all sorted

I was incredibly productive today…at least from 1:30 – 4:30 pm! First thing on the list was buying laundry detergent, because I couldn’t even think of starting off in Australia with half a backpack full of dirty clothes. Got the detergent, and was carrying the box into the hostel when the guy at reception stopped me and asked me if I realized that the washing machines automatically dispensed detergent. Awesome. I did two loads of laundry, and then dried my clothes for over an hour, 20 minutes at a time, because 1) there isn’t a line and 2) they kept taking longer than I thought so I had to keep checking and feeding it dollar coins. At least they have coins bigger than a quarter here (10, 20, and 50 cent = silver-colored, and $1 and $2, gold-colored, just in case you were wondering. 1 and 5 cents coins no longer exist, which is pretty awesome).

I washed all my warm-ish clothes, so I couldn’t go out til they were dry, which is why I got a late afternoon start. First stop: library, to return the books I finished last night. Second: post office to mail collected items home. Third: bank to exchange NZD for Australian dollars (they’re super colorful!! very Monopoly-ish, except made from plastic, so they’ll survive laundry adventures). Fourth: AA (Automobile Association, the NZ branch of AAA) to get some free maps before my year-long membership runs out on Friday. Fifth: Kathmandu camping store to get my Summit Club membership, which came with my hostel membership. I probably won’t really use it, but I like having cards from places because it makes me look and feel legit/non-backpackery.

Back at the hostel, I booked my airport shuttle (4:25 am…ouch…), a hostel in Brisbane, and packed my backpacks. Jamie finished work early, so he came into town for an Indian dinner, and then we had a strange but entertaining conversation with a French Canadian pro skier & second-generation hippie who honed in on my ‘Alberta twang’ from a couple tables over in the hostel lounge. Interestingly enough, this was the second time today that I was told I [speak with a? have a? I do not know the correct phrasing here, because I don’t think I have ever used the word before] a ‘twang.’ The comment earlier in the day came from an Irish roommate who was convinced I’m from Texas.

Time for bed soon, since I have to be up before dawn. Internet’s not too good here, so I’ll upload the rest of the road trip blog entries/pics in Australia.

back to welly

...coming soon...

wairarapa

...coming soon...

lake ferry

...coming soon...

o possum world.

I introduced Jamie to the touristy side of Napier this morning, with a stop at Opossum World. Interestingly enough, the possums here don’t officially have an O at the front, but this store just dares to be different in a lot of ways.

In New Zealand, 70 million non-native possums consume 21,000 metric tons of vegetation each night. I know this because I have had this fact pounded into my head at every single conservation-oriented attraction in New Zealand, and there are many of these. Possums also eat the eggs of endangered native birds like kiwi. Therefore, it’s a good thing to kill them, and the government does all it can with poisons, traps, etc., and it’s considered very patriotic for individuals to go possum-hunting by whatever means necessary. I did my part for the good of the country by running over three of them in my car on the West Coast of the South Island last time I was here. It was partly out of concern for the national mascot, and partly because the roads there are pretty bad and I didn’t want to swerve at night and possibly end up wrapped around a [native] tree [and then feel guilty for maiming/killing something native].

Anyway, Opossum World is this terrifically tacky tourist shop selling possum tails, possum pelts, 8-foot-tall emus made of possum pelts (everyone needs at least one), mini kiwis made of possum fur, possum-merino sweaters and scarves, and Daniel Boone-style possum hats. More importantly, they have interactive displays such as a band of possums sitting on top of half of a car that sing a static-y version of ‘On the Road Again’ when you push a red button on the wall, a walk-through ‘forest’ with trapped (stuffed) possums and buttons to hear native bird calls, and jars of preserved fetuses/possum kittens in various stages of development. It’s definitely the must-see attraction in town – and best of all, it’s free!

After finally exhausting the entertainment possibilities at Opossum World, we drove up to a look-out point with a great view, and eye-hurtingly bright flowers. We also tried to drive to the gannet farm, but found out half-way that four-wheel drive/all-terrain vehicles are preferable over lowered cars.

Back in Hastings, we stopped at a hunting and fishing store that looked like the only thing open in the area. Turns out they were just about to close (1 pm), as it was some sort of regional public holiday and they’d discovered they were the only store still open in the town, but they welcomed us in, asking if we each wanted a ‘beer’ (we politely declined, which was especially good as it turned out to be Jim Beam & Cola premixed. The two guys in the shop seemed like they may have been a few into the day already). Anyway, we were originally looking for some bait for saltwater fishing down at Lake Ferry (today’s destination), but they didn’t have what we wanted so I wandered over to the fly-fishing section and…45 minutes later, we left the shop having seen the owner’s most recent fly-fishing digital photo album in its entirety, gotten hand-drawn maps to recommended spots on nearby rivers, added 4 flies to our collection, and heard plenty of fish stories from our two hosts.

We stopped at one of the spots for a while, but the water seemed pretty rough and we certainly couldn’t see anything in it, so we just played around with casting practice for a little while and then picked up pizza for dinner halfway to our destination, Lake Ferry.

hawkes bay a&p

We made it to Hastings in time to visit the A&P show this afternoon – we thought we might do it tomorrow instead, but this’ll give us some extra time at the next destination, wherever that might be. Nobody seems to know what A&P stands for, though I think the A must be for agriculture.

Right inside the ticket gates, we caught the tail end of the sheep-herding trials. The border collies over here aren’t nearly as cute as Tucker, or, actually, nearly as cute as most of the ones in the States and the UK, based on the trials I’ve seen at home or on TV. They’re all really wiry and short-haired, maybe from mixing with another breed, or else they just all descended from a couple of wiry/short-haired border collies way back when, there’s a ton of within-breed variation. Anyway, they seemed to herd the sheep well, so that’s what matters here.

There were a ton of commercial exhibitors – AWD vehicle dealers, animal breeders, mobile vets, mobile butchers, as-seen-on-TV gadget peddlers, tractor salesmen, etc. We saw sheep-shearing demonstrations by an off-color Australian in the children’s section (and hoped the jokes were going right over the kids’ heads), wood-chopping competitions, winning fleece and alpaca wool, and champion poultry.

I’d seen in the paper that there would be miniature cattle there, and was very excited to see those – they were mini Highlands, furry things that stood maybe 2.5-3 feet at their shoulders, at most. I still have no idea what the purpose of miniature cattle could be, the brochure was no help in figuring that out and I thought it might be kind of rude to ask the breeder, but they seem even less useful than miniature horses, and I don’t think those guys have a purpose other than standing around looking cute.

My absolute favorite part of the whole thing was the petting zoo/kids animal exhibit section (no big surprise, right??). I learned by observation that ostriches are NOT to be petted (this could probably have been inferred by the completely enclosed cage without a ‘come on in’ or ‘pet me’ sign like all the other, but some people near us did not figure it out in time). There were ‘ginger fleeces’ from Iceland – oddly orangey-red lambs with cute little pink charm-collars (the fleece color was natural, but I’m pretty sure the collars weren’t). There were also several miniature horses and ponies, a super-furry donkey, goats and kids, ‘regular’ sheep, a pile of ducklings, and tons of colored chicks. One pen had a big sow and lots of piglets (too active to count), these were lots of fun. Half of the times I stuck my camera up to the fence to get an eye-level picture without having the chain-links visible I’d get a perfect little dirty snout-print on it from a curious piggie. The merino ram was also entertaining, though not overly friendly when we tried to hold it by its horns to search for its eyes, which were well-buried beneath all the wool. There were llamas and alpacas, and another favorite of mine – the Captain Cook pig and piglet. These guys were really furry, and had amusing facial expressions especially when something (a child’s hand stuck through the fence, for example) appeared to confuse them.

