Day 19 last big walk - Sunday Nov 11

Sorry no pictures on this one, we literally just finished this walk and I haven't moved the pics to the computer from the camera yet.

Well we decided not to rush anything today, this was pretty much going to be our last day of hiking and we wanted to take it easy. We slept in a bit, took our time getting ready and eating breakfast before heading south for a hike. We swung into the information center to ask if the walk we were planning to take was worthwhile, they actually recommended another one which was in the same direction so we decided to do that one. This walk was actually on another section of the same trail we walked two days ago when we got into town. Our driver yesterday told us they do an annual race along this trail and last year the winner ran it in about 4 hours and 30 minutes, which is pretty amazing since if you plan to hike this trail you are expected to take about 6 days. There are huts places throughout the trail that you can reserve if you plan to hike the whole thing, you can hike about 6 to 8 hours between these huts, which are basically bunk houses.

Since the walk was along this trail we could basically make it as long as we wanted since we were going to walk out and then turn around and come back along the same trail. It was a nice walk, nothing spectacular like at Rob Roy, or yesterday, but it was very nice and green along a riverside and through the woods. I still can’t believe how many ferns they have here, they coat the ground. We made it to one of the huts in about an hour and a half and decided to keep walking another 30 minutes to make our walk 4 hours total. Once we got to 2 hours we were feeling good so went another 30 before turning back, figuring on a 5 hour walk total. What’s odd is that we always make it back faster than we do the midpoint of our walks. This makes sense when we climb a hill or mountain or something, but this was a fairly flat walk the whole way. Despite that, we still got back about 20 minutes faster than we took to get to the turnaround point.

After the walk we just came back to the hotel for a bit and are now about to head out to do some email, where I’ll probably do the last blog update, and then we’ll head off to dinner.

Day 18 Boating through the Sound

We got up early because our bus was picking us up at 8AM in front of our hotel to take us on an all day excursion highlighted at Milford Sound with a boat ride. We were in a small van, not a big bus, with 6 other people. There was a couple from Massachussettes, a German guy, and another older couple, and one band geek college student from Nebraska. Our bus driver was very nice, he’d grown up in this area and knew a lot about pretty much everything. For the whole drive to the Sound our driver talked to us about the surroundings and he stopped at various spots along the drive for us to take pictures. About an hour or so in we stopped at a trail head and we had 2 ½ hours to hike to the summit if we wanted to, the driver gave the option not to do it if we chose and he’d drive those people around to some waterfalls. Marlo and I elected to do the hike up the hillside. It was pretty much straight up, but only took an hour or so to get to the top, so it wasn’t too bad. The views up there were fantastic. Once again we had terrific weather, and this area gets more rain than anywhere.

When we returned from the hike our driver was waiting there with some hot tea for us before we headed on to the sound. We came through a big tunnel to get through the mountain range, what made this interesting is that the tunnel was drilled through by hand back in the 50’s and they didn’t bother to put any siding on it, so the walls of the tunnel were just pure rock, looked really cool.

When we got to the sound we quickly boarded our boat which left in just 10 minutes. It was a fairly large boat, they use it for overnight trips and I guess it sleeps 64 people. Marlo and I found a spot up on the upper deck outside so we could see everything. The weather was great, but it was really windy when we got out in the water. There were countless waterfalls all over the mountainsides that plummeted into the sound. Several of these falls were really big, one in particular they told us was the height of Niagara falls. The boat took us all the way through the sound, out into the Tasman Sea a bit, where the swells increased significantly, and then back through the sound. Along the way we spotted several fur seals and a couple of penguins in the water. I was actually inside getting coffee when everyone saw the penguins, but I got to hear about it from Marlo. When we came back upon that big waterfall the boat actually drove right up to it, I’d say about 20 to 30 feet from the base of it, close enough that we were all getting sprayed pretty good. It was really impressive to be at the base of a fall that large.

Once the boat ride was done we found our driver and began our trek back. One funny note, just before we got into the van we ran into the Folsom couple once again, the same people we kayaked with at Abel Talisman a week ago and ran into again at the glaciers. Turns out they were doing the overnight in the same boat we were on. We only had one stop on the way back, it was about 5PM at this point and most of the folks were somewhat tired by now, not much talking going on in the van anymore. The girl from Nebraska had proven herself completely annoying. She was a band geek extraordinaire. We made one stop and a Kea (parrot-like bird) flew over to us, and she jumped out of the van and began feeding it, despite being told repeatedly that this was bad and the Kiwi’s didn’t want people feeding them. Our driver told her not to do it and she ignored him. She was more like a 13 year old than a college student. I hated her. I hope she never reproduces and makes more like her. She also asked ridiculous questions the whole trip, she needed to just shut up.

Once we got back it was basically dinner time so we walked up the street to the town center and found a nice little restaurant to have dinner. We didn’t get back til around 9:30 or so and just got ready to go to bed since we were pretty knocked out by all the day’s events.

Day 17 God Damn Right, it’s a beautiful day

Today was designated a drive day for the most part, we had about a 4 hour jaunt over to Te Anau which is at the edge of the largest park in New Zealand, basically at the bottom of the south island. We took our sweet time in the morning and didn’t get out of there until right at 10AM, exactly when we had to be checked out of our nice hotel.

Once again the weather was perfect for us, clear blue skies and great temperature, this is really unbelievable. We didn’t waste any time and just drove straight through w/o stopping anywhere other than a few viewpoints off the side of the road. We drove through the mountain range on our way there and it offered great views of Queenstown and other areas.

We got into Te Anau around 1:30 and walked up and down the lake front looking at hotels and finally settled on one that offered a full view of the lake from our room, very nice. We’re going to be staying here 3 nights so we figured it’d be a good one to be picky in selecting.

There was a fairly large (the biggest one in New Zealand) bicycle race coming through town right after we arrived and they were biking right down the lakefront drive which was between our room and the lake. There were groups of people along side the road cheering the bikers as they rode by.

Once the bikes were through and we ate some lunch, we headed off to the other side of the lake for a 3 hr walk along the other side of the lake. It was only a 10 minute drive to the trail head, which pretty much began at a damn that drew power from the lake waters. This was a very easy walk compared to most of the other ones we’ve done up til this point, pretty much flat the whole time. It was nice and the trail was well kept, more like a path than a trail really. There were plenty of spots where you could go out along the lake on long strips of empty beach, they were really nice but the one problem was sand flies. They bite. The bites hurt. So we didn’t stick around idle too long. On the return walk we came along the base of a small incline and a guy in his 40’s was coming over the ledge towards us, he had his camera out and he took our picture. I thought this was a bit odd and gave him a curious look like “what the hell was that buddy”. He turned out to be a very chatty, he was from the northern part of the south island and was here to see his son race in that bike race that was coming through town today. His wife had passed us jogging on the trail a bit earlier and he was just walking along waiting for her to return.

He actually turned around and walked back with Marlo and I the whole way back to the car. Along the way he told us about the area and the various birds and plants we could see around us. He also didn’t hold back in telling us all about himself, he was a big fan of himself obviously, but not to the point he was intolerable. Evidently he owns a car dealership up in Nelson, but what I found to be more impressive is that he used to be the head of sales and marketing for Tui beer!!!! My favorite Kiwi beer!!!! Anyhow, he walked with us back, chatting the whole time, once we got back to the car we thanked him for the company and drove back into town.

