I know that I am about six months late on this, but I finally got around to finishing up my New Zealand photo album. Take a peek by clicking the image below if you want...or not, I honestly don't care.

I just realized that I never finished up my story from New Zealand. I know that it has been over a month, but I don't want to leave everyone hanging. Besides, I have a ton of photos in a web album that I am just finishing captioning, and I can't upload that until I finalized all the writing for the trip.

Where did I leave off...Ah yes, in Paihia. We were supposed to go swimming with the dolphins, but the weather was so bad that the trip was canceled. It was a bit of a bummer, but on the positive side, it did allow me to start drinking beer at 3pm. Before the beer, though, the storm broke for a bit, so Steve and I used the time to climb up to a little scenic overlook above town. It was about a thirty minute walk to the top, so it wasn't too strenuous or anything.

On the way back, we decided to hit a bar, called Sharky's, I believe, for some food and libations. What was supposed to be a couple beers along with late lunch turned into a long haul drinking session. We stayed at that bar for a while, because more or less the moment we stepped inside it started pouring down rain again. Neither of us had an umbrella, and I don't particularly relish the idea of getting soaked, so we stayed. At least we were trapped in a bar, and not somewhere less convenient.

So we drank all day and into the night, but starting on the sauce at 3:00 in the afternoon means an early bed time, and it was. Unfortunately, the following day was our last full day in new Zealand, and that thought was a little depressing. Fortunately, we had rescheduled our dolphin swimming adventure for then, so we had that to look forward to. Theoretically, at least. The weather outlook wasn't good.

Somehow, though, when we woke up Saturday morning, the sun was shining and it looked like a great day for a boat ride. We went down to the dock and everything was good to go. I was so excited to see dolphins and possibly swim with them that I couldn't wait. Unfortunately, waiting is what I had to do.

The guy drove the boat around for a while, showing us different stuff in the Bay of Islands, all the while trying to find some dolphins. There weren't any. Finally we went out to the 'hole in the rock', which is the same as every other rock arch you have ever seen in the ocean. At least that part was fun, we left the bay and got out onto open water, so the boat was really bouncing around. I took up a position way at the front, so I could get the biggest movement out of it, and had a good old time.

After seeing the lovely rock arch, we headed back in to look for dolphins again. While doing this, we stopped off at an island that previously had a snack bar and gift shop. Unfortunately, it went out of business, so there was actually nothing to do there. I don't know why they kept this as part of the trip, but I did scurry up a hill to find a scenic overlook while we were there (pictures to follow, I'm at work, so I don't have them here).

Once we left the island, we started to head back to home. I had given up on seeing any dolphins and figured I was going to be out the money it cost. They offer a guarantee if you don't see dolphins, but it isn't money back. If you don't see any dolphins, they will give you a voucher to use the next time you are in the area. Since I don't intend to go back to New Zealand any time in the near future, this would be pretty much worthless to me. No offense, New Zealand, I love you, it is just that there are other places I want to go.

All of a sudden, BAM! There they were. Dolphins were swimming alongside the boat. Well, sort of. Three dolphins came by for about 45 seconds, and then went away. That was that, we saw our dolphins, so they weren't under any obligation to give us a voucher, and we could go away disappointed. I wanted it to be like Free Willy, with the dolphins doing backflips over the boat and stuff. Sadly that wasn't what happened. I guess I was hoping for too much, anyway, but it would have been nice if we actually got a good chance to see them swimming around. Oh well, maybe next time.

The rest of the trip was uneventful. We went back to town, got our car, and drove back to Auckland. We made it to Auckland in the evening, just in time for dinner and beers, which I had plenty of. I was worn out from driving, so decided to go to bed early. Besides, we had to check out at like 6:00am in order to get to the airport on time, and I wanted to be sure to get up on time.

To wrap up the trip, I realized that there was no map telling us exactly where the rental car place was, and my memory wasn't good enough to find it on my own. No one was working there at 6:30am on a Sunday, so we had to drive around a while before finally finding it. That is what you get when you rent a car from a cheapy place that doesn't even had a kiosk at the airport. On the other hand, it was half the price of its competitors, so you do have that.

We did finally find the rental car place, and then took a bus the rest of the way to the airport, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Yesterday morning we woke up early to head north of Auckland to the Bay of Islands, and a nice little town called Paihia. It is about three hours north of Auckland and the drive was fairly uneventful, except for a confusing ride on a toll road that didn’t ever actually make us pay. I don’t know how that works, but I have the vague feeling that we somehow did something wrong. (edit: I paid later, when the rental company dinged my credit card to the tune of 20$ US)

We arrived in town and found the room we reserved easily enough. We are staying at the Mousetrap guesthouse, and the place is really nice. The only strange thing is that the other people staying here completely ignore us. Everywhere else I have been, the people have been nothing but friendly. Here, I feel like an outcast. Im not sure why that is, but it is a stark contrast to everywhere else I have stayed. Oh well.

