On the road...

Greetings from beautiful Queenstown, NZ!

We've been on the road, so I haven't had much of a chance to update my blog, but here is a quick summary of what we've been up to - I promise I'll upload a bunch of pictures over Christmas (including all the stuff in Australia that can kill you!).

The weekend of November 19th our friends Tim and Jennifer invited us to the Marine Ball. It is a celebration of the Marine Corp birthday which involved a good deal of ceremony (including cutting cake with a sabre) and speeches from the US Ambassador to NZ and several other special guests. There was a great deal of good food and a rocking party after dinner. That same weekend was the annual Toast Martinborough wine festival! It is located a couple hours northeast of Wellington (near the Hawkes Bay region we went to a few weeks ago). The festival includes a number of the area's wineries hiring live music, specialty catering, and offering plenty of wine to taste (all for a price of course). Every year Carsten and Sarah rent an entire train carriage to transport us all from Wellington to the festival and back home. It was a perfect day and an absolute blast.

Our current contracts with work ended on Friday, Nov 23rd - that night we had an impromptu Thanksgiving dinner with Carsten, Andy, Tim, & Jennifer. It was by no means traditional (Salmon instead of Turkey) but there were sweet potatoes (Kumara) and a bottle of really good Pinot from the south island (courtesy of Ann Marie's boss). We barely slept that night because after cleaning up dinner we had to pack for our trip to Australia and the South Island!!

Early the next morning we grabbed a flight to Cairns, Australia and then made our way further north to Port Douglas, which is the perfect place to get out to the Great Barrier Reef. We had a fantastic time (although it was crazy hot) in PD - we went snorkeling on the reef, took a great rain forest tour, ate kangaroo, and relaxed on the beach. It is shocking how big Australia really is - flying from one side to the other takes as long as going Chicago to LA.

After a week in Port Douglas and Cairns, we flew directly to Christchurch and took a bus down to Queenstown (about a 7 hour ride). The trip goes along the southern alps and the views we had were astounding - snow capped peaks over crazy blue lakes. Now we have a week to enjoy Queenstown - probably the most spectacular scenery in NZ - with some friends from the states (they are meeting us in a couple days). Then we'll take a week to tour the rest of the south island before flying home for the holidays!


I do have one picture that I uploaded before we got on our way. As I mentioned in my last post or two, I've been playing Touch Rugby with a team from work. We just got our team t-shirts, which are possibly the ugliest and loudest shirts I've ever seen. They were part of the "Corporate Challenge" which was a big run/walk in Wellington a few weeks ago. ACC provided shirts to all employees who ran/walked it and our Touch team will be wearing those same shirts. Right before the event started, all the ACC employees who were participating gathered for a group photo - there were about 200 people in these shirts... additionally, about a third still had creepy mustaches because it was Movember (and only about halfway in)!!! Here are three of my teammates:

Happy Guy Fawkes Day!

Hello all - last monday (Nov 5) was Guy Fawkes Day - an infamous holiday in Britain and also celebrated in NZ (of all the English colonies, NZ maintained and celebrated it's connection to England the most). It commemorates the attempt by Guy Fawkes and some others to blow up Parliament in London in 1605. The attempt was barely thwarted and is now remembered annually. Generally, people celebrate by setting off fireworks - either public displays, or the cheap kind you buy at the store. What I find most amusing, is that fireworks are illegal in New Zealand for 361 days of the year, but from the 2nd to the 5th of November you can buy and set off fireworks to your heart's content! We went out Saturday evening with our friends Tim and Jennifer (also Americans) and celebrated Guy Fawkes in style by setting off a hefty quantity of fireworks and then watching the Wellington city fireworks as well. This is a video/picture of Ann Marie doing her best Harry Potter impersonation:

November is also the month of one of NZ's biggest charity drives: "Movember". Men will shave on October 31st and then grow their mustaches throughout the month to raise money for Prostate Cancer research and awareness. Often offices will have competitions to see who can grow the best "mo". No, I am not participating (I was strongly encouraged not to) but I do know some people that have started sprouting impressive mos.

I've been slow to update the blog, so here's some bits on the travel that we've been doing over the last couple weekends:

Taranaki w/ Carsten & Sarah

The 2nd week of October, Ann Marie and I planned another weekend road-trip on the north island - this time to Taranaki on the west coast. The area was a major Maori stronghold during the 1800s, and Mt. Taranaki is considered sacred to the Maori. As legend has it, Taranaki was caught dallying with Ruapehu's wife Ngauruhoe (these are two of the big volcanoes in the center of the north island) and went west to hide and cry in shame (Taranaki is one of the rainiest areas in NZ). The trip was extremely relaxing (especially cause Carsten & Sarah graciously did all the driving) and we got to see the mountain, Dawson's falls, and tons of coastal scenery. Highlights included getting lost (not really, but our map was not what you would call detailed), playing card games with Guinness coasters at an Irish pub, searching for volcanic rocks on the beach, and climbing the Paritutu (the "Rising Precipice"). We missed out on a couple of interesting museums (the weather was great so we opted for the outdoors experience) so a return trip may be in order at some point.

Christchurch

The following weekend (which was a three days weekend for Labour Day here) Ann Marie and I flew to Christchurch to spend the weekend with Jorgen & Mona. We were again lucky with the weather and had a wonder time. On Saturday, Jorgen drove us up into the mountains to see their mountain cabin and the scenery. It rained a bit on us through the passes, but everything cleared up after lunch.

These pics are from a cave system near the cabin - you can hike through the caves by following the stream underground - of course it is an ice-cold glacial stream and the hike requires you to wade knee deep and scamper up a couple short waterfalls (note we didn't actually hike the stream this time).






We also spent some time in this boulder park - all these rocks are the product of erosion. They are immense and wandering among them is quite eerie. Jorgen pointed out a couple of exposed fossils and we also watched some people free-climbing on the smaller boulders.







The South Island is a bit more rural than the north (certainly more so than the areas around Wellington) - check out this boar we saw on our way back from the mountains!

On Sunday, we explored Christchurch itself - we started in the central market to pick up a few souvenirs (and some crepes from a funny and friendly frenchman), walked through Cathedral square and downtown, and then rode the gondola to the highest point in Chch for a great view over the city. That night we enjoyed a fantastic meal with Jorgen, Mona, and my Aunt Charlotte (I should mention at this point that Jorgen is a gifted cook and we ate quite well over the entire weekend).

We got up early on Monday and directed our rental car toward Akaroa. Christchurch is situated just north of the Banks Peninsula, which was formed by two major volcanoes - one crater became Lyttleton Harbor (which is two minutes from Christchurch) and the other became Akaroa Harbor, which is about 90 minutes away. Both harbors are narrow and long, with some spectacular scenery on either side. Our drive included these views over first Lyttleton and then Akaroa harbor.

In Akaroa, we took a harbor cruise during which we saw fur seals, dolphins, and miniature penguins.

We then headed back to Christchurch for another enjoyable meal (a Danish favorite - frikadeller!!) and then made our way to the airport. We're looking forward to getting back to the south island for two weeks in early December before coming home for the holidays.