I have lots more A&P pictures that I don’t have room to post here, and will make a Picasa album with them at some point later on.

the longest wharf

We drove down the coast from Tokomaru Bay to Gisborne, stopping near Tolaga Bay on our way down. The longest wharf in New Zealand is in Tolaga Bay, and Jamie’s dad said he’d heard there’s good fishing there, so we bought a surfcasting rod when we got to Gisborne and made plans to head back up there for some night fishing.

Rather than messing with real bait without a refrigerator, we got a package of softbait and some flasher rigs. Softbait, realistically-shaped plastic bait infused with scent-chemicals, is supposed to outfish real bait in many circumstances, but we didn’t have that luck tonight. There were a bunch of other people fishing on the wharf, though, and no one else even got any bites – according to the locals, we later found out it’s a feast-or-famine spot there – so we didn’t feel too bad. Also, we can now say We Have Walked The Entire Length Of The Longest Wharf In New Zealand, which has to be good for something. It was reeeeaaally long; it’d be interesting to see it on Google Earth when I have a decent internet connection sometime. The sunset was gorgeous, too, and the cliffs on one side had a ton of caves, which looked pretty cool.

brian's place

When we were in Auckland on Saturday, we discovered that there’s an A&P show in Hawke’s Bay this Wednesday through Friday. Jamie’s wanted to go to one for a while, and I was disappointed I missed the Nelson one by a few days earlier this year, so we decided to try to make it to this one. Problem is, we’d planned to spend the holiday weekend on the East Coast, which is pretty far north of Hawke’s Bay. Also, everything gets booked early for the long weekend (Labour Day), so we might be sleeping in the car over the weekend, but we’re taking our chances.

The description of Brian’s Place, a BBH hostel in Tokomaru Bay, caught my eye on the internet – an eco-hostel with fishing, hunting, tramping, etc. overlooking the bay. We hoped they’d have room for us a few days early, and we were lucky. The place definitely has character, as does the owner, Brian. After buying the best fish and chips ever (a huge fillet of ocean-fresh groper and chips with garlic butter, heavy on the garlic) from a little decaying-cinderblock place right on the bay and eating them at the beach and then exploring an old wharf as a possible fishing spot later on, I took a nap for the rest of the afternoon while Jamie chatted with the owner. When I woke up, we hiked through some paddocks to the top of a big hill with a 360-degree view of the bay, farmland, mountains, etc. – and then I was completely exhausted again.

One drawback of the hostel was that it was in such a beautiful area and so laid back that a lot of people got ‘stuck’ there, including one couple with a very loud 1-year-old. It might not have been so loud if they had watched it sometimes, and, for example, not let it fall four to five feet off of the porch into a spiky plant, or if they had told it that tackling a half-blind and grumpy cat (with claws) is not a good idea. But they didn’t, so that is actually what’s motivating us to move along down the road tomorrow rather than staying for the two days we’d planned to stay.

rotorua

As we were leaving Rotorua and its wonderful rotten-eggs sulfur aroma, we stopped to fill up the car and I noticed this 98 octane biofuel pump. The price was a little higher than the 91 octane regular, but not out-of-whack compared to the usual higher-octane gas. Do we have biofuel pumps at normal gas stations in the States? I haven’t seen them yet, but I didn’t do a whole lot of driving when I was back, and none outside Virginia. Anyway, just thought that was pretty interesting.

Jamie and I spent an hour or so trout-spotting along one of the rivers in town, but didn’t have any luck, so we decided to keep the fly rods in the car for now and head on down the road. We realized our original road trip plans, which included the Far North and skiing on Ruapehu, were far too ambitious, so we’ll just mainly do the East Coast and lower North Island now.

We drove through Whakatane and Ohope today, nice coastal towns on the Bay of Plenty. I’m still fighting a bad sinus infection, so I’m not very good company and also not very motivated to suggest stops along the way…hope this goes away soon!! We stopped for lunch at a nice beach with White Island visible in the distance. A few kms down the road, a little white church glowed in the sun right on the coast – it’s been raining on and off and we caught it just as it stopped.

Lesson of the day: when you’re driving into the boondocks [Waihau Bay/Opotiki is a good example], it’s helpful to go grocery shopping beforehand. Also, just because a camp has a communal kitchen doesn’t mean it has pots, pans, dishes or utensils. Fortunately I had some Trader Joe’s mac n’ cheese and a can of tuna from home, so we made that with water and oil instead of milk and butter, and it actually turned out pretty well. We cooked it in a little pot and frying pan from my mess kit – also useful – and ate it with my new titanium backpacking utensils (yay! I love them) and Air New Zealand plastic ones.

kelly tarlton's

I spent three hours in Auckland’s sewer system today. Ok, so it’s been repurposed – the former municipal waste management facility is now home to Kelly Tarlton’s Antarctic Experience and Underwater Encounter.

Highlights of the day included a Snowcat ride through the penguin breeding facility, watching the 6’-wide stingrays being fed, walking through life-size reconstructed Antartic explorers’ huts (with mostly authentic items rather than reproductions) and salivating over a tank full of gigantic crayfish (rock lobster). Sunglasses shown for scale.

After Kelly Tarlton’s, we drove down to Rotorua for the day. I’m feeling worse than yesterday, so I wasn’t up for the dusk fly-fishing that the campground manager recommended (he and his buddy landed 4 trout between them in under an hour last night. supposedly) and I crashed soon after dinner.

wgn to akl

Number one on my list of Things You Should Definitely Not Take On A Roadtrip: a sinus infection. Thanks in part to the airline ventilation system, though, I think I’m coming down with one. Based on approximately 54 historical data points (one in spring, one in fall, every year. yaaay.), it should last about 2 weeks, or through the end of the road trip and on into the beginning of the Australian adventure. Sigh.

Anyway, we left Wellington at 5:10 this morning to miss weekend traffic. As planned, I set my alarm for 5 am, and slept in my clothes so I’d just have to brush my teeth, put in my contacts, and grab the overnight bag and food from the kitchen on my way out the door – everything else went in Jamie’s car last night. Unfortunately, though, I was in a bit of a fog yesterday from lack of sleep, jetlag, and killer allergies, so I forgot I’d been subtracting an hour off the time shown on my phone/alarm clock to account for daylight savings time. I did not change the clock or account for this when setting my alarm. I was ‘lucky,’ though – one of my five roommates was not feeling well from her bar adventures, and was making lots of noise fumbling for her water bottle in the early hours, and 4 am (by my phone-clock) was the last of several times I woke up. I suddenly realized 4 am might really be 5 am, and sent Jamie a sheepish text asking what time it really was and apologizing if it was actually 4 am and he was still trying to sleep. I got the reply back saying it was 5 am, and (foolishly) there wasn’t anything in there about ‘…and you’re an idiot, I’m reconsidering this road trip idea,’ so I headed downstairs to meet him.

The drive was pretty uneventful – about 8 hours to the Onehunga outlet mall outside Auckland, including a couple of stops. We drove up the middle – the Great Desert road by Mount Ruapehu etc. is an intriguing contrast to the lush green farmlands north and south – and saw a bunch of nice rainbows along the way. Rainbows are nearly as common as sheep here, but they haven’t lost their charm for me. Oh – and neither have little lambs, I’d almost forgotten how absolutely adorable they are. Sheep = kind of ugly, though. At least close up.

