corn fritters and a fried dough/honey dessert. You can never go wrong with fried dough.

cleaning with kuku

Today was our second day on the job - we had yesterday off because we worked on Friday, and we had 2 free nights at the hostel already. Apparently bed-making is a coveted job, so since we're short-timers we were assigned to shower duty with Kuku, a super sweet Welsh-Samoan lady. Scrubbing showers was as much fun as you'd think it would be, but she made us stop every now and then because we were working too hard, and she’d tell us stories about her grown daughters and those breaks made the work go by a little faster.

job contracts

This morning we had to go work out our job contracts with housekeeping/reception. You're really only supposed to be able to work if you are staying for more than 3 weeks, but we somehow lucked out and got here in the middle of spring cleaning so we can just stay for a week...and we only have to work four days, Monday through Thursday, to stay from now until next Sunday for free. Shouldn't be too bad, I'll be an expert bed-maker by the end.

iep orientation

We went through BUNAC USA to get our work visas, and BUNAC's NZ partner is International Exchange Programs (IEP). We had a mandatory 2-hour orientation at the IEP office this morning - it was pretty helpful, if a little too long. We filled out our tax ID number forms, left copies of our passports for safekeeping, learned about all the different regions of NZ, got info on how to open a bank account, and saw pictures and heard stories about the 1,001 ways to spend lots of money on an adrenalin rush here (in addition to bungy jumping and skydiving: zorbing, abseiling, skyjump, swooping, canyon gliding, paragliding and hole-in-the-rock jet-boating, to name a few). They also gave us delicious chocolate and L&P (lemon and paeroa soda, or rather 'fizzy drink' as it's known here), which accidentally ended up becoming our lunch.

The IEP office is right across the street from our hotel, and they have free internet (20-minute limit), phones without calling card surcharges, job listings, a travel agency, comfy couches, and pretty much anything else a job-seeking backpacker could want.

We met a couple of fun people in the orientation - Lisa, an American who's looking for a 'real' job to make use of her MBA, Kori, a ski instructor and the other American, and bunch of Germans. There was also a guy from the UK and a girl from the Netherlands.

birthday celebration

We went out for a real meal, our first of the trip, to celebrate my birthday. We were both very excited - the only requirement was that it had to involve meat, no rice or pasta. After a lot of walking, we found an Irish pub with a meat stew that said 'carnivore's delight' in the menu notes, so we knew we'd found the right place. We split a steak sandwich and seafood chowder and the stout beef stew. We met an Aussie couple sitting near us and had fun chatting with them, except we couldn't understand a word of what the guy was saying because he spoke so softly and with a pretty heavy accent. The girl was a park ranger at a sea turtle nesting site, so I got the info on that in case I get a chance to visit it.

After dinner, I tried to post my blog stuff, but only got the writing up and not the pictures - pretty frustrating since wireless is so expensive. We'd told a few people from orientation that we'd be at the Globe bar at the hostel at 9, so we met up with them - we were still kind of of 'island time,' oops, but they waited for us. Several of them were leaving early tomorrow for other parts of the country, so they didn't stay out late, but we joined up with two Americans, sisters from Colorado and Chicago, and headed out to a bar with live music. Turns out it was actually the same Irish pub where we'd eaten dinner, and the live music was stuff like Sweet Home Alabama, Brown-Eyed Girl, etc. - not exactly Kiwi or Irish! The pub was on the water, so it was a nice location and we had a good time.

we have jobs!

Well, kind of. We'd seen in the hostel welcome packet that there was an option to stay for free in exchange for a few hours of 'light housework' per day. Our French roommate has been doing it for the past week or so, and said it wasn't bad - the time flies because you're working with other backpackers. After the orientation we stopped by to ask Michelle, the head of housekeeping, if there were any openings. We were thinking of starting tomorrow, but they needed us right away so we ditched our plans to open bank accounts and picked up mops, buckets, rags and a vacuum and got our orders from Ronnie, our supervisor. He's really nice and fairly amusing - a world traveler who just got back from home, the Philippines, three days ago.

