Boxing Day Cricket and a West Coast Road Trip

Sunday, the 26th, aka Boxing Day, we went to our first 20/20.  That's a cricket match.  20 overs for each team.  It's making sense to me now, but I'm not even going to try to explain in a written format.  Just know that it's the shortest of the cricket matches you can watch.  A full test match lasts for 5 days, a one day test is 50 overs for each team, and then there's the 20/20 which lasts about 3 hours.  For those of you with an attention span of a newt, watch the highlights on the news.

Todd, Laura, Vanessa, Graham and I went to Eden Park (where rugby matches will be played in about 8 months!) and found that our seats were SUPER close to the field.  Our row was X.  Based on our experience with American stadium numbering/lettering systems, we were expecting seats in the back.  In NZ, they start with row ZZ at the back and as you get closer to the field you get to the beginning of the double row alphabet.  Row Z was 3/4 of the way down to the field, and the rows ended with row R.  WTF???  Who came up with that bass ackward lettering system?  Well, we're not really complaining cuz we were CLOSE.  But seriously...

The NZ Cricket team is the Black Caps.  They're not spectacular.  The news has been calling their current streak "dreadful".  They were (and still are) playing Pakistan, who were dressed in green on the day we were there.  We cheered loudly when NZ got their wickets and when Southee (our favorite player) made several outs.  And then we got donuts!!!!  It was just like a baseball game with people running up and down the sections selling food and beer (espresso coffees you had to go get - but how many stadiums in the states sell espresso drinks? such a great thing here).  One of the guys was selling donuts and they were AMAZING.  About the size of a hair elastic, squishy, bite size, and covered in cinnamon and sugar. so. yum. best part of the game.  Oh yeah, the Black Caps won too.  

After the game L, T, V & G dropped me off to go meet Lorena (who was at the Auckland Museum).  L, T, V, & G headed off to Whangarei and then Lorena and I were planning to meet them in Kerikeri the following day.  So Lorena and I had another day/night in Auckland.  We started out with an afternoon coffee and a nice long chat - very reminiscent of our college days!  Then we decided to just wander around the harbor and work up an appetite.  

After dinner we decided to get to bed early before our road trip, but we walked into our dorm room and started talking with the guy in the room who was a brewer and a winemaker from Portland, Oregon.  And then we met another American while we were brushing our teeth and started chatting again.  And then we got back to our brewer/winemaker and continued chatting... so we didn't get to bed early at all.  oops.

Monday morning, we got up and did some souvenir shopping, had coffee, wrote postcards, and then picked up our rental car for our impending epic roadtrip!  We just had to figure out how to get out of Auckland first...

lorena in all her backpacking glory - pre-road trip

We decided to drive up the west coast of the north island and drive through the ancient Kauri forest and then check out a Zen boulder garden on our way to Kerikeri where the rest of the group was.  After some fish and kumara chips (kumara is the NZ sweet potato - sooo yummy) we got to the ancient Kauri forest, put on some epic music in the car to match the epic scenery, and drove up a windy, dirt, steep road to the lookout tower:

the view from the lookout tower over the whole forest - gorgeous

The view was stunning!  But we were on a mission to visit the Four Sisters, the Father of the Forest and the Lord of the Forest.  The four sisters are two sets of trees whose roots have all grown together.  The Father of the Forest is the widest tree and the Lord is the tallest.  They were all impressive trees (and the boardwalks were really cool too - made it all feel a little Swiss Family Robinson or something!) and despite the fences, I still a found a way to hug the trees from a distance

ever a tree hugger :)

After the beautiful trees and the ridiculously curvy roads, we emerged from the forest and continued our drive up the coast.  We were planning on making good time back to Kerikeri, but we came around a corner and had to immediately pull off to enjoy this view:  

The amusing thing is that when we pulled in to admire the view, we met the couple we'd just seen in the Kauri forest admiring the view as well.  And then the next 3 cars that came around the bend pulled off as well and we were surrounded by everyone we'd just seen in the forest.  One of those cars carried a group of three who recognized us from the ferry to Rangitoto!  Small country, eh?  

