Cuckoo for KiwiLand

Done.

2010-07-19T09:35:00.000-07:00

One last day in Sydney. Not much time, but enough time to eat the BEST pancakes on the planet at Pancakes on the Rocks but only after seeing the new Russel Crowe Robin Hood. Then race the rain to the train station. Boarding a plane for 14 is not much fun soaking wet....and then you see Vegas from the skies!

Bye Bye Cairns!

2010-07-17T21:57:00.000-07:00

Last day in Cairns! Almost a full day, full enough for another breakfast in Kuranda! And a visit to the waterfalls.....then a sunset flight to Sydney!!!

Mom's Gone, Time to Relax!

2010-07-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

With mom gone, we headed straight back to Karunda and spent the day relaxing. May 15th.

GBR: Norman Reef.

2010-07-15T12:17:00.000-07:00

Second half of the day, Tim spent green and sick, but also on Norman Reef, two hours into the ocean, right on top of the reef from our pontoon.

GBR: Green Island.

2010-07-14T23:58:00.000-07:00

The first half of our Great Barrier Reef Excursion was spent on Green Island. An hour into the ocean lies a small small island of complete beauty...

May 13th. Cairns.

2010-07-14T08:48:00.000-07:00

Ayers Rock (Uluru).

2010-07-13T12:27:00.001-07:00

A Day at Ayers Rock... (its not like there is anything else to do!)

May 10th! Uluru! aka Ayers Rock.

2010-07-09T09:27:00.000-07:00

May 10th, we flew to the middle of NOWHERE. NOOOOWHERE. 4 hours from the closest super small town, and many many more hours from any actual civilization. Ayers Rock. And the coolest gourmet dinner under the stars. One of the most unique things i have ever done i my entire life. Plus we ate things like Kangaroo and Crocodile and crazy other animals....

Mother's Day 2010.

2010-07-08T11:48:00.000-07:00

We took my mom to this KILLER Pancake House in Adelaide, and then were horrible children and dropped her off at a museum and went to an Australian Rules Football Game. We totally got our comeupance on it though, it was thee stupidest most boring thing on the planet. They are pansies. PANSIES!

Happy Mommy's Day?

Photos. Part Two.

2010-07-03T11:12:00.000-07:00

More Pictures. May 8.

May 6 & 7!

2010-07-02T18:35:00.000-07:00

Ok, too far behind, just going to load a bunch of pictures. Ill give details to all that desire!!

Penguins and Koalas on May 5th!!

2010-06-30T09:54:00.001-07:00

May 5, 2010
It took us awhile to get out of Melbourne, we tried driving past the Docklands first, then we were off to the Yarra Valley and the Dandenong Range.

This is supposed to be Wine Valley and such, only I haven’t seen a single one and we are wasting our time wandering around the curvy mountain roads (its more like NZ now, curvy mountain roads, but these are paved, and a full two lanes).

Into Healesville for coffee. Tim and I got more treatment and toothpaste, mom in search to the bakeries, she wanders far, saying that there was no coffee in the windows. Its like, its not coffee, and why would they put an espresso maching in the window? So we went into a fish and chips shop for coffee. It’s a fish and chips shop, and mom proceeds to specialty order her coffee. Its like treating Blue Moon like a Starbucks.

We found the Rochford Vineyard, and decided to go in. There was a café and restaurant attached, we looked at the menu, and the eating area looked nice and cozy, so we sat down to eat. There was a fudge counter right at the front, and one of the fudges that they had was a caramel apple fudge. Yum. After we ordered, Tim showed me where the actual dessert cooler was, and holy cow did they look absolutely amazing. There was a pear cake, and a chocolate cake that looked absolutely to die for. Mom first got a trio of wines and vegetarian lasagna that was absolutely delicious. I could have eaten a whole pan of it. Slightly sweet with the squash, lots of veggies. Delicious. I ordered the soup of the day and a side salad. The cucumbers and tomatos though, those were juicy and delicious. I also had the vegetable soup, which wasn’t like regular veggie soup, but pureed veggies, like pumpkin and squash and celery. It was absolutely delicious.

After the restaurant, we went to another winery Stoneridge only a few miles down the road. Mom was pretty much done with wine, but its like, we did not drive all this way to go to a café inside one winery. Huge waste. The view from the place was absolutely gorgeous. It was atop a hill and you can see in all directions form it. We went inside, and the guy was super cute, I thought he was a bit pushy, but both Mom and Tim commented afterwards that they didn’t feel pressured at all. I didn’t try any, but Tim tried a Souvignon Blanc, a desert wine, and a whiskey based wine. The guy kept talking on and on about the different wines, different grapes and just lots of facts and such. I totally tuned out, but the guy was totally into it.

We were racing the clock. We made it to the Koala Conservation at 4:25. And it closed at 5, so we had half an hour once we got our tickets to get through. The guy said that we could still do the walkway, but Tim and I felt that it was a total ripoff, because usually “walkway” is just looking at trees and birds and stuff. We got to the place where the Koalas were, and it was a walkway less than 10 feet off the ground, and we spotted the first Koala right away. He was faced away, and sleeping, so we moved on, found another one, much closer to the ground where we were, but again, asleep and facing away. Then, we found an awake one. Kind of high up, but still visible from numerous angles. He was looking at us, and then decided to crawl down his branch, and move to a different branch to reach some leaves, and then down to mere feet away from us, and crawl up a different branch. It was really weird, it was uglier than I expected it to be, but still cute in the ugly way. Mom bought the better seats for the Penguin Parade, and when I saw the numbers of penguins from the night before, I actually got pretty excited, there were 1285 the night before. That is a LOT of penguins. It was quite windy and chilly, I was hoping the penguins would make an early ocean exit. There was one penguin that was super early, and it was so small and cute! The ranger said that that’s as big as they get, they are the Little Penguins, the smallest penguisn that exist. We had to wait awhile, but finally the penguins arrived. One or two, and tehn a massive clump of them. It was hilarious! And totally awesome.

The better seats were well well worth it, they were right there along the walkway of the penguins. They went right in front of us, or right up the hill and you could watch that. We watched for 20 minutes, the noises of and squawking of them kept getting louder and louder. It was really weird nosie, they sounded like they were sick or hurt or being murdered. But it just kept getting louder and louder. There were so many penguins. We saw burrowns on the way down to the seats, and the ranger said that it was the home of some 60,000 penguins. They just kept coming in droves, resting right at our corner before they walked on, preening.

They stayed in their tight group though, waddling super fast to catch up. We all got a little too cold and followed a group all the way up the walkway, listening to the super loud noises. They were everywhere, you could see them on both sides of the walkway, in the bushes, in the hillside. It was insane. Penguins everywhere! They even had roped off part of the sidewalk by the Visitor Center since they were crossing right over the sidewalk. As you leave the center, there are signs telling you to check under your car for penguins before you pulled out. This was exciting, because I really wanted to get a picture of one (since you couldn’t photograph in the park at all) and I ended up getting a somewhat decent picture of one from the car as we pulled out of the lot. It’s a dark drive, but the darkness is nowhere near as dark here as it is in New Zealand. Nowhere near it.

Pretty chill evening once we got back. We decided to start early tomorrow, and be back early since we have a pretty early flight on Friday morning. Midnight here already somehow. I was super tired around 9, and now I am wide awake. Ugh. They are in bed. Probably both asleep already.

Reef and Tide Videos!

2010-06-28T11:55:00.000-07:00

Last Set of Videos!!!

Two hours into the Pacific Ocean, you land on a giant floating pontoon. From that pontoon you can dive in a sub and take a little ride along the reef....

Outside our hotel in Cairns. The water traveled at least the lengths of two football fields in an hour when tide was coming in. Nuts.

Tim's Helicopter Adventure!

2010-06-24T10:47:00.001-07:00

Poor kid was so sick that there was no way in hell I was letting him take the ferry back for two hours from the Great Barrier Reff. So I was a good wifey and shelled out the moolah for him to get his own helicopter ride back....at least he got footage of the view!!!