We went straight back and to the grocery store to get some supplies for the next few days and then headed back to our hotel to relax for a short bit before heading out to dinner. For dinner we strolled up the street to a bar/restaurant about ¼ mile up the road, also right on the lake. The place was packed with people from the bike race, which made it pretty lively. The food was good, but since we had arranged to be picked up by a bus at 8AM tomorrow to go see Milford Sound tomorrow we didn’t want to waste any time hanging around after dinner and just came back to the hotel to go down for the night.

We were able to watch the sun set over the mountain range and the lake before hitting the sack, since we’re so far south the sun actually doesn’t go down til around 9PM or so.

Day 16 Them there hills

We slept in til 8:30 or so today since we only had 1 plan, to head out to the Rob Roy mountain range and hike up it. It was about an hour drive out there, but a gorgeous ride through the open prairies full of cow and sheep and lined by mountains, water falls everywhere. Most of the road was actually dirt, and only one lane, and there were plenty of areas where you had to actually drive through flowing streams. The one hiccup we had on the way was due to the sheep, they were everywhere. Marlo was driving and a little baby sheep darted out in front of us and she slammed the brakes on but not quick enough, we hit the little guy. We were both horrified at first but quickly realized we luckily just grazed his back leg and he quickly jumped up and ran off to his mom, we watched for a while to make sure he was OK and he seemed to be. Lucky day for the little sheep.

The walk itself was about 3 to 4 hours total, the first ½ of it mostly uphill, making the return walk fairly easy and fast. The views were reminders of Yosemite, we winded through massive cliffs with waterfalls pouring off hundreds of feet in the air just to disintegrate into mist ½ way down the fall. Dominating the horizon is the massive glacier, Rob Roy. We ended up hiking right up to a viewing point that felt like you were in an IMAX theater staring at this unreal scenery. It was so massive that I don’t think any of the pictures I took of it will do it justice. Parts of the ice were breaking away up on the top and causing huge landslides of ice to come tumbling down the mountain side, making bellowing rumbles as it crashed downward. It didn’t look like big slides from where we were, but when you heard the noise you realized just how much ice was crashing down the mountain side. Very cool.

Also amazing was that we ran into some Brits at the top of the hike, we’d passed them on the road out here on their bikes. I asked them how long it took them to ride out and they said 3 hours, then the 3 hour hike up, and now they were ready to bike 3 hours back to town. If I see them at the pub tonight I’m buying them a beer.

Day 15 Wednesday, Nov 7 All sunny skies with unlimited visibility

We got out of our hotel and on the road by 9:30 or so, the drive was going to be about 3 ½ hours to the next town we were going to stay in, Wanaka, but there were 3 or 4 stops along the way at different hikes that we’d use to break up the trip.

The 1st stop was about a 15 minute walk in to see a waterfall. It was pretty nice to see, but to be honest it wasn’t as large as one we say about 5 minutes earlier along side the road, I wish we’d have stopped to take a picture of that one. This fall had a river running in front of it which was pure aqua in color, so that made for interesting pictures. This stop was about 30 minutes into our drive.

The 2nd stop was only about 10 minutes further along, this was another water fall, but the hike to it was negligible, about 5 minutes. This fall was a bit larger in height and there were a few more people gathered about looking at it.

Another 10 to 15 minutes down the road we stopped at yet another water fall which was also a 5 minute stroll through the woods. The trees here were massive compared to what we’d seen so far on the south island, I have no idea why they grow like that here and not anywhere else we’ve been. This was called the fan fall because the water fall fanned out as it came to the base and into the river. It wasn’t as high a drop as the previous one, but still pretty to look at. This was the last water fall we’d stop to see on this trip.

The 4th and last stop before getting into Wanaka was a hike that took us to the top of a peak in the mountain range we were driving through, it was about a 30 minute walk straight uphill to the top, it got the sweat flowing for the 1st time today. The view up there was pretty nice of the mountain range and valley we were driving through. The walk down that hill was about twice as fast as the walk up, for gravitational reasons. We were expecting an hour and a half walk here and ended up w/ the 45 minutes and felt slighted. Turned out that right across the street from this hike was another marked hike that was supposed to go for an hour and a half, so we decided to stroll along that one. This was a nice level walk the only problem I was having is that they had recently trimmed the trail back and the walking path was littered with twigs and since I was wearing my Teva sandals I was getting twigs stuck into my toes all the time. This trail ended up w/ a decent view of the valley as well. From here we headed straight into Wanaka.

We drove along three separate lakes coming into town, it had a very Tahoe feel to it with the mountain ranges in the back with snow caps. Coming into Wanaka gave the impression of driving into a small mountain town, probably a ski town in the winter. Right on the lake and probably about 3 square blocks for the major downtown area. We quickly found ourselves a hotel to stay at tonight, this is probably the best place yet, we have a full kitchen, a living room area (part of the one room, but a couch and TV separate) and a small patio area out back, it’s really nice. I kinda just wanted to relax here but the weather was absolutely perfect out and we couldn’t waste that not being outside, so we drove to the outskirt of town to what is known as Mount Iron which was supposed to be another hour and a half walk.

The first 45 minutes of Mount Iron were straight uphill, and with the sunshine beaming down on us it didn’t take long to start sweating again. The views from the top were stunning, you could see all 3 major lakes with the mountain range backing. The other side was a spectacular view of the prairies with more mountains off in the distance.

On our way back we swung into the grocery store to pick up some drinks and food since we have a full kitchen and plan to stay here two days, evidently our hike tomorrow is long and we’ll need to pack a lunch. The grocery store is about 50ft from our hotel, which is where I am right now writing this, now I think we’ll head out to find a pub with an internet connection and hopefully I can post this stuff since it’s been about 4 or 5 days since I’ve updated the damn blog.

Day 14 Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy

Well so much for the Wet Coast, we woke up today and peaked out the front of our hotel to see the mountain range shining through in front of a bright blue sky. Since our place had a kitchen Marlo made some eggs for breakfast and we were out the door immediately after. We wanted to get to a specific hike early because it was around a lake that gave great reflections of the mountains in the morning before the wind picked up and created some ripples in the water. The 1st people we see when we got there were our friends from Folsom once again, we’re seeing them everywhere. The actual hike/walk around the lake was fairly easy and quick, about a hour or so, but the views were fantastic of the mountain range and the glacier. We got there kinda late so the water wasn’t like glass, but as we waited a few minutes the wind died down and the water got pretty calm, so we were able to get some good pictures.

Our next hike was just up the street, actually it was right next to the walk we did yesterday out to the glacier face. It was called the chalet walk and it went along the hilltop that ran along the gorge that the glacier was in, so you could look across at the glacier face we saw yesterday. It was a 2 hour walk total, all uphill on the way there. The weather was still really good but there were a few clouds coming in across the glacier, I think that is a common occurrence. The views we got of the glacier were fantastic and after 2 hours we were back in the car and heading south, hoping to end up in Haast, about 2 ½ hours away.

