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.