Koala Poo?

2010-06-22T10:14:00.001-07:00

New post last night, but this gem should be shared....

"I hope that was rain and not koala poo..."

Spending May 4th in Jail...

2010-06-21T19:50:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, May 4, 2010
My repacking job took quite a bit of time this morning, I had coffee though and we were out the room door by 8. A super nice guy helped me with my suitcases on the elevator, to a degree of dragging one of them all the way to the desk. Right through security at the airport. I had been chugging my water and juice and sprite al morning, trying to get it finished up so I wouldn’t have to toss any of it, and come to realize, I didn’t have to. Domestic Australian flights you can take liquids through. Mom went straight to Krispy Kreme and had a nice argument with them about her coffee preparations, but you cant be going to a country that doesn’t even have regular coffee, and then be super picky about how they prepare it, its not even a starbucks, it’s a donut place.

We boarded the plane, over 20 minutes late, and the flight attendant was rather snippy to Tim getting on the plane, he was just following us, said he was with us, and shes like no, I need to see your flight number. Its like, isn’t that the job of the scanner, and not waiting until you get all the way to the plane? Once we got our bags, we realized that his bag had the zipper wide open and his multitool was missing. Because that’s a good $50, we decided that we would report it so they could at least look for it, and get it so we could deal with travel insurance for it. It was 12:45, and we really wanted to make the Victoria Square Market, since it was the only day that we would be able to do it, and it closed at 2pm. It was exactly like Reading Terminal in Philly. Like, it was weird how much they were similar. It only had about three long rows, and then two super long rows of produce out the back. There was another building for the raw meats, but I didn’t actually end up going in that one. We split up to find our own lunch. I ended up with a Burek, which is a cross between an enchilada/puff pastry, and it was filled with spiniach and cheese, but it was a baby one. We went through the produce and got some items for dinner, so we would have a picnic dinner in the hotel. We decided to go straight to the Melbourne Gaol (jail) so we could get it done, since we didn’t know how it early it closed. We got our tickets and learned about the tour, it was more an immersive experience, like they treated you how it would be to be an inmate there at the jail. They emphasized that it was scary, I really didn’t feel like doing that type of thing (there were heavy warnings along with the tour), and Tim didn’t either, so we waited in line with Mom until she started the tour, and then went and continued the Main Building, which is a good thing, since we hadn’t even finished the bottom floor by the time she was back.

It very much reminded me of the Eastern State Penn, only it would be only the size of one wing, and its totally restored. Most of the cells had personal stories about all the people that had been hung there, which seemed like a lot of innocent people in the long run. But the jail was still in use until the 50s, and their most famous inmate was Ned Kelly, so there was a lot of things about him. Off to the hotel it was, which was quite the experience in itself with all the no turning lanes. We circled quite a few times trying to find a street we could just turn on. We pulled into valet parking, and I waited in the car, but apparently the hotel had that we were supposed to check in last night, making us a no show, so they had no room for us. But Mom had her sheet printed out proving that they were the wrong ones, so we ended up getting a room. I did the hotel gym thing, and prepared for an awesome dinner of olive bread, cheeses, and salami.

We were mostly trying to plan out tomorrow with the Yarra Distirct and Phillips Island. Some laundry, and bed!

Tim's Birthday (May 3)!

2010-06-19T07:00:00.000-07:00

May 3, 2010 (Tims Birthday!!!)
Gym, showered, hair done (for the first time in FOREVER) All had coffee, and we were out the door, in the car, and on the way to the Blue Mountains. Mom in the front seat today, for the first timte since we got here, its funny that its so weird for her. Amusing at least. Time has gone super quick, its 11. The roads are very regular. Two lane, towns every once in awhile, trees lining the road so you don’t really see much.

We got to Echo Point, aka the Three Sisters. The Three Sisters is a rock formation that has three stacks up. But the kicker is the area right next to it. It’s a MASSIVE open space for miles and miles. You can see forever, and you are super high up, you look down and its like you are on a high rise, but the ground is just the tops of trees. Katoomba was next. It was cute, it had a block of cafes anad stores and bakeshops. We lapped it a few times, and we ended up at a place called Mountain Ridges. It was very much a locals type place. Like Cup of Joe with food. We all had a huge pile of the best scrambled eggs I have ever had. Everyone agreed that they were amazing. Fluffy, perfectly salted, not overcooked. Just amazing. It was a fantastic lunch. Best decision we could have made. At the bakery we got some dessert, Mom asked what a Lamington was (we have seen bunches of those in NZ) and it’s a sponge cake soaked in a chocolate sauce and then covered in coconut. That’s what she got, and my trial bite of it was yummy.

There wasn’t much else in the blue mountains that Mom wanted to do. And we hadn’t hit up the Victoria Building or the Strand Arcade yet, so we headed back to Sydney to do those. We went straight back to the Victoria building, and ended up paying $30 in parking, which is crazy, but got even crazier when we got inside and Mom admitted that she had only wanted to see the inside architecture and didn’t actually care about doing any shopping inside. I mean, I don’t think she could have shopped there upon further looking, since it was all super high end shopping, but that’s pretty hefty parking to look at a Royal Clock inside the mall and looking at the building structure.From there, we walked to the Strand, another mall that Mom wanted to see the inside of. This one was more Gothic/iron bar-y, so it was more arty and cool looking to see at least. After perusing the inside, we went to the Billabong store across the street. They had super cute stuff, and again I got super frustrated that they got to have such super cute clothes and yet they are so pricey that I can’t get any of them. Tim did get an awesome shirt for his birthday though.

We got back to the car, paid the ridiculous pricing, and talked about how high tech the parking garage was. There was a light over every stall that glowed red if it was filled and green if it was open, so you could look down the whole aisle of cars and see if there was an open one instead of having to drive down the whole thing before moving up a level.

The next few hours involved stealing internet from McDs in the lobby, attempting to work out (whole story there) and then an argument about the dinner for the night. Tim and I were completely happy eating the tons of leftovers that we had, or going to the grocery store, but Mom was super determined to go out for dinner. Halfway to Coles to supplement what we already had, I remembered that there was an Irish pub in the area, so we wanted to look for that, and hoped to find it. And there you go, on the next block, we found Scruffy Murphy. We went upstairs to the restaurant and went through the menu, figuring out what we wanted before ordering at the bar. Mom had the fish and chips, Tim had beef burger, and I got a side salad. The fish was fantastic, the burger had an egg on it, but was super tasty, and my salad was perfect. It had huge chunks of veggies and had a vinegar dressing. We relaxed a bit longer as they each got a second beer/wine before walking back. Tim opened up his birthday cards. The best one from my parents, “The dingo ate my birthday cake!.” We drank the honeywine, and I put apple pieces in my glass, which tasted delcious after soaking a bit.

Bondi Beach, Harbor Cruise, Curry Beef! (May 2nd)

2010-06-17T11:10:00.000-07:00

Sunday, May 2, 2010
I woke up on my own at 6:45. Mom was clearly wide awake as well, but she said she had plenty of things to do, and the market didn’t open until 9 anyway, so I was at the gym by 7:30. Mom was a life saver and had brought hair scissors with her, so the morning brought about haircuts for both Tim and I.

Paddy’s Market was a huge bust. It was all these crappy booths with really cheap stuff and clothes and electronics accessories. Really not at all what we expected. So we headed to Bondi Beach. We made it to the front strip of Bondi, but ended up getting stuck because of some sort of parade that was heading down our street. We waited a few minutes, but then ended up flipping a uturn and going down the side streets, Mom oohing and aahing at the beach the whole way. It was a perfect day for beaching. A little overly hot, but a breeze, perfect sun. There were a ton of surfers out, and they were super fun to watch. Hot, yes, but they were too far away too really tell that of the ones actually surfing. Mom was just as enthralled by them and kept trying to take the perfect picture. Mom had thought there would be chairs to lounge on at the beach, so we sat on a bench and watched for a total of two minutes before she claimed she was bored, and we walked back up to the food strip street. Tim got fish and chips again, I got a mango smoothee for right now, and the sweet potato salad to take with me since I felt it was still a little early to be eating lunch. Mom got a chicken cesar salad from the same place. I had a bit of tims fish and chips, and mom had some too and decided that she wanted more fries. She barely ate any of her salad before we looped around and dropped her off to get another order of fries.

