New Zealand-Goodbye for now...

Week 5

I spent my last week in New Zealand back in Auckland. Last Saturday, my coworker Anthony and I went to Western Springs Park to see the Pasifika Festival, the world's largest Pacific festival which showcases the culture, traditions, and heritage of all of the Pacific Island Communities.

The park was filled with an estimated 200,000 visitors and each section of the park was designated to a Pacific Island. There were booths set up for selling food and wares as well as stages for performances. You could even get a tattoo if you wanted. I know it would have made the blog much more interesting but Sorry, I did not come home with a tattoo. After the festival, we walked over to Eden Park to watch another Rugby match ending a complete day of the New Zealand cultural experience.

Kiwi

On Sunday we decided to visit the zoo because I could not travel all the way to New Zealand and not see a Kiwi. Kiwi's are a native flightless bird and New Zealand's national symbol. They are also endangered. I felt bad for the little endangered Kiwi all alone in his big enclosure. I only saw one Kiwi in there so I hope he had a friend that was maybe sleeping or hiding. He was bigger than I thought he would be. Like a small chicken but cuter and sillier. He was digging through the leaves with his long beak and when he pulled his head out there were leaves stuck to his head. I wanted to take him home with me.

The thing I liked about the Auckland Zoo was that you could get really close to the animals. The thing my friend Anthony did not like about the zoo was that you could get really close to the animals! At one point we saw two zookeepers walking an elephant through the zoo during regular visiting hours amongst the visitors including children. Anthony, being from London is not accustomed to seeing elephants casually walking by. He became completely flabbergasted and began ranting "The health and safety standards of this country are seriously lacking. You can't just walk an elephant like it's a dog! You can't walk an elephant through the zoo while there are people walking around!!!" I tried to calm him down but was too busy laughing and chasing after the elephant with my camera.

Elephant going for a walk

The exhibit design and signage were pretty much non-existent. It would have been nice to see a label here and there indicating what animal it is you're looking at. They had a lot of native birds I had never seen before. I would tell you their names but I don't know because there were no labels.

The highlight of my visit was the hippos. Despite my repeated requests, we did not have any hippos at the Bronx Zoo. I almost didn't get to see them at the Auckland Zoo either because there was a wedding going on right in front of the hippo pond. That's right. Somebody's dream wedding involved saying their vows in front of a hippopotamus. I waited out the wedding procession, managed to inadvertently get myself into some of their photos, and then got to see my hippos.

The following Saturday was my last day in New Zealand. We decided to visit Auckland Domain before going to one more rugby game. Within the park is the Auckland War Memorial Museum which we did not get to early enough to visit (sorry! I definitely will go next time) and several botanic gardens called the Wintergardens (which we did get to visit. Yay!). Then there's the park itself which has cricket fields, and fountains and beautiful ponds. Ok New Zealand. We get it already. You are stunningly beautiful. You can stop rubbing it in. It's not fair that all the beauty should be concentrated on your two tiny islands and not spread out evenly throughout the rest of the world.

Wintergarden

So here I am now back in New York for less than a week and have already endured snow, a thunder storm, and a hail storm. aaah! Springtime in New York. During my entire five weeks in New Zealand it rained only twice. One of those times was during my white water rafting trip in which I was already wet so no big deal. It's been difficult settling back into life here now that I've had a dose of paradise. New Zealand was definitely a life I could get used to. The driving and the coffee were a bit tricky at first but it's not hard to get used to seeing perfect weather and beautiful scenery every single day. It was easy to settle into the laid back lifestyle, the peace and quiet, the endless beauty surrounding you wherever you went. It didn't really feel like a foreign country to me. In fact, it felt like home. I could imagine what it would have been like to grow up there. A little barefoot Kiwi with wild hair climbing the rocks on the beach. Now New York seems so foreign. At least in New Zealand they speak English.


This is the last New Zealand post I will write. Hopefully not forever but just until I can go back someday. I barely even scratched the surface of NZ. There's still so many more places I want to see and explore. New Zealand, I will miss your fresh air and water. I will miss your magic and your sheep. I will miss the free bottle of milk you give me when I check into a hotel. Who wouldn't love a place so sweet and endearing? It's hard for me to even write an ending to this story so I don't think I'll write, "The End." Instead I will leave it unfinished and write, To be Continued.....

New Zealand-Tauranga & the Coromandel Peninsula

 

                                                      

Week 3

On Monday I drove north up the coast to Whangamata located in the Coromandel Peninsula. After work, I went to check into my hotel but no one was there. There was a sign on the door telling me to let myself into my room. Where is everybody? Gone surfing...as I later found out. I might as well go check out the town...which took up about five minutes. There was one main street with all of the shops and restaurants. If you were driving you could go through it in about a minute and miss the whole thing if you weren't paying attention.