Outlet shopping was semi-successful: I did not find the right kind of Canterbury polo shirt I am hunting down for Charles, but I did find things for me. Oops. I need to remember I am backpacking, and already carrying at least one too many backpacks.

wellington

I'm in Wellington! It took me about 33 hours door-to-door, so I was very excited to get here...but then my hostel room wasn't ready so I had to wait 4 more hours to shower and change. I got about 3 hours of sleep on my LA-Auckland flight...AirNZ had an excellent movie/tv selection this time around so that kept me up longer than intended! Now I'm fighting to stay awake til evening so I can get onto schedule for the new time zone (17 hours ahead of EST).

I missed my first Auckland - Wellington flight because the LA-Auckland one was delayed, and nearly missed the second one for the same reason, despite putting in good effort on the Auckland International Airport 1K Run between the domestic and international terminals...with my three backpacks in tow. Fortunately they have free+numerous luggage carts, but they kept sliding off. Before that, when I was waiting at the baggage claim to pick up my stuff to go through customs/biosecurity, the cute little yellow-vested beagle-bloodhound biosecurity dog singled out my carryon bag because of the fruit I'd had in it on the plane, and the ensuing hand-inspection of ALL of my luggage even before I got to the checkpoint (where they repeated the process) contributed to the near-miss...

The Wellington flight, like the one before it, was pretty turbulent but fortunately the famed Wellington fog didn't prevent our landing as it so often does. After dropping my stuff off in the hostel's storage room, I headed to the grocery store to get stuff for the N Island road trip (begins very early tomorrow morning!) and then met Martha at Rahzoo for lunch - they have a great 3- or 4-salad combination plate.

I have to say I absolutely love Wellington's 'walkability,' and today's activities made me realize how much I missed the built-in exercise I got when living/working here - 6K/day (with hills!) at the very least.

I'm at the downtown YHA, a gorgeous eco-conscious hotel-like high-rise hostel that I stayed at after my lease was up here last July. Next up for today: a trip to the library for fun-books and Fly-Fishing for Dummies, a visit to Kathmandu [camping/outdoor goods store], meeting Jamie to finish any pre-roadtrip preparation, then early to bed!

...and i'm off again!

Tomorrow morning at 9 am is the start of my next adventure - the first leg is Baltimore to LA via Detroit. After that, it's LA-Auckland-Wellington, then a 12-day break from airports (N Island road trip!). Then finally Wellington-Auckland-Brisbane...and that's where my ticket ends. Yes, I do have a one-way ticket to Australia...but I'll be back by Thanksgiving '09, I made a promise :)

I finished packing in the early afternoon today, and then proceeded to spend the rest of the day adding mostly-unnecessary items to my backpack. In fact, one whole backpack is unnecessary, but I decided to make full use of my 2-free-50-lb-checked-bags allowance, so I'm even bringing non-perishable food just to get my money's worth (it's cheaper here, plus they don't have Trader Joe's down under...one day, I hope to fix that). I just weighed my big bag, though, and it's only 31 lbs, so...hmm....what else could I add? bricks? a dive weight belt? It's probably a good thing that I don't know the Baltimore-area shopping scene.

Anyway, I have enough clothes in the blue bag to last me a good 2 weeks or so without a laundry stop (not a goal, but could be useful at some point) - it's easy packing for just warm weather! My electronics get their own bag - laptop, camera, every kind of back-up storage you can think of, etc. I'd be such a light traveler without them! It's worth it, though.

I guess I should change the name of the blog to something a little more Australia-centric. Any suggestions?

the story

I'll be back-posting stuff from Jan/Feb and Apr-Jul in the second half of July...yes, very much after-the-fact so people might not care about it anymore, but I've got pictures and stories I want to put up before I forget them, and I've just been too busy living it all to record it!

one week

One week from this moment, I'll be somewhere over the Pacific en route to Los Angeles. I'm really excited to see everyone stateside, but I'm so sad to be leaving NZ, and am comforting myself with the knowledge I'll be back in the general area in a few months.

I'll miss Wellington - being able to walk everywhere, the amazing view of the harbour from my window, the arts/entertainment vibe, the forested hills surrounding the city, seeing black-coated masses of businesspeople and bureaucrats streaming down Lambton Quay in the morning/at lunch hour/in the evening and dodging my way through, the cozy cafes, pubs with fireplaces, the 146 different restaurants, and the way the wind whipping past my room at night sounds like waves crashing on a shore.

I'll miss the land - snow-capped Southern mountains, countless Northern islands, the brilliant blue water everywhere, how the angle of the light makes everything 'pop' during the day and creates technicolour sunrises and sunsets, cliffs and beaches and alpine desert and rainforest and extinct volcanoes and ripply hills and green-green pasture.

I'll miss the people - the three families who adopted me over the year and in whose houses I'll always feel at home, the travellers I've met from all corners of the globe, the Kiwis who've bent over backwards to give me the best possible impression of their part of the country, and the friendly and helpful strangers I've relied on every day.

I'll miss rugby madness, Indian takeaways on every corner and my hunt for the perfect butter chicken, flattened vowels, waiting for the inevitable 'so what do you think of New Zealand?' enquiry from every Kiwi I meet, feijoas/persimmons/kiwi/avocado/tamarillos at the Sunday markets, kumara, Whittaker's chocolate, little lambs in fields, an outdoors store (or three) on every corner, superfine merino, Maori-English translations, Black Adder tea, the silver fern emblem, and the nationwide enthusiasm for EFTPOS.

I'll miss Aotearoa New Zealand.

harbour capital 10k

I was dangerously close to skipping the 10k this morning...hit the snooze button 4-5 times, then finally decided I'd be really mad at myself if I missed it, and dragged myself out of bed for a quick hot shower to warm up and clear my head - allergies have been messing with me lately.

The race started at Westpac Stadium so I walked the ~3.5km down there, stopping at New World for some vitamin water on the way. It was drizzling and cold, and I had to keep reminding myself how good I always feel after a run. Thought I might be late, but fortunately spotted some others in the white and blue race tees, and figured as long as I wasn't too far behind them I'd be okay! I was in a bit of a rush with getting to bag storage and everything, but still made it. The full-on rain started and ended at the same time as the race, of course! Actually, I didn't really mind it - once you're wet, you're wet, so might as well have some puddles to jump in along the way.

I'd decided that, based on how I was feeling, I'd be happy just crossing the finish line having run jogged) the whole way...once I got going, though, I found someone with a good pace to follow, and was feeling pretty good at the turnaround point past Oriental Bay. The course ran along the water the whole way, which was a new experience for me - windy, but gorgeous! I was amused by the giant flouro 'CAUTION: ATHLETES' signs along the way.

On the way back, my pace-setter decided to walk, so I had to pick someone else, and ended up with a negative split - yay! I don't usually manage to do that. Still, didn't run it very hard. Around 8km or so, I saw Toby waving and taking pictures - unfortunately I ended up behind a pole in both of them! I finished strong, and was happy with the race goodie bag - the nice big dry towel was perfect for the weather, and I immediately ate the big Whittaker's Peanut Block (Wellington-made chocolate...the toasted coconut one's the best, but peanut's pretty good too!), had an apple and banana, and was still hungry enough to get a Baby Mac and a chicken snack wrap at the McDonald's by my house! I guess after 10km of running and 7km walking there and back I deserved it though :)

I warmed up with a long hot shower (sorry - I know there's an energy conservation push on at the moment, but all the rain today had to have done something for the hydrolake levels!), handed my old cell phone over to the TradeMe auction winner, showed my car to a potential buyer, and then parked in front of the TV for a few hours. Toby came over in the afternoon - he's been camping in his car in the Te Papa parking lot for the past few days and I know that can get old after a while!

