Auckland - Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve, we all decided there wasn't much thrilling to do IN Auckland, so we took the morning ferry to Rangitoto Island (just off the coast) and decided to walk up a volcano...inactive they think :)

That's Rangitoto in the distance

It was an hour hike up to the summit... prolonged a long whiles by our picture taking.  It's the newest volcanic island in Auckland's volcanic field.  It erupted about 600-700 years ago and is covered with hardened black lava stones (scoria) that look like either charcoal or cow poo depending on your frame of reference.  The rock is light and super hard as Lorena and I realized when we tried to lie down on it.

The island is also covered with NZ's largest Pohutakawa forest.  Pohutakawa is NZ's Christmas flower, cuz it's a summer plant and therefore blooms around Christmas.  Clever, eh?  It's a hearty tree that grows out of anything - including what looks like nothing but black charcoal.  The colors of the thousands of red flowers in beautiful green trees were really vibrant against the dark black rocks.  Not a huge spectrum of color, but beautiful nonetheless.

On our way up to the summit, we took a detour to go look at the lava tubes/caves.  Apparently, when everything was erupting, lava flowed down the mountain and what was on top, that came into contact with the air, hardened and then the lava continued to flow beneath it.  The caves are still there and super cool to see.

Before we hit the summit, we got to the crater and looked down into a forest.  I've never climbed up a volcano before, but I was totally picturing something a little more like Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings (yes, I'm easily influenced by the media... so what?).  However, this crater was covered in trees and one pretty impressive fern. 

At the summit we took more pictures (shocker), had lunch and played around with the color accent feature on Lorena's camera. 
  
On our walk back down the volcano, we met with some conflicting signs regarding time to get back to the ferry (our map said 1.5 hours, the sign said 2.5 and our ferry left in 2.5 hours, potential yikes!) so we made some serious tracks downhill.  But then we saw a lighthouse and took a picture...

And then continued to bust our wee bums to get back in time.  But, alas, our desire to take pictures tends to trump our desire to exercise, so we stopped, albeit briefly, to take more pictures along the way as the mood struck us.   In the end, we were so speedy in our trek back to the ferry point, that we had about 45 minutes to kill until it came.  Some of us were tired...

laura and lorena on naptastic voyages

Once we got back to the mainland, we wandered around the backpacker neighborhood and looked in a couple stores.  Lorena and I found this FABULOUS sign on one store door:

We went out for Christmas Eve dinner at a Thai restaurant and then headed to the backpackers where Lorena and I got distracted chatting with our newest dorm roommates (David from earlier and a girl and a guy from two different parts of Germany).  In the end we had a passport party and were all comparing our coolest stamps and visas.  David won with an awesome visa from Ghana.  I won with the prettiest passport - congrats to the US for finally making something pretty (sorry, but our colored money is such a lame attempt at color compared to, well, the rest of the world, but I digress).


Since it was Christmas Eve, Laura and Todd and I decided that we should actually hit a Christmas Eve service, and there was a church at the end of the road so we got ready for the 11:30 service.  I invited our roommates and the two boys decided to come with.  So Laura, Todd, me and the boy backpackers all went to the Christmas Eve service at the Anglican church up the road.  It was a looooong service and they sing "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" to a completely different tune than Laura and I know, so we mouthed the words :)  So we enjoyed a summer night Christmas Eve service with 2 strangers from our backpackers in the southern hemisphere - a wee bit memorable I'd say :)

Auckland - December 21, 22 and 23

The 21st, I arrived in Auckland and started scoping out the city.  I camped out in Albert Park (in the shade - Auckland was MUCH warmer than Dunedin) and looked at the relatively short list of activities to do in Auckland.  Honestly, Auckland isn't all that thrilling during the day - unless you leave.  So, since Auckland was going to play multiple parts in this grandiose excursion, I decided to not explore too much on my own since I'd have to do it again with other people.  So, instead I figured out where all the backpackers were and the bus and ferry terminals...and the local yarn store.  Yup, I have my priorities.

On the 22nd, I met my college friend Lorena at the airport and after the initial thrills of having a travel buddy wore off (only slightly) we bussed back to downtown Auckland and checked into our camp-like backpackers.  I would HIGHLY recommend this backpackers: City Garden Lodge.  It's a little removed from downtown Auckland in the Parnell neighborhood.  But it's so lovely, the kitchen is well stocked and organized and everyone there is really nice.  As soon as we got there, we met the girls in our dorm room with us - both were actually American and super nice.  We nicknamed our dorm the "American Girls" room, I enjoy the name even though I'm not really a fan of the dolls...

We then set off on a quest for cheap fish and chips.  It's a necessity for all newcomers to NZ.  Sadly, the f+c in Parnell was all hoighty-toighty and expensive; and they didn't have donuts.  No deal.  So, we wandered all the way into downtown in our (unsuccessful) quest. 