After checking in, Steve and I decided to walk through town and have something to eat. Since it is winter, there isn’t a lot going on, but fortunately there are a bunch of bars right across from where we are staying.

Today we were supposed to take a boat out to see dolphins, but the weather was so bad that the boat was canceled. We switched our reservation to tomorrow in hopes it will be nicer, but the prediction is more of the same. Actually, right now the weather looks to be clearing up quite a bit, so I might actually manage to take a nature walk or something today. If not, I have a good book and a comfy couch to hold me over until it is beer drinking time.

Finally the day came that I had been waiting for in restless anticipation. We were making the trip to Hobbiton. We made it to the bustling community of Matamata without trouble, and from there took a bus out to the Alexander farm, aka Hobbiton and the sheep shearing experience. It was cool to see the farm, the scenery was great. Hobbiton, though…well, it left a lot to the imagination.

More or less everything was left up to the imagination. The natural scenery was the same, but the hobbit holes were mostly filled in, and the ones that were left were only plywood cut outs. Still, I have one heck of an imagination, so it was pretty cool. Unfortunately, two things happened which made it a bit more difficult to enjoy. First, my camera battery died, and apparently I left the charger and spare at home (edit- I found them at home while unpacking, go figure), so I had to rely on Tuttles pictures. The second thing is that they were starting work on restoring the area for the filming of The Hobbit, so there were all kinds of people doing work all over the place. All in all, it was the kind of thing that you do to say you have been there, and for that it was worthwhile. However, unless you are a huge Lord of the Rings fan, you could probably skip it and not really feel like you missed much.

The sheep shearing on the other hand was pretty exciting. A guy talks for a few minutes about sheep shearing, and then gives you a demonstration. I think I enjoyed that part more than the sheep did. After the sheep gets a haircut, the guy brought out four lambs and gave us bottles of milk to feed them. I gave the baby sheep some milk, and it was pretty cute, even though they were a bit aggressive and rammy. Following the feeding, we got to hold the lambs for pictures, which was nice. Of course when I return to Seoul, one of the questions they ask in customs is if I had any contact with farm animals. I, of course, am going to lie, but I am rather curious about what they would do with me if I said I was playing with sheep.



That bit concluded our tour of Hobbiton, and we started our long trip back to the civilization of Auckland.

I had reserved a tour of Whakerewarewa Maori village and geothermal hotspot for today, which was right in town, so there was only a couple minutes of driving to get there. The tour started at 1000am and consisted of explaining how and why they lived on top of a geyser. Well, the short answer is that it is warm. The town itself supported 26 families, who had all kinds of modern conveniences, but still apparently liked to cook by putting their food into the boiling hot pools and steam vents.

This style of cooking is called hangi, and Steve and I had a nice, albeit expensive hangi lunch. I was expecting it to taste like rotten eggs, but it didn’t, and the food was actually quite good. Because I started the day with a Kiwi Brekkie, aka 1500 calories of lard, I couldn’t totally enjoy it, but it was good.

We also watched a traditional Maori performance, which included dancing and things of that nature. I actually got on stage and did the Maori war dance, which was pretty funny. Of course Steve chickened out and didn’t join me, he said he had to hang back and take pictures….whatever!



After the hangi lunch and checking out all the thermal activity (I left the camera at home, so check out Steves site for pics), we headed over to the Rotorua Museum. The museum is in the old Rotorua bath building,, and a large part of the museum was dedicated to that. The bath stuff was interesting, but the rest of the museum was pretty blah to me.

Waking up early with an upset stomach, I was glad that Steve had said he would drive the first shift this morning. Fortunately, we weren’t too far out of town before I started feeling better. So much better in fact, that I jumped at the chance to stop at McDonalds for a mcmuffin.

I was just going to get the standard breakfast set, but saw a menu item that caught my eye. It was called the hunger buster set. It consisted of a massive mcmuffin, a bacon mcmuffin, a hash brown and a drink. I got that. It turns out that the massive mcmuffin is two sausages, bacon, egg and cheese. Pretty massive, and enough to reupset my recently calmed stomach. I still ate it all, though.

