Road Trip! (AKA Sammy's visit part 2)

So this really should have been posted close to three months ago, but you know how life goes. I wanted to put this all in one blog entry, but my first post got long and I didn't want to post one massive entry so I figured I'd break it up. Good idea in theory, but in execution... not so much. I didn't start right away and then one thing led to another... anyway I wanted to come back and tell the story of Erik and my epic (well... maybe not epic) journey up into the countryside of the North Island.

Erik took that Friday (July 6) off work and we slept in a little longer than we had planned. Sleep is a wonderful thing. At about noon-ish, we wandered down the street to the rental car place, picked up our lovely vehicle and hit the road. One thing that turned out to be a little shortsighted on our part was that we only burned one CD of music. I think by the time we got home 2 days later, we must have listened to that CD about 15 times. Good songs, just too repetitive.

We hit the road with no real plan. We knew we wanted to head towards Tongariro National Park (the place that they used to film Mordor in the Lord of the Rings movies) and we were hoping to head all the way to Rotorua where there are some great hot springs. But we were just happy to hit the road, see the sights and go where the journey took us. It was almost like a scene out of a Jack Kerouac book or something, but much more pretty. We started heading up the coast until we got to Palmerston North. We stopped for lunch there at an Irish Pub that took so long to get our food, I thought they might be hand making the sausage in the back. It did leave some time for me to remember that I am no good at darts at all and Erik is.

The countryside was unlike anything I've ever experienced before. It was like the mountains in Colorado, but much much more lush and green. The grassland in Colorado is much more brown, but in New Zealand, the entire landscape is pure green. It is not however the bright emerald green that is normally associated with Ireland and I believe that is due to the brightness of the sun in that part of the world. Due to the big hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica, there is much less of a filter of the sun. It really seems to make colors appear to wash out, like if you took pictures and slightly overexposed the film. Colors don't appear majorly vibrant, but it really didn't matter. Everything was gorgeous. I believe that the sheep outnumber the humans 10-1 in New Zealand and from what we saw as we drove, I wouldn't doubt that statistic in the slightest.

Another thing we came across were a number of cows. At one point, Erik and I had stopped to take pictures and these four cows followed me as I jogged to the other side of a hill to get a better shot of the valley below. They then followed me back to the car. I think they wanted me to take a picture of them, so I did.

Something else we learned is that when you see a sign saying "scenic overlook ahead" you go check it out. We got to Stormy Point just as dusk was beginning to settle in. Those images are some that were burned into my memory forever. Words really can't describe how amazing the scenery was there.

As the sun went down, I took my turn behind the wheel. It was my first experience driving on the left side of the road and the right side of the car. Add to that the complete lack of any lights on the side of the road and couple it with the blizzard-like conditions that swept in over the mountains and it made for an interesting drive. One thing that I commented on was the fact that I had absolutely no idea what was on the sides of the road. For all I knew it could have been a sheer cliff on each side and I would have had no idea. I knew that we were driving through the mountains and the road was "The Desert Road" so I had some guesses on what it might have looked like. We were in Tongariro National Park, so I imagined Mordor and I figured that was probably close enough. Finally, I could tell that we were alongside Lake Taupo because I could begin to see the reflection of the city of Taupo begin to reflect off the lake.

We got to Taupo and checked into a neat little hostel. Nothing special, but it was pretty cool. I think the highlight of Taupo was meeting John the Fisherman. Erik and I went to find some food and a drink and we went to one of the local establishments. Out in front was this grizzled guy who we got to talking to. He was clearly a regular at the bar as it looked like he had a standing tab and he knew all the bartenders. We had a great conversation about fishing. He said he used to lead fishing expeditions out on the lake and the rivers around it. Apparently Lake Taupo is one of the greatest places to fish for trout in the world. This guy was so much fun and really took a liking to us. When, while we were ordering dinner, Erik made a comment that everything was better with bacon, John asked the bartender to put bacon on our steaks and to charge the bacon to him. We had a great time chatting with him.

The next day was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky. It was a little brisk, but the air tasted pure and clean. We spent the morning at Huka Falls, which are the largest falls on the Waikato River, one of the longest rivers on the North Island. Just a beautiful area with the water rushing by. It was very serene. Another serene location was the Craters of the Moon park which was just just up the road from Huka Falls. I'm just going to let some of these pictures speak for themselves.
I'm glad to see that Erik and Ann Marie went back to Mt. Ruapehu when the weather was better. When Erik and I went, thick clouds were covering the top of the mountain and it had snowed something like 12-15 inches the night before. The skiers were loving it, but it didn't make for good picture taking. Instead, we got some great shots of us climbing through the rocky desert towards "Mt. Doom" in the distance like a scene out of Lord of the Rings. The views from the mountains were amazing. I was struck with how different the climate was in such short distances. One moment, you are in rolling green meadows covered in sheep, the next, desert mountains. It was simply amazing.

