The "Day of the Scenic Route"...and more

It's the day you've all been waiting for...our trip from the male perspective! I apparently am charged with catching you up on the past 3 days. Sunday shall forever be dubbed the "Day of the Scenic Route", but it started with a straight shot drive from Orewa back into Auckland. There we shared a wonderful lunch with Sir Wilson Whineray and his lovely wife Beth. Sir Wilson is one of the most famous rugby players in all of NZ, having captained the All Blacks for several years. It was quite an enjoyable experience with a couple of extremely friendly hosts.

From there, we set out for Rotorua, with hopes of stopping by the Hot Water Beaches of Coromandel. That's when the "scenic" route kicked in. Instead of heading straight across the Coromandel Peninsula to the Hot Water Beaches, we missed the turn off and, with a large mountain range running down the middle like a backbone, we found ourselves circling the entirety of the peninsula. Best mistake we've made thus far! The views were amazing!



With a time constraint on when we needed to check into our hostel in Rotorua, we had to skip the Hot Water Beach, and another "scenic" route on our way into the city made it close, but everything worked out in the end.
We started the next day with a new challenge: ZORBING!

That's Kelly

That's me. 

All around good experience!

Of course that wasn't enough so we tried jet boating, flying up and down the Huka River at high rates of speed, dodging rocks and trees by mere inches (not to mention pulling several 360 degree spins)! Eventually we ended up at Huka Falls, which is amazing in and of itself!

That brings us to today, when we made a morning trip to Wai-O-Tapu, one of Rotorua's many geothermal hot spots. We started the tour with Lady Knox:

We then made the 3 km hike around the rest of the park, which featured craters and many other-worldly colored rocks and boiling pools.

This afternoon, we boarded the Barbary sailboat and headed out on Lake Taupo, the largest lake in NZ, comparable to the size of Tahoe.

The boat tour took us to some fascinating rock carvings

So there is my contribution to the blog. Please comment and say that you like Kelly's posts better so that she won't be silly enough again to suggest that I write a post!

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Location:The Coromandel Peninsula, Rotorua and Taupo

The Bay of Islands and The Poor Knight Islands

The past few days we have spent up in The Bay of Islands where Hopper's Aunt Freda and her husband, Bruce, live (about 3 hours north of Orewa). Freda's son was working in Christchurch when the earthquake hit but luckily he is ok. When we arrived they had lunch waiting for us before we went exploring in the town of Paihia. That afternoon we grabbed some beers and famous New Zealand ice cream from happy cows and strolled the beach. We also booked a boat tour of the islands for the next day.



We woke up bright and early Friday morning for our day-long boat trip and stopped at the store to buy our picnic lunch. I am not a fan of lamb and that was going to be their only option on the boat, so we brought our own.

Right off the bat we started seeing bottle nose dolphins.

Then they let people who had paid extra swim with them. I am not sure who had more fun, the dolphins or the people on the boat watching the group of European tourists in speedos chase the dolphins.

Midway through the day they dropped us off on Urupukapuka for lunch and to explore. This is where Nelly and I had a picnic.

 

Sheep!

Then Nelly went Boom Netting. Basically they threw out 2 booms with a net and dragged people around the bay (he's the first one standing up holding the sides of the netting).

The next day we left Freda and Bruce and headed 1.5 hours south to Tutukaka. There we caught another boat, this time destined for The Poor Knight Islands, large masses of volcanic rock jutting out of the middle of the ocean about an hour off shore.

The snorkeling was amazing, with tons of fish that swam right up to us! The sights were especially spectacular in Rikoriko Cave, the largest known sea cave in the world.

Here we are in the boat inside the cave. The tans are starting!

The boat company that we took was called A Perfect Day which was aptly named because it really was a perfect day. From there we went to stay with Gay again, we really missed her!

Location:The Bay of Islands and The Poor Knight Islands

Cool Is King in Kerikeri Too!

Dad, check out the guy's name.

