Auckland and the Donuts

Friday morning Kyle returned our rental car early, then came back to sleep in a bit on a rainy morning. We spent our last afternoon in New Zealand walking around Auckland and and touring Voyager: the New Zealand Maritime Museum. We took a harbor cruise on the museum's traditional scow, the Ted Ashby.

As the country has a rich maritime history, it was interesting to learn about the history of Auckland as a port and the more recent sailing culture. The museum had exhibits on everything from traditional South Pacific canoes to the America's Cup racing yachts. It was the perfect place to explore on a cool and rainy day.

Our flight was early Saturday morning and we had a 7 hour layover in Sydney. Our intention was to leave the airport and make our way down to the Sydney Harbor for the day, but when we got to immigration, we realized that I'd let our Australian Visas expire. I knew that I'd had to get an online visa before, but I thought it lasted 3 years or so. Nope, just one. I was mad about it all day.

However the airport did have free wifi so Kyle took a nap, while I took care of some work email to dig myself out of the hole from being gone so long. It was actually a fairly painless and productive day.

The worst part was the walkway between terminals as we were returning from our failed attempt to enter the country. A glass wall gave us a view of the restaurants available on the other side of immigration. And what did we see? A Krispy Kreme.

You may remember our joy at Krispy Kreme in Shanghai.

Suddenly Kyle wanted a Krispy Kreme donut more than anything. We could SEE the Krispy Kreme. We stood and stared at the glass wall. We considered writing a sign and holding it up for anyone who was eating, but would be coming through to our side eventually. We considered sending out a tweet to anyone in the Sydney airport. We considered paying off an airport employee. He just wanted one donut; it's not like we were asking anyone to do anything illegal.  

After ruling out those possibilities as sketchy and/or likely to get us arrested, we walked sadly back to our own Krispy Kreme-free restaurants. We both got a salad for lunch and sat down to eat. I got up at one point to fill up our water bottle when what did I notice in the garbage can? A Krispy Kreme box.

The box was just laying on top of the pile. The box was closed and it wasn't smushed, or damaged in any way. And there were two donuts inside.

It was like they were a consolation prize for the visa debacle.

I walked back to the table and told Kyle. We sat and thought. How awful is it to eat donuts out of the trash can in the Sydney airport? Well, they're not actually IN the trash can. They're in a box. That just happens to be laying in (on, really) the trash can.

Kyle got up and grabbed the box before the "on top" and "not smushed or damaged" part of our argument could be voided.

So we sat and stared at the box of donuts.

Perfect condition in every way. And really, was eating one of these donuts any different from asking a stranger to buy some and bring them to us? I mean, basically that's what had happened.

So... what would you have done?

Bay of Plenty and the Coromandel Peninsula

After leaving Rotorua on Wednesday morning, we drove north and spent Wednesday and Thursday on the Bay of Plenty and the Coromandel Peninsula before wrapping back to Auckland. They were two very relaxed days, just driving, taking in the sights, and relaxing.

The Bay of Plenty is East of Auckland and it's the kiwifruit (not to be confused with kiwi birds or Kiwis, the people) capital of New Zealand. We stopped at Kiwi360--a kiwifruit farm and information center--to taste both gold and green kiwis, kiwi liquor, kiwi wine, and kiwifruit juice (it's thick, like a thick orange juice) and of course to check out kiwifruit on the vine. They are grown on arbors and kiwifruit picking is one of the most common itinerant jobs in New Zealand.

We ate lunch at their cafe before heading West along the coast. We stopped in Whangamata at the i-Site to book a room further up the road and to take a Coke break (in a glass bottle!) on one of their gorgeous beaches. The weather was lovely. People were on the beach in bathing suits, but it wasn't terribly hot.

We ended Wednesday night at Seabreeze Camp in a cozy little cottage with a kitchen. Once we checked in, we backtracked to the nearest grocery and picked up groceries to go with the fresh avocados we'd bought earlier in the day from a roadside stand. We made tomato and avocado bruschetta along with chicken tortellini. Kyle broke out another of his collected New Zealand beers: a Monteith's Summer Ale, which was spicy and gingery and great. We ate dinner on our little porch and watched the sunset.

After dark we headed to the beach. Thanks, again, to New Zealand's volcanic activity, there are several hot water sites on the North Island. Near our camp there is a beach with several hot water springs near the low tide line. You go at low tide (which was about 8 pm in this case) and dig yourself a sandy hot tub, right by the ocean. The springs are pretty close together, so everyone that's there to enjoy them is clustered tightly together. We got there a bit late, but two nice guys offered to let us in their "tub" with them. You don't want to be too close to the spring (because it is extremely hot), but you don't want to be too far away, either, or you get no heat. You have to dig a hollow for the spring water and build up sand sides, because the waves coming in are quite cold and you don't want that cold water in your hot tub.