We did a scenic loop around Bondi. Stopping for mom to take pictures, all of us eating way too many French fries, but they are just the best fries ever and nearly impossible to stop eating them. Back towards the Sydney CBD, did some Souvenoir shopping as we waited for our Harbor Cruise.

We waited by the docks to load the boat, and behind us came the stereotypical, rude, everything is about them, group of Asians, complete with know it all leader. I mentioned to Mom not to get trampled by the Asians and the Exercise Exhibition guy in front of us heard me and commiserated with us. We boarded our 2:30 vessel, and in the process of going up the first ramp, mom took a tumble. We were petrified that that was the end of our day, if not the end of the trip, but she got up, seemed ok, and we got on. The Aussie was concerned about her and kept talking to us, and we made a new friend and he was very chatty for the first 20 minutes of the boat ride.

The sun was bright and shining, unlike the day before, which was realy nice because we got some really good pictures of Mom by the Bridge and the Sydney Opera House. As well as Tim chillin in his aviators and v neck. The ride was only 75 minutes, but it felt like a few hours. I flipped through Mom's Australia travel book, not finding much more than what Mom had already on the itinerary.

Post boat, we found a wine store. They even had bottles from Clare Valley. Dropped bags off at the hotel, went to the mall to catch up with news back home (internet style) and look for a brush for Mom. It was a little after 6 by the time we left the Mall, and we all knew that if Mom went up to the hotel room, she would never make it out to dinner. We walked up and down the Chinatown block, and every few feet there were these women shoving menus into our faces asking us to come sit. It was really rather weird. Picked one and ordered, when we got the food, clearly Mom and I ordered poorly. But Tim’s curry hot pot beef dish was the killer. The curry sauce was amazing. We each had rice and put the sauce on it, and I even tried the beef too. It was amazing. Well worth eating there all by itself. The waiter was kind of strange though, didn’t know much English, but was thoughtful enough to bring over an extra chair so that we could put our bags on it while we ate. When he brought the check, we also received two thin slices of watermelon and a Sandie like cookie. Yum yum.

May Day! Mommy Day!

2010-06-16T10:21:00.000-07:00

The day that everything turned happy!

Saturday, May 1, 2010
5:30 wake up and off to the terminal and waited for mom. Once the screen said that her plane had landed, it took mom 50 minutes to come out of the arrivals gate. I was getting worried! We stood there forever looking at every person that came out thinking it was her. It was super awesome to see her though, everyone was really happy. We waited in line with her at the Hertz rental. We got the car, and it was so awesome, the inside of the car was spotless. SO so different than the crap van we had been living in. It was beautiful.

Good Living Market first. We lucked out with parking right across the street, and it was a really big market, biggest one that we had seen yet. They had virtually every type of food stand that you could want. All sorts of foods, prepared and take home, ready meals, flowers, spreads, everything, and quite a few of the stalls had samples. We all looked for the lunch that we wanted to purchase, and I wanted figs, but you could only buy them in the trays, so that was disappointing. We ended up buying a bag of apples, olive bread, and a super super soft cheese. Mom bought some jerky, and I got strawberry tarts for dessert.

Justice and Police Museum. We almost had to park in a garage that was $35 a day, which was just insane, but we found street parking thankfully. We can’t believe how expensive parking is though. Its almost not worth having a car, at least in Sydney. And of course, Mom is surprised at the cost of things (besides parking) despite my attempts at trying to tell her before she was even here exactly how expensive this place is. But of course, no one believed me. The Justice and Police Museum was interesting, the individual stories were cool, but there was a lot on the gambling/casinos/prostituion rings, which could be super interesting, but the way they were presented was too wordy and hard to really grasp. It was just different than I expected.
Once we finished there, we walked down to the wharf. Mom got her chance to see the Sydney Bridge and the Opera House. As soon as we got to the Opera House, Mom turned into a little girl. It was really cute. She was giddy and prancing all over the place. She was taking pictures every few feet like she wouldn’t ever remember what it looks like. It was somewhat disappointing that we couldn’t go inside, but she was still in utter glee and kept saying how she couldn’t believe that she was there.
Hyde Park Barracks next. On the way, we made a wrong turn, and had to go all the way over bridge, and then get back, which took an extra half an hour. The Barracks were three levels, each floor slightly different. They had interesting set ups of views of things, like a table set for dinner, and then a video camera shooting down the images of food and hands eating as if the people were there at the table. Also a section on the orphan girls that had been housed there, and what it was like for them. I really enjoyed it overall. In the courtyard, there was a shelter and a plaque for the three kitties that lived there at the Barracks, only one was home, but it was super cute and loved the snuggles I was so willing to give it.

Outside the Barracks in the park, there were bagpipes and a huge group of people. We watched them for awhile, thinking that they would eventually march down the street, but as soon as we saw that they were Socialist protesters, Mom was more than willing to go back to the car. We got to The Rocks area, and saw that the same market as yesterday was going on again. It was hard to decide on what to get for lunch with so many options looking super tasty. So Mom and I shared a cheese and spinach crepe/quesadilla thing, which was awesome. And then we each got one kebab, hers beef and mine chicken, although I should have had beef since mine had only two pieces of meat and one of those was rather gnarly. But overall it was tasty, it was like Chinese food on a stick. Tim had a KILLER hamburger. I could have had a whole one of those all by myself. There really wasn’t any non restaurant seating, so we ate while sitting on these big planters, not exactly easy, but it was better than standing and trying to juggle the plates.

We went and found Hillsong church, so that we would know exactly where it was later and wouldn’t have to be wandering around in the dark. There was a Cole’s right next door, so instead of going back downtown and walking or parking in an expensive lot, we parked in the free lot right in front of the door. On to the hotel, which was huge driving drama. GPS wasn’t seeming to take us there at all, so I had to follow the map, which was really hard because it looked easy enough on the map, but what WASN’T on the map was all of the one way streets that we couldn’t go down, that we needed to go down. I eventually got us there, and Tim only went through one red light to do it.

Only one bed, and mom and Tim immediately started fighting about who would be the one sleeping on the floor. Tim eventually was the one that won. There was a note saying that the gym was closed until the 3rd (the day we leave), but I went to check anyway, and it was at least functional. Got to the church in record time of about ten minutes. It looked like a shady esque neighborhood, but the building on the inside was clean and bright and gorgeous. You could tell immediately that it was going to be super awesome and that I wish I could go there on a regular basis. The speaker was super intelligent and was one of those people, that you just wanted to listen to. His talk made me want to take theology classes from him. It went over the 90 minute mark and I thought my poor mommy was going to pass out. It was 4:30am her time. Back to the hotel for a brief dinner and bed for Mom.

Kangaroo Walk Video.

2010-06-15T11:51:00.000-07:00

Kangroos walk so oddly...and sadly, away from me:

Maori and Road Videos!

2010-06-10T11:30:00.000-07:00

Super awesome Maori Haka....

Only in NZ are the roads THIS curvy...

Part of the Maori Demonstrations....

Robert Downey Jr Seven Stories Tall, aka Lazy Day in Sydney! (A30)

2010-06-09T13:32:00.000-07:00

That's right, two posts in one day, but this one is short, so you can TOTALLY read both.