Tomorrow's my first day at the Office of Treaty Settlements, over by Parliament. Since I haven't exactly been frequenting Courtnay Place (party central, just a few blocks from my apartment), it probably would have been a good idea to get a flat on the other side of town where all my work assignments have been...just have to remember walking is good :)

all blacks v. england

What a lazy Saturday...got up around 10 am, but didn't manage to leave my room until around noon. I need to do some gift shopping before I head home, and wanted to go to the mall in Petone since it's got the only Canterbury store in town.

I got there in a roundabout way - but I did get there! - and managed to exercise a considerable amount of self-restraint, not adding a single Canterbury item to my already ridiculously large collection. I did eventually find a shirt for Charles, but no luck on the other items on my list...didn't realize that a lot of the stuff I'd wanted to take back is so regional. I also picked up a merino sweater I'd been eyeing for a while...not Icebreaker (on my 'if-i-still-had-a-real-job' wishlist), but still nicer than most we'd get in the States, and less than half the price!

A potato curry & naan dinner was too appealing to pass up, especially with the hills-and-harbour view from the food court, and then I headed back to the city. Toby, one of the instructors from the sailing school in Opua, had texted me earlier in the week to let me know he'd be in town Friday - Monday, so we made plans to meet in town for the rugby match. His friend Tom, also from Opua but living in Taupo now, met us at Te Papa and we headed to a sports bar to watch the game. The All Blacks won 44-12, although there was still grumbling from the NZ side about the quality of the game, and captain Richie McCaw is out for 6+ weeks with an ankle injury sustained early in the second half.

I just barely escaped from going clubbing afterwards - the boys were very convincing, but I've got the race tomorrow and I'm determined to do it especially as the entry fee was somewhat outrageous!

last day at tpk

Today was the final day of my 3-week assignment at TPK - invoice processing isn't exactly thrilling, but I'll miss the crowd here. Val insisted I take it easy as it was a Friday and my last day, so I took the entire day entering one batch (should take 1 hr or so) and stuffing envelopes with remits and EFT payment advices.

Val, Manu, James and I got several games of table tennis in throughout the day - I'm warming up a bit. At lunch, I walked to the Town Hall to pick up my race packet for the 10K on Sunday. I was interested to see the Heart Association had set up camp there with their This Is How Much Fat Is In Your Fish N' Chips, Butter Chicken And Thickshakes display complete with stomach-turningly realistic fat blobs. I have to question their targeted audience, though - especially since the main event was a marathon/half-marathon, not 'just' a 10K. Haven't seen too many marathon runners who look like they live off deep-fried food!

In the afternoon, the Supply Services group (finance, IT, etc.) had their monthly meeting, which opened with a kapa haka performance - singing, guitar, dancing and poi. Audience participation was 'highly encouraged' [mandatory] for one of the performance, which might have been ok if we had actually been able to see the person leading the dance moves. I wasn't complaining, though - I knew afterwards we'd have hangi, which I'd been looking forward to all week since having some at the museum last Saturday! Val and I even headed out to the $2 store in the afternoon, on Manu's advice, to get some take-away containers for the leftovers we were told would definitely be there.

After the hangi, a bunch of us from finance stuck around for table tennis and other games, then I headed to a pub with some of the guys from the team. I could tell the pub employees were anxious to close, though, and I know from Sullivan's that that's the worst ever when you're trying to close and you can't get people to leave, so I convinced a couple of the guys to leave with me though some of the group insisted on staying. We ended up playing pool down at a bar on Courtnay Place for an hour or so, then I went home to rest up for the race.

all blacks v. ireland

Ann arrived from Nelson this afternoon, after a whirlwind room-cleaning session on my part, for my first visitor to the flat! I'm very excited to finally be able to partially pay back Ann's hospitality, since I stayed at the place she shared with Lex countless times, and her new flat just last Friday.

It was apparently decided for me that I'd be supporting Ireland in the match, so Ann brought me a green, orange and white hat from the nursery where she works and she had a matching one. Phone tag with Rosh and Isaac started early in the day, but we didn't manage to catch up with them before, during or after the game despite many attempts.

Ann and I shared a bottle of Lindauer Fraise before the game, for old times' sake, and I'm glad we did - helped us stay warm(ish) in the cold rain! The rain started on our walk to the stadium, and continued throughout the game so we 'borrowed' some seats in the covered section - lots of other people had the same idea, very few people were sitting in our section, just a couple rows from the field and completely unprotected from the weather. Ann (from Cork) made some Irish friends in the seats next to us, so we ended up with flags painted on our faces as well.

The All Blacks won pretty easily, and Ann lost her voice from shouting at them. We stopped at McDonald's on the way home, and I discovered I get a Flatmate Discount there - woohoo! At my flat, we changed, attempted to re-straighten our hair, and headed out to the Welsh Dragon Bar. Ann was right about the Irish fans - they take the losses well, and were out in full force all having a good time, whereas Kiwis tend to sulk for a week or so (or 4 years, in the case of the Rugby World Cup) over losses. We made it until nearly 5:30 in the morning, heading to Kitty O'Shea's after the Welsh bar - not quite as impressive as some of the Christchurch return times, but still something! I randomly ran into 3-4 people tonight that I recognized from working at the pub there - lots of people in town just for the rugby.

hi there

As you can see, I'm finally starting to make a teeny tiny bit of progress on catching up. While you're waiting for more, here's my January photo album: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/lotuselise99/January

Current location: Opua, Bay of Islands. Working at a sailing school/yacht charter place. Feeling the season change to fall, especially at night :( Gorgeous location, but getting a bit lonely as it dies down for the season - moving on in a week or so.

opua

I drove back to Whangarei this morning to do a little more shopping since I’ll be far from any large towns at the sailing school in Opua. I picked up some more oil for the car (had to use some to top it up, so will need more for the oil change), a snorkel since mine broke in Rarotonga, and a Sesame Street tshirt from Farmer’s, just because.

I drove up to Opua, and met up with the Dunns at the office. Cindy was headed in to town (Paihia) to do some shopping, so I rode along with her to catch up and discuss my ‘terms of employment,’ which are fairly loose.

I'm living in a caravan again, just like at the Pujjis, except this one doesn't have power, unfortunately. At least it's got a bed, though - so far in 2008 I've slept in a bed for a total of less than one week!

found it!

I sort of woke up this morning when Ann was leaving, then fell back asleep until a more reasonable hour. I got in a couple of hours of electrical outlet use before check-out time, then began driving back up toward the Bay of Islands. I stopped at the Canterbury store in Whangarei and picked up some shorts, board shorts and a nice big navy tote/gym back that looks like it’ll be useful for sailing. I also stopped by AA and got some maps I was missing, including one for Northland, and decided to try to find the campsite near Tutukaka that Ann and I couldn’t find the other day.

I drove all the way back down the gravel road we took on Sunday night, following the DOC directions to the letter, and again found myself stopping the car suddenly as the road disappeared into the water. I turned around, pulled over, and got out the map, looking for the name of road the campsite was on – the final piece of the DOC directions, which we never managed to reach since we hit a dead end first. I found the road on the map, then realized that if the final road name was right, all of the other directions leading up to it were completely wrong. Hoping that the road name was at least correct, I picked out a route on the map and drove there – and finally found the elusive campsite, nearly 30km from where the directions landed us!

At the site, I did some final reorganization of the car, and pulled out the stuff to do an oil change…then discovered that the ‘all-in-one; adjustable pipe wrench I bought for the filter and drain plug was too ‘strong’ for the drain plug – the plug was frozen, so the ridges in the wrench were starting to strip the nut on the outside of the plug…so the plan was aborted once again. I know they’ll have a lot of tools at the boatyard, though, so I’ll just do it there. Next project was reading about fly fishing and trying to set up my new rod. I made it through one book, but unfortunately it was just tips and not instruction, so didn’t get the rod set up yet.