No pictures, because it was pitch black by the time we arrived and got settled, but it was really lovely. We could see patches of stars through the clouds, hear and smell the ocean, and sit in the warm water and sand.

As the tide comes back in it gets harder and harder to defend your pocket of warmth. The waves eventually take back the stretch of sand with the hot springs and everyone rinses off and goes home.

On Thursday morning, we reluctantly left our cozy cottage and further traced the Coromandel Peninsula coastline to Cathedral Cove.

It was a 1.5 hour hike round trip to get down to the Cove, but we broke it up with play time on the lovely beach. Plenty of people were in the water, but as equatorial folks now, it was a bit chilly for us. Instead Kyle baited the locals:

we had a Hamish photoshoot:

and we had a Kyle photoshoot, so he wouldn't feel left out:

When it was time to go, we took the 309 road, a curvy, mostly gravel road, to Coromandel town on the western side of the peninsula. We stopped halfway to see a stand of kauri trees, one of the largest and most ancient trees in New Zealand.

We had lunch at a great cafe in Coromandel (Driving Creek Cafe, largest, most delicious lentil burger ever) before wandering through town and down the West coast of the peninsula back to Auckland.

The coastline was so pretty and peaceful. I loved the little wood frame churches in the tiny towns and Kyle was particularly impressed with the trees.

We called the one on the right Perfect Trees, because that's what they look like. We only saw a few of the one on the left, but they looked more like something out of Dr. Seuss.

A Taste of Maori Culture

We left Christchurch on Monday night and flew to Auckland. We landed pretty late and went straight to bed, and the next morning we headed immediately South for a bit of work for me during the day. While I was working, Kyle visited the i-Site (told you we were impressed) and booked a room for us in Rotorua. The town is famous for its hot springs, which means it's infamous for the sulfur stink. But really we didn't notice it. We'd get whiffs of it while we were there, but it definitely didn't permeate everything like we'd been warned.

Hot tubs and thermal spas are a big draw to Rotorua, but as we felt Hamish was already at prime temperature, we chose to experience a bit of indigenous New Zealand culture.

When the Europeans first arrived in New Zealand, the two islands were inhabited by the Maori people, a distinct Polynesian tribal warrior culture skilled in both hunting and agriculture that trace their New Zealand heritage back to about 1300 BC when they arrived on canoes, probably from islands to the east.

[We are mispronouncing this FOR SURE, but the way we learned that seemed most similar to what the New Zealanders were saying is like Maui in Hawaii with a D in the middle: Mau-di. Again, this is not right, but it's a heck of a lot closer than what we were saying to start with: May-or-ee.]

When the Europeans began arriving in the 17th century the Maori were well established in New Zealand, and the British signed a treaty in 1840 with the Maori so that the indigenous culture and the British colony could coexist peacefully. There were definitely some problems, but the 1840 treaty still plays a real role in the way the country is governed. Now Maori people make up about 15% of the population, more on the North Island than the South. Their language and culture is experiencing a resurgence, and is used in schools and by the government to some extent.

On the South Island we'd seen some Maori carvings at the Canterbury Museum and had heard the Maori legends behind the formation of Milford Sound, the glaciers, and other natural landmarks, but in Rotorua we got to enjoy a Maori cultural display and meal while touring the hot springs and geysers at Te Puia, the New Zealand Maori Arts and Crafts Institute and natural thermal valley.

Interestingly, the Maori have a long history of guiding tours in this area. It was a tourist hot spot in the 1800s as Europeans started visiting New Zealand and came to see the world famous Pink and White Terraces and most (if not all) of the guides were Maori women. The Terraces were thought destroyed in an 1886 volcanic eruption, though the lower tiers of the terraces were just rediscovered in 2011 at the bottom of the lake (too deep to dive, sadly).

Our evening began as one man of our member was chosen to act as our chief and initiate contact with the Maori chief and assure him that we were a peaceful (if camera wielding) group. The Maori chief came out of the wharenui, or elaborately carved meeting house, and demonstrated his skill with his weapons. Our "chief" humbly accepted the peace offering of a branch, and we were invited into the meeting house.

We were treated to several songs, dances, and displays. The women demonstrated the poi dance involving a ball on a string; we saw weapon displays; and we heard Maori folk stories set to music.