We stopped at a couple of places along the way, there was a scenic overlook that gave a great view of the coast and we stopped at a beach and walked around there for 30 minutes or so. It was amazing to see beach as far as you can look, and no one was on it. There are supposedly penguins here but we haven’t seen any yet, I’d love to be able to see them sometime while we’re here.

We arrived in Haast at around 4PM and quickly found a hotel for tonight then decided to drive about 30 minutes down to Jackson’s Bay, which is the furthest along the west coast you can go. The town itself was VERY small, I’d say like 10 homes in all, I guess it’s a fishing village. We took a hike that left from there and went up over a hillside for about an hour each way. The walk was really nice since there was no one else there, but the ground was pretty muddy so it got messy at times, and since Marlo wasn’t feeling too well it didn’t go too well. I actually thought it was a great walk since the mud made it challenging, but I was concerned about Marlo at the time so it took the fun out of it.

After that was done we headed back to our hotel and walked over to the nearby tavern for dinner which was a pleasant surprise. I had what turned out to probably be the best ribs I’ve ever had, and Marlo’s lamb was great too. Afterwards we ended up back at our hotel having some wine out in front of our room and talking to our neighbors who were doing the same thing, they were from Boston so we could talk sports for a bit.

Day 13 I’ll have the pancakes

We didn’t rush our morning and slept in a slight bit before just having breakfast in our hotel room. We just made some tea and some bread w/ honey on it. There was a hike along a river in this town and the entrance to the trail was just about 100 ft from our hotel, so we just walked up the road and right up the trail. This was a nice walk, all along a river. Since we were along the western coast the terrain was much different from the other hikes we’d taken earlier in our trip, the far side of the river was a shear cliff that shot straight up about several hundred feet. What was different about the river is that the water was sort of a brownish color, not in a nasty way, but more like it had stirred up mud or something, although we have no idea why it was that color. We walked in for about an hour before deciding to turn around and head back, evidently this hike could go for days if you wanted it to.

After returning from our morning walk we drove up the road about 5 miles to what is known as the pancake rocks, which was the whole reason we’d stopped in this location. I have to admit they were pretty cool to see. It was basically a formation of rocks that was formed on the coast due to the coastal tides and waves. What made this different from any other rock formation I’d ever seen is that they literally looked like pancakes stacked on top of each other. The rocks were basically in layers that appeared like they could just be peeled apart. From reading the plaques they had out there it seemed that scientists have yet to figure out why they actually formed that way. These rocks were just off the main road, so we were able to see them and get back to the car in about 15 to 20 minutes, it wasn’t exactly raining out, but it was misting and I didn’t feel like standing out in that for too long. Although we were told the weather was going to clear up and it’d be a nice day today.

We continued our drive down Highway 6, winding down the western coast for another hour and a half before stopping in the 1st major town for lunch. There aren’t too many big towns on the west coast, so we took this opportunity to jump into the store and grab some road snacks, get some gas, and have lunch.

From here it was another hour or so til we got to Franz Joseph, which is where one of two big glaciers were that we wanted to see. As we drove into the town I immediately saw what I hate to see, a handful of massive tour buses. Tour buses equals mounds of people trying to all get to the same places and see the same stuff we want to see, so we try to avoid them at all costs. We went into the information center here and found out the next town (about 30 min away) was much smaller and less touristed and accessed the other glacier, so we decided to just head there.

We quickly found a hotel in Fox Glacier, which had a full kitchen, we were thinking of going to the general store to get some eggs so we could make our own breakfast tomorrow morning. After checking into the hotel we drove about 10 minutes to the base of the glacier which was supposed to supply us with an hour walk up to and back from the glacier ice. What has been funny is that since we’ve done a handful of 4 hour hikes, these one to two hour ones seem silly to us now. Anyhow, it was windy and cold up by the glacier, although not raining, which was good. We basically hiked 30 minutes up a very rough rock canyon which is the result of the glacier retreating over the past decade. There were high cliff faces on both sides of us, and many waterfalls toppling over the edges and down to streams that we had to skip over en route to the glacier. When we reached the end there was one other couple out there, and it happened to be the two from Folsom that we had met several days ago up at Abel Talisman for the kayaking trip. You couldn’t get right up to the glacier, but the trail stopped around 100 ft short of it, but the thing was massive and there were some spots where you could see the baby blue ice that these glaciers are known for.

After the hour walk by the glaciers we came back into town and walked up to the local tavern for dinner, turned out the Folsom couple was there as well, it was becoming funny seeing them everywhere we went. The food was decent but I really wanted to find a wireless connection since it’d been about 4 days since I’d been online and I wasn’t able to find a connection that’d work.

After dinner we made a quick stop at a pub for one Tui and are now back in our room for the evening. Tomorrow we’ll take a relaxing morning for breakfast and then go on a couple more hikes around here before heading down to Hast which is only about 2 hours away, further down the coast.

Day 12 (Sunday, Nov 4) Go West Young man, go West

We were able to get up and packed and on the road by 9:30AM, we thanked the Kimrey’s for letting us stay with them and were on our way. We weren’t quite sure how far we intended to travel today, we wanted to try and make it to the west coast, making a few stops along the way for some short hikes. We figured when it got close to dinner time we’d stop at the nearest town and find a place to stay. It was raining once again today, a bit harder than it had yesterday, so the drive over the hills went slowly. Once we were away from the coast the rain subsided and we just had some overcast skies. We stopped at about 11:30 at some Podunk town that had 1 café (the Bushman Café) for lunch. One thing I love about New Zealand is that it’s never hard to find a light meal with reasonable portions. Back home everything is massive. We just got a toastie each, which is basically a grilled sandwich. It’s just enough to make the hunger go away, but not make you feel stuffed.

We went another couple of hours and stopped in a town called Murchisom because they had an information center and we wanted to ask about any 1 ½ to 2 hour hikes in the area. The guy there gave us a few options and we headed out to what we figured would be the 1st of 2 hikes we planned to do along our drive today. The problem was that we weren’t able to find the 1st hike, we ended up driving several miles into the middle of no where before agreeing to just turn it around and head to our 2nd hike which was one that included spanning across the largest swing bridge in new Zealand. It didn’t take long to get to this hike, and it was well marked because it was a bit more or a tourist attraction due to the bridge. I have to admit it was pretty cool, basically three cables strung across a large canyon/river and you walk on one and use the other two as support w/ your hands. Once across the bridge there was about 2 hours of trails to hike through. It wasn’t raining here, but you could tell it had rained recently because the ground was very swampy and muddy, which made the hiking a bit more interesting. This area was once used for gold mining so there were several points along the walk that included old mining shafts, mining equipment, etc. The walk was enough to make both Marlo and I fairly sweaty since we’d been dressed in warmer clothes which weren’t too good for a 2 hour hike. But we were happy to get the exercise in.