I also have a new name, Leslie. Ronnie thinks this is my name and by the time I realized it wasn't mine it seemed like it was kind of too late to correct him. Hopefully the accomodation credit will go to the right person! Since most of the housekeeping is done mid-day, and we'd gotten back from orientation in the afternoon, we were the only ones working and we were assigned to wall-washing rather than bed-making. Qualmark, a travel certification organization (maybe kind of like AAA?) was coming to inspect the hostel, so the lobby had to sparkle. One disadvantage of working in the lobby rather than in rooms is that everyone gets to see you with your plastic gloves, old gloves, etc. And of course we saw everyone we knew. Fun! This was not quite how I envisioned spending my birthday.

We got in trouble for finishing our assigned tasks too quickly (washing walls, cleaning lights, scrubbing elevator doors while elevators were still in service), despite attempts to slow down - we'd only killed an hour of the three required. We were left to our own devices for a while, so we decided to clean each and every leaf on both ficus trees in the lobby in the remaining two hours. The trees are rented, so there's a good chance they'll just be swapping them out before the inspection, but whatever - who knows what other tasks we could have been assigned!

The three hours didn't go by ask quickly as our roommate Lusi had promised, but we did manage to entertain ourselves laughing about how we were not exactly putting our college degrees to good use, wondering if we should send in a notice to the UVA alumni magazine for that section which broadcasts important life changes including promotions, calculating what percentage of our old salaries we were making, etc. We also had some fun chatting with people coming through the lobby or riding the elevator.

It was Michelle's birthday, too, so the cleaning staff invited us to have a piece of cake with them after we were done - it was carrot cake, my traditional birthday cake! It wasn't nearly as good as yours, Mom, but it still tasted delicious since we'd been working hard and hadn't had a real lunch.

Photo: See the lobby sparkle? Don't the leaves look nice?

i have a phone!

While I was napping after the day tour, Sabrina researched cell phones and after I woke up we went out and got Vodaphone pre-paid phones. Calling is pretty expensive especially mobile to mobile, but incoming calls are free (even international :) ) and texting is pretty inexpensive. I don't need the phone for much, but it's just nice to have and it'll make it easier for Sabrina and I to get jobs in different locations later on but still be able to meet up for traveling.

kiwi experience day tour

I'm not sure quite what I was expecting, but it wasn't this – or I might have reconsidered going on the tour on only a few hours of sleep!

First stop was the Auckland city bridge, a bungy jumping site. I definitely want to try bungy jumping before I leave, but I think I'll probably do it in Queenstown. We walked halfway across the bridge and up to the bungy jumping pod to watch a couple of jumps. We were attached to the bridge by the harness that I'm holding in my hand in the picture – despite warnings to watch out for the heavy clip at the end of the harness, I of course am sporting a colorful bruise on my shin!

The jump's about 100m – doesn't look that high, although I'm sure I'd feel differently standing on the edge of the jump platform.

After the bridge, we got lunch of fish and chips in Devonport – our first time eating out on the trip! Our third stop was an old naval site on a hill overlooking Auckland, and our final stop was at Victoria Market, where I had a chance to see what the Kathmandu outdoor store was all about after seeing everyone on the Antarctica trip all decked out in their gear.

auckland

We left the hostel at 3 am this morning, which was Wednesday in the Cook Islands, and got to Auckland a few hours later, a little after 7 am on Thursday. The international date line is confusing!

BUNAC, the organization through which we got our work permits, arranged for transfer from the airport and two nights' in the Auckland Central Backpacker's hostel. This hostel is totally different from the Cook Islands one – it's a modern high-rise style with an internet cafe, travel agency and employment office.

We saw an ad for a free Kiwi Experience day tour of Auckland on the bus, so we're off to try that in a few minutes.

world travelers

One of the coolest things about the hostel in Rarotonga was meeting a ton of fun fellow travelers from all over the world. We haven't met any American backpackers so far – just a couple from the cruise ship docked in Avarua on Friday and a women at our hostel who worked at the Met and was island-hopping after a conference on Pacfic archeology. Maybe it's just a biased sample, but it seems like it really is a lot more common for people from other countries to go off traveling for an extended amount of time. A couple of people at the hostel were at the end of 12-month trips, and others were away for an indeterminate length of time. Considering some of the reactions I'd get when I told people what I was doing, it's awesome to meet a lot of other people with similar interests.