After breakfast, Steve continued to drive uneventfully, until right outside of Hamilton, where he misjudged distances, and smacked into a truck. The truck driver didn’t notice, so we did what anyone would do, we kept going. Now the rental car is in my name, so I hope there isn’t anything seriously wrong. Steve is sure that the mirror just dinged the guy, but Im not so certain. Anyway, my battery is dying, and we are just outside Waitomo, our first stop for the day, so I will check the car and update the situation later.

Update -

We arrived in Waitomo around noon and that was the first opportunity I had to check out the damage to the car. We did end up hitting more than just the mirror, but it isn’t actually that bad. There are two small streaks of white paint that actually rubbed right off, and the broken mirror just popped out of its spot, so after just a little work the car was as good as new.

The Waitomo caves, on the other hand, are not new at all. We had signed up for a blackwater rafting trip, which basically works like this…you throw on a wetsuit, take a big inner tube, and tube down a stream that runs through a cave. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? Well, it was. Actually it was a little too exciting for Steve, and he ended up turning back part of the way in. But I wont make fun of him here for it, being an egg sucking scaredy cat is his right.

The caving was actually really cool…cold even. Remember, it is the middle of winter here in New Zealand, and besides, the water underground doesn’t really ever get warm. The caves themselves are famous for the glow worms which reside within, and it was pretty cool to turn off the headlamp and just float along watching the glowing ceiling.

After the tubing, it was time to head to Rotorua, our final destination. Actually, we had a short stop off in the town of Te Kuite, which bills itself as the shearing capital of the world. We didn’t get sheared, but did get some wonderful photographs.



We finally arrived in Rotorua under the cover of darkness and then had a hell of a time finding our accommodation because the atlas that was provided by the rental company is more or less worthless. We did find it, eventually, without resorting to asking for directions, which is always nice, and then it was onto the important matters of drinking and dinner, in no particular order.

I picked Steve up at the airport, which was uneventful, although nice, because I was alone for the previous week and it is always nice to have a partner in crime, aka drinking buddy. We got the rental car with no hassle (a cute green Mitsubishi three door), and I actually had no problem driving on the left. The fact that the turn signals are on the wrong side of the steering column, though, is still causing me no end of aggravation.

Once we got into town, we tried to check into our room, but it wasn’t available yet, so we walked over to the Auckland Domain and checked out the museum. The museum was good, but we seriously underestimated the size of the place, so I was starving by the time we left. From there, we went downtown for a bite to eat at some restaurant that served steak, spaghetti, curry, rice, and just about anything else imaginable. I got a huge plate of everything for 8$, and proceeded to eat way more than necessary. Whoops.

From there, we checked into our rooms at the Fat Camel Hostel and Bar, and that was more or less that. The beer flowed like wine, and I got drunk. For some reason we parked in a 24 hour lot that only let you pay for twelve hours at a time, so midway through the evening, I had to stop drinking and go feed money into the parking meters. Other than that, it was a night like any other, although Steve befriended some rough and tumble characters that he proceeded to antagonize about Lord of the Rings. Kiwis take that shit seriously, so caution is advised while attempting anything like this. Granted, I found it amusing to be arguing a fantasy epic with a bunch of dockworkers, so it was definitely worthwhile. I made it an early night, however, because I woke up early and we started in on the booze quite early as well.

Heading back to the room to go to bed, though, I got caught by two Argentinean girls who wanted to use me. Unfortunately, it isn’t what you would hope for. They were in New Zealand on working holiday to study English, and of course I am an English teacher. I’m sure the practice was good for them, being that I was three sheets to the wind, and didn’t particularly want to talk. Bed was calling, and fortunately, after not too long, I managed to get away and have a good sleep.

Well, I woke up somewhere around noon to find that there was no hot water in the hotel. I washed my hair in cold water because it was so wild and decided to try to fix the laptop since the broken keys were making me crazy. Also, since I headed back to Auckland a day early, I didn’t really have much of an agenda.

First I stopped by the book store, because I had ripped through the two books I brought with me (Farenheit 451 and Eleven Minutes) were read practically by the time I got off the airplane. I browsed through the science fiction section a while before settling on Speaker of the Dead and Dune. I had read Enders Game a while back, but never got around to finishing the series, so I was looking forward to that, and Dune I had read years and years ago, and I would like to revisit it.

After that, I ate lunch and set out to find a new keyboard. The first place I went to recommended that I go to another shop that could likely help me. The second shop refused to sell me a keyboard, claiming they had to service it themselves, which I refused. Disheartened, I went to Albert Park to read a book.