From there we headed out to the western coast, which is known for it’s rain. Evidently the weather systems come into New Zealand from the west and all the clouds hit the coast and just sit there. As we approached the coast we could see the dark clouds looming. We agreed we’d try to make it down to a town called Punakaiki, which was one of the places we had planned to stop along the drive down the coast. We originally figured on stopping somewhere closer, but we were making good time and figured if we got there tonight we could take our time in the morning. We had no idea how difficult it’d be finding a place to stay there though, that could dictate whether we actually end up there or not. The drive down the coast was really nice, the coastal area is much like California right at the water line, really rugged coast with shear cliffs and rough waters pounding in. But as soon as you were 100 ft inland from the beach it quickly became very tropical, you could be dropped in there and easily be made to believe you were in the Caribbean. We got into Punakaiki and stopped at the 1st place we saw had lodging, which was also the tavern. I went to ask about accommodations and he told me they had a room for us, and he also told us there wasn’t much else in the town, “We’re it” is what he said. So we ended up getting a room here at the tavern, which was actually really nice and quaint, and about 1 block from the beach. It turned out that this tavern was the big local spot to go and after dinner time was really filled up. The two bartenders were really cool, they were the guys I spoke to when we checked in. One was an old salty looking guy, with a massive overgrown grey beard, and the other may have been his son, but was a really mellow guy. They didn’t even take my credit card when I checked in, he just said they’d get it in the morning. Best of all, they had Tui on tap! J

We had dinner there at the tavern, they had a special of Mussel Chowder that was amazingly good. I was also convinced by the younger bartender to not have a Tui and to try the local West Coast brewery, which was called Monteith’s, and was OK, but definitely not a Tui. When I tried that other beer and told him it was decent the old bartender came over and told me I must have my taste buds in my ass because that beer was crap. These guys were very entertaining and it was cool to hang out in a nice tavern that was only 50 feet from my room for the night, it was almost like we made the tavern double as our living room. I’m actually sitting here in the tavern right now typing this. Our plan for tomorrow is to get up whenever we wake up, take a hike around here and then continue heading south. The weather is supposed to be fairly nasty for the next couple of days, I guess it’s payback for the great weather we’ve had up til now.

Day 11 Let there be rain.

Well we knew that New Zealand was supposed to resemble the U.S. Northwest in climate, so we were prepared for rain, but until today we’d not seen a single drop of it. It wasn’t pouring, but it was a steady drizzle out there when we woke up. We lounged around most of the morning and after lunch we all took off to do a couple of local hikes/walks. The first one was to what is known as PuPu springs, which was supposedly some local pond that was supplied by underground springs and was among the clearest water in the world. We drove about 30 minutes out to what seemed like the middle of nowhere and came to what we thought was the right spot, there was a trail there so we took it for a bit, but soon realized we’d overshot the road we were looking for a this wasn’t PuPu spring. We walked around a short bit, there was a river running through this area that drove a turbine station which you could walk to and check out. We were here for about 10 to 15 minutes and then backtracked to the real PuPu springs.

It was a short walk to the spring, which is a sacred area for the Mauri, and the sign there explained that the only known clearer water in the world is located under the ice caps in Antartica. They had a periscope thing which allowed you to look under the water and that really gave a good perspective on how clear it was. The spring was about 50 yards across, and basically like a big bowl with a stream running out of it. It was about 20 ft deep in the center and had various vegetation growing in it. The overall walk around that area was pretty short, about 20 to 30 minutes, so we decided we needed to go find another hike to do since we had plenty of time.

We drove for about 45 minutes out to the end of the cape, which is the northern most point in the South Island of New Zealand, on the western tip. We hiked out to the beach here, which was really nice, even though it had begun to drizzle once again but not bad enough to make it too uncomfortable. The walk to the beach was nice, we actually walked through pastures of sheep all the way there and since it was spring there were loads of little baby sheep running around. The beach itself was very cool looking, large rock formations out in the water and a very rugged coastline. The beach is called Whariki beach and there are plenty of hiking spots here, but after about 30 minutes in the rain we wanted to get back since Betsy was carrying Lila (their 7 month old baby) and didn’t want her to get too cold and wet.

It was about 5PM and we headed back to the house for a quick stop to pick up the baby food and then out to the Mussle Inn, a somewhat famous bar in these parts, for dinner and some drinks. The bar was really rustic and cool, and the interior was really small, I’d say there were only about 5 or 6 tables for eating in there. It’s a good thing we got there as early as we did, otherwise we’d have been sitting outside or waiting for a while to get a seat inside. We were starving and ordered up some snacks before getting the meal, all the food was really good and pretty inexpensive. The other cool thing was that they brewed all of their own beer here, as well as ginger beer (non-alcoholic) and it was all very good. We hung out at the Mussle Inn for a couple hours and then just headed back to the house to end the evening. On the way back we swung into a tavern and bought some Tui to have back at the house. The rest of the evening consisted of Jason and I finishing off all the Tui beer and talking while Marlo and Betsy chatted. We didn’t stay up as late as we did last night, which was a good thing since Marlo and I had to be up and out of there at a reasonable time to get to where we wanted by tomorrow at dinner time.

Day 10 Getting our Sea legs

We got up early to get to our kayak adventure, which we were told to be at by 7:45, turns out the girl working there who told us that was new and we actually didn’t have to be there until 8:30. So we went back to our chalet, which the maids had already gone though, and made some tea and had it out on the porch before returning to do the kayak trip.

The kayaking was ok, but not like I’d actually imagined, the wind was strong and I had to battle that pretty much the entire time. We were kayaking for 3 hours down the coast, then were going to hike our way back. We were in double kayaks, so it was myself and Marlo in a single kayak and although she was actually working pretty hard I had to dig in hard when we hit the strong winds and current to keep a good forward pace going. Kayaking got about two to three stars from me, I think I’d rather hike. It was just too much work and too much getting soaked to get to a spot to hike back from. One odd thing was that when we got there and met the other people who’d be kayaking along with us one couple introduced themselves and said they were from Northern California, so we asked where and they told us from Folsom. They actually live in American River Canyon South, same neighborhood as my folks. Small world. We were also with a lesbian couple from Australia and a lady from Toronto who I guess was traveling alone.

Today wasn’t as warm and sunny as yesterday, so when the kayaking was done and I was ½ soaked it was fairly cold. Luckily the hike back began with a substantial uphill walk so that warmed me up pretty well. The complete walk back actually took the 3 hours they said it would, most of the hikes are exaggerated in length so I was expecting about 2 to 2 ½ hours. By the time I got ½ way back my cloths were dry, I love these light material pants I bought. When we got to the end, which was the same drop off that we ended at yesterday, we had the same reward that we had yesterday….a Tui, and it was good.

We got on the road at around 4:30, figuring we’d take an hour or so to get to the Kimrey’s beach house in Takaka, which they moved to today. We wanted to arrive there after 5:00 so we knew they had time to get moved in and set things up. The drive there was pretty windy, twisting and turning our way through the hills. By the time we got there it was about 5:45 and it turned out that the Kimrey’s had just arrived themselves. Marlo and I were rank from our day of hiking and kayaking, so we just needed a shower, so we cleaned up while the Kimrey’s moved in.

The house was really nice, right on the beach, and best of all it had two master bedrooms, so Marlo and I were able to have our own bathroom this time, unlike the place in Nelson we stayed with them at two days ago. None of us felt like going anywhere so we just stayed in, cooked a really nice pasta dinner, and drank some of the wine we had purchased in Marlborough. We stayed up pretty late chatting, around 12:30AM, probably the latest we’ve stayed up all trip.