Friday, April 30, 2010
We didn’t get out of the room til 10amish. It was gloomy and dark. Not exactly raining, but raining off and on. We walked to the central stop, got a text from mom saying that she was on her first plane, and a txt from dad saying that he had dropped her off. We waited for our bus a little bit. We still had until 11:20 in the morning to ride the hop on hop off bus, so we figured we could at least get to our first destination on it for free.
We made it to the National Maritime Museum, really the only free museum, hence the reason it was picked. But when we got there, we realized you had to pay to see the boats, only the exhibits were free, but we figured we were already there, so why not? Ranging from the beginning of Australias European convict history all the way to the current navy and such. I also enjoyed reading about Australia’s reaction to the Japanese war brides of WWII.
We got to the IMAX, grabbed the schedule, and walking out decided that really, we were so museumed out that we really would be happiest seeing Iron Man 2 on the worlds largest IMAX. Seven stories tall. And a full week before its released in the U.S. nonetheless. We decided to go to the 2:15 showing, and it was 12:30 already, so we hoped to make it to the Rocks market before hand, and headed off towards there. We walked forever, accidentally overshooting the place that we wanted to be, so we had to double back because we were at a high way, and a high tail it a seriously long ways. Tim wanted to turn back numerous times, but I was super determined to make it and get back to the movie in time. Finally we made it to the market, it was about a block long. Bread stand, flowers, soap, fruit and veggie stand and then a bunch of food stands. All with super long lines. One had amazing bbq, great looking hamburgers. There was a crepe/calzone type looking place, and a Chinese place. All looked really good. But we only had about 45 minutes to make it back, I didn’t think we would make it if we waited for food. So we stopped at a bake shop on the way back .
We got to Circular Quay and figured our only real shot was to take a cab. We walked to the train station, got in the cab (the doorhandle came off when I went to shut the door). With lunchtime downtown traffic, it took a lot longer than we thought it would. We were stopped for minutes at every single light.
Assigned seats at the movie. Near the top, somewhat in the middle just fine for me. I mean, its hard to have a bad seat when the screen is literally seven feet tall. Did I mention yet that we were seeing Iron Man 2? Its really the only reason that I could justify spending it on a movie. 7 stories of Robert Downey Jr. is ok with me. It was great. But really it was nice to relax like that. No hard plot lines, just funny and explosions. Good time.

We walked back from the mall, towards the hotel, stopping at Coles on the way. Picking up a tub of masala chicken, and salad (again). Chilled at the hotel for the rest of the evening.

Bussing Around Sydney. (A29)

2010-06-09T09:47:00.000-07:00

Thursday, April 29, 2010

The morning found our medical issue getting worse, I was getting really nervous about it. Dealing with our travel insurance and going to a doctor and finding a doctor, and figuring out how to pay and all that jazz is not something I want to be dealing with when I am supposed to be touring Sydney. But it was a hgue debate about going to the doctor because we don’t want to affect Mom when she gets here, and/or be completely incapacitated by the time she arrives, making the last two weeks totally miserable. We decided at the least to look up our medical travel insurance, just to see what we even could do. After looking at our policy, it was looking grim that a doctors visit would even be covered. Due to the fact that its not life threatening, and we had no idea if it would leave permanent injury or whatnot since we didn’t even know what it was.

We figure out some prescriptions that could help us out, and seeing as though we aren’t in the uber restrictive US, all of them can be got OTC here. If we couldn’t get them, we would go to the doctor, but there was no sense paying the extra if we could just do it ourselves.

Feeling accomplished, we found the place selling the Hop On Hop Off bus tickets, and bought ours. Sitting on the top, the weather was awesome, not having to drive, seeing everything and being super comfortable, nothing really jumped out at us as worth getting off the bus for. We rode the bus around a good portion of the loop, Tim getting hit in the head with a branch (hard too), but got off when we hit the rocks to go to the Information Center.

We walked to the Starbucks next door, ordered filtered coffee, but had to wait for them to make it, since they didn’t have regular coffee made, which I found really funny.

The bus was a great way to see the stuff, without Tim having to drive, and we could just look at everything and drive around and hear certain information about places. We arrived pretty quickly at the Bondi Beach stop, right in front of the beach. Between it, and a whole strip of stores and eateries that lined the road in front of it. I went into the first store right off the bus.

We shopped around for awhile, Billabong was first, and it had amazing stuff. Stuff I wanted really bad, and not just for myself, but for Tim too. Everything was just so ridiculously expensive, I couldn’t justify $100 for a shirt. It’s the same brand, I just don’t understand why NONE of it is available in the states. It is so frustrating. I want to dress cute. I want to dress my style, but at home, I cant do that. And neither can Tim. Argh! This town is full of real surfers who barely wear real clothes, and they are the town that get the super awesome clothing stores? I guess it makes sense with that kind of style, but still! Not fair!

Back to the front street of Bondi Beach. It didn’t take long to find the places that we each wanted to go. Tim got the fish chips and I got a mango surpise smoothee next door. I planned on getting the fruit bowl, but that was more expensive than the whole smoothee. I had some of Tims fish and chips that were absolutely amazing. At the smoothee place though, they had tons of awesome side salads. Made me really want the cucumber feta tomato Italian one. As well as the pumpkin, sweet potato, sun dried tomato salad. Yum.

Back to the hotel to start some laundry, hit up the internet a bit, and shop at Coles for our Masala chicken and salad dinner. We tried to figure out what to do tomorrow, and in what order, which causes a bit of drama. Medicated, we head to bed and I wonder how all of those people in New Zealand walk around barefoot all the time. At gas stations, on the streets, restaurants, everywhere we went, city or small town, there were people that were barefoot, just walking around no big deal. There was even one guy downtown Wellington that was running in no shoes. It was just ridiculous. Ouch. And gross.

Down Under Nordyke Style.

2010-06-04T20:22:00.000-07:00

I promise my next post will be a legit post. With actual events of actual days. But for now, I am watching Burn Notice, so simple photos of the heads in Australia will have to do. Note, that my mommy has a body! She is no longer just a head!

But dad almost lost his head, to a kangaroo!

Uluru, aka Ayers Rock.

Mom and her love on Bondi Beach.

She was totally giddy the whole time at the Opera House!

Oh, I lied, she was still a head at the Sea Museum.

Getting eaten by the sea monster!

Penguins and HUGENESS!

2010-06-03T18:06:00.000-07:00

Penguin!!

The sheer HUGENESS of the Milford Sound. (Check out the white dot)

For Your Viewing Pleasure...

2010-06-02T20:27:00.000-07:00

A few videos from New Zealand....

Prancing at Cathedral Coves...

A Kiwi Pack House....

Endless Driving of New Zealand...

Nordyke's in New Zealand.

2010-05-31T20:51:00.000-07:00

We couldn't NOT take them with us...in spirit...or xerox.

April 28th: Hello Sydney!