The warriors demonstrated the haka, a pre-war pep rally of sorts to pump up the tribe with the extra benefit of scaring the daylights out of any opponents who happened to see or hear it. (The New Zealand rugby team, the All Blacks, now does a haka before every match accomplishing the same general results.)


Any willing [male] volunteers were invited to learn the haka. Besides our hapless chief, who didn't have a choice, guess who was the first volunteer.

It involves yelling, posturing, and lots of sticking the tongue out with crazy eyes.

The performers were all of a single family, and they were very talented. The music was quite lovely, actually. Te Puia also houses two workshops/schools for Maori traditional crafts: carving and weaving. Most of the weaving is done from flax and can be simple or incredibly sophisticated. The carving really shines in the ceremonial houses and the Maori canoes; war canoes in particular were elaborate.

After the performance was over, we had a hangi dinner. A hangi is a way of cooking food with hot stones buried in a pit oven for many hours. Our dinner was cooked the traditional way, but used aluminum containers and muslin bags for the food instead of the more traditional baskets with leaves for covering. We had chicken, pork, lamb, mussels, potatoes, and kumara or sweet potatoes. We also had an array of salads and seafood to supplement the earth-cooked spread.

Dinner in general was very good, but we were actually expecting a bit more smokiness from the hangi. The meat was tender and moist, but we (Kyle especially) expected there to be more infused flavor from the cooking method. The kumara was the best part.

Aside: one of the beers that Kyle picked up at the Invercargill Brewery was a hangi beer. And it had smokiness to spare! It was like drinking what we thought a hangi would taste like.

Before our evening began we'd seen the bubbling mud pits (Ngamokaiakoko, meaning pets or playthings of Koko), the sputtering Pohutu Geyser, and the kiwi, a small, flightless, nocturnal bird only found in New Zealand (nocturnal = no light and no photos in the kiwi house, but here's what they look like). But after dinner we returned to watch the geyser really shooting (90 feet) as the sun set and we sipped hot chocolate. 

Sad City

We had planned to spend a couple of days in Christchurch before heading to the North Island. We returned the car on Saturday at 5:00 and were booked a flight on Monday at about the same time. So two full days to see Christchurch. We knew there had been an earthquake there, but the extent of our concern was to say an extra prayer that there wouldn't be another one while we were there.

I'd booked a backpackers room right near the old part of the center city and when we got in on Friday night, the room and the place were great! Then we started to look for dinner options close by and we learned this:

All of that red shaded area is off limits. The red star on the top right is our hotel. And lots of what we wanted to see--the old Cathedral, boating on the river, the art gallery, most if not all recommended restaurants, and just the old city in general--is inside that red zone.

In case, like us, you heard of "the earthquake" and have put it out of your mind. Here's a summary:
The biggest one was September 4, 2010: 7.1 magnitude (Haiti's was 7.0 for comparison). That day there were 97 aftershocks, several in the 5.6-5.0 magnitude range. Since then (16 months) there have been 41 more earthquakes with a magnitude over 5.0 in greater Christchurch. If you're interested in a really well done interactive map of the seismic activity, you can check that out here.

Not to say that outside of the red zone things are all good to go. At the i-Site we were told that a lot of the walks and green spaces outside of the city are closed because of damage to trails or concerns over rock or landslides. We heard (and read in the local paper) stories of families having been without plumbing for close to two years; of insurance payments still stalled because policies have a 90 day (or so) waiting period that resets every time there's another quake; of infighting and name calling in the city legislature. And we saw countless closed businesses, restaurants, churches, and homes as we skirted the red zone, many of the beautiful old stone buildings being held together with plywood and wrappings with chunks of pediment, finials, and even whole walls missing. 

To be honest, we didn't take a lot of pictures because it was just too sad. I didn't really want to be gawking at the decay and destruction while the city's people were walking around us trying to go on with their lives.

It wasn't a bad visit. We did visit the Canterbury Museum and wander a bit in the Botanic Gardens (east of the red zone). The International Buskers Festival was being held in the gardens that week and we caught a few street performers on Sunday. And on Saturday as we walked to dinner the weather was warm and breezy and we actually got to break away from our New Zealand uniform of jeans and jackets. Kyle even took advantage of the sun and the wind to capture a Hamish-sighting on the way to dinner.

We only had two days, so we're certainly not in any position to make educated judgements. But we did not get the impression of a city down for the count; we did get the impression of a sad city that's still struggling.

Glaciers, Kea, and So Long South Island

There are only a few passes in the Southern Alps, so we drove inland and north a bit in the rain on Thursday, spending a night in Wanaka, before crossing the Alps at Haast and arriving on the West Coast on Friday.