Day 9 Nov. 1, Walking downhill is faster than walking uphill.

We hung out w/ Jason and Betsy a bit in the morning and for breakfast (Jason made some good grub) then headed out towards Abel Tasman, which is a very large conservation area along the coast, we were going to hike there today and reserve a kayak for tomorrow. We agreed to meet them at their next house which they are moving to tomorrow, it’s further up the coast and right on a beach, should be fun. The drive was about an hour, it wasn’t very far distance wise, but very windy road through the hills. We reserved our trip for tomorrow, we’re going to have a guide come w/ us on kayaks up the coast for about 3 hours, then we hike back along the coastal range, which is beautiful.

After booking that, we found a very nice little chalet for the night, we have a nice little porch that overlooks a field w/ horses and in the distance is the ocean. This was just a short walk to the entrance to the park, so we went over there and took the afternoon to do a hike inland through the park. The hike started off nice, the weather is perfect yet again, I really can’t believe how lucky we’ve had it with the weather. Since we were going to be hiking back along this same trail on the waterfront tomorrow we decided to take the inland track today. This was ALL uphill, and not a slight hill, a steep hill. We basically walked for 2 hours uphill, what surprised me the most is that I didn’t fatigue like I figured I would. I guess all that bike riding I did in the early part of my sabbatical is helping out. Even the though it was tons of work, when we got to the top of the hike, the view was amazing, we’d scaled quite a bit and were at a fairly high altitude and could see everything. It was worth the effort to get here.

The hike down took significantly less time that the hike up. We took a little side hike for about 30 minutes and still made it down to the hike entrance quicker than it took to reach our summit. At the trail entrance is a restaurant/bar and my reward awaited me, a nice cold Tui beer. Mmmm mmmm mmmmm. It was really good.

After nursing that beer for a bit we walked back to our chalet, cleaned up (we were probably as smelly as we’ve been on this trip due to the 2 hour uphill hike in the warm weather), and headed up the street for dinner. There are only two restaurants in town here, the one I had my beer at and one other one up the road on the waterfront. We went to the 2nd restaurant and it was pretty good. Now we’re back at the chalet, sitting on our porch, drinking some wine we bought in Marlborough and reading/writing. Tomorrow we get up early to kayak.

Day 8 Going riding on a boat

The ordeal of returning the car and making it onto the ferry wasn’t an ordeal at all, it took about 10 minutes to find our car rental place and the guy drove us over there with plenty of time to spare. The ferry ride was cool, a 3 hour trip in all, the ferry was large and had a café, a pub, a movie theater, and other areas aboard and it was about 10% full, so there was plenty of room to walk around and hang out in all the areas. We went up to the top deck which is outside on the top of the boat for the arrival to the South Island, we actually wove our way though some channels before docking in Picton at 11:30, 3 hours to the minute after leaving Wellington. These people are better than Germans in public transportation punctuality. All the employees on the boat were dressed in costume for Halloween, I wasn’t sure if they observed that here, guess they do.

We didn’t spend any time in Picton, just got the car and headed out to Marlborough which was about a 30 min drive. Marlborough is the largest wine region in New Zealand, so we had our eyes set on tasting a handful of wines. The down side to it was that this region is known for it’s white wines, and we are more red people, but Marlo did some homework and figured out which ones had some reds in their inventory. We hit about 4 small wineries before heading another hour or so to Nelson, which is along the north coast of the south island. The drive to Nelson was very windy up through the hills, I wouldn’t want to do that drive after tasting too many wines.

We got into Nelson and just walked around a bit, Marlo had done some research and found a cool old pub that actually has rooms to stay in up stairs too, so we figured we’d try that place for tonight. All we really did in Nelson was go to the information center to ask about what good hikes were in the area. We made out way out of town about 10 minutes to that pub to find it was pretty expensive, which left us with 2 options. Option 1, go back into Nelson and find a place for tonight, or option 2, drive a bit out of town and hope we can find our friends the Kimrey’s who are vacationing here as well and are staying just outside of town. We took option 2 even though our directions weren’t very good, we figured if we couldn’t find them then we’d just go back and find a bed n breakfast. We ultimately did find them, they were way outside of town, and way far away from everything. Jason works at Intel too and is on his sabbatical as well, but they are taking the entire 11 weeks to stay in New Zealand, a week or two in each location, renting homes for that time instead of the B&B whirlwind Marlo and I are doing (we’ve only got 3 weeks!).

The place was really nice and it had an extra bedroom, so we were able to just stay with them, which was nice. I went with Jason down to the creek for about 45 minutes to try some fly fishing (caught nothing) then we met the girls in town for a very nice dinner. Afterwards we came back to their house which had a fire pit outside, we started up a fire and drank wine by it until we went to bed around midnight.

Day 7 Last day on the North Island….Let’s go for a drive

Today was going to be our slow drive from Napier down to Wellington. If we did it straight it’d be around 4 hours, but we decided to take our time and see things on the way down. We started off by swinging into one of the wineries in the area before heading out, they were the only ones who opened at 9AM. About ½ way down the drive was a town called Woodville, we stopped there for a short 30 minute hike to just stretch our legs. They had a long hiking trail along a gorge and we just did the beginning portion of it.

We also drove through a town called Dannevirke, which surprised me because it was a Danish town in the middle of New Zealand. Just thought I’d mention that.

Just south of Woodville we stopped at the Tui brewery for lunch. We’d seen signs for this type of beer for a while but hadn’t been able to find it on tap anywhere. It was actually pretty good and brewed in the middle of nowhere. Turned out to be a good stop for lunch.

From here we headed out to Martinborough, which is basically a wine territory. We were having trouble because we rolled into town at 3PM and many of the wineries closed during the week at that time. We ended up finding 3 of them that were opened, which was plenty since we still had to make the drive into Wellington. Most of the wines here are Pinots, and some were pretty good. We bought one bottle and figured we’d end up drinking it in our Bed and Breakfast on some rainy day over the next two weeks we’re here.

We then took a straight shot to Wellington and got in around 5PM, right in the middle of rush hour, which is significantly lighter than what we’d see in the states. Wellington is the capitol of NZ, and is a legitimate city, nothing like the towns we’ve stayed in so far. We found our hotel, checked in, and headed out for dinner. Turns out our hotel is 1 block from the main strip of bars and restaurants. We had some fancy schmancy pizza which turned out to be good. You know I actually did something I’d never thought I’d ever do….I ordered a pizza that had sour cream on it, I had my doubts, but it was really good.

We then just took a walk down by the waterfront, nothing too special. Turned in early since we had to be up early to catch the ferry to the south island.

Day 6 Let’s go for a LONG walk

Well the 1st item on the agenda today was to get the tire on the car fixed. Marlo took off to go to the information center to figure out what we should do today and I drove about 200 ft around the block to the auto place, they told me they couldn’t patch the tire so I had to buy a new one and it would take them about 30 minutes. So I left them to do their work and walked around the corner and found Marlo at the info center, where she was discussing the local hikes with the lady working there. We ended up deciding to take a walk to the end of the cape kidnappers, which was about 10 miles or so away, she told us the walk was pretty long, about 10 kilometers each way, but it went right along the shoreline next to the cliffs out to the point. On our way back to pick up the car we stopped at a possum store, they had all kinds of things from sweaters to throws made out of possum skin. Possums are everywhere out here, but they aren’t quite like the ones in the states, they aren’t as menacing looking. The pelts are soft too, but the sweaters were a bit pricey so I passed. No need to pay that much for something made from a possum.