2010-05-30T22:03:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Our first day in Sydney. Busy busy day.
I learned that putting orajel on bug bites at 2am….doesn’t do jack.
We didn’t actually leave the hotel until 8:50, walking through Hyde Park and another park to get to the wharf. The parks were gorgeous. Very Boston Gardens. Big fountains though, as well as the big ANZAC memorial. And then all of a sudden we rounded the curve, and BAM. There was the Sydney Opera house. It was really really weird. Just right there in front of me, something more iconic than the Eiffel Tower even. Its like, it hasn’t hit us that we are in Sydney. Australia.
We took some pictures of the bridge an the Opera house as the ferry passed right by them, but the half hour ferry ride seemed to take forever before we arrived in Manly.
There was some “Do we or don’t we” drama about the Q Station, but it was resolved, and we wandered downtown Manly to kill some time. We happened to pass an amazing looking deli that had rolls in the front window that Tim couldn’t pass up. We got one shell roll to share, and it was ooey and gooey and perfect. Something about Southern Hemisphere bread. Can’t be beat.
We picked up another man along the way on the shuttle, and the Santalike driver and him had a more personal conversation, including the statement, “A fine filly suggested we have lunch….of course it will be dutch.” It was beyond adorable. We were a full hour early, so we walked down the dock outside, saw lots of schools of fish swimming totally erratically, it was quite strange. We were the only ones on the tour, and our guide seemed very scattered. She told us all about the healing powers of the Quarantine Station, and that was really the only time she was very animated. It was weird though, it was a government facility, used all the way through 1984, and yet, they keep saying they know very little about it. Like where certain buildings were, and other pieces of information that should have been well documented since it was a government institution. It was just very strange. There were buildings and rooms that she said were still in the exact condition that they were left in, and yet, she didn’t have a key and couldn’t show us on the tour? It was just odd. Its like the concentration is solely on the Ghost Tours and Spa Hotel services (90% of the buildings had been turned into resorts and spas and such buildings) and not at all on people that want the actual history of the place. We did get to go into the shower rooms, where they showered in a carcogenic material, the hospital (part of which had been rebuilt since it burned down earlier this decade), saw where the tram up the hill was, the boiler and generator room has been turned into a bar. She was clearly into the sacred grounds of it, a decent enough guide, just a bit looney.
We walked all the way down the Corso and got to the Manly Beach at the end. Beautiful beach, long too.
It was relaxing to watch the ocean and the beach, there were a ton of people still out on the beach considering it was the middle of a work day too. On the way back through, we stopped in all of the clothing shops, which I don’t know if it was a good idea or not. We both could have spent thousands of dollars. Roxy, Billabong, Element….all were absolutely fantastic and I wanted everything. Tim wanted everything. But everything was so expensive. Like, more expensive than the States, which makes no sense since this is the country of origin! It was just obnoxious to try on the sweaters or a jacket or shirt and then have it be over $100. Because this is the clothing that we will never see anywhere near us in the states. Ever. Because its too much out of the Midwest fashion schema
Bought our dinner (our first night of the ever famous Chicken Tikka Masala) and back to the ferry to take us back to Sydney. I could have easily fallen asleep. I was sleepy and comfortable, the gentle rocking and breeze. Just give me something to lean on, and I would have been out. We hauled our load all the way back to the hotel and I was super sick of walking by the time we got back, but it didn’t help that we saw two grocery stores close to the hotel when we had just hauled four bags from Manly.
Things got reorganized and we left for our Ghost tour. Walked all the way back down to Cadman’s Cottage, We got checked in, and while standing in line realized that we were not the only Americans on this tour. Ghost Guide proceeded to hand out props to everyone, giving everyone a character to play at some point in the night. The props were somewhat large, and you wore them around your neck on a lanyard. Tim and I tried to avoid getting one, but then it was clear that he was going to pass them out until everyone had one. Somehow, he finished giving everyone one, and started the tour, only I still hadn’t gotten one. I was the only one off the hook. Only minutes into the tour, I was bored. It seemed to never end. I was hungry and tired almost right away as it started, and I hoped that I would get so enthralled with the stories and the tour that I would forget that my feet hurt and I was hungry. Not even halfway through I was ready to leave. Just chuck the prop at him and leave. Or hand it (and our self wound flashlight) to someone else and scram. We paid for it, we could tough it out, plus, maybe it would get better as it went on? His delivery of the decent stories was awful. I also saw more cockroaches in the tour than I have in my entire life. Also two dead rats. Too many pauses, stuttered and stumbled like he didn’t remember the stories. He seemed very unprepared or just flat dumb because he would stop mid sentence. His pausing style was absolutely awful.
But it finally ended, and there was a big hubaloo about finding the main part of the city again to take the train back to the hotel, but they dropped us off in nowhere and we kept getting stuck in sketchy dead ends.
Finally, chicken masala touched our lips, and life was whole again. ☺

Tuesday Travel Day: April 27th.

2010-05-27T19:32:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, April 27, 2010
We both slept awful last night. It was hot and humid all night long. We woke up to the alarm at 7 to rain, but both of us were up numerous times during the night. Ugh. But it was the last night in the van!!! Yay for that.
We drove around Devonport, perused to the town a bit, but ended up parking near the New World. Across from the car was a Stonebakery Café place that looked amazing. We looked in and knew that that is where we would be getting our lunch from later on. The Devonport Library was amazing. They had free internet computers (30 min) for visitors. Tim even saw a kitty, but it ran into the office before I could love on it.
Left the library, and up the block was the pet store with four 7week old kittens and one 11week old kitten. All black and white and puffy and adorable.
We finished up all of our business in Auckland and filled up the HellVehicle with gas. We pulled off a few blocks away from the return place and pulled out our sandwiches. Mine was a Brie Vegetarian that was awesome. Lettuce, tomato, cucumber, roasted red pepper, squash, and brie on a seasame roll. Tim had a HUGE BLAT (blt with avacado).
Got to the car place, Tim ran in. We pulled up to the door and unloaded our bags. We told the girl about all of the insane problems with the car. Numerous lights out, electric key didn’t work, chiller didn’t work (“It’s a chiller, its not a fridge”), windshield wipers barely worked, dvd player kept falling, and the van was absolutely filthy with crumbs and crackers. She was rather snippity, but apologized. She had us fill out a survey for some grad student that was ridiculous and long. By the end I had given up. And like, if we had been expecting a regular van, that had some bars welded into it, with a couch cushion, it would have been different. Even if it had been clean it would have been different. It was the fact that they oversold their product in the advertisements and didn’t give what they said they would deliver. That was our big problem. She called a cab for us, and soon we had left the piece of crap behind.
Checked in at the airport, not too bad a line, had to show our tickets out of Australia, got to the first point, NZ passport check, no one told us we had to fill out forms, so we had to step aside to do that, but they weren’t upset about it at least. Next step was security, kept our shoes on, zero line, walked straight through. It was fantastic. The Auckland Airport is super nice, at least the international terminal is. I would fly through here anytime.
Onboard, looked at our movie options, chose Bad Leiutenant, and got started on it right away. Take off was quite bumpy, as was the first 20 minutes or so. My tv shut down for a bit, and totally restarted, but at least it came back! Got served our meal.
We landed, and passed through the first customs passport check in under a minute. Stamp stamp, done. Picked up our luggage, but it took awhile to come out, and ours were some of the last ones and I was beginning to be a bit worried about it.
We were a bit worried about customs, our food was easy, wine and coffee packets, but we had to mark that we had been in nature basically and my hiking shoes had mud on them. We got sent to the guy, asked about our food, no problem, asked if we had been to farms, no problem, see ya. And straight through with no checking. Awesome.
Train station was right there in the airport, we got our ticket easily, and the train was right there seemingly waiting for us when we got to the right platform. It was a double decker train, just like the train we rode in Paris. I forget how much I like trains. They are very homey. It took us five stops to get to the Museum stop, and then we had to haul our luggage up four different sets of stairs to get out of the station, and then it was a bit of a hike to the hotel. It really wasn’t that long, but at that point, it seemed a lot longer.

April 26th. Chillin Bikram Style.

2010-05-26T08:57:00.000-07:00

Well kids, you certainly spoke up! In quite the numbers. So as promised, I shall give you more!