After dinner, I sorted through some pictures on the computer, read for a bit, then went to sleep.

pakiri beach horse trek & kauris

Guess what we did on our way to the horse trek? That’s right, we got lost! Yeah, we’re kind of used to that by now. So anyway, we got there half an hour late. We had a great time on the trek - just two minutes into it, our horses swam across a river, then we headed to the beach, and went for a leisurely ride along the surf. On the way back, we wound through the dunes, and Ann and I and one other woman went with one of the guides to do some cantering and galloping, while the rest kept to a slower pace on a shorter trail, and we met back up near the end.

Ann’s mother called us last night when we were on our way to Whangarei and she was at the Auckland airport ready to fly back home, and recommended the Kauri Museum in Matakohe, so we backtracked an hour or so to visit it this afternoon. The museum was really impressive, with very interesting exhibits including a full-scale model of a Kauri sawmill. We got a little overloaded halfway through, and decided to leave, but couldn’t because we kept stopping to look at interesting stuff along the way! The Kauri trees were amazingly large, and the amber room, full of petrified Kauri gum, was equally astounding – there were even pieces with whole geckos and frogs preserved in them!

We picked up a quick dinner on our way to the hostel, then unpacked the entire car into the living room of the 2-bedroom suite…and, of course, the woman staying in the other bedroom arrived at the peak of the mess! We did manage to sort out everything that belonged to Ann, and even managed to get everything of mine to fit back in the car. I burned some photo and music CDs for Ann, and then we went to sleep early-ish so Ann could get a couple of hours in before her 5:15 airport shuttle.

great escape

Ann was signed up for another day of diving, but at a cost of $110/dive compared to the $25 I was used to in Utila (Bay Islands, Honduras), I decided to just do one day! Ann had to get up early again for the dive, so I did laundry and took down the tent before heading up to the Bay of Islands to research sailing schools – I want to do a week-long course up there before heading down to Wellington to work for the rest of my time here.

I wasn’t really sure where to start my search, so I just drove in the direction of the islands, stopping along the way in Kawakawa to visit the Hundertwasser Toilets, the ‘most famous public toilets in the world’ – they were designed by an eccentric architect by the name of Hundertwasser, and are a colorful mosaic of glass and tiles.

Next stop was Paihia, where I stopped in at the info center and picked up some sailing brochures before heading to an internet café to do some more research online. I wanted to do a course with internationally recognized certification, so was originally looking at the RYA ones, but at $1500+ per week decided maybe NZ certification would be enough. I took down some phone numbers from my google search, noting with some disappointment that Nelson had the cheapest courses, and started calling around. I didn’t get an answer from the first couple places, and decided to stop by one in nearby Opua to figure out what all the brochure rhetoric meant.

The road to Opua has a unique layout, with the far left lane reserved for vehicles going on the ferry across to nearby Russell. The ferry is off to the right, though, so when you want to keep going straight past the ferry, the ferry cars cut across your lane to board – without any road signs explaining right of way. The ferry cars seem to think they have it even though it goes against all road rules or common sense, but I wasn’t about to argue, so I waited until they’d all boarded to drive up Richardson Street, following the bright yellow AA signs pointing to ‘Yacht Charters.’ At the boatyard, I followed some more signs to Great Escape Yacht Charters and Sailing Schools, reached the office, and found no one home. I walked back up through the boat yard to where I’d seen someone working, and was met by Terry, one of the owners, and Toby, a 19-year old German working for the company. Terry came back down to the office with me and went through the various courses, but told me that I needed to have another person to sign up with. I couldn’t think of anyone who would want to do it and who’d be able to (Ann leaves in under two days), and told Terry, so after we’d talked for a bit he asked if I might like to work there for a month to fill in for Toby, who’d be delivering a boat to Tonga, and whenever someone called up to do a course on their own, I could do it with them. I’d also get to sail for free whenever work was light.

I was hesitant at first because I’d been planning to go straight to Wellington to work after a week of sailing when Ann left, and had been budgeting accordingly, but then remembered that most of the really cool stuff I’ve done here has been stuff that I haven’t planned, just opportunities I’ve decided to take at the spur of the moment. Soo…I decided to take the leap. I know I won’t make nearly as much money, and it’ll be a lot tougher to get a flat and a job when I’ll only have 2.5 months left on my work visa, but I think I’d regret it if I didn’t take this chance. Terry introduced me to his wife Cindy – they just live across the road from the boatyard, in a house on a steep hill surrounded by native vegetation.

I drove back to Tutukaka in a bit of a daze from the unexpected turn of events, stopping along the way to check out a couple of horse trekking places to find one for tomorrow. I picked Ann up from the dive center, and we booked a horse trek near Pakiri Beach, and a room at a hostel right by the Auckland airport for tomorrow night, as Ann has a 7am flight! We stopped for an Indian dinner in Whangarei, then set up camp at the very easy-to-find Uretiti Recreational Reserve near Waipu, a 500-site DOC campground which, fortunately, was nowhere near full capacity.

dive! tutukaka

One of the favorable side effects of sleeping in a car (there aren’t many…) is you’re already awake to see the sunrise. Upon waking (for the third or fourth time) we discovered that our ‘campsite’ was a gorgeous section of surf beach, under a pastel sky.

The dive trip had an 8 o’clock start, so we headed in the direction of the Dive! Tutukaka dive center when we woke up, with Ann quizzing me on dive theory on the way since it had been two years I dove, in Honduras. We had a nice ~1 hour trip out to the Poor Knights Islands from the Tutukaka Coast, then jumped in the ‘warm’ water which didn’t quite compare to what I was used to from the Caribbean or what Ann was used to from the Red Sea! We had two nice dives, with lunch and hot soup in between. We saw tons of morays, some stingrays, toadfish, colorful nudibranchs, and lots of wrasses and angelfish. My favorite part of the dives was when we went up inside an underwater cave on our second one, and poked our heads up into a 2m-wide air bubble – and took out our regulators, breathing without assistance 8m below the surface of the water!! The air was kind of stagnant, so we only took a breath or two, but it was still a cool experience.

On our way back, the guide took the boat into the largest sea cave in the world, and one of the instructors jumped out with a snorkel and underwater camera to take pictures of some sharks poachers had killed and ditched in the cave, so they could be reported to DOC.

After the dive, we checked into a holiday park, showered and changed, and Ann took me out to a really nice dinner at a restaurant on the harbor near the dive center.

lazy sunday

The campground kicked everybody out at 10 am, so we didn’t get to sleep in, but we did everything else possible to make it a lazy Sunday – no rising from the sleep early this Easter! After packing up camp, we drove Lex and Ann’s stuff into town while the rest of us walked, and we stopped at the i-site so they could find a hostel to check into. I called Mom and Dad to say hi and get my PADI number to dive tomorrow, and Ann did some research for a dive center.

We booked a day-long drive trip to the Poor Knights from a dive center in Tutukaka, and after picking out a campground in the DOC book decided based on the distance that we had some time to spare to hang out with Lex and Ann back at their hostel. We went back there, hoping we might be able to sneak in a shower too, but the hostel manager was diligent and I didn’t manage to get one. We called Sabrina - so hard to believe it’s been just over 2 months since she left! I learned the hard way that the $2/hour mobile phone rates for calls to the US turns to $1.35/minute after your first hour is up…and I’d just topped up my phone, so the damage wasn’t cut off by my usually-low balance! Oh well, good to catch up.

