Another one bites the dust / Sailing

Tonight we had dinner with Gareth and Claire before they depart New Zealand to head back to Manchester. They are spending about 8 weeks travelling the US before arriving back in the UK. We've enjoyed hanging out with them and they'll be missed. But we enjoyed a final meal in NZ with them at Kermedec.

In addition, I went out on one of the partners sail boats today. He has a 40 foot Beneteau which is actually the same kind of boat that Erin and I got our beginner sailing certifications one. It was a beautiful day on the harbour and we stopped at Motuihe Island which is in the harbour and me and another guy (Cameron) went for a quick swim. Check out some of the pictures below:

Stephen, Cameron, Valerie

The City

Rangitoto

Hanging over the edge

Rotorua

We have a few final things to see on our New Zealand list. This weekend our task was to go to Rotorua, a city south of here, to see live kiwi birds. The kiwis are in captivity, but we heard from our friends we would be able to see them in an open air enclosure, which is the closest we would ever get. Rotorua is also one of the Pacific's most active thermal regions and is surrounded by mud pools, geysers, and hot springs.

Our first stop when we got to Rotorua on Saturday was to visit Rainbow Springs Nature Park which is where the kiwi birds are. A ticket to the park is good for 24 hours, so we spent some time walking around the park looking at trout, native birds and other random farm animals. We went into the nocturnal house and finally saw a live kiwi! It was behind a glass wall, but we couldn't believe our eyes - it was so much bigger than expected. We had been looking for something the size of a softball but this was the size of a rugby ball. We still wanted to see a kiwi up close, so we kept our tickets for the evening show, when other kiwis would be running around their open air enclosure. (Sadly no photos of the kiwis, as it was dark when we saw them and we weren't allowed to use a flash!)

Small Wallaby

Erin and a friendly donkey

The next stop on our trip was to the gondola and luge in Rotorua. This is very similar to the one that we have visited in Queenstown, but the luge ride is MUCH longer. We had purchased three rides each, but the rain started to fall and we were a bit tired with luging after the first ride so we decided to give our remaining tickets to some strangers.

We hit the road for our hotel, which was 15 minutes outside of town. After checking into our hotel, we grabbed our bathing suits and towels headed off to the Polynesian Spa where we had booked a private hot pool. The hot pool was very nice and we had secluded views of the surrounding bubbling mud pools. It was very hot, so when our allotted 30 minutes was up, we were ready to go.

A large chess set at our hotel

Our private hot pool

Next stop was dinner in town. The rain had stopped so we sat outside at a cafe where there was live entertainment. We enjoyed dinner until sun-down when it was time to head back to Rainbow Springs to see more kiwis. The park was lit up with blue, green and red lights which made it feel very exotic. When we entered the kiwi enclosure, we didn't expect to see much, but were lucky enough to see three more kiwis scampering about. They are nocturnal animals so they were out looking for food and other exciting things. They certainly did move fast!

After a long and exciting day we were ready for bed. It was back to the hotel for us as we had to get up early on Sunday for more thermal explorations.

Sunday's adventure was a visit to Waiotapu Thermal Wonderland. At the park, we walked through bubbling and hissing pools, steam vents, craters, and other exciting things. We felt like we were on another planet. At 10:15 we joined the other visitors at Lady Know Geyser as she erupted and hit a height of almost 20 meters in the air.

Jeremy checking out the sites

Devil's Bath

Champagne Pool

Mud Pools

Exploding geyser

Our weekend was a busy one and we are finishing it off by doing more research for our trip to Asia in just a few weeks. We hope that everyone else had a nice weekend!

Touch Rugby Career is over

In November of 2008 I began my touch rugby career. I played with a number of people from work and we got off to a good start with a couple wins in the first few weeks. We then lost a game and I was pretty upset as losing is never good. Overall my first season was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it.

This year I played again, but unfortunately our team was very bad and not winning a game became all too common. My last rugby game of my career was this past Friday night and I was playing on another team which we won with a final try with no time left in the game. It was a great win and a good way to end my career.

Unfortunately I injured my finger in one of my last games and it still hasn't gotten better. I went to the doctors and he's told me that I have to see a physical therapist (physio as it's called here). It sure does sound strange, but yes, I have to see a physio for my hurt finger. I have an appointment for Monday, so hopefully they can help make me a speedy recovery.

Everyone over here has told me to take Rugby back to the US and to start up a touch league in Boston. As much as that sounds like fun to me, I'm pretty sure it'll be difficult to start up a touch league, so I'm guessing my career in Touch is over (at least for now).

Squid

On Saturday we were hoping to watch the final races of the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series on the boat of two partners that Jeremy works with at PwC. Unfortunately the weather didn’t pan out the way we had hoped and there was lots of rain, so our trip was cancelled. We spent the day at home avoiding the rain but our afternoon was interrupted with lots of boat horns blasting in the harbor. We ran outside to see what the commotion was (the rain had finally cleared) and found out that New Zealand had won the race! There was a celebration right around the corner from our house where the race boats were being stored, so we joined in the cheering for a little while.

That evening we got dressed in our Valentine’s red and pink for a farewell party for our friends Gareth and Claire. They are leaving Auckland this week to return home to the UK. Their trip home will take them through the US for several weeks of travelling. We started at their house before heading to a couple of bars in the city. It was a late but very fun night for us.

We topped off our weekend with a delicious lunch today at Squid Row, a seafood restaurant that we’ve been talking about going to. We both filled our bellies with the salt and pepper squid, which was fantastic. We really will miss all of the good restaurants around Auckland!