Monday, April 26, 2010
Lazy morning, except for Tim trying kwana. He didn’t hate it, but I thought it tasted like a nasty pickle, so we just left it at the hotel.
We went straight to the Hamilton post office, and it was clear the lady was not only miserable that she had to deal with us, but that she thought we were insane for spending that kind of money on sending luggage. It took about 20 minutes, she had to lug or suitcases around to her side, and pull them up onto the scale on the counter, I felt super bad, then she had to deal with tagging them, which was quite a bit more work than it seemed it should have been. But now its done with. Dealt with. Yay.
A sidenote about this country’s bathrooms. No paper towels. Shocker. These people never have paper towels. Its so strange. Its like, they are so environment conscious. Lights are rare. Like, bathrooms will have one bulb in the big area and that’s it. And you are supposed to turn it off when you leave. Or no lights at all! No paper towels. Sometimes hand dryers. Some don’t work. And even half the time there’s soap. Its aggravating how green people are. Plus the whole, put the key in the motel lock in order to put power to your room. Aka, no charging anything while you are gone. Or EVERY electrical outlet having a switch to have to turn on. No heat in most buildings. Just kind of sick of it.
25 minutes outside of Auckland, Tim figured I should drive since it was easy road, and he didn’t think I would want city roads. But really, highway driving isn’t even weird since you are totally separated from the other direction. But I did anyway. It was totally fine, the hard part was keeping it under the speed limit. After 10 minutes, Tim was already bored, so I pulled off at the next exit and we traded again.
We got into Auckland, had really no plan, so we plugged in the War Museum first to go check out their gift shop again. On the way, we noticed that we were really close to one of the Yoga places I was interested in, so we got there and I poked my head in.
Tim bought the NZ flag, and after a Subway lunch, we also tried a Pinky bar for the first time. Chocolate around a marshmallow base (pink) with a nonstringy, more jellyesque caramel strip on top. It was delicious, I’m glad we just now found them, cause I would eat them all the time.
More random wanderings through the city, stopped at several stores looking for the “perfect” All Blacks shirt for Tim. We wanted to go to the store we found the first time we were there, but we couldn’t seem to find its exact location, so we circled for probably at least 20 minutes. We hit the same 6 block radius of the Auckland CBD at least ten times. It was ridiculous
I figured out today that gas is $US4.88 a gallon.
I was still nervous about Bikram, but I was determined to try it, at least once, and this was the best time. Tim dropped me off, and I headed up. It turned out that the instructor went to Augustana in the Quad Cities, so that was really super random. Stood around outside the door til someone else went in, he told me to be at the wall not at the mirror, so I did, but it was pretty full already. Little did I know that that was only about a third of the class. There were at least 25 people there, if not more. Everyone was laying down, so I laid down too and it felt like I was laying there for 45 minutes, but it couldn’t have been more than 10. It was also good that I was good to go on his American accent. The warm up freaked me out, it was this weird breathing exercise that involved back bends and throwing our heads back. It hurt my neck immediately. Plus there were lots of poses that Carissa would have freaked out on, it was techniques that went exactly against what we should be doing. Like the toes and heels together always. There was one drink break the whole class, and I thought I was going to die at a few parts. And with no clock, it felt like it was going on forever. He kept telling us to push past the pain and just keep bending or stretching or pulling. But when your muscles are THAT hot (105 for bikram) then you are totally going to pull or tear something by pulling that much, so that was weird. Also, we did split poses, and no one else seemed to be sliding at all, but I was all over the place, but they were sweating the same amount! I was literally soaked at the end of class. We did a bunch of poses, but did every pose twice. We did a group of 2 or 3 things, then repeated them, the next group, repeat, all the way through for 90 minutes.
After class, we found the camp, The sign on the shower said limited hot water to ¾ turn. I turned that sucker up to full heat. And then 6-7-8 minutes in, the lights kicked off. They must be on a timer. I hate this country. That’s so uncool. Im showering, soapy, wet, and the lights are ALL the way at the other end. I at least had enough glow from the mens room to finish the shower, and by the time those cut out, I was in a towel so I could go turn mine back on. Its just ridiculous.
We found a Subway for dinner (shocker) but right next to it on the GPS was a Burger Fuel, something I had wanted to be trying, so we made the trip. Another Subway right next to it, screaming at me to be healthy, but I said screw it. I had some sort of chicken sandwich that was HUGE. My extended palm and fingers did not cover the size of the bun. It took us awhile to get our food though. But mine was killer. It was chunks of chicken, a bbq/ketchup/A1 hybrid, brie, bacon (the English thick awesome kind that Ihad tim eat half of), lettuce and tomato. I nixed the aoli like a smart girl would. I also tossed the top half of the bun and probably a good third of the bottom bun. We shared Kumara fries, which Wikipedia says it’s a sweet potato, and I believe its in that family, but that is no American sweet potato, it is DELICIOUS.

Tickle me pink.

2010-05-24T10:47:00.000-07:00

Ok kids. Here's the time for you to get your piece in. This blog has zero followers, but I know at least some people have looked in, considering I have had a few comments, but other than that, I have no idea if anyone cares.

Life is busy and crazy and if no one reads it, Im probably not going to continue. I want to, so please please let me know if my blathering actually excites you. It would tickle me pink that I have readers.

SO.

Here's your chance. Leave a comment, shoot me an email, facebook me. Whatever. I am about a month behind on journal posts, I can start to catch up if you care. Or if you want info on anything else.

JUST OPEN YOUR YAPPER AND TELL ME YOU LOVE ME! :)

Top Trio of Food Discoveries.

2010-05-20T19:24:00.001-07:00

Oh we just can't get enough, we just can't get enough!

Tim & Clare's fave dinner. Chicken Tikka Masala. Eaten three nights in a row, and totally could have been more. Looks like cat puke, tastes like Indian awesome.
Clare's fave fruit. Fresh fig. The healthier fig newton!
Tim's fave candy. Jaffas. Orange coated chocolate balls, crunchy choco-citrus!
Clare's fave dessert. Tim Tams. Seriously chocotastic.

Sunday, Cave Day! (25th)

2010-05-18T08:57:00.000-07:00

Sunday, April 25, 2010
Tim finally woke up, Madagascar was on tv, we ate our cereal, drank our coffee, and were on the road towards Waitomo by 8:10. Chilly morning, pretty gloomy and cloudy and misty so far. Neither one of us care! Although, despite the airing out of the van for the afternoon yesterday, it still reaks of nasty. More airing out today will have to occur. We had a great day yesterday and today should be equally awesome. Today is Anzac Day, so we might be out of luck on that one. Seems like everything is closed for the morning, and then opens mid afternoon or so. We got to Waitomo and there were several different tour companies with different booths, and we really couldn’t tell which one was ours, so we ended up going into the i-site to ask.
Drove to the Aranui Cave, it was a bit of a hike up hill to the teeny tiny entrance to the cave. But once inside, it was huge. The guide pointed out the cricket like Wetas right away, giving me the creeps of being jumped on the whole time. Great. We then proceeded into numerous rooms and passageways seeing the different formations of rock and limestone within the cave. It was really quite awesome. There were massive rooms with tons of tiny icicle like rocks, and other small hallways with HUGE boulder formations. She said that in the cave underground was one of the safest places to be during an earthquake, which I found interesting. That in the cave, you could come out ad have no idea that an earthquake had even happened. Apparently most of the guides are direct ancestors of the Chief that showed white people the caves. She also said that people had weddings in the Aranui cave, which I found super interesting. Kinda weird, but it really is that romantic beautiful in the cold rock sort of way. So much of it looked like melting ice. The tour lasted only half an hour, then back through the tiny hole and down the path. This meant though, that we would for sure be able to make the 11am Glowworm tour.
Waited at the top for a little bit, and right as our guide got there, this large Asian group came bounding up, and the leader pushed through the 14 people in our tour, like violently, and started rudely demanding exclamations and things, as we were trying to follow our guide. Just insanely rude. They followed our group into the cave and in the very first room we listened to her talk about it, and as we turned to leave the first room, the leader BOUND through the area that was barred off and tried to get the guide to give him her flashlight. The gall of that guy was just beyond me. And then for the rest of the tour he was rude, the whole group was, lagging behind by a lot. The tour guide eventually just stopped waiting for them to being her talk, and they were loud.
We went to a small room and saw a few glow worm glows, and then bent down and saw a lot more, but then she turned on the lights, and we could see the really gross creepy strings hanging from the ceiling. It was really gross. Next was the boat. We had to wait as we boarded one at a time, and by the time it got to Tim and I, she asked if we could split and sit one in front of the other, we didn’t want to, but said ok. I went and sat in the back row, the corner nonetheless, and Tim went to sit in front of me, and then she told him to sit on the complete other side of the boat another row ahead. I couldn’t even see him anymore.
I was not happy. I was in a boat, in the complete dark, with long spidery glowworm webs overhead, and expecting something to come eat me at any moment. It was 100% straight from Voldemort’s cave that Harry and Dumbledore have to cross. Exactly. So the whole ride was spent in silence, which made it that much creepier, and I couldn’t figure out how the boat was even moving. I later saw that the guide was standing on te front of the boat, pulling us along with a rope on the ceiling. We exited, and in the gift shop it was FLOODED with Asians spending $30 to buy the picture of us in the boat. No pretty cave behind us, or glow worms, just us in the boat. Weird. And yet, still rude.
On the third trip on the same city block in the hunt for lunch, I saw that one of the cafes had desserts in a case, so I figured we could do Subway and a nice dessert, so we went in Scotts Epicurean, and they looked FANTABULOUS. We decided to get one for dinner dessert too and share both. I picked this caramel coconut bar, that ended up being like a thick caramel filling on a crust with a crunchy coconut top layer, served with yogurt and berries in a cup. Tim picked Sticky Date bread, a big slice, that came with a yogurt/toffee sauce cup.
This was the first Subway bread that was back to US standards. The sheer amount of Subways in this country is insane. It’s the Starbucks of New Zealand. I seriously don’t think we have hit a single town bigger than the size of Hudson that hasn’t had at least one Subway. Most have numerous. They LOVE Subway, otherwise there really isn’t much fast food. Dominoes. A few Burger Kings, handful of McDs. That’s it. Just a crap load of Subways.
Spent the afternoon at the hotel, Tim making a Kmart run, and went to the Countdown for waters. Walked back, I had intended to do yoga, but Tim kept laughing at me, and the video wasn’t very good. Plus, I had found a bikram yoga place in Auckland that I really want to try to get to tomorrow. So I scratched the yoga plan and looked through the Sydney book instead while Tim journaled. After that, I started our electric skillet dinner of red pepper, tomato, taco seasoning, and chicken. Tim had the last pita, we shared the quinoa salad from the store.
We sat down and plugged through the Sydney book, looking at the different places online, making our Must list and our maybe list, compared it to Moms, and mapping the different places on the map. I emailed mom with our own itinerary and questions about hers (since we had looked at her most recent plan, and from what we see, it looks fine by us). I feel better about Australia. She has some awesome things on her plan, and from what we have read on Sydney, I feel like I am getting to see literally everything that I would want to, and not missing much, which was a huge worry of mine on this trip. Tim was asleep by 11:45. I posted pictures, blog entries, and was ready for bed by 12:20. But somehow, I ended up on Tumblr til 12:45. Then FORCED myself to bed.