We exchanged contact information with a few other backpackers from Rarotonga to meet up later on or to exchange travel tips, since several had done extended Asia trips right before the Cook Islands.

coconuts

There are a ton of coconut trees on the Rarotonga Backpacker's property – this is cool because we can get free coconuts anytime we want, but also a little scary because falling coconuts apparently can be lethal. Fortunately the hammocks are all underneath the beach bungalows – I thought this was just for shade, but maybe there's more to it.

One of the Kiwis from the spearfishing group had showed Sabrina where to look for coconuts and how to tell if they were okay to eat or not while I was on the hike on Sunday. Paul (hostel co-proprietor) showed us how to us the husking spike and crack the inner shell with a machete yesterday, so we decided to try it out on our own today. We missed the husking goal time of 10 seconds by about eight and a half minutes because it seems like it would be really easy to impale yourself on the spike while trying to impale the coconut, but Paul assured us that would be impossible since the spike is blunt. I'm not ready to test out my insurance policy just yet so I'll stick with the slow-and-steady method. The machete part is fun – you hold the coconut in one hand, and whack one of the three stress lines with the blunt edge of a machete until it pops open.

objects in picture are farther than they appear

Sabrina discovered at the Rarontongan that she liked snorkeling, so after an hour or so we headed back to find someplace where she could rent a snorkeling set – we'd been sharing the mask I brought from home, the snorkel was a casualty of my yesterday afternoon snorkeling adventure off the Rarotongan Backpacker's beach.

The first place we went was the Muri Lagoon, where we'd been swimming a few days earlier. It was rumored to be a good snorkeling spot, but it was grassy with no coral so we didn't like it as much. We did see lots of triggerfish, pufferfish, and the other usual suspects, plus two scary-looking polka dot eels. Again, eels are cooler behind glass. We swam all the way out to one of the three little islands...and then back. It was far!

Next we headed to a beach a few kilometers down the road – walking, of course, to save bus money! There was a ton of coral there, so we had better luck with fish – everything from before, plus damselfish, butterfly fish, more types of angelfish and little white fish that skipped along the bottom.

Buses were stopped for dinner when we were done, so we ended up chatting with a man and a woman training to represent the Cook Islands in the triathlon at the South Pacific Games in Samoa in late September, and the woman gave us a ride back to our hostel. It was great to get a ride and get back while it was light out, and she was entertaining to talk to – she's a Kiwi married to an islander who runs a charter fishing business that had actually taken a bunch of the guys from our hostel out that morning.

the rarotongan

After our usual breakfast, we headed out to the Rarotongan to snorkel. We'd heard it was a good spot, and Mark (Irish hostel guest who's been delivering sailboats around the world for the past 6-7 months) had shown me some cool underwater pictures from there last night, including a bright blue giant clam.

I didn't find the giant clam, but I did see a ton of fish – parrotfish, wrasses, butterfly fish, a flounder, etc. I saw a green moray eel, too – I think I like them better in aquariums! There were a ton of sea cucumbers too, of course, and more of the bright blue starfish. I did see two mini giant clams, one blue and one greenish-brown, but not the big one the guys had seen.

b-a-n-a-n-a-s!!

There are a lot of banana trees on the island, so bananas are one of the few things that are really inexpensive here. And today, they're free! The hostel put up two bunches of bananas for us – they're the little kind, and they're so delicious once they're ripe.

I wasn't a big fan of bananas before because I've always thought they were pretty tasteless, but once I had my first 'real' one in Panama I've always tried to get them if they're local. I can't believe the difference it makes in the taste!

the people on the bus go 'round and 'round

There are two buses running in Rarotonga at any given point in time – well, at least during the hours of operation, which are different nearly every day and include a break for dinner. There's the clockwise bus and the anti-clockwise bus, and they run exactly as their names imply. The anti-clockwise bus was made for miniature people, and the clockwise bus was just made a really long time ago. The bus drivers wear festive flower-print shirts, will drop you off anywhere you want – if you've missed your stop, they'll even turn around and take you back - and will give you advice on anything Rarotongan, unless you ask Tupu for good snorkeling spots because he claims he'll rust if he goes in the water.

We spend a fair amount of time waiting for the buses, since they only come once per hour and run on island time. The good thing about a circular island is you can take either bus and eventually get where you want to go.