Thanks go out to Erik for letting me post to his blog and double thanks for his magnificent hospitality while I was out there. So for now, Be Excellent to each other, and Party On Dudes!

Possum World!! (and other random adventures)

For those who don’t know, the Possum (Opossum) is a hated creature in New Zealand. They were introduced from Australia a long time ago and the lack of natural predators allowed them to spawn like crazy. Note that the NZ Possum is different from it’s smaller North American cousin (which most of us are familiar with). Now, the Possum is a serious risk to native bird and plant species, and the millions of Possums in NZ eat 70,000 tons of foliage every night. People here will go out of their way to kill Possums – my coworker Jeremy (also an American) tells me about his neighbor who traps and kills 40-60 possums every couple weeks. The pelts are actually valuable – the fur is blended with merino sheep wool to create something similar to polar-tec fleece. Here’s another fact from Jeremy – you cannot kill a possum (at least not humanely) with a .22 caliber bullet. You have to use something bigger, cause the possum’s skull is too thick. How insane is that?



I learned many of these facts at ‘Opossum World’ in Hawke’s Bay! Ann Marie and I took a road trip to HB a few weekends ago to check out the east coast, and to see some of the wineries in that area. Possum World was pretty hysterical (and free!). There was a Possum Shooting Range (here I am helping thin the Possum population), and little stuffed possum pelts everywhere. A great place, but shockingly and to our disappointment there were no ‘Possum World’ t-shirts.



The wineries were also a ton of fun. We rented bikes to travel from vineyard to vineyard - there were a couple tough hills, and some brutal head winds at the end, but we really enjoyed the scenery and freedom to go at our own pace. We stayed in the town of Napier, at the former prison there (now a backpackers) which was, to be honest, a little weird - but still enjoyable. It was nice to get out of Wellington and see an area that is totally different from what we’ve seen thus far – HB is mostly flat and dominated by vineyards, although some of the areas have rolling hills. Napier was also completely devastated by an earthquake in 1931 so nothing stands more than a few stories tall.




The following weekend we stayed in Wellington. On Saturday we hiked up to the top of Mt. Victoria – which is one of the two big hills in the middle of the city. The views were fantastic – we could see downtown, the entire harbor including the channel out to the sea, and the ocean-side of the city. The hike took us a good 3-4 hours and included another stroll through Oriental Bay - our favorite neighborhood in Wellington, which is at the base of Mt. Vic. We are trying to do least one hike a week to prepare for some more challenging trips later in the year.





We’ve also made friends with our neighbors the Marines! They were having a barbeque over the weekend which Andy, Ann Marie and I dropped in on. The guys were really nice (they have a great reputation in Wellington and lived up to it) and we met a number of others from various govt. departments (both American and Kiwi). It was fun to share stories from back home as well as NZ – be it about sports, the embassy itself, or some of the things that are different over here. We also learned from our new friend Tim (not a marine, but pictured below in the middle) how to watch football from the states. Unfortunately, there are zero games on during the weekends here – they only broadcast Sunday and Monday night NFL games during the day on Monday & Tuesday. Neither of us has watched a minute of either college or NFL this fall. Tim had his parents to purchase a cable-box with an internet connection. The box can be accessed over the internet, allowing the user to watch anything on their computer in real time (although one drawback is that the box controls the TV it’s connected to, so Tim’s parents have to watch the same thing as him!). We figured that was overkill for us, but if we were staying for three years like Tim, we'd have to look into this option.



The weekend ended on a downer though… on Sunday morning the All Blacks lost a close game to France in the Rugby World Cup – their earliest exit in a world cup yet. On cue, the clouds and rain rolled in as the game ended (it had been a nice sunny morning up until then) and the weather was pretty ugly for the rest of the day. The Kiwis are all disappointed and rather angry at both the team and a particular referee, but they’ve managed to rebound a bit to enjoy the remainder of the tournament (South Africa plays defending champ England next weekend). My team members from work all met up this Monday morning for breakfast at one of the local pubs during the SA-Argentina semi-final before going into the office.

As I mentioned in my last post – I have moved offices! I’m with the same group at ACC, but we have moved into the downtown building. It is a further walk (15-20 min) but it is much easier to run errands during the day, or meet up with Carsten or Ann Marie for lunch. I’m still enjoying the work (currently we’re sorting out next year’s budget), and feel like I have been able to contribute a lot to the team.

This most recent weekend we went road tripping with Carsten & Sarah, but more on that later as well as our upcoming visit with Jorgen & Mona in Christchurch. Hope everyone is well – cheers!