When we got to the auto place the car was all ready to go, so it didn’t end up holding us back much at all, just setting us back about $80 or so. I’ll know when I see the exchange rage AMEX gives me.

On the way out to the hike we stopped at one of the wineries that was right on the way. This region is known for it’s wine, so we had to give some a try. Just like by us, the tasting was free, so that was nice. The wine wasn’t too bad, it was actually pretty good, but we didn’t have too much of it since we had to head out on a long hike. We bought some bread and spreads to eat while on the hike and headed out to the starting point.

We drove out to start the hike, which began at a trailer park. They actually give you guidelines based upon the tides that dictate when you can do this walk. The times vary each day since so do the tides. Today you had to wait til 11:15 before you could start, which is pretty much exactly the time we got out there. You had to start your walk back from the end of the cape no later than 4PM to avoid being stranded out there all night by high tide. We didn’t plan to come anywhere close to staying that long, we figured it’d be a 2 to 2 ½ hour walk each way, so we could get back by 4:00 or so. It was funny to walk through a New Zealand version of a trailer park, there was no evidence of white trash present, it was very neat and clean. Not what you’d expect to see if you were stateside.

When you began the walk you could look out at the cliffs and beach we’d be walking along to get to the end, the cape at the end, and it looked a LONG way out there. But the walk was great, the cliffs were probably 200 to 250 ft tall and were all sorts of colors from grey clay to reds and tans. The colors were in large bands, I’m assuming depending upon age and what type of rock they were. The water basically comes right up to the base of the cliffs, which is why you have to do this walk during low tide, otherwise there’d be no beach to walk on. We were right in our guess, it took about 2 hours to get out to the end, where we had our lunch and then went a bit further to get to the very tip of the cape. We had to climb up to the top of the cliffs at that point to get to the reserve that is for the Gannet breeding, these are colorful sea birds that all nest right at the end of the cape. There were thousands of them, all sitting on their nests (it is spring here remember). They weren’t afraid of people at all and would come swooping right over your head to find their mates sitting on their eggs. The views from up here were really good. Also of note, once we left the beach area to climb up the cliff to the top, part of that walk was actually through pasture full of sheep and cows, the cows were really curious and actually began coming towards us like they were threatening. Once we turned and faced them they ran the other way.

The walk back was quicker since we didn’t stop to eat or take many pictures. We got back around 4:30 and instantly took off the shoes and put on the sandals, the feet were ready to feel some air. We figured the total walk was around 14 miles, so we were a bit fatigued. The weather was PERFECT again, it’s really unbelievable how great it’s been for us, all anyone ever told us was to get ready for rain. I’m sure we’ll get our share, but it hasn’t happened yet. Today was actually warm, we both bit sunburn despite coating ourselves in sun block.

We had planned to go to a winery afterwards, but we were kinda sweaty and just wanted to shower so we went back to our B&B to get cleaned up before going out to find dinner. Nothing too major happened for the rest of the day, we went to the irish bar from yesterday and had 1 beer since neither of us was hungry enough for dinner yet. We ended up at a Mongolian BBQ which was really good, but tons of food, now I’m totally stuffed but don’t feel guilty about it since I walked 14 miles today and have only eaten some bread and my breakfast.

Red Sox win the World Series in a clean sweep of the lowly Colorodo Rockies. Can any national league team compete? Guess not. I also saw the Patriots trounced Washington by like 50 pts.

The plan tomorrow is to get up whenever we wake and get out of here and begin our 4 hour drive south to Wellington which is where we’ll take the ferry to the south island in two days. We plan to take the drive slowly and stop at several places along the way.

Day 5 (Sun Oct 28) Pop goes the Tire and the tire goes pop

Well even though our place was a dump, the sleeping was still fine, and the shower was hot, those are the two important things and they were acceptable. Got up around 8:00 or so and checked out of the dump and headed back to the café we had lunch in yesterday for breakfast and then off to hike Huka Falls. The total walk was to be around 2 hours up and 2 hours back, so we figured it’d get up right up to lunch and then we could drive out to our next destination, Napier in Hawk’s Bay. The river rapids were pretty impressive, mainly because of the volume of water that rushes through them and then over the falls, which weren’t very high, but were still impressive with that amount of water flow. I have to say that the weather has been great since we’ve been here, but today was perfect. Great day for a long hike. The walk started out just going along side the river, which widened and slowed down after we got further upstream from the falls. After about a mile or so the trail moved in from the river and more towards the open prairie where we saw lots of sheep and cows. We walked right up on a baby cow that had just been born, we heard the noise and were wondering what it was, it was the baby crying when it popped out of mamma. It was just trying to walk and was still all wet. That was pretty cool.

We took about an hour and 45 minutes to do the walk from start to turn-around point, where there was a dam and on the other side was a river which very closely resembled the American river back home in Folsom, with tall rocks on either side. On our way back we stopped to see how the little calf was doing and another cow went over to check on it, then pooped on it’s head. I thought that odd, but the little guy took it in stride. He seemed to be just fine, and sleeping next to his mom.

By the time we got done hiking it was around 1:00 and time for lunch, so we headed back into Taupo to the same bar we were at yesterday to try and take advantage once again of the free internet connection there. We also caught the 1st inning of game 3 of the world series before leaving and driving off to the Hawk’s Bay region, where we planned to stay the next two nights in Napier.

The drive was nice, very open and green. Tons of sheep. We even passed a golf course that looked like it used sheep to mow the grass. There were people teeing off into a fairway full of sheep. That was pretty funny to see.

We arrived in Napier around 4:00 and had a few bed and breakfasts in mind so we drove though town til we found them and parked the car to go see who had vacancies. Here’s where the driving on the left side of the road takes it’s 1st toll. I (Mike) didn’t correctly gage the left side of the car when pulling over to the side of the road to park and brushed the tire on the curb, it pinched, and pop….flat tire. Turned out we were directly across the street from the bed and breakfast we ended up staying at, and found out that we were also just 1 block from a tire shop. Luckily there was no damage to the car other than the popped tire, so I put the spare on for now and will take the damaged tire to the shop tomorrow to get patched. Shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

Our Bed and Breakfast is very nice here, makes up for the dump of last night. Very quaint, all painted nicely and the owners were very friendly too. We’re about 2 blocks from downtown Napier, and we’re right along the street that runs along the waterfront. Napier is right on the east coast of New Zealand, on the Pacific Ocean.

We took a stroll into town to see what was there, ended up at an irish pub and had dinner there which was good for pub grub. On the walk back we found some other restaurants that looked interesting for tomorrow night, and we also found the information center which can give us some direction on activities for tomorrow, Marlo will go check that out while I handle the tire problem.