Photo: Self-portrait while waiting for the bus after our second grocery shopping trip of the week.

paradise

I don't ever want to leave! As we were trying to find a ride back from the cross-island trek (buses don't run on Sundays, and I haven't seen a taxi since we've been here), we happened to be near an undeveloped beach for the perfect view of the gorgeous sunset. It was a great show – lots of color changes and conveniently placed palms trees for interesting silhouettes.

The stars here are amazing, too – I haven't read far enough in my camera manual to figure out how keep the shutter open for a night shot, so you'll just have to take my word for it – or come visit, I'll gladly go back and be your tour guide!

cross-island trek

On the walk back from church, Lisa and I decided to join Jess and Inge on their hike across the island later in the afternoon. I'd been lazy earlier and missed the deadline for the guided trek our hostel was offering today, so I was happy to have another chance to go.

The trail went from the side of town near the airport up to the 423-m 'Needle,' a tower of bare rock near the center of the island, and then back down to Wigmore's Waterfall on the opposite side of the island. It was a tough hike – parts of it were more like rock climbing, and recent rains had made the trail slippery (or rather 'slippy' - one of my favorite new British words, at least when spoken with the accent!) so I ended up half-covered in mud at the end.

We were following the written instructions in the Lonely Planet guidebook – I think they keep the trail unmarked so you'll pay for a guide! We got lost several times, and it wasn't until we could nearly see the road at the end that we found one half-obscured arrow tacked to a tree to mark the trail. There were some gorgeous views from the top, though – I'm working on setting up a photo album for the pictures that don't make it into the blog posts, hopefully that'll be up in the next few weeks.

It was a good thing that the views were good along the way, because the waterfall was nothing to speak of and although all the guidebooks said we could swim in a refreshing pool under the waterfall, the pool was stagnant...and a prominently displayed sign forbade swimming since the waterfall fed island water supplies.

Photo: me at the base of the Needle.

sunday service

Sabrina, Lisa and I went to a Maori-language service at the Cook Islands Christian Church this morning. Lisa's a fellow hostel guest, a Brit who's spent the past 12 months traveling around the world, and has a week left – so she's pretty much in exactly the opposite place I am!

The service was beautiful – in an open-air church filled with tropical flowers, and most of the service was sung. One unusual part was the presentation of sports team trophies during the middle of the service! I didn't catch the whole thing since only a few words were in English, but apparently several local teams had recently won about 16 trophies in various sports such as handball, netball and soccer.

I had a visitor in the middle of the church service – a little Cook Islander girl, maybe 3 years old, came wandering over and presented me her Strawberry Shortcake notebook out of which she had just taken a nice big bite of cardboard. She then proceeded to slowly pull all her gum ,which was mixed with the cardboard from the book, out of her mouth and fling it around. Sabrina and I finally got her to get it back in her mouth (and keep it off of her nice dress!) after some pantomiming that I'm sure amused everyone else around us.

After the church service, the congregation had a lunch for visitors. It was wonderful, a welcome break from pasta or rice – fresh fruit including several tropical varieties I've never had before, tea sandwiches, seaweed, cheese and crackers, fresh avocado, cakes and coconut sticky buns.

The three of us sat with Jess and Inge at lunch – Jess is an Aussie med student staying at our sister hostel, whom we'd briefly met on the bus the night before, and Inge is a Norwegian pharmacist at the beginning of a 2-year contract with the Cook Islands Health Ministry.

frangipani

Sabrina found one of these frangipani flowers on the beach. It's wilted now, but when she first picked it up it was so flawless I assumed it was plastic.

I haven't seen them growing anywhere, but a lot of the island women wear them in their hair. This was the first time I've been close enough to one to smell it – the fragrance is amazing!

There's an island perfumery here, so I stopped in to see if they had anything that smelled as good – unfortunately, although the scents are supposed to be inspired by the island flowers, nothing came close!

muri lagoon

We went to Muri Lagoon today on the recommendation of a couple we met on the bus yesterday. Lack of sleep from the flight caught up with me, and I slept in this morning. We went to the market once we were finally both up – a disappointment, more touristy than I'd hoped.