Tonight, our frustration with DOC’s N Island campsite directions reached new levels. We drove 28km down a windy, unpaved road to try to find Otamure Bay near Whananaki South, but ended up only finding a flooded coastline as the unpaved road ended unceremoniously and without any warning road signs.

Exhausted from driving through the pouring rain on tough roads, we backtracked and were thinking of just parking outside the dive center when we found a nice beachside pull-off with a few other campers. No spot for a tent, but no matter – we were tired enough to just put on a few extra layers for warmth, lean the seats back, and fall asleep right in the car.

bluesfest nz

The concert didn’t start until 1 pm, so we had time for a leisurely stroll into town to get more camp stove butane cylinders, some food for a bbq, and an adjustable wrench to serve double duty for removing the drain plug and oil filter on the car.

We cooked up yummy hamburgers and veggie patties around noon, then headed over to the concert venue…but it was horribly hot! We came back after less than 2 hours to sit in the shade of our tent, which was close enough to still hear the artists. After the sun went down a bit, we went back to the main concert area to listen to more acts. Highlights of the day were KT Tunstall and Xavier Rudd, both amazing performances.

We were happy not to have to set up camp tonight, one of the few nights we haven’t! Of course, in exchange for that we had the fact we were camping in a paddock that, judging by what was left behind, had cows in it very, very recently, but that’s just part of the fun.

Photos: Xavier Rudd. Ann and Ann at the main stage.

coromandel

Today began with a wonderful bacon, egg and homemade hashbrowns breakfast, then we unpacked the car to reorganize it. I attempted an oil change, but didn’t have a decent wrench for the drainplug, so decided the car would be better off running a bit longer on the old oil than having me rig up something dangerous to get the drainplug out.

We took a little longer organizing the car than we’d realized, and ended up rushing to get to the dive center…we’ve been doing that a lot lately! Just before the appointed time of 1 pm, we arrived at the dive center in Hahei and I plugged my phone in there (so we could get messages from Ann and Lex, who were meeting us to camp at Bluesfest tonight) and went to get ice and some groceries for the weekend.

After the Wildfoods free-for-all campsite scramble, I thought it might be a good idea to drive up to Whitianga to see if I could set up the tent right when the gates opened, and then head back to pick Ann up, so I drove up there – about 45 minutes away. The drive was gorgeous, with views of the blue, blue water at the base of the cliffs along the way. When I got to Whitianga, the signs for the concert and camping were hand-lettered and few and far between – great, looks well-organized! - and I drove around for a while with the concert site frustrating visible but unapproachable without driving straight across the airport landing strip or, as I eventually determined, winding through an industrial park. The guy at the gate said I couldn’t take my car in and out, though, and since it would have been a 6-7 hour walk for Ann, I drove back down to Hahei without setting up camp, but it wasn’t a bad way to spend the afternoon, and at least I knew where the place was.

I got some text from Ann and Lex saying they couldn’t get a bus to the Coromandel until tomorrow, so after I picked up Ann we brainstormed alternative solutions – we could pick them up halfway from Hamilton or Thames, etc. – but all buses anywhere seemed to be booked since it was Easter weekend, so fortunately they were able to convince a driver to take them to Whitianga.

Ann and I set up camp, made some dinner, and waited for Ann and Lex, who unfortunately got dropped off in the center of town and had to walk several kms with their backpacks…so I went to meet them at the entrance to the campground with some ice-cold beer! We caught up for a bit – always great to see them – and then went to sleep to get ready for the big concert tomorrow.

rap, rock n' raft

We got an early start this morning to drive to the caving place at Waitomo. The group was pretty small – just four other people plus the guide. I’d been to Waitomo (“water holes” in Maori) in November, but just did a ‘dry’ option. Not so this time – first stop was at a shed to put on wetsuits, pants to protect the wetsuit, a climbing harness, and helmets with headlamps.

We drove on to the cave, piled out, and hiked down to it. The landscape around the caves is pretty amazing, lots of stacked rounded rocks that look almost like the ruins of old stone buildings, and large green depressions in the ground where more tomos might form many years down the road. Our guide, Stew, taught us rappelling (‘abseiling’ in NZ) techniques on land before we stepped off a ledge to rappel 27m into the mouth of the cave. Once in the cave, we walked around for a bit and saw the glowworms, eels and wetas. Wetas are basically crickets on steroids and can grow to be nearly a foot long if you include their legs in the measurement. They’re what the digital media studio that did the Lord of the Rings trilogy is named after, too. Once we’d done some walking and wading, we picked up inner tubes and floated down the fairly sedate underground river. There’s a drought at the moment, so there weren’t really any rapids, but if I get a chance to come back in the winter I can go again for free to experience the higher waters. We jumped off some rocks, squeezed through some very small holes, slid down muddy rockslides, and then went back to our starting point to rock climb the 27m we’d abseiled on the way down.

After a full day in the cave, some warm soup was in order back at the office, and then we went on our way driving up north-east in the direction of Hahei for diving tomorrow. Ann arranged a dive – I’m saving up for the Poor Knights Islands – and we picked up supplies for an oil change since all the mechanics around were booked solid for the holiday weekend and surrounding days, and we’ve got a lot of driving to do in the next couple days.

Our drive up to the Coromandel Forest was nice, with a stop in Hamilton to get food for the next couple of days, and we found our campsite at Wentworth, an old gold mining settlement, without any drama.

free-fallin'

As we were driving over to Taupo from Rotorua, we were anxiously watching the fog which really didn’t seem to be lifting. We called the skydive place, and they said the fog would burn off and we should still be on, so we went there, signed our lives away, and sat anxiously waiting for our jump. We were joined by about ten other jumpers, and went in and watched a video and got instructions…and then were told the fog hadn’t burned off, and we should come back in an hour and a half.

So, we drove around for a bit, visited the Huka Prawn Park - the world's only geothermally heated shrimp farm, a honey store with tastings, and my favorite - camping/outdoor stores. We called the skydive place at the appointed time, found out we'd be pushed back again, and decided to find some lunch. Thai looked good, so we ordered...and then realized it probably wasn't the best option, a bit spicy and heavy for a small plane ride. Oh well, too late, it tasted good anyway.

When we got back to the skydive place we had to wait around for a bit, drank some tea, decided that was a bad idea, then got suited up and paired with our instructors. My tandem instructor was 'Big M' - Mauritio, a 6'4" Brazilian guy, and Ann had Steve, an American who works as an instructor in Chicago in the NZ off-season. After some cheesy photos, we boarded the little pink plane and then I started to wonder what I had gotten myself into.

Ann convinced me we wanted to do the 15,000ft jump for a longer freefall, so we were shoved in the very back - all eight of us on the plane fit in like puzzle pieces! I was first one in, so last one out. Since we were doing the higher jump, we watched the other two pairs go at 12,000 before climbing 3,000 more feet - with oxgen tubes shoved up our noses. Sexy. So there we are at 15,000...me repeating the instructions over and over in my head ('be the banana' - keep your head up and back, and tuck your legs back, and DO NOT EVER obstruct the instructor's hands. ok, think i got it), and looked at how tiny everything looks on the ground. Then the door slid open, the light went green and Ann was out.

Half a minute later, my turn. It's cold up that high! I moved to the edge of the seat, then somehow I was out of the plane, tumbling, flipping - wait, flipping? I don't remember that being part of the briefing - and falling, falling. Then the chute opened, and we slowed, and made lazy circles in the sky. Lake Taupo was blue and beautiful beneath us, and the ride was actually relaxing now that the chute was open and, as far as I could tell, functioning well. I was amazed how well the guys are able to steer - we all landed right by the photographer at the jump building, with perfect form - I'd been focusing on that for a while, pulling my legs up long before I had to, remembering the two people I know who've broken legs/vertebrae on landing! Everything was smooth, though, and Ann and I barely had time to pose for one quick photo in our jump gear before being whisked away to get the next set of jumpers ready. By the time Ann and I paid, our instructors were back on the ground after another jump!