When I wrapped up reading, I ate some dinner and was headed back to the room for an early bedtime because I had to pick up Steve the following morning. Before going in, though, I stopped off at a convenience store to get a drink and a snack. The bill was 4.90$, and I wanted to pay with coins. In case you are unaware, NZ has one and two dollar coins, so the amount of change you carry can get out of hand pretty quickly. Anyway, I had 4.70 in coins, but the guy told me it was ok. What a nice dude. Perhaps he knew something I didn’t, though, because the drink, "supplement water" (energise flavor to be precise, and there were no capital letters on the bottle, so I am just following their lead) was absolutely vile.

After reconfiguring my plans to head back to Auckland a day early, I decided to get drunk. Well, that isn’t exactly true. I decided to have a few drinks, and we all know what that leads to. As far as I could tell, there were two popular bars in Ohakune, and one of them was located slightly closer to the Matai Lodge, which was where I was staying. I decided to go there for obvious reasons, and to be honest, I cant even remember its name. It is the bar on the main corner of town, Rocky Mountain or something like that…in all honesty the name isn’t that important.

I went in and it happened to be happy hour, which was nice, but also not very important. I sat down to have a beer or two, and decided to drink Summit Draft, the reason being that was the only draft beer whos name I could pronounce, aside from Steinlager, which I prefer to avoid. Since I was alone, I was halfway through my second beer and had made up my mind to leave after a third when a guy sat down next to me.

The first thing he said to me was- sorry, quote key is broken- The first thing he said to me was `Im a Maori by inclination.` What that means is completely outside my realm of understanding, but it made me curious enough to continue conversing with the guy. Also, since I was no longer alone, it meant I was going to have more than the three beers I had first intended.

The beginning of the conversation was lively as he told me of all the infidelities of the other regulars sitting at the bar. Small towns are great for that. After hearing about how all of these people were cheating on and with each other, the conversation became rather stale. In fact it was just barely interesting enough to keep me from wandering home. Believe me, with beer involved, I don’t need much conversation at all, and sadly, this guy could barely provide it. Im not knocking him, I just don’t have that much in common with small town New Zealanders, I guess. Anyway, since I started early, I wandered back to my room at a little after 900, to make sure I was well prepared for the trip back to Auckland.

And what a trip it was. When I first got on the bus, I took a seat on the left hand side because most of the right side seats were full for some reason. After ten minutes on the road, I realized it was because the sun was beating unmercifully down on that side. So, I moved over to the only remaining seat on the right side in search of relief from the brutal sun.

I found relief from the sun, all right, I was relieved by a seat that was caked with dry vomit and stunk like you wouldn’t believe. It was terrible, but I had a choice to make. What is worse to a man with a somewhat severe hangover? The beating sun or the stench of some strangers vomit? I chose to deal with the vomit smell, and spent the six hours traveling back to Auckland stewing in the smell of someone elses digestive juices.

Fortunately I made it back to Auckland without adding my own personal stomach acid to the pile, and when I got off the bus, I ran to my room for a shower, a quick kebab, and about 12 hours of sleep.

Well, good things do happen, because I did find a place to stay for Friday night in Ohakune. Of course, by the time I had, I already decided to head back to Auckland. It wasn’t because of the lack of a room that I changed my mind, it was the snow condition.

Between the lift ticket and rental fees, I was looking at about 170$NZ a day. For that kind of money, the snowboarding would have to be really good, and it just wasn’t. The town was great, the people cool, the scenery was breathtaking, just the snow itself left a lot to be desired. So, I am writing this while sitting on the bus back to Auckland.

Let’s talk about the scenery, though. The town of Ohakune itself is below the snow line; in fact the weather was comfortably warm in town. Everything was green, and if not for the single gigantic snow covered mountain in the background, you would have no idea at all that this was a ski town.



But, if you hop a shuttle to the mountain- 20$ return- you go through just about every climate imaginable. At first you are in a rain forest, vegetation is thick and green, and you can see trees that look suspiciously palm like all over. After a couple minutes, this gives way to a coniferous forest, which gets sparser and sparser until there is nothing left but rocks, and soon enough, this gives way to snow.



Ah the snow, the downfall of the experience. The resort itself, Turoa, was neither too large nor too small. It wasn’t too crowded or too empty; in fact it was quite nice all around. The lifts were busy without being crowded, and the sky was blue and sunny. Unfortunately, the snow wasn’t really snow at all, but thick sheets of ice. Snowboarding at Turoa was very reminiscent of my experiences snowboarding back in Pennsylvania, which I had sworn off nearly two decades ago.

Would it have helped if I hadn’t been to Colorado just a few months before? Perhaps, but in all honesty, poor conditions are poor conditions, and that is why I am headed back to Auckland a day early.

And for all you SuperDrew lovers, here is a wonderful self shot of me with the mountain in the background.