Day 4: Land of the Lost

Another great breakfast at the b&b and we were out the door before 9AM. Before heading towards our next destination which was Taupo we tried to swing into the local library to see if there was free WiFi, but we quickly found there was not. We also found out that the gas stations can’t use overseas credit cards at the pump, we have to go pay inside everytime, it took a potential temper tantrum from Mike before we figured thae one out.

The drive to Taupo is about an hour or so, but on the way we stopped at Orokei Korako a thermal reserve that Collin, the owner of the 1st bed and breakfast we stayed at, recommended to us as the place to go if we wanted to see thermal stuff as a tourist but not be bunched in w/ other tourists, because it was out of the way not many people went there. I have to say it was pretty cool, several geysers and bubbling mud, boiling water, and steam rising from the ground all around you. The walk was about an hour and a half all through this terrain, so it wasn’t a small area. I half expected Chaka or a Sleestak to run by us, it seemed really prehistoric (Land of the Lost reference there, sorry for those that just don’t get it). The running water all around us was bathwater warm at the beginning and too hot to touch at the top, I can only imagine what the actual pools were like, I’m guessing since they were bubbling that they were boiling. Takes a college education to figure that stuff out. There weren’t too many other people there, evidently the tour buses don’t come here because you have to take a boat across a lake to get to the thermal grounds and the boat wasn’t large enough to fit a bus load of people. Evidently this is one of the best thermal spots in the whole world, it was definitely like nothing I’d ever seen.

After that 2 hour break we finished our drive into Taupo, which is situated right on a very large lake, I’m guessing it’s larger than Tahoe. Since we didn’t have reservations anywhere here our 1st agenda item was to find a place to sleep tonight, even though it was only about 1:00. We didn’t want to waste too much time doing this, so we quickly found a hotel and checked in, the place is kind of a dump, but the bed was clean, that’s all I really need.

We had the whole afternoon to kill, so we drove about 4 miles outside of town to the “Craters of the Moon”, which was basically more thermal ground. It wasn’t as impressive as what we did earlier, but it was still pretty cool. There wasn’t as much vegetation around this place, so it really did look like the moon. There were also large craters here, which is where the name came from. That was about a 45 minute walk for us, so a bit more exercise which is all good. After that we drove right across the street to some tourist trap that was a honey store, they had all kinds of honey they make onsite from literally millions of bees. I have to admit it was pretty cool. We even tried wine made of honey, which is what mead is, I never knew this.

We made our way back into town and decided to search for an internet connection so we could email our folks to let them know we arrived here a few days ago safely and to see about booking our accommodations in the next couple of destinations we had in mind. We went to the café we had lunch in and paid for the wireless connection which was enough to everything we needed to do done. After that we found a nice Irish pub to relax and have a couple of beers, and low and behold I was able to pick up a free wifi connection here, so we did more planning and hotel booking.

Our final activity of the day was dinner, we walked about 100 ft from our hotel door to a pub that was also a restaurant.. the Crooked Door Inn. We had a massive seafood compilation that had three full plates of foot stacked on top of each other when it was served on a tiered tray. Scallops, prawns, salmon, mussles, oysters, and other stuff was all included. So now we’re stuffed and ready to go to sleep. Tomorrow will be a big hike before we drive out to Hawk’s Bay.

Day 3: Let’s go for a walk….

Once again we were able to jump up early due to our time zone advantage and headed downstairs for our breakfast. The older couple that own this B&B had a great set up for breakfast, the wife evidently makes fresh muffins each morning, they were really good. She provided fresh fruit and yogurt that was outstanding and she also had fresh eggs from their chickens that were really good too. Their dog had just had pups and she brought out the 3 of them to show us, they had to only be a week or so old, they were really small and sweet. The daddy dog barked and jumped proudly as she displayed them to us. She also had a small cage in the living room with newly hatched chickens that were under a heat lamp. She was very proud of them too.

We finished up breakfast and were able to head out by 9AM, and by 9:30 we were on the 1st trail that we planned to hike today. The total walk was about 2 hours and it weaved through an "exotic" forest that was actually created by the Kiwis to test different trees from other countries to see which could grow best in this environment for industrial use. It was odd because most of the trees were Californian, there were coastal redwoods, douglas firs, sugar pines, and several others that were pretty familiar. Marlo and I joked that we didn’t have to come all the way out here to have this hike... but of course the under growth and the even some of the tree properties were totally different. Part of the walk brought us along the hillside with a spectacular view of the town with the lake in the background and thermal pools in the foreground. The geyser was shooting up at this time too, so that was cool to see from afar. There were several trails where we were, two were shorter hikes than the one we did and one was an 8 hour one, we weren’t quite up for blowing a whole day walking through the woods, so we stuck to our 2 hour hike. There were a lot of mtn biking trails too, and they even had built in ramps for jumping and some other obstacles built into the track.

Once we finished the first walk we drove about 2 miles up the road to Blue lake and did our 2nd hike which went completely around the lake. This was a completely different type of walk, there were no redwoods or pines, it was all indigenous plants which are much more tropical and almost prehistoric looking. The coolest "tree" here is a Pongas which is a fern tree. Very prehistoric feeling... and have been on just about every hike we've been on thus far. There were duck tours going on here too, which was funny to see, they plunged into the lake and did a quick circle and were on their way off to their next stop. The only place I had ever seen duck tours was in Boston. This hike was easier than the 1st one, there was little climbing and was pretty much all along the waterfront of the lake. It took about an hour and a half total and once we were done it was around 1:30 and we were ready for some beer and headed back to our familiar bar to watch the Red Sox game which had started at 1:00.

The lunch crowd was just thinning out when we got to the Pig n’ Whistle, I don’t think they’d changed the channel since yesterday because the world series was already on even though no one was watching it. (The Pig and Whistle used to be the old police station, hence the name of the bar.) The bartenders saw us come in and gave me the thumbs up when they saw I noticed the game was already on. About 1/2 way through the game the bar was pretty much empty and a couple walked in, with the guy wearing a Colorodo Rockies cap on his head, I was pretty amazed. I had figured there could potentially be parts of Red Sox Nation out here, but not Rockies fans. Go figure. He said he’d never have imagined sitting in New Zealand watching the world series with a red sox fan. They were cool folks, from Denver, and evidently she worked for a tourism company and they were tagging along w/ one of the trips, which was mainly for Seniors, so they slipped away for some free time to watch the game. Four or five beers later the Sox won the game and we came back to the bed and breakfast to clean up before heading out to dinner.

The bartender at the Pig n’ whistle (she had a cool name, Kirianna) recommended a place for dinner so we went there to try it out. It was a bit pricey, but very good, way better than the Indian food from last night. They actually served meat fairly raw on a rock that the waiter told me was 400 deg Celcius, you cut up the meat and rolled it around on the rock for a few seconds to cook it before eating it. It was interesting, and definitely different.