Muri Lagoon was pretty cold for swimming – it had been raining earlier in the day, and the sun never really made it back out, so the water wasn't warm. We both went wading for a little while, and I went snorkeling – aside from the ever abundant sea cucumbers, I didn't see much, just one triggerfish and a few more common ones.

tide pool creatures

There's a lot of coral right off the beach at the hostel, and we went exploring at low tide. Black sea cucumbers are everywhere, so I wear flip flops in the water – wouldn't want to squish one of those in bare feet! We saw lots of sea urchins, too, which helps build the case for wearing shoes.

There are a ton of hermit crabs and small mollusks, and we can see little fish darting around but can't tell what kind the are from above the water.

This bright blue sea star was my favorite find – it's about 10” across and the picture doesn't do the color justice.

breakfast of champions

We got a ride in to town this morning from two fellow hostelers - a honeymooning Kiwi couple who'd gotten married at a nearby resort on 07/07/07 after dating for seven years. After getting cash at the ATM, we headed to the grocery store – what a shock! Prices are crazy here since almost everything is imported from New Zealand. Some of the scarier ones: a roll of paper towels is NZ$10 ($8.60), 1 lb beans NZ$11, a can of Coke NZ$2.50 and a gallon of milk for NZ$13.

After some very careful shopping, we ended up with pasta, pasta sauce, rice, boxed milk, Weet-Bix cereal, cheese, carrots, bananas, juice, baked beans and potatoes for under NZ$25 – a successful trip. We tried out the bus system on the way back.

rarotonga backpacker's hostel

This is our home-away-from-home for the next five days. It's an awesome deal – NZ$20/night and it's right on the beach, with a pool. We haven't figured out how many other people are here – they keep coming out of the woodwork, but it's a gorgeous location and everyone seems really friendly. Plus there are hammocks down by the beach, and that's pretty much all I need!

Rarotonga's about 32km in circumference, pretty much a circular island, and our hostel is located on the western side. It's the main entry point for the Cook Islands - the international airport is surprisingly busy, if tiny.

flight to rarotonga

We had a fairly uneventful flight to Rarotonga – I think I slept for 8 of the 10 hours, and the other two were spent eating huge meals.

Among our fellow passengers were about 45-50 uniformed Cook Island Handball Federation members – we need to find out what handball is. I just learned what netball is ('basketball without bouncing') and didn't realize there were more new sports. The handballers seemed really tired so we didn't bother any of them to ask, but hopefully we'll find out when we're here.

Map: http://www.south-seas-adventures.com

rarotonga

Our flight to the Cook Islands leaves in about an hour. I'm not sure of the internet situation there, but hopefully I'll have some updates sometime in the five days that we're there!

in-n-out

We didn't make it to In-N-Out in Vegas, so we decided to try to find one in LA.

After asking several people in the airport and getting various answers on locations, the most promising one being 15 minutes away by car and who-knows-how-long-of-a-walk, we finally found the toll-free corporate headquarters number and found out there was one only a few blocks north of the airport.

By then we'd walked several miles southeast of the airport (LA weather is kinder than Vegas weather for walking!), so it took the help of two of our siblings giving us GoogleMaps directions over the phone and one friendly bus driver to get there, but we did it!

And the food was, of course, delicious - definitely worth the walk and a perfect 'last meal' in the States.

vegas luck

Well, our luck turned! We got to the Vegas airport this morning, checked in, and were sitting waiting for the boarding call when they asked for 2 volunteers to get bumped from our overbooked Delta flight to another American flight arriving in LAX only an hour later than our original one.

We'd planned a 13-hour layover in case of bad weather or other problems since our domestic and international flights were booked separately, so one hour wouldn't hurt...so we got an unrestricted credit that will more than cover the one-way tickets back from LAX next year, plus meal vouchers to use during the wait!

We forgot about our checked luggage, though...but everything worked out just fine, except for one more broken backpack strap. Guess that wasn't the place to cut corners.

Oh...almost forgot. Airport security doesn't really like one-way tickets. That was another thing we didn't think about beforehand. The giant air-puff-dangerous-powder-detecting-security-machines were kind of interesting to watch for the first 45-minute block of time, but not so interesting the next few.

Photo: Fountain outside Forum Shops, Caesar's Palace casino

whirlwind vegas

Seems our streak of airline bad luck hasn't run out yet...something not-good apparently happened to our plane on the way out, so they had to switch it out for a different one in Salt Lake City and we got to Vegas a few hours late.

