May 2007

In attempts to maximize our time spent exploring New Zealand and minimize time spent traveling, we opted for the 7:30 am Wellington ferry crossing.

Driving onto the ferry, just as the sun was rising for the day.

The Interislander is a huge ferry ship that transports passenger vehicles as well as large freighters across the Cook Straight from the North to South island. All in all the journey takes 3.5 hours and travels 92 km. The ferry is quite elaborate with all sorts of activities (including but not limited to a full size movie theatre and a child's play gym) and cafes to conjure even more money than the initial passenger and vehicle booking fees.

Not to shabby eh?

While I have been told the trip is beautiful and am sure the overpriced pastries are delicious, I was more interested in catching up on some much needed sleep, as this ferry was leaving at 7:30 am. Luckily for us, we were all able to commandeer our own private couches located in the coffee lounge and enjoy a 3 hour long nap.

But not until we had taken ample photos from the boat deck of course...

After our nap and arrival in Picton on the South island, we began our journey to Christchurch. As luck would have it, the weather was absolutely beautiful (albeit cold) and the drive was lovely and filled with beautiful scenery, all of which was unable to be caught on film due to the very narrow roads in New Zealand, but I'm sure you can imagine the grandeur right?

Doesn't even come close to doing the views justice, but we tried...

Following our drive, and unsuccessful attempts to make purchases at a local 'Funk & Junk' shop (I for one was disappointed the shop was not open), we arrived in Christchurch to Brooke's friend of a friends Farrah's place. Upon arrival we were informed it was time to head out and due to our limited wardrobes, pieced together interesting outfits and hit the town.

Christchurch, like Wellington, is a beautiful city. On the eastern coast of the Southern island, it is a decent sized town with Universities and sights galor. Farrah took us to Godly Head, a lookout over Christchurch that was originally used as a lookout and armory to protect the harbor against invaders.

Shot taken on the drive up to Godly Head.

At Godly Head we enjoyed a short 30 minute walk to the coastal lookout, where you could see the entire harbor and ocean for miles.

Overlooking the ocean.

Apparently I have a problem with authority, but come on, the view was so much better on the roof.

Following our trek, the remainder of the day was spent exploring Christchurch, its markets, gardens and shops. Overall, Christchurch was a great city. We ended up spending an extra day here and would love to go back, we'll see how the remainder of the trip goes eh? Tomorrow, Mt. Cook...

Lake Taupo: a beautiful Lake in the middle of the northern island, surrounded by loads of things to do. When we first arrived, we had dreams of exciting outdoor adventures including hiking Tongarirro Crossing (aka Mt Doom) and sky diving over the lake. The weather had other plans for us however and forced us to call off our plans of jumping from planes until the rain cleared and fog lifted.

Unfortunate weather was the story of our brief stint in Taupo, pouring rain prevented us again from sky diving the following day and because the Tongarirro crossing would be closed for the next few days we decided to cut our losses and head down to Wellington, hoping to hit the crossing and skydiving with better weather on our way back up next week.

Overlooking the river leading to Huka Falls, outside of Taupo.

Before we left however, we had a brief stop at Huka falls. Here we enjoyed a run along the river, resulting in Brooke taking a wrong turn and running for nearly an hour before she realized she was not on a loop around the Falls. Luckily, she found some fellow backpackers that were heading back down to the mouth of the Falls and she was able to hitch a ride back to the car.

Talk about a pristine running trail eh?

The next morning, after a LONG drive in the pouring, and often near blinding rain, we enjoyed a leisurely day in Wellington with sites, a museum, a cable car ride, and of course, more good food.

Bree has made it her quest to eat curry in every country she visits, so far so good.

The Te Papau museum was huge and best of all free. We looked at only one floor, specializing in Maori history, where along with learning about history aspects, we were able to enjoy the displays, and further everyone's impressions of Americans as being obnoxious.

I think Bree may have found her dream hut. Take note boys.

Along with playing in and around the Maori displays, we also found our calling as being thugs. Check our super cool display of thug-ness.

Oh yes, we are flashing CA gang signs in New Zealand.

Wellington is a fabulous city. Though much smaller than American cities, it feels very metropolitan and is quite trendy. We had a good time shopping at the various stores around town and enjoyed the Botanic Garden in the city. My personal favorite in the gardens was the tire swing contraption in the childs play area. If only it had not been so dark and we had had one more person, we could have had a great time.

Good thing this child's play area did not have a height restriction, not that I would have paid attention, but anyway.

Wellington Pier

Wellington Harbor

For more pictures from New Zealand, click HERE.

Upon arrival in Rotorua one thing was immediately prevalent, the overwhelming smell of sulphur protruding from the hot pots all around. It was an amazing site, driving around and seeing the steam escaping from the ground everywhere.

Bree was very hungry and therefore slightly deranged as she thought the sulphur smell was enjoyable and that it 'smelled like cheerios.' Because this was definitely not the case we made it a point to feed the poor child and then she too realized how unpleasant the sulphur smell really was.

See the steam? Yeah, not a cheerio-eche smell...sorry Bree.

After a good night's rest, we set out to find the natural (and best of all *FREE*) hot and cold pools just outside of Rotorua. This is a pool that has two streams leading into it, one hot and one cold (slightly obvious from the name eh?). The pool was fabulous, and while we were initially apprehensive, we soon found the hot section to be very relaxing and all in all quite fabulous.