The most notable thing about our drive out of Fiordland to Wanaka was the bread we picked up at the grocery in Te Anau to eat with cheese on the road. Best bread ever. We may never have a baguette again without fond memories of this one.

Anyway... on Friday our first stop was the Franz Josef glacier. We decided on Friday morning that maybe we wanted to go helihiking on the glacier--where a helicopter takes you to the top of the glacier and you get to hike in the crevasses and blue ice for a while before coming back down. Hiking TO the glacier from the bottom wasn't something we thought Hamish would be up for (it's a very steep hike for nearly an hour) but being dropped off on the top sounded great.

Sadly, we came to this conclusion too late. On Friday morning we zipped through the gorgeous Mount Aspiring National Park at Haast Pass on our way to Franz Josef, just to miss the last helihike. Hmph.

Franz Josef and Fox are two glaciers on the West side of the Alps. Franz Josef is bigger. It gets 52.5 FEET of precipitation annually at the neve (or top) of the glacier and about 20.5 feet in the valley. It flows 5 to 23 feet per day, which is really fast for a glacier. Like the glaciers that formed Milford, it cuts a U-shaped valley in the mountain and a river runs from the base of the glacier to the sea.

We hiked to the base of the glacier (well as close as you can get without a guide) across a rock field where the glacier used to extend, and then had a picnic on a bench. It drizzled a bit on our walk out, but by the time we had our picnic, it was lovely again. Even if we didn't get to hike on it, it was still pretty beautiful.

Since I was sad about missing the actual ice-hiking, Kyle found some broken off glacier in the river and brought it to me to stand on. Look, we're standing on a glacier!

After our picnic lunch, we headed further up the coast to Greymouth for the night.

Have I mentioned that there were no people in New Zealand? It was weird. When we got into Greymouth Friday evening (in daylight!) it felt like we were driving into a ghost town.

Thankfully, we found a local place with live music for dinner to reassure us that the country is inhabited. The music was, um, interesting. But the people were friendly, the food was really good, and we got some advice for our next day's drive.

Saturday was our last day with a car on the South Island so we had to make our way from Greymouth on the West Coast back to Christchurch in the East. We started by driving North again along State Highway 6 to Punakaiki, site of the pancake rocks and blowholes.

This was our second rock-based site visit, but Kyle thought the pancake rocks far outshone the Moeraki Boulders.

The rocks are limestone layers made by a combination of erosion and high-pressure deposits, but the exact reason for their formation is not clear. There's a lot of them, and they form all kinds of nooks and crannies and caves and holes for the sea to get caught in and explode out of (hence the blowholes).

After deciding not to have pancakes at the Pancake Rocks (you know that's an option!) we drove back down to Greymouth to take Arthur's Pass over the Alps (740 m above sea level) and back into Canterbury.

At the pass we finally got up close and  personal with the kea, the world's only Alpine parrot. There are supposedly lots of kea around the tunnel to Milford Sound, but we only saw one on our way out. But at the pass, there were plenty!

They say the kea is the monkey of the parrot world. They are very smart and mischievous--people sited studies! We heard tales of the birds unlacing hiking boots left outside and shredding the laces. And we heard a LOT of stories of the damage they can do to rental cars. Kyle parked far away from the other cars in an attempt to hide.

Doesn't he look intelligent? We saw several cars stopped at the pass covered in kea. They completely ignored attempts to wave them off and some hung on even as the cars drove away. Those feet plus those beaks are not good for rental car returns.

We enjoyed the view and the birds for a while, but as I was taking this picture of the pass:

I heard Kyle take off at full tilt. The birds had found our car, so we decided to head out.

We spent the rest of the day enjoying our last look at the South Island. It had been drizzling off and on ever since we entered Fiordland, and it was amazing the change in weather as soon as we were on the east side of the Alps.

On our last afternoon drive, we got to enjoy some of our favorite New Zealand things... the hydrangeas. Stunning arrays from white to wine red to purple everywhere we went:

The signage. How cute (and detailed) is this railroad sign. It has steam!

The tree-fences. We learned later that these are planted and pruned to protect the animals from the wind and blowing rain and snow. Some of them are so tall and so narrow and so precise and we saw a few planted with multiple kinds of trees to be extremely dense. They seemed like a lot of work to maintain.

And of course the sheep. There were a LOT of sheep. But sheep are not big on portraiture, apparently. They took off whenever we slowed down.

Thankfully, I found this guy willing to sit for me.

We stopped for ice cream and pictures on the way back, but that was it. We needed to return our rental car (hopefully kea-damage-free) by 5:00 on Saturday.