Saturday, April 24th: Happy Day!!

2010-05-17T11:41:00.000-07:00

Saturday, April 24, 2010
There were so many people at the the Rotorua Farmers Market that we had trouble finding a spot to park, but really, that just makes total sense. The regular stores sell nothing healthy, everything is full badness levels, and the produce, while decent quality, is really expensive, but at the market, produce is much cheaper, just as good of quality if not better, AND the selection is much much greater. This one was a little different than last weeks, there weren’t as much other goods being sold, but there was a flea market aspect to it. There was still grand stalls of fruits and vegetables, one stand of breads, one of coffee, one jams, one dessert. It was fun to walk around and see all the different things. There was quite a bit that I didn’t know what it was, but there was also one stall that was selling Durian.
The takeaway food (which we planned our dinner on) wasn’t as easily portable as the first one. There was lots of local foods, mango chicken rice, fried breads, hot sandwiches. The two that we did take advantage of was the waffle/crepe stand. We shared a maple syrup waffle. It was perfect size to share, hot and crispy, and since it was meant to be carried, no plates, which had me worried about the syrup, but he carefully squirted a tiny bit into each square. And then Tim bought 5 kabobs (3chicken/2lamb) for part of the dinner later. We got spinach, mango, and red pepper to add to our lunch/dinner.
One of the towns between Rotorua and Hamilton was called Cambridge, and we drove right by their Saturday market, so of course we had to stop and look for the ever evading fresh figs. No figs, but a really good cheese sample, and we bought date/walnut bread (very hearty), Tim got a steak Cornish pie for dinner, and I got a strawberry brioche for dessert to my fruit/veg dinner. Two farmers markets by noon? Well done!
We arrived at Hamilton around 11, and wish we had known about it right away. This was the place for us to live. Both of us said it right away. Neither one of us had read a single thing about it, but that’s shocking because a town of this much culture, and of this size, with this nice of a downtown district, but still looked totally livable and workable, should be ranted and raved about totally. Add in perfect sunny day with a light breeze, so that was we drove around with the windows down, we were in total bliss. Having spent so much time in the car, that’s really saying something, but the weather was perfect, there was tons of stuff to look at.
We got out and walked down to Barton Street so I could take a picture of the graffiti I had seen earlier, of a robot lazer beaming a cat. It was actually kind of cute in an odd way. Walked around a bit more, but got to the car around 1, decided to go at least attempt to check in to the hotel early. And were greeted into our awesome Bella Vista ground floor haven of awesome. We pulled everything inside, and I mean EVERYTHING. The windows of the van all got rolled down all the way, sun and moon roof open, and it had the next 4 hours to air out as best as it could. There was a great breeze, and the air was really warm from the bright ever shining sun today. As we worked in the hotel room even, we had the door slid all the way open and the window in the bathroom open.
We kept the laundry going all afternoon, the dryer didn’t work very well, so we snagged a drying rack and put it in our room. There were clothes everywhere. We were busy simultaneously doing laundry, updating the internet, unpacking and sorting all of our gear. Snacking on occasional pieces of the date bread. Next thing I knew it was 5pm. I did 15 minutes of abs on the floor while Tim continued to work, and then we headed out for a walk right at sunset. The weather was still nice though. We walked rather aimlessly, just in the general direction of “stuff” just a stroll.
So we saw a Countdown and picked up some raw chicken, peppers, and tomatoes to use with our leftover taco seasoning. I have also decided that these people have a liquor and gambling problem. The sheer vastness and hugeness of all the Liquor Saves everywhere. And there seem to be Lotto stations in every possible nook and cranny. Not machines, but actual kiosks with people that you buy Lotto Tickets from. And there are usually at least one or two people at them, no matter the size of the town.
I had brilliantly found illegal versions of ‘Til Death, and Modern Family for while we packed. Once we were close, I called a break for our ice cream and to watch Survivor (illegally of course). I showered, and with the water pressure of a raging river rapids, came out very clean, but feeling like a drown dog. But I would take that hard of water pressure any day, put away the last of our stuff and Tim was in bed by 11:30.

Russell with a side of syrup please.

2010-05-16T21:22:00.000-07:00

It's impossible to come to Australia and not see a Russell Crowe movie. No matter how much you think he's a pompous butthead who can't act, right?

So there. I saw Robin Hood in Aussie Land. I took one for the team.

That being said, it wasn't as bad as I expected. His crew of merrymen made it worth it. Mainly, the Canadian. :)

And now I go to consume pancakes where British convicts were once sent to do manual labor....tasty social retribution!

Ode to Cairns/GBR

2010-05-16T10:17:00.000-07:00

Good Bye Cairns....I shall miss you. More than you know.

Towns run by hippies with the best fruit salad on earth.

Oceans that disappear during the tide.

Street performers with odd style.

Night Markets with endless tourist traps.

Italian eateries with calzones the size of my torso.

Not including the Great Barrier Reef...
Endless Coral
Endless Blue
Endless Green
Warm Sand
Intense sun
Sea Cucumbers
Strong Currents
Finding Nemo Fish
Coral at the top of the water

And a fish that tried to eat my leg off!

Double Dose of Post. Saturday Style.

2010-05-15T17:25:00.000-07:00

Two posts in one day! I know I know! Exciting! I have to get you all caught up though! Its only getting better.