After dinner we finished the day off by going to the Polynesian spa that is right downtown, only a few blocks from where we ate dinner. Evidently this is rated as one of the ten best spas in the world. We got a private spa, which was basically our own room with a hot tub in it that was enclosed on 3 sides and the open side faced out to the lake, so the view was really nice. The water was all from the natural hot springs that are underneath the whole area, so it smelled like sulfur and was sort of algae greenish in tint, but very warm and soothing.Turns out we timed the stay at the spa just right, because we were able to watch the moon rise - it was a full moon - and the city lights turn on as the sun set. We were serenaded by sea gulls as the sun set. haha. We soaked in there for 30 minutes before heading back to the B&B which is where I sit now getting ready to fall alsleep because I’m pretty relaxed after soaking in that water. They say that natural hot spring water is healthy for you, I am not sure about any magical healing powers but I definitely am relaxed and shouldn’t have any problems sleeping tonight.

Day Two: (The Boston Masacre)

Thanks to the time advantage we got up early and made it to our breakfast at 8AM with no problem. Collin gave us a map and showed us the best way to drive to Rotorua, which was to be our next stop. He also gave us a handful of other tips on places to see before jumping over to the South Island in a week. He referred to our destination affectionately as ‘rotten’rua because of the heavy sulfur smell there due to the volcanic hot springs all around the area.

Before leaving town we went back down to the glow worm caves and did the 45 minute hike around a trail that gave great views into the river flowing into the caves. The trail was really beautiful with lush green valley. Was interesting to see the forest on top of what we had floated through the afternoon before. The trail weaved through open caves both large and small - a small one is to the left.. . and some beautiful river views (below). We were lucking out on the weather, it had been raining up til now but both of our days here so far have been perfect, blue skies and sunny, around 65 degrees.

By 10AM we were on the road for our ~2 hour drive to Rotorua, where we hoped to be able to find a pub that would be broadcasting the world series on Sky TV, channel 1, we had already confirmed it was on. The Red Sox had of course made it to the series this year, I had something to do with that since we came here to New Zealand and made it difficult to see the games. If I was home and in front of a TV, guaranteed they’d have lost by now.

We made one stop on the way at some small town, Tirua, that Collin suggested we quickly stop to see the information/tourist building. and a few artsy shops. The info center was shaped like a big dog and a big bear made out of corrogated white sheet metal. Was odd looking, and definately unique. The shops weren't much... but clearly a spot where the tour busses stop on the way between Auckland and Rotorua. We strolled up and down the main strip there for 15 minutes then took off. Rotorua was only another 20 minutes away.

We got in just before noon and found a place in the local car park, and walked around the small town of Rotorua for a bit. This town was definitely larger than Waitomo, with a downtown of about 4 or 5 square blocks, and nested right on the banks of a large lake. We grabbed a quick lunch at a very San Francisco’ish deli before nesting at the local pub - Pig and Whistle - that had sky sport on the TV, and they were kind enough to put the world series on for us. We were the only Americans in there, but we struck up conversation w/ several of the bartenders and some of the locals at the bar. They were intrigued by the baseball since they had limited knowledge of the game. We hung out there most of the afternoon, through the 7th inning at lease, since the Sox were well in command (13 to 1) so I felt comfortable enough that we could leave and they wouldn’t blow the lead. I’d better not find out tomorrow that they brought in Eric Gagne to pitch the 9th inning and he gave up 15 runs. It’s possible.

We made our way about 5 miles outside of town to our B&B for the next two nights stay. This was more of a traditional bed and breakfast compared to where we were last night, which was more of a room like at a hotel. This was a bedroom in a house, but it’s very nice and the place is situated up on a hillside and our room has a great view of the town and lake below. We drove back into town for dinner, settled on some Indian food place because there was a good crowd , turned out no one knew what they were doing because the food was average at best, but my hunger was gone.

That was pretty much it for the day, we took a quick stroll after dinner to get some of the crap Indian food settled into our guts then headed back to the B&B where I’m writing this now. I think tomorrow we’re going to do a serious hike in the morning, hopefully making it back into town to catch the tail end of the Sox game 2.

So far my overall impression is positive of New Zealand. The people are very friendly. A few observations have surprised me, first of all there are many more Maori people than I anticipated. These are the native people to this land, they are of Polynesian decent and look like Samoans or Hawaiians. There was actually a big protest by a group of them outside of the bar when we were watching the world series today, the bar is right next to the courthouse. I guess a Maori guy was arrested for something and it’s big news that they feel it was due to racism and they are protesting it. Looks like America isn’t the only country with racism issues. David Allen Coe would like it here too. The other thing I’ve noticed that I didn’t expect to this degree is the tropical feel of the forests, the landscape as we drive around resembles Vermont a lot, lush green pastures and rolling hills for as far as the eye can see, but when we hiked through the woods you could have told me we were in central America it was so tropical feeling.

Day 1: The Glow Maggots

It was raining when we landed... but it didn't last for long. Once we got the car the sun came out. It was like NZ was welcoming us!

The drive was only about 2 hours, and very picturesque with all the lush green countryside here. We got to our bed and breakfast, Waitomo Guest Lodge, and were able to check in at that early hour, which was to our benefit because they gave us the best room at the place, with a great view of the hillsides and pastures. The owner was a guy named Collin, he was very friendly and gave us an overview of everything to do in the small town, and he even went as far as to tell us which places weren’t any good, were overpriced, or had poor customer service. We took a couple hours to stroll around the small town, by small I mean only about a few hundred feet from beginning of civilization to the end of it.

At 3PM we had made reservations to go see the glowing worms. What you actually do here is inner tube through underground rivers and streams while looking up at the top of the caves at the thousands of green glowing lights that are emitted from the butts of maggots. But for tourism purposes the maggots have been renamed ‘glow worms’. Gotta love good marketing. It turned out that the typical group of 10 people that go together was going to just be Marlo and I and our guide, a local guy named Lucas, evidently things were slow this afternoon, so he told us he’d take us on the typically 3 hour tour but since it was just the two of us he could show us some other things as well. Looks like we lucked out. The water was cold, the wet suits were uncomfortable, but the ride was very cool and well worth it. There were spots when we turned off our helmet lamps and just floated through the caverns in total blackness looking up at the thousands of tiny florescent green lights, it looked like a bizarre sky you might see in tahoe filled with stars, only they were green . We also had to take the tubes over several underground waterfalls, they weren’t too big so the danger level was low, but it was fun none the less. For the "extra part" of the tour, we hopped a railing and went to look at another cave that was loaded with stalagtites and stalagmites. Was really cool. The railing and walk way we jumped onto was pretty significant too... because it turned out that our guide had been one of the guys to build it a few years ago. They sent the metal beams down a natural shaft (way high up) and then waded the stuff upstream in the dark. Was crazy to think! When we went to leave the tour group before us had thrown extra inner tubes on top of our bus, so Lucas had to do donuts in the parking lot to throw them off. This wasn’t a big deal, but the couple families in the parking lot who were doing the trail hike didn’t understand what we were up to and gave us a really good confused look.

This turned out to be a great way to spend the 1st day here, and that cold water helped keep us both awake and alert to avoid any jet lag, although in reality New Zealand happens to only be 4 hours different in time than California, the adapting won’t be too hard. We’re actually 20 hours ahead, but the actual time difference is just 4 hours, it’s just a day off. But thanks to my lack of sleep and excess of convulsions on the plane I was pretty tired, so we went to the local pub for a some beers and to the local youth hostel restaurant for some pizza before turning in….at only 8:30, but we both went down instantly and slept straight through the night.