Unfortunately, things didn't go so smoothly with the camping part of the day. Tired after the day's activities and drive, we searched for an hour for the Piropiro DOC campsite in Pureora Forest Park , seeing signs for it but never finding it even after we drove to the very end of the road. We were tempted to just pull over next to a paddock, but finally decided to backtrack to Ngaherenga, another DOC campsite 40km away (all hostels and holiday parks were closed for the night) but still in the same forest park, pulled in, set up camp, made a quick pasta dinner, and went to bed so we can get up early tomorrow for 'Rap, Rock and Raft' - a day-long cave adventure with black-water (underground) tubing, rappeling, rock climbing and caving in Waitomo.

in hot water

We drove up to Rotorua today, swapping our plans for Taupo until tomorrow since I don’t want to be feeling any less than 100% for our skydive. Ann did a water Zorb, and then we headed down to a holiday park with thermal pools early in the evening.

The thermal pools, of course, didn’t look quite as impressive as the brochure made them out to be, but we still had a relaxing several hours of reading in the pools after we set up camp and made dinner. The pools are drained every night and fill from the streams, which are ridiculously hot – you don’t want to get too close to the inlet!

We booked our skydives this afternoon – tomorrow morning at ten-thirty is the big event! Hope the weather holds up – I know someone who’s been up in the plane two separate days and still hasn’t gotten to jump!

ab workout

I woke up feeling a little off this morning. As we were de-constructing camp, this turned into a bit more than just a little discomfort, and I found myself lying down on the ground in between pulling up tent pegs, in order to get up the energy to pull the next. I couldn’t think of any reason why I’d be feeling so bad, though, so I decided it must be in my head, and just forged on – very slowly still, though. We decided it might be a good idea if Ann drove, and I meditated in the front seat, hugging my pillow for comfort.

About halfway through town, I decided it might be a good idea to have a bag handy, just in case, and emptied out our perfectly-sized map bag for the purpose. Just thought it would be a good comfort thing to have it out, didn’t think I’d use it. Oh, but I did! And here’s an important lesson I learned: carry-holes are not a good feature on barf bags, because if you’re feeling too sick to notice they’re there, bad things happen. Fortunately, I hadn’t had much to eat. So we stopped to get some water and ginger ale for me, and drove on.

I was feeling fabulous after getting whatever bad stuff it was out of my system, and this lasted for a good 45 seconds or so, during which I decided I was 100% okay again and loving life. Then it hit me again, and I went back to being silent passenger, afraid of what might come out if I opened my mouth at all. I significantly decreased our Useful Empty Grocery Bag Supply on the way down, and decided a nap in Ann’s mother’s hotel room might be the best course of action while the rest of them went to a long lunch. Our plan was to head back up north toward Taupo, camp tonight and skydive tomorrow, but Ann’s mother became my personal hero for the day at least when she treated Ann and I to a room next door. Ann and her mom went out to get groceries for dinner while I took a long hot bath (this was during one of my cold phases, which alternated with the sweaty feverish ones, at unpredictable intervals of course, just to make things more interesting).

Sometime in the early evening, after staring at the Saltines Ann and her mom had gotten for me, I decided to exert the tremendous amount of effort required to pick one up and consider eating it. Five or so minutes later, I had polished off the entire cracker, and things just got better from there. I even had a little bit of beef stroganoff!

womad

Today began with a nice big breakfast, then we backtracked a bit to the town of Otaki, shopped for a bit and had a nice salad-y lunch. We got a message from Ann’s mother, who’s been in the country for a week and a half or so but keeps hitting place a day or two after us, saying she’s headed to Whanganui for a few days. We had tickets to the last night of WOMAD (World of Music, Art and Dance), a festival in New Plymouth, so we had to drive past Whanganui today but we made plans to come back down tomorrow to meet up with Ann’s mom and her husband.

We arrived in New Plymouth around 5:30 and decided to get set up camp and get some dinner before the festival – we weren’t thinking about the fact they’d have great international food there! At the festival, we sent a text to the Pujjis to try to meet up with them, but didn’t realize there were six different stages so wasted a bit of time standing around looking confused at what we thought was the main stage while they were off at another. We found Arvind and Jane after a nice wander around the vendor section, where Ann finished up her Christmas shopping, and took their advice on which shows to see. Our favorite by far was a male modern Polynesian dance troupe – they were phenomenal. Oh, and they also happened to be shirtless and have great abs, but we were just paying attention to the cultural side of things.

Another memorable performance was Neil Finn of Crowded House and Split Enz – used to hear one of the Split Enz (why does love…do this toooo meeeeee….) songs nearly every night at the pub so it was interesting to see him in person. In addition to Jane and Arvind, we met up with Dean who stayed at the Pujjis for a month back when I was there in September – it was a little reunion!

Back at camp, we did our laundry and I decided I wanted to do the coastal walk tomorrow morning before we drive back down to Whanganui.

high-wire wellington

We arrived in Wellington (bottom of the North Island) early this morning via the Interislander ferry and tried to find a hostel, but hadn’t realized there was a big cricket match taking up all available accommodation for the whole weekend, so decided we’d just stay for the day and then head up to a DOC site north of the city for the night. I sent a text to Martha, a high school/UVa classmate who moved to Wellington a year and a half ago, and we made plans to meet up for brunch. We met up with her in Miramar, a gorgeous hilly area with beautiful sea views, and had lunch at the Chocolate Frog, a café inside a landscaping store. Neither Ann nor I really likes city driving, so we left the car by Martha’s house and took a bus in to the city to meet up with some of Ann’s friends from Florida who happened to be in Wellington for the weekend, at the start of primarily South Island camping trip.

After morning shopping and then lunch with Ann’s friends and some of their friends from Wellington, we all headed over to a park near the waterfront where we saw an amazing high-wire acrobatic act called Gravity and Other Myths. We also caught the tail end of the dragon boat festival over by the rowing club.

In the afternoon, we left Wellington and drove up along the western coast of the island to the Whanganui area to camp for the night at a basic DOC site.

sounds

Ann and I packed up camp this morning and drove back in to Picton to see about finding a Sounds cruise. We booked one for the afternoon, then wandered around for a bit to find a hostel for tonight (very important as we have a 5:45 am ferry crossing, so no camping for us!) and get food.

Once again, we somehow ended up on a ‘bluehair trip’ and were the youngest passengers on the cruise by about four decades. We didn’t really get the best weather and the slow-moving boat put me to sleep, but one cool part about the cruise was seeing our campsite from the water, we could even see the van that was parked next to us last night!

We went straight to our hostel after the cruise to make an early dinner and go to bed early because we have to be ready to drive onto the ferry an hour before our already-too-early departure.

fish filmin'

We slept in a bit this morning, encouraged by our comfy cots and mattresses, and awoke to find it had been raining for a while. Unfortunately, the rain disrupted the charter schedule since the 7 am charter was a film crew, so we weren’t able to go diving in between the early morning and noon charters since the crew had the boat on stand-by. As we were having a cup of tea with Gerard the film crew rang again, saying they’d be ready in half an hour, so he was heading out and we planned to be on our way up north when he asked us if we wanted to go out in the boat when they headed out to meet them. We, of course, were up for this, so we jumped in the car and headed to the wharf where Nick met us with the boat. We had zero time to prepare, so unfortunately I wasn’t able to grab my camera.