We drove on as it got darker and made it to the zen boulder garden, but it was closed.  So we swapped places and Lorena took a turn at driving on the right hand side of the car and the left hand side of the road.  We survived (phew!) and now Lorena can proudly say she drove in NZ.  After I was back in the driver's seat, we made it to Kerikeri where we were staying with the rest of our group.  Road tripping in another country is pretty sweet as.

Christmas in Auckland - on the beach!

Christmas morning we got up early and drove out to Ponsonby to Vanessa's friends, Nicky and Merv's, house.  On the way, we passed a sign that was just too true:

At Nicky and Merv's, we skyped with the parental and grand-parental units while Todd made tortillas and streaky bacon.  Christmas breakfast was GREAT.  Unfortunately, Lorena liked the tortillas so we had to share with her.  Graham also made a genius move and used tortillas to make bacon butties.  So yum.

tortillas and streaky bacon!

After breakfast we opened presents.  We nominated Vanessa to play Santa.  Lorena and I came away NZ twins with (practically) matching NZ change purses, bags and jewelry.  Todd got a cricket game that he was most excited to try out.  Laura got her pounamu (a jade necklace carved into the Maori Triple Twist symbolizing the bonding of two people for eternity).  Vanessa got the promise of an afghan from me and Graham got some models to make.  Then I wrapped up Nicky and Merv's kitty Murray.  He didn't seem to mind too much.

After presents, we explored the nearby beach...

And then we found a playground with an awesome rope thing to climb.  I've been to many playgrounds in the states and around the world (well, pretty much just in the Tiergarten, but that still counts as an international playground) and this one was super cool!!  They've got things that we just don't have in the states - or at least, I haven't seen them.  There are mini zip lines, and this rope course thing, and the ground wasn't hard gravel but rubbery stuff!  Did I mention I'm simple?  Regardless, cool play things.  I was in a skirt so the climbing up high presented a brief dilemma.... however, I had an extra hair elastic so I fashioned myself some oh-so-sexy baggy shorts out of my skirt and scooted up to the top!  Project Runway... here I come.

that's me at the top, in the middle :)

Graham's missing piece

Back from the beach, we gorged ourselves (even more!) on a ginormous lunch that Vanessa and Graham had been cooking the day before.  Lorena exercised her hand at sketching Merv's new concrete sculpture and Todd and I tried out the cricket set to make sure it worked.  Lorena was the boundary of the cricket field.  If the ball hit her leg: 4 runs.  If it hit her head: 6 runs.  

Before we all passed out napping after lunch, we decided we'd better truly break in the new cricket set.  So, back to the beach!  We played backyard/beach cricket rules.  If you want details, send me a message, otherwise just know it was fun and I would have won if Graham had broken a leg; sadly maiming other players isn't allowed.

We were all taking turns batting and bowling.  Laura was up to bat and this group of 5 Samoan teenagers walked by, started laughing at Laura's cricket playing, kept walking.... and then turned around and asked to play with us.  Laura, never one to back down from stupid boys' mocking, proceeded to mock them back and then batted some great balls that their limbs and fingers got in the way of... But after the first few tense minutes, the guys stopped being quite so annoying, and started batting and bowling as well.. and they were crap!!!  One of the guys was wearing a hat that actually make him look like Bruno Mars, so the rest of the Samoans (and some of the Americans :) ) started singing "Just The Way You Are" to him.  It was pretty classic.  

We watched the Samoans play cricket (we casually fielded - they monopolized the game pretty thoroughly while we watched and laughed at their singing and crap batting) and when they finally took off, we finished our game and headed home.  

On our way back to the backpackers, we drove down Franklin Road.  It's a famous street in Auckland where a large number of the houses are decorated with (supposedly) an obscene amount of Christmas lights and decor, drawing huge crowds over the Christmas season.  ...there were lights on the houses... but if people want to see true decoration excess, they need to visit the States.  However they did achieve the distinction of creating the first real traffic we've hit in New Zealand!  It took us 10 minutes to turn onto the street!  Usually traffic is 3 cars in front of you at a rotary.  But I did see some cool lights set up like a spiderweb.  Not exactly Christmas themed, but cool nonetheless. 

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!!