Once we found some food, we made tracks to the yarn store (yes, I'm a knitting nerd).  But Lorena was super excited about it too!  So I bought a boatload of yarn for presents and Lorena bought some for small projects to work on when we had down time.  Then, since we were both a little bushed from so much travel, and the knowledge that we'd be going non-stop for the next 2 weeks, we headed to the back porch of our backpackers with a cup of tea and knit and caught up for, oh, hours...

The next morning, we were expecting Laura and Todd to meet us at the backpackers before we took off for the zoo.  While we waited, we hit the sunny back porch again and continued to knit and chat with the other backpackers.  We met some very cool people, Danielle who was heading home after several months in NZ, David who's been here nearly a year and is new to Auckland and Dwight who'd been biking all over the North Island and Australia.  All cool people and interesting conversation, so the wait for Laura and Todd was not tedious.  But when they arrived we took off to see kiwi birds.

L and Me riding the bucking Tuatara - KIWI! - ginormous tortoise

MONKEYS!                                Please clean my armpit   And the other one                 Oh yes, my bum too

 Needless to say I enjoyed the monkeys, cheeky as they are...

hippopotomi, giraffes, and...Todd? oh my

On our way home, Laura and I were happily reminded of the most fabulous town in the greatest state ever...

Lorena and I then cooked dinner, after which we attempted to teach Lorena how to play cribbage.  Note to self: teaching people a rather complicated card game after a bottle of wine is difficult for both parties... (but I won, so all is still well with the world :)

Christmas/New Years Adventure - Part 1

December 20, 2010, 9am

Vanessa and I set off for Christchurch at the beginning of our long (and exciting) Christmas and New Year's holiday. Amidst the Glee sing-a-long and the chips and truffle gorging, we did see some stunning scenery - the colors were amazing!

no idea what the white field is, but we also passed a yellow field, and we think the purple is lavender - so pretty!

Once we got to Christchurch, I went to jail.  No, my working visa is not in jeopardy, but it is a pretty cool backpackers.  It's an old jail that they renovated into a backpackers.  They kept a couple cells in their original condition, but they added clerestory windows and large picture windows, plus everything's white and bright so you don't actually feel as though you're doing time.

looking towards the back of the jail (there's a pool table in the loft!) - and towards the front of the jail, nice, eh?

one of the original cells - doesn't actually seem big enough for 2

After checking in to jail, I was on my own - so I wandered all over.  I went to Cathedral Square where, just in case I was completely out of touch, they reminded me that the 2011 Rugby World Cup would be happening in NZ.

The Cathedral was pretty - I'm sure the angels in the nave were supposed to be the eyecatchers...

But I have to pull the architecture card and state that I much preferred the ceiling in the apse.

After the cathedral, I did break down and stop at a Starbucks :-/ for my soy chai and to plan my afternoon.  I ended up walking through Victoria Square and then over to the Botanical Gardens where I got a wee bit carried away with the flowers...

Victoria Square, and a punter

Flowers, me and a sculpture in the Botanical Gardens

That evening, I stopped at The Bog, an Irish pub that happened to have trivia night on Mondays.  Lucky me, I shagged a table and was immediately entered as my own team for trivia night.  The first round was all about movies, so I cleaned up, even though I was alone.  The trivia guys seemed to take some pity/interest in my trivia team of one, and subsequently helped me out with the Kiwi-specific questions (i.e. Which town received the New World Town of the Year award in 2010?  Motueka - duh).  The table next to me (there were 3 people there) started to cooperate with me a bit.  They helped me with Kiwi and sports questions, I helped them out with grade B American High School movies and American sports team names.  It was a pretty good time - especially when one of the trivia guys came down and crossed out my incorrect answers and wrote the correct ones.  So, fortunately, I didn't come in last place!  I tied for second to last, but considering the other groups probably had multiple people, I didn't feel too shabby about my performance.

That night at the backpackers, I was sleeping in the top bunk over an epic snorer - I mean EPIC.  He snored the way cartoon characters snore - loud and obnoxious so you don't think it's real.  He also started speaking mid snore.  A good 10 second one-sided conversation.  But to deserve the title "epic"?  He snored and sang a scale!  No joke.  He fa-la-la'd his way up a scale before a brief second of silence and then the snoring recommenced.  Epic.  Truly epic.  And really hard not to laugh at.  Ah, the joys of sleeping in backpackers with strangers :)

The next morning, I flew to Auckland.

A Brief Summary of an Extensive Trip (more to follow)

The past two weeks have been crazy busy starting with a drive to Christchurch followed by a flight to Auckland, a reunion with my friend Lorena, a road trip up the west coast of the North Island, a trip up to Cape Reinga (the tippy top of NZ), another road trip down the east coast of the North Island, New Year's in Auckland at the Sky Tower, a trip to Hobbiton and on to Rotorua for some white water rafting and zorbing, one more trek (literally) around Auckland, another flight to Christchurch and a long bus ride back home to Dunedin.  Phew!  So, I'm catching up on sleep and then I'll fill in all the details of the past two weeks of fun and ridiculousness.  Until then, enjoy some pictures of what's to come!!