The boat had been chartered by two Frenchmen working on a nature documentary, and this bit of it was meant to capture an American PhD student, studying at the University of Otago, using specially-designed microphone buoys to monitor whale sounds. The Frenchmen and their Kiwi interpreter got on the boat with us and we chased the research vessel around for a bit, then went to go see the seals and pull cray pots just for some variety. When we were pulling up the cray pots there was a huge octopus in one of them that had poisoned the two biggest crays – greedy bugger! Apparently they poison them in size order, and THEN go back and eat them. Sometimes they’re punished by being turned into bait, but this one got clemency for some reason. After the film charter, Nick and Gerard had another fishing charter so Ann and I took Gerard’s car back to the house with the interpreter, and wrote up the invoice for the film crew. That sounds ridiculous, but I’m not very surprised by stuff like that any longer – why would someone give two people he met less than a day earlier the key to his new car, access to his house, trust them with handling money for his business, etc.? The answer, I’ve found, is because this is the South Island (and a small town, to boot) and that’s just what these crazy-friendly people around here do.

After writing out the invoice and dropping the interpreter back off with the crew, we made grilled cheese sandwiches, did a final battery charge-up session, and hit the road. We drove through Blenheim, and made it to Prenzel (liqueurs, oils, sauces, etc.), Makana (boutique chocolate factory) and two wineries before everything closed. We picked up some groceries in Picton, then drove very indirectly to our campsite at Aussie Bay – DOC’s directions were a bit off, so we found it on our second pass. We cooked up leftover perch in some smoked garlic sauce we bought at Prenzel – delicious!

Photo: A Royal Albatross (in background) and other albatross/mollymawks in front, from

yesterday's boat trip

change of plans

As I was waiting for Ann to come back from the dolphin cruise (she’d texted me earlier to let me know she’d gotten on it, but might not be able to swim) and for Nick to finish filleting all the fish, I was thinking about how we could cook the crayfish Gerard and Nick had given us. We only have a little pot, and I wasn’t sure I would be skilled in crayfish origami, so I had a dilemma. And then I saw the tent Gerard was talking about – it was huge, with cots and mattresses, and it came with the use of a real flush toilet, and shower – even with hot water! – and a kitchen. So when Ann arrived I told her about it, and we decided it would be worth it to change our plans a bit, especially since although she’d had a shower after her dolphin swim, I still had fish guts clinging to me and she probably was not too excited about the idea of being in the car with me in that state. This was a perfect example of the kind of Kiwi hospitality I’m still surprised by even though I’ve experienced a lot of it – I was just another customer on the fishing charter, but here Gerard was opening up his home to me for nothing in exchange.

Gerard was heading up to Blenheim for the night to drop off his sister, but – maybe since Ann and I looked fairly confused by the squirming crayfish we were playing with in the driveway at the time – Nick offered to cook up the cray and the fish for us. We’d bought the ingredients to make coconut ginger fish with some frozen blue cod we’d picked up in Takaka, so I offered to make that one (we threw out the frozen fish, though, in favor of the much better fresh option!) to try as well. Oh, and when we were talking on the boat I mentioned that both Ann and I dive, so Gerard had offered to let us use his dive equipment if we wanted, and Nick offered to take us out to see crays and paua in their natural habitat in between their charters tomorrow. So, once that suggestion was thrown out there, there was no getting us to leave that night.

Nick cooked up the cray in a saucepan with butter, garlic and ginger and gave us honorary Maori status when he saw us picking the meat out of the body instead of just taking the easy pieces of tail meat and being done with it. It was delicious – better than the one this morning, since it was so fresh (and didn’t cost $47…)…but that one was excellent, so this was just off the charts! Next course was the coconut ginger fish, which turned out well enough to make Nick enjoy eating blue cod, which apparently isn’t usually the case. Then we had some lightly battered perch, all complemented by wonderful Koura Bay Sauvignon Blanc, a wine which has some sort of connection to the company hence the same name. Ann and I were feeling like we weren’t really contributing much to the feast, so we brought out our special Nestle-hot-chocolate-and-Redwood-Cellars-cream-liqueur for dessert. We had a nice relaxing spa before crashing at the ripe old hour of 9:45 pm – hey, the sun really can take it outta you.

dolphins & fishing

We arrived at the i-site to book our activities around 11 – not exactly opening time as we’d intended! After several dead-end attempts, the lady working at the i-site found me a spot on a fishing charter, and Ann got wait-listed for the dolphin swim/cruise, which was booked solid for the next few days. We drove down to the seal colony to kill the 1.5-2 hours before our activities, and found a little seafood stall by the water and - of course – had to try a crayfish fritter, which turned out to be a deliciously light egg-based creation served with rice and salad greens. After that, we made some excellent PB&J sandwiches for our ‘real lunch’ (yes, we are pigs, and yes, our taste varies from plebian to gourmand).

My fishing charter pick-up was on the beach near the seafood stall, so I camped out for a bit and read the book I’ve been working on for the past two months – quite a switch from the 3-books-a-day life at the orchard. I made it through a few pages before getting distracted by the sandflies and the fact that I had cell (texting) service, and then it was time to go. I wasn’t really sure what the plan was – didn’t see any boats around – but a truck pulled up with a little fishing boat on a trailer, so I smiled and waved in that direction hoping someone would tell me what was going on and wandered on over when it seemed like they recognized me as one of their passengers. I was introduced to Gerard (the captain/owner of Koura Bay Fishing Charters, a retired bank manager/stock sales agent/farmer/landlord, and a cousin of Ewan McGregor, who’d been out on the boat twice a couple months ago) and Nick (first mate, an ornately tattooed Maori with one aluminum leg).

As we were heading out, Gerard got a call on his cell from three more people who wanted to come out, so since I was flexible on time (Ann’s cruise was scheduled to end an hour after my fishing trip), we circled around in the bay until a car of three surfers from England pulled up and joined us. On our way out to the fishing grounds, we swung past a bunch of seals on rocks, including Harry the Koura Bay Fishing Charters Pet Seal – apparently he gets leftover fish from the charters, so he is quite willing to pose for pictures when the boat comes around. We were more interested in fishing, though, so we went on by, and dropped our lines in 25-30m water. I got several bites right off the bat, but didn’t land anything until the guys had pulled in several perch…but I got the biggest blue cod of the day next! It wasn’t the biggest fish – someone got a shark – but it was the biggest keeper. I got 3 blue cod and one perch in the hour or so we had our lines down, and we headed back with plenty for dinner. Fish cleaning was included in the deal, and Gerard had two crays back at his house that he was going to give the boys (mine had come along for the ride already), so we drove back there to get the fish filleted.

On our way back, I was driving with Gerard and he offered Ann and I the use of a big tent in his yard for the night. I’d told him earlier we’d been camping nearly every night of the trip, and thanked him for the offer but said we’d planned to drive up to the Marlborough Sounds tonight so we could do a day and a half of sight-seeing there before we headed to the North Island.

life of luxury

Our plan this morning was to get up early, pack in a hurry, and get on down to Kaikoura when the i-site opened so I could arrange a fishing charter and Ann could get in on one of the dolphin swims. We got up early…then went back to sleep, or at least I did. Ann did most of the packing up, and we got on the highway reasonably early. And then we got distracted. First, by the seals playing right off the side of the highway. Then, by lobster for breakfast. That’s right, around 10 am we decided to stop at the locally-famous Nin’s Bin, a seaside converted caravan which offers up fresh-cooked crayfish (rock lobster) with a view. We got ours with garlic butter, yum, and devoured every last bit. I saved my big hunk of delicious tail meat for last.