Whangamata Harbor

Coromandel Forest

Next, I had to drive to Kopu which is on the west side of the peninsula. The only way to get there is to drive an hour through the Coromandel Forest Park which has some seriously steep roads with extremely sharp turns the entire way but also spectacular views. My only complaint is that there are few places to pull over and take it all in. There's not even any shoulder on the road so if you pull over, your car will go flying off a cliff! This forest, with the exception of the road that goes through it, is basically untouched.

Mercury Bay, Whitianga

Tuesday I had to work in Whitianga which is another hour or so up north in the Coromandel region. So I set out again and was off through the Coromandel Forest and Tairua Forest. Not a bad commute to work. After work, I explored Whitianga (another one-street town) and visited Mercury Bay and then set out to go back to Tauranga.

On the way back I just had to make a pit stop at Hot Water Beach. I've been to many beaches but never one like this. If you dig a hole in certain locations of the beach at a particular time of day, warm geothermal springs will bubble up from underneath the sand. You can dig a hole and sit in your very own hot tub.

Hot Water Beach

Tairua Forest

Driving up steep mountain hills really sucked the gas out of my car and while out in the middle of nowhere, my gas light came on and my car started making a threatening beeping noise with an exclamation mark flashing on my dashboard !!! This is not good. Next, the skies opened up and it started pouring. It was a treacherous drive with no gas in the pouring rain through the steep and sharp turns of the forest. I didn't think I would make it out of the forest but when I finally did, the car coasted to the nearest gas station and I took my first breath in probably ten minutes. I was almost back to Tauranga when I suddenly came to a line of cars. Traffic in the country? Once I inched a little further up the road I was informed by a police officer that the road to Tauranga was closed. This was the only road to Tauranga but it should be open again "in about three hours," he told me. Drivers just pulled their cars over and left them on the side of the road to wait. If this happened back in New York there would be a riot in the street. But the road was closed so there was nothing left to do but to turn around and find someplace to pass the time. I made a U-turn and drove back into the town of Katikati and saw a sign for the Katikati museum. Perfect!

Outside the closed Katikati Museum

So I went in and found out the museum was also closed. This is not my day. At least the cafe was open. Until they closed that too. But they let me sit on a bench outside until the road opened back up two hours later. Apparently, a tanker truck tipped over and the road had actually been closed since 6 am. It was now 5:30 pm. When I finally got back on the road the skies cleared and as I drove on the only road to Tauranga, a brilliant rainbow stretched across the sky.

Ok, New Zealand. I still love you.



Te Puna Quarry Park



Te Puna Quarry Park

Wednesday was a much better day. I went to Te Puna Quarry Park, a community project built in an old quarry. This was one of my favorite places I've visited here so far. It's part museum, part sculpture garden--with works by local and regional artists, part hiking trails (or "tramping" as they call it here), part botanic garden. They also threw some rock climbing in the mix as well.



Musical sculpture

 They didn't forget to add a musical element either. Visitors can play music on this sculpture made from found objects and the sound will echo through the park. This place was really fantastic. You can stick to the main track or venture off onto one of the little side trails. Wherever you choose to go you'll discover a sculpture. You could come dozens of times and still not see it all. It would be a different experience every time. They also have a butterfly garden as well as a sensory garden for the visually impaired. Admission is simply a donation and the park is open all the time. You just let yourself in and explore.



Kiwi Train

Kiwi 360

Thursday was a triumphant day when I found my first cafe that served filtered coffee. Victory!

 I was working in Te Puke (It's pronounced Te Pookey just in case you were wondering) so I had to go see Te Puke's main attraction, Kiwi 360. I took the guided tour of the kiwi orchard. We drove in the little kiwi train through the orchards which grow not just kiwi's but just about 70 other kinds of fruit as well. We got to walk under the vines and pick kiwi berries and eat them. Kiwi berries (or Arguta) are like tiny little hairless kiwi's that taste like a kiwi and grape mixed. They were sweet and delicious. An interesting fact I learned about growing Kiwi's is that only the female vines can grow the fruit. The male plants only need to work for about two weeks out of every year to pollinate the females. Typical. ha! At the end of the tour, we were allowed to get off the kiwi train and wander around the orchard on our own. The guide let us pick and eat the Nashi off the trees. Nashi is a type of Asian pear that grows very well in the New Zealand climate. They are shaped and look like yellow apples but taste more like pears. They taste so good I had to take a couple for the road...because you never know when the road might be closed and you could get hungry waiting for it to re-open!

Picking Kiwi Berries

Adventures in Kiwi Land

I decided to take this blog and turn it upside down. I've traveled to the other side of the planet and landed in my version of utopia, New Zealand. The only difficult thing about blogging from New Zealand is not having internet access. Now that I've managed to get online I can get my first Kiwiblog started.