While enjoying the hot pool we were joined by a naked local who enlightened us on the exfoliating properties of the lava rock surrounding the pools. Being gullible Americans as we are, we proceeded to smear the volcanic ash on our skin and then pose for pictures.

Here I was going for the rugby look,

While Brooke was working on her glamour shots for next months edition of Vogue.

After the ash mud mixture had dried we proceeded to rub it off, and luckily for us and our already dry and travelled hides, the crazy local was not as crazy as we had initially believed. The mixture worked wonders as an exfolient and left our skin silky and smooth... a wonderful natural scrub, and we didn't even have to pay loads to use it, shocking really.

Looks like an ad campaign for the ash... coming to a drug store near you!

Upon leaving the hot pool, we realized that for the first time since our arrival in New Zealand, we were not cold. As our new found friend explained, the hot pools warmed even your bones and we enjoyed our new found warmth for the remainder of the day.

Following our hot pool experience, we went to see another naturally phenomenon in Rotorua, the boiling mud. This was brilliant; the molten mud bubbled and popped from the volcanic activity beneath the surface, providing a fantastic show.

After experiencing some of the natural wonders of Rotorua, we went on to take part in some commercial scams as well. Zorbing. A New Zealand phenomenon where you are put in a very large blow up ball filled with warm soapy water and then sent rolling down a hill.

The Zorb making its way down the zigzag path

Though a bit expensive, this is a must do for the young and young at heart. All three of us piled into the zorb and went flying down the hill like hamsters in their running balls. When we reached the bottom, we were a bit disoriented, but found the soapy water to be the perfect chaser to our earlier sulphur baths.

Can't you see how clean we are?

If you happen to be in Rotorua and decided to try Zorbing, I recommend the wet single Zorb on the zigzag track, or the 3 person Zorb down the straight track. Either way you will have a good time, and come out dizzy and nice and clean.

Saturday afternoon we arrived in New Zealand. As we have become accustomed too on our travels, we proceeded through customs. Brooke, being the trouble maker that she is, caused quite a stir when the sniffer dog attacked her, pawing through her bag, apparently after the large amounts of plastic bags she was smuggling into the country that had previously held fresh produce (contrary to popular belief, we are earth conscious Americans, and we are trying to do our part to reduce, reuse and recycle, in this case plastic bags... suck it American hating world). The ferocious sniffer dog would not let up and they proceeded to empty her entire pack in the middle of the airport, clothes, unmentionables, food, all haphazardly strung about the ground surrounding her pack.

Notice all of Brooke's belongings and the sniffer dog, still confused and on the trail of something forbidden...

After all of our questionable items were allowed into the country, the first thing we noticed about New Zealand was the substantially lower temperatures. While every New Zealander kept informing us that the temperatures were actually quite high for this time of year, we were still freezing.

The worst part of the cold was our lack of warm clothes. To remedy this problem we made a stop at Save Mart, the New Zealand super-sized thrift store. My shopping outfit was particularly memorable, as I was wearing nearly every piece of clothing I had, including my full body black under armour and bright blue basketball shorts, wool socks, converse tennis shoes and 2 t-shirts. Fortunately for my posterity, this monstrosity was not captured by film, and only the locals had to endure my hideousness (from whom I received many odd looks). Luckily for all of us, Save Mart was a success and we loaded up on warm jackets, sweaters, and Bree scored herself some killer grandpa shoes.

After our thrift store experience Bree and I went to dinner with a woman we met in the ward where we further gorged ourselves on a feast of New Zealand delicacies; sweets, chips, and all sorts of candies, or lollies as they are referred to in New Zealand.

After the junk food fiasco we prepared to be on the road again and head out for Rotorua bright and early...

Our Australian travels came to an end today as we boarded the plane for New Zealand. We will miss the pristine beaches, and most importantly the last bit of warmth as we head down south to New Zealand and winter. A bit about what we did on our last days in Oz...

On Thursday we enjoyed the weather as we visited Maleny, Mapleton and Mortinville. These quaint old English style villages were beautiful and set high in the mountains.

We enjoyed perusing the shops and admiring the architecture and beauty of these small towns. An interesting site was the lily ponds in Mapleton.

Here, the lilies were so dense you could barely see the water at all, and birds were actually walking across the water from lily to lily, eating as they went.

At night, Bree and I enjoyed a wonderful Thai dinner (again, going on about food, but it really is a high point of our days). As we were told by some locals, the place was a bit dodgy, sporting high quality plastic lawn chair furniture and plastic mermaid molded decor on the walls. The high fashion aside the food was cheap and fabulous, really what more could we ask for? After dinner, Bree and I were informed that we could not go into any of the restaurants/clubs, as we were wearing flip flops, and it was much to casual for a night out in high class Maloolaba.

With that, we decided to go back and go to bed, but only after Bree and I made ourselves sick eating an entire DARK (75% cocoa) chocolate bar each. Let's just say I woke up with a horrible headache the next morning to say the least.

The next morning we headed back down the sunshine-less coast, to Brisbane. We had a bit of a detour when we climbed a mountain to see an old fire lookout. The views were beautiful and the mountains on the skyline reminded me of Goonies where they use the old medallion to find there way to the buried treasure.

After our climb, we made it back to Brisbane and South Bank where we wandered around the various museums and art galleries and met up with Lindsey for our last Australian meal. Tomorrow morning we fly out wicked early for New Zealand... kiwi's here we come.

For Australia pics, click HERE