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Location:Kerikeri

The Hoppers

Nelly keeps giving me a hard time because I am repetitive in saying how much New Zealand reminds me of home. Well, more of a combination of Maui (minus the skyrise resorts) and northern California. And the past two days have been spent with what feels like family, so he really has no legs to stand on when ribbing me about it! One of my dad's really good friends is from New Zealand and his whole family still lives here. On Wednesday morning we picked up our car and headed to his sister's house in Orewa, which is about 1/2 hour north of Auckland. It is a very cute beachside town. We stopped downtown at the beach for brunch first as we were starving from not having eaten since lunch the day before. Unless wine tasting counts as dinner! After that we met up with John's mom, Gay, at the house and she gave us a tour of their town and where John was raised. We got to see the house he grew up in, his school and his surf club along with Shakespear Park and the thermal pools just north of town.

This is the beach at John's surf club. Earlier in the day when we stopped for brunch the tide was all the way up to the sea wall just a bit out of this frame, but you can see from this photo how large it really is.

Me and Gay at the club.

This picture of the whole beach was taken from the opposite end of his surf club. I loved that there are no tall buildings clogging the shoreline.

Then we went back to John's sister's house (Gay lives there too) and had an amazing afternoon lounging by the pool and drinking wine. I want Gay's life!! All of the family came over later for a BBQ where we feasted on local wine and food and Pavlova. If you have never had it before, you are missing out. It's basically a meringue topped with cream and berries. To.die.for. Nelly said it may have been one of the best things he has ever eaten.

John's sister's mother-in-law made it. She is also the same delightful lady who informed me that New Zealand has the best ice cream because they have the happiest cows. I think I would be pretty happy if I were them too :)

Stay tuned for the Hopper family visit 2.0!


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Location:Orewa

All In A Day's Work

We made it! After a 13 hour flight, we arrived in Auckland at 6:00am Tuesday morning. However, because we crossed the International Date Line, Nelly and I will never have experienced Monday, February 21, 2011. Very 'Lost' of us! We were very saddened to hear about the earthquake in Christchurch, it brought back many memories of our own earthquake in 1989. We are safe though. Auckland is not close to Christchurch.

We started the day of by checking into our hostel. Neither of us have stayed in one before and we were very happy with the one I picked. From there we took the bus into downtown Auckland and headed for the Sky Tower. It's like the Space Needle in Seattle only a lot taller.

You have a 360* view of the city.... And can bungee off of it. Yikes! We are saving that for Queenstown though.

It was about 11:00 by the time we finished that and were starving so we headed to the harbor and grabbed a burrito....from Americans. Go figure. We just landed in New Zealand and ordered Mexican food from guys from Long Beach. I was really glad we did though because they gave us an awesome tip for what to do the rest of the day.

We took a ferry from Auckland to Waiheke Island to go wine tasting. The trip over there reminded me so much of the San Francisco Bay. I felt like we were on our way to Sam's.

Leaving the harbor. Is this Oakland or Auckland?!?

Pulling into Tiburon...err I mean Waiheke.

We rented a car on the island and Nelly had his first taste of driving on the wrong side of the road. And then we both tasted some great wine. Look at these views.

Then we headed back on the ferry where we both fell asleep and were in bed without dinner before 9:00! Today we are off to get our car and then to see our friend Gay and the rest of Hopper's family.

Location:Auckland

The Other Side Of The World

In less than 2 weeks we are off for our great adventure! Here are the details...

 

Matt quit his job.

I quit my job.

We leave at the end of February.

We will be gone four months.

The end.

Good story, huh?

I kid, I kid.

Our first stop.

Second Stop

Then

Can't Miss

Don't worry, we won't chew gum here!

Scared for the next 3 stops.

What I am most excited for.

And our final destination!

We plan on being back at the end of June for a 5 week wedding spree.

If you have been to any of the places we are off to and have some recommendations, please pass them along. We can't have too much information!

Also, stay posted to this blog during the trip as I will be keeping it updated!