I left New York City on Sunday, February 13th and after approximately 24 hours of travel, I stepped onto New Zealand soil on Tuesday, February 15th. Since I don't have too much experience with time travel I wasn't prepared for the toll it would take on my body. I will definitely listen to the advice of my boss and buy one of those neck pillows next time. It also doesn't help to be sitting on a packed flight next to someone who had the flu. This brings me to my travel tips for this blog entry:

1. Do not get on an international flight if you have a raging head cold. Nobody wants to sit next to someone for 14 hours who is blowing their nose, sneezing and coughing on them every 5 minutes. Take some Zicam and postpone your trip.

2. Buy a neck pillow. Even though you look ridiculous wearing a pillow around your neck, you will be happy that you're able to turn your head when you finally get to your destination.

The best part about this trip so far was actually getting into the country. I was more than a bit hesitant after my little incident with Canada (see blog entry "NOT On The Road Again"). I had absolutely no problems and was welcomed with a smile. Very refreshing. I'm already loving this place.

The first stop was Mount Eden (Te Ipu Kai a Mataaho or the Food Bowl of Mataaho), an inactive volcano which they refer to as the "crater." To me, it looked like a big grassy hole in the ground but the view from the top was spectacular. This was actually the first volcano I had ever seen and had I not just gone there directly from the airport I might have thought to take pictures if I wasn't so delirious.

The apartment I was staying in was located right in downtown Auckland on Customs Street overlooking Waitemata Harbor. Conveniently located above many restaurants, pubs, and shops, I was spoiled for choice. It's summer here in New Zealand and having dinner on the waterfront and watching sailboats and yachts pass by in the middle of February feels like a dream.

Waitemata Harbor

Auckland is a very tourist and backpacker-friendly city. The visitor center is located right on Quay St. and I used it a couple times to find out how to get places or where I could find a concert or rugby tickets. There's no shortage of places to rent equipment either. You can rent anything from a bike to a sailboat. Kiwi's love their outdoor activities and extreme sports and it really shows. I started a game of counting the number of people I spotted wearing casts and bandages. I've only been here a week and on five occasions I've seen someone make a parachute landing right in front of me. I feel at home here with my fellow dare-devils. I love the outdoors and I love surfing, mountain biking, and hiking. New Zealand has it all. Mountains, beaches, forests, volcanoes but I've had to adjust.

I'm learning to drive on the left side of the road. My steering wheel is on the right side of the car and I keep turning on the windshield wipers instead of my indicator because that's on the other side as well. They have these roundabouts which completely do my head in. I panic every time I have to go through one and they are all over the place.

I'm also learning the metric system which I'm not finding nearly as difficult as ordering a coffee. They have "Long Black", "Short Black", and "Flat White."  When I finally figure it out, I will let you know.

A Flat White

The light switches are also upside down which I guess makes sense since the whole country is upside down. The sun also moves in the opposite direction across the sky. So basically I have to take everything I've learned my whole life and reverse it. The Kiwi's are reprogramming me.

On the weekend, my coworker and I headed over to Mission Bay for some sun. It has a little beach where you can, of course, rent rafts and kayaks and paddleboards. The water was really shallow and you could keep walking for 10 minutes and it would still only be up to your ankles. There are many restaurants and bars right across the street so you can refuel after row boating or kayaking or kite surfing.

That night I went to my first rugby match. We saw the Auckland Blues vs. the Crusaders. Some of the more enthusiastic fans will dress up in costume so the fans were almost as fun to watch as the game. Rugby is like an expression of the Kiwi lifestyle in sport form. It's non-stop action, dangerous, and exciting.

Rugby Match

Sunday was my last day in Auckland so I crammed in a bunch of sightseeing. My coworker and I went to Sky Tower, the tallest structure in the Southern Hemisphere. The elevators which take you to the top have glass floors so you can see the ground moving away from you as you go up. It makes you really dizzy! There is a rotating restaurant at the top and of course more amazing views and the option to Bungy jump or walk around the outside...but not without a harness!

View from Sky Tower

The next stop was a Reggae concert in Henderson Park. We were finally in with the locals and probably the only tourists who managed to find it. After that, we shot over to One Tree Hill, a well-known landmark thanks to the song "One Tree Hill" by U2. The obelisk on top of the hill was erected as a memorial to the Maori people but you won't find a tree up there. In 1852 British settlers planted a Monterey Pine to make amends for chopping down sacred totara. The Moari's, offended that it was not a native tree, chopped it down in 2000.

A typical New Zealand scene. Sheep, Parachuters, and One Tree Hill

As I am writing this I'm in the second week of my trip. Yesterday, Christchurch was hit with a devastating earthquake. I'm currently in Mount Maunganui which is far away so we were not affected. I had some frantic emails and phone calls from friends and family but could not get internet access to let people know I was safe. Many people are still missing and most of the country is in shock and mourning. Now that I've got the blog up, you're now all informed of my whereabouts. Thanks to everyone for your concern and sorry for the worry. Thankfully I'm fine and having a great time here. I guess there's no Utopia after all but so far I think New Zealand is pretty close.