NZ is Gorgeous (Pt 2)

The southwestern corner of the South island of New Zealand is Fiordland, a wild and remote area made up of fjords (spelled fiord in New Zealand, but nowhere else, it seems). A true fjord is a glacier-cut valley in mountains or rocks with steep sides. They can look similar to riverbeds or sea inlets, but to be geologically accurate, a fjord needs to have been formed by a glacier.


And New Zealand's certainly were. Jutting into the Tasman Sea, the coastline was so foreboding that Europeans sailed past inlets several times, simply not seeing them. Once they were discovered, they became a hot spot for sealers hunting for fur seals for the European market. Today the whole area is a protected National Park and World Heritage Area, lush and green, thanks to the 19.5 FEET of annual rainfall. (Warm air from Australia/Tasman Sea hits the cold air from the Southern Alps and you get lots and lots of rain.)


We drove in to Fiordland on a beautiful Wednesday, the warmest day we'd had in New Zealand, surprisingly.

We stopped in Te Anau, the little town that serves as the tourism hub for gas and a quick stop at the i-Site to get weather details before we ventured into the fiords. On our way out of town, we picked up meat pies, a New Zealand specialty: venison, and steak and mushroom. They were yum, but so rich. We should have gotten venison and apple for dessert.


We stopped for a few short walks and views on the road between Te Anau and Milford.

Milford Sound is the most accessible fjord today thanks to the Te Anau-Milford road, but it's been a tourist attraction for years. Donald Sutherland was the first European to settle in Milford in 1878, and he immediately started guiding European tour groups through the fjord in row boats. In 1888, the Milford Track (one of New Zealand's "Great Walks") opened and Sutherland and his wife set up a 12 room hotel for trampers that wanted to also see the fjord. Rudyard Kipling reportedly called Milford Sound the 8th Wonder of the World.


Today there's no hotel at the mouth of the Sound, but there is a boat terminal and a parking lot. Day cruises leave from Milford all day long, but we wanted to soak in a bit more of the experience, so we splurged for an overnight cruise, spending one late afternoon night and morning on the Sound in the Milford Mariner.

It was a great way to see the Sound. We soaked up the amazing scenery on our first pass through the Sound toward the Tasman Sea.

The U-shaped valleys mean this was glacier-cut. A river--or water in general--would cut a V-shape in the rock.

After making it all the way to the Sea, we turned back into a protected bay to go kayaking. We launched our kayaks off the back of the boat and spent an hour or so paddling around the coves and nooks and crannies in the rock. The only downside... sandflies. Apparently the sandflies have plagued Milford tourists since the first days. Thankfully they only bothered us on the kayaking trip.


After our workout (the water in the Sound is not super calm!) we had dinner on the boat and watched the sun setting on the glaciers in the mountains.

Before we went to bed, we watched the fur seals play on the back deck of the boat. The crew said they always attract one or two seals on a trip. The lights of the boat attract fish, and the seals are smart enough to know to rest and watch from the deck before grabbing their dinner (and post for photographs, of course!).

Many of the crew commented on our gorgeous weather on Wednesday night. It was perfect, but it wasn't very representative of Fiordland. Thankfully, we got to see both options because on Thursday morning we woke to mist and rain.


Although not as picture perfect, I loved the fjord in the rain. Water cascaded off the cliffs in waterfall after waterfall and the mountains looked mysterious and romantic.

Stirling Falls, at more than 508 feet, is the largest of Milford's falls and is permanent. Our captain drove the boat nearly into the falls so we could get a feel for its height and the sheer force of the water over the rocks.

Other falls just appear after the heaviest rains and the wind whipping between the clips nearly blows some of the away. Disappearing Falls tends to get blown right off the side of the cliff in strong wind.

On Thursday morning after a lovely breakfast, we pulled back into Milford and headed out of Fiordland. Again, the drive was nice in a different way, as the mountains were covered in waterfalls, but even with the less than perfect weather, we couldn't miss one of the Great Walks.


The Routeburn Track is a 3- to 4-day walk through the subalpine rainforest with stunning views. Hamish wasn't up for a 3- to 4-day walk carrying all of our gear and food, but one end of the Routeburn Track is on the road between Te Anau and Milford at the Divide. So on our way out of Milford, we stopped and hiked just an hour and a half or so on the trail. It was cool and misty, but not actually raining, so it was a pretty easy walk in the clothes we had on.





And it was lovely. We certainly can see why a fern is the symbol of New Zealand. Moss and ferns of all sizes covered the landscape. We hiked until we caught a glimpse of Key Summit in the clouds, then returned.





Once we got back to Te Anau, we turned out of Fiordland, and headed for the West Coast.