Hawke's Bay Wine Festival

On Thursday morning we set off towards the Hawkes Bay, which is a 6 hour drive south of Auckland. (We enjoyed a four day weekend this week, taking Thursday off and Friday was a public holiday; Waitangi Day.) The Hawkes Bay is known as wine country and New Zealand and part of our weekend included the Hawkes Bay Wine Festival.

The first three hours of the drive were very familiar to us as it is the drive that we take to many of the popular sites on the North Island. After we hit Taupo, the scenery was new to us – but of course great.
We got to the Hawkes Bay around 4:30 and decided to explore Napier, one of the cities that make up the Bay. Napier was destroyed by an earthquake in the 1930s and had to be completely rebuilt. The city now has an Art Deco theme that it is famous for. We strolled through some of the public gardens before heading off to our final destination, Hastings.
For this trip we decided to try a Kiwi summer tradition and go camping. We rented a tent from a home business in Auckland and were all set. The campground was very nice with lots of open tent sites. We got ourselves set up and went into town for a quick bite to eat. The sun set around 9:30 which left us with not much to do but read by flashlight or sleep, so needless to say, we were in bed pretty early.

The birds were chirping nice and early for us on Friday morning. We were up and running by 7:30 am. We decided to drive to Cape Kidnappers which is a famous golf course. When it opened a few years ago it was ranked #27 in the world. We had a hard time finding the course and when we asked someone where it was, they told us that we had to have permission to enter the property. We found the gate and dialed the course, begging them to let us in. We learned that it never hurts to ask as we were at the Pro Shop within a few minutes. The course was heavenly and the staff were so nice and accommodating.
After taking in the sites of the Cape, we were off to Kemblefield Estate to start our first day of wine tasting. We were told that we had to see Kemblefied, but it’s far away from the festival, so we decided to make an extra trip on Friday. After tasting a few wines we enjoyed a delicious platter of food as we were definitely ready for lunch at that stage. The woman at the vineyard suggested a few other wineries in the area that we should visit, so we mapped out our afternoon to do just that.
The afternoon included Trinity Hill, where after tasting wine we read and napped in the shade, Unison Vineyards, Matariki Wines, and finally Craggy Range where we drank an Avery Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc while snacking on a variety of cheeses. We also stopped to watch a random go carting race that we came across during our journey.
Saturday was the official start to the wine festival. We had no trouble getting to bed early on Friday night, so by 8 am on Saturday we were ready to go again. We walked into town to meet up with our shuttle for the day. We were given tasting glasses and a bus pass that we were told we had to wear on our necks all day. (It was kind of hard to drink from a glass that was tied to your neck, so we didn’t exactly follow all of the rules.)

Our first stop was Beach House Wines, a small vineyard. We only stayed for a short time and were back on the bus towards Elephant Hill – stop #2. When we got off the bus, we were greeted by tour guides who poured us generous glasses of wine to taste. They then walked us through the vineyard explaining that Elephant Hill opened just a few months ago. It was a very nice vineyard but we still didn’t feel like we wanted to spend the rest of the day there, so we were off again to stop #3, Clearview Estate.
Now this was more like what we were looking for. There were vendors selling snacks, cellar door tours, tastings and a restaurant where we were lucky to grab a seat for a delicious lunch in the shade amongst the grape vines. After lunch we hopped back onto the shuttle towards Kim Crawford. The shuttle took us straight through the vineyard which was kind of neat. At Kim Crawford we secured a bale of hay under a shade tree. We had packed a small blanket and travel Yahtzee which came in handy as we sipped wine all afternoon. The vineyard was serving thin crust pizza and ice cream, so we enjoyed that (and plenty of water) as well! The last shuttle back to town was at 4:30, so we were certain to get on one a little bit early. The shuttle dropped us off at Vidal wines where we purchased a final glass of wine for the road (the road was a walk to dinner!)

This morning we were on the road at 7:30 am, thanks to chirping birds and crying babies. We got back to Auckland in the early afternoon and hit the gym in an attempt to burn off some of the calories we drank over the past few days. For dinner we stopped by the Lantern Festival, in celebration of the Chinese New Year. We went to the same festival last year and sadly forgot the camera this year! We dined on scrumptious dumplings and spring rolls which were the perfect end to a wonderful weekend.

Blown Away

Jeremy is off playing touch rugby this evening and I am busy catching up on our friends' blogs. Stephen and Deon (they live in our building and are from the US as well) keep a great blog. I was checking it out and was blown away by the photos Deon took on our trip to Tongariro. Check it out: http://onlyinnewzealand.blogspot.com/. She's a professional photographer, so the stakes were high, but I think she she did a great job! I'd also like you to notice the picture of me carrying our heavy pack for some of the trip. See I'm not 100% lazy :)

Another great blog to check out is our friend Nate's: http://2yearsinkiwiland.blogspot.com/
He is from Pittsburgh and (of course) a huge Steeler's fan. Jeremy watched the Super Bowl with him yesterday at Fox's a bar in the Viaduct. Nate was the organizer of our trip to Tongariro and he did a great job planning the trip. He has some great photos as well!

Anyways, enjoy the photos! It's a short week for us (3 days!) and then we're off to the Hawkes Bay for a wine festival. It's one of the few places we have yet to see of this amazing country. We're going to try our hand at camping since we've had good experiences in both the Outback and Abel Tasman. Fingers crossed for great weather and we'll catch you soon.