Sabrina had never been to Vegas, so I had to take her on the grand tour...we hit every major casino on the Strip from 3 - 11 pm...and donated a total of $1.15 to the nickel slot machines in the process. We were definitely more interested in the over-the-top sights than gambling. I got some fun pictures especially of the neon lights at night - I'll try to upload them and link them to this post.

We were pretty exhausted from all the walking, the heat, getting up at 4 am to make the flight, etc. so didn't make it out to any clubs. Next time!

happy birthday, gram!

It's my grandmother's birthday today - Happy Birthday, Gram!

We went to Antarctica together earlier this year - Gram's seventh continent and my fifth. I decided in the middle of the trip, in part because of the natural beauty of the places we visited but even more so because of all the amazing and adventurous people we met, that I really wanted to move abroad for a while, and that's what got me started on NZ research, and...the rest is history.

Photo: Gram, me and a few thousand king penguins on the periantarctic island of South Georgia

and we're off! oh, wait, no...

I arrived at Dulles this afternoon a few minutes before Sabrina did. She was the one with all the ticket paperwork, but I thought our domestic tickets were electronic (no such luck on the international ones!), so I went to the self-check-in booth. 'PLEASE SEE KIOSK ATTENDANT' flashed across the screen after I swiped my credit card - wonderful.

The line for the only attendants present was huge and said it was for paper tickets, so I called Sabrina first to make sure we really had electronic tickets. We did - turns out all of us with connecting flights through ATL had been bumped because we would have missed the connecting flight, and they booked delayed JFK passengers in our place. Oh, and just in case you ever get that error message - the kiosk 'attendant' is actually a phone with no audible dial-tone or helpful identifying signage.

We'll be spending another night in Virginia, unfortunately forfeiting one of our two pre-paid nights in Vegas. We were also advised by several different security officers that we should get to the airport at 5 am for our 7:30 flight - fun!

It's a disappointment to only spend one night in Vegas, but I know this won't be the only change of plans along the way, and it's not too bad as long as we still get on our international flight on Thursday night! Good thing we booked some extra time to get out to LA...

meet sabrina

As mentioned in the '(un)plan' blog post, my friend Sabrina will be my travel buddy for the first seven months or so.

Sabrina and I have been on several travel adventures in the five years we've known each other, beginning with late-night roadtrips to nowhere whenever studying and dorm life got to be too much as RAs in Webb House at UVa our third year.

Then, when we were roommates for our first two years in Richmond, we went to New Orleans with Heather in early 2005. In late 2005, after we'd each moved to different parts of Richmond, we went to Ghana for 10 days.

Last year, we went on a 68-hour road trip to 6 states and DC over Labor Day weekend. We ended up with a regional-food theme for the roadtrip, and the picture at left was taken on that adventure - at Lynn's Paradise Cafe in Louisville, Kentucky which we'd decided to visit after Sabrina saw it on 'Throwdown with Bobby Flay.'

Now on to the next adventure...

modern materialism

One of many reasons I'm looking forward to this adventure is that I've become more materialistic than I'd like to be. So I was actually looking forward to 'down-sizing' both permanently (hopefully) and even more so on the actual 12-month trip itself.

The result: one 36-lb backpack with clothes, etc. and a daypack with my laptop, camera & accessories and carry-on essentials.

We're going from the Vegas heat to the Cook Islands to winter in New Zealand just in the first week and a half, so packing took some real planning - but I still have some room left!

all quiet on the home front

My lease was up on Sunday, so I'm staying at my parents' house in Northern Virginia until I leave next Tuesday. My parents told me many times as I was growing up that I was never allowed to move back home after college, so I told them to just think of me as a guest for this stay – especially since guests don't have chores, get nice home-made meals, etc. It's not entirely working out that way – while I am enjoying my favorite Mom-cooked dinners and they're being very accommodating about the various 'sorting piles' of papers and stuff to pack strewn around the house, they're still putting me to work at times.

Also, they have dial-up internet. It's painfully slow and temperamental, and I'm running out of ideas for things to order at Panera, so that's my excuse for the minimal blog action until 7/11 or so when we hit Vegas at the start of the trip and can hopefully get wireless at our low-budget hotel.

Photo: 'Sunrise' water lily in the parents' pond today