Friday, April 23, 2010
It was warmer than the entire trip so far when we woke up to the alarm at 8:00. I can’t believe we slept that long, but I guess with the night before, its not surprising.
First stop was the National Aquarium. It was the kind that I like, theres really only one direction to go through the whole museum, so you know you aren’t missing anything. And it was kind of small, but really well done. You could see all the animals up close (too close if you ask me, but NZ seems to not care about being sued for kids that stick their hands in shark tanks). Lots of animals, big and small turtles, a crocodile, sharks, manta rays, cray fish, seahorses, eels, and lots of different fish. Then the last thing was a huge thank with different sections, but you could go into basically there was a tunnel that ran under/through the tank, so you could stand on the moving walk way, and go through and see all the fish to the sides and up above you. The sharks and rays were the coolest in that area.
A scuba diver came down and started feeding all the fish other pieces of fish that he was breaking up right in front of the glass. He picked up a crayfish, fed it, and then was aacting like it was his pet cat, he was a funny guy. He did a cell phone underwater bit, napping and blowing perfect o-bubbles, blew up a balloon to go to the top.
Now we are slowly meandering our way to Rotorua. Its sad, but I find that I see the beautiful landscape and don’t want to take pictures anymore. Its like, I feel like I have photographed it a million times. And the problem is, that it looks different and different areas, but I feel like I have photographed it all already, and therefore don’t bother. But I SHOULD, but its hard when you see it 10 hours a day, and feel like you already have that picture, even though you might not.
We arrived in Rotorua, and went straight to the Zorb site to check it out, in hopes that we could get it done still that day. There was almost no one there. It looked small from the bottom of the hill. They pick you up at the bottom in a jeep and haul you up, and they say its bumpy. But this was another ride all in itself. I am convinced that the waiver you sign is actually for the ride up the hill, not the ride down.
At the top of the hill it looks a lot steeper, and I got a titch bit nervous. Especially when the way into the zorb, is to run and dive through the whole. Only they lay a rubber mat over the seam, so I totally got stuck. I felt like an idiot. But one shove and I was in. The water was already in, and I got the tap on the ball, and crawled toward the front. It was awesome, your body is flailing everywhere. When you are backwards you feel like you shouldn’t be going backwards so you try to twist around and you flail uncontrollably even more. I loved it. Backwards and forwards and you feel like you should be at the bottom, but you aren’t, you just keep going. And then you are stopped basically by running straight into a hill, and they open it up and take your picture right away. Tim came out of his ball and it looked like he had the same blast that I did.
With 2+ hours left to kill before the show at Te Puia, we figured we could kill a few birds with one stone. We each got half an hour at an internet cafe. Tim booked the Bella Vista in Hamilton for tomorrow night, and because we booked it online we got a better rate, so that was positive. And we knew that it had laundry and free internet. How can you not love the Bella Vista?
Checked in at the camp, and that was when we first realized that the entire town smells awful. With all of the thermals and vents and things, the entire town smells like sulfur, no matter where you go. Its pretty gross. But we totally dug this camp (despite the smell) because the lady was super nice and told us about the farmers market tomorrow, the bathrooms had paper towels, and we could park literally right in front of the strip of bathrooms and kitchen and things. Yay.
When we got to Te Po for the night’s events, Guy came out and introduced to the Maori and the Jade Stone in the middle of the columns. We entered the Maori grounds, and our chief was picked. He was told what to do when the warrior came out of the Maori building and challenged whether or not we came in peace. It involved picking up a leaf and backing up, and theres nose touching involved. I was worried we would all have to do it. But all the warriors came out, and women too, and there was some singing while we stood outside and waited to enter the building. We were welcomed in, and had to all take our shoes off, as well as women weren’t allowed in the front row. There was the speech and then a few long songs, interspersed with a poi dance (and then women brought on to be shown how to dance), more long songs and warrior dancing. The warbling really got to me every once in awhile, I just wanted to eat! They did the Haka which was really cool to watch, and quite amusing to watch them try to teach it to a bunch of German men.
At the dinner, on the table was some sauces, bread, water, and a shot glass of some honey/plant liquid. It tasted like very flat and watery 7up. A blessing was said, and the starters came out, and we could go to the buffet. Tim and I went to the buffet first. Pasta salad, shrimp salad, crab leg meat, seafood chowder, a sweet potato soup, oyster, corn salad, it was all delicious. I didn’t really have any of the starters, more weird seafood, including eel. Then the main foods came out, chicken with stuffing, lamb (which was way overcooked), and pork (which I didn’t have). And then three types of potatos. One was soooo good. I wonder what kind it was. And then there was the dessert. I skipped the ice cream, strawberry topping, and fruit. But took sweet bread with sauce, cream puffs, chocolate mousse, some fruit pudding thing, and PAVLOVA. I understand why everyone loves it so much. Its very much like angel food cake, but somehow without the cake. It was strange.
After we ate, we were directed to head to the geysers, a bit early, because they were erupting early. We headed down the pitch black path, which was a little unnerving, you couldn’t see a single thing. And then I somehow saw a solid black kitty with white paws on the track. We got to the geysers, which were actually really pretty cool.
We could get quite close, and at night, with the lights, it was quite pretty. But then I saw the kitty again and went to play with it. It went to drink out of the geyser! I wanted to snatch it to save it, but it clearly it was fine and came back to play. When Guy got there, we got to sit on the hot rocks and watch the geysers while we drank hot chocolate. The sitting rocks were really hot, we had to move to a cooler section at one point because my butt was burning. Guy ended the evening with a song that he sung (he clearly likes to sing) and then we made our way back down the path. I was so full!
Back at the camp I went to explore the facilities that we didn’t use, and of course, on the one night we aren’t really at camp, it has an immaculate and detailed kitchen, and the tv room is warm and has leather couches and a tv with a dvd player. It was 8:45, and not time for bed with that much food in my tummy. Once the van was ready for bed, we came to the tv room to watch the first episode of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. Once actually ready for bed, we figured it was too much work to try to figure out the dvd player, but we might as well finish Astroboy, did, and went to sleep. No idea what time. Little after 11 is my best guess.

Best of Van Cuisine.

2010-05-15T07:52:00.000-07:00

Thursday, April 22, 2010
I was awoken with a text message from mom saying they had gotten a call from US Bank saying my card had been suspended and that some of the charges had been declined due to the suspicious activity. Now, I had looked at my account last night, and my supposed pending items (that were first in line to be considered “declined” were things like the Maori tix, the Cave tix, our hotel in Sydney)….bad news.
I was less than a happy camper when I called, the bank said that it was the Emirates flights that had flagged it. Which is ridiculous, it’s an airline. Of all the options, that’s what gets it? Stupid.
Made it to the ferry with plenty time, and were told to get into the line with the van. Got in the line, and it looks like you sit in the car until its time to load. You can get out, but I have nothing to do outside the car!
Aboard the ferry, found a nice comfy spot, had some toast and banana for breakfast and Tim is heading outside, how, I don’t know, its FREEZING. I’m sure if I was properly dressed I might be ok, but I only have my light green jacket. However, I was slightly more prepared than last time and at least have on long sleeves and a hooded sweatshirt. Brr. And these rude people go outside or come back from inside, and leave the door open. Its like people, I know you aren’t sitting up here, so you don’t care. But its cold, shut the frickin door!
While planning our Sydney excursion, a german girl came in and exclaimed something to her friends and they all ran outside, so naturally, we all did too. There were dolphins swimming along the boat!
We hit Hastings at about 4, found the Rush Munroe ice cream gardens. Pretty much just an ice cream shop, that part was a let down, and then further a let down when I got passion fruit, and Tim got hokey pokey.
On the way to Napier we saw the sign for the pet barn that had kittens and puppies. A stop was a must! Napier Town center was too far away to walk to, from the camp that we picked so we drove into town and parked outside the Countdown grocery store. I saw the Mad Butcher shop next door and after our awful meat experience the night before, we decided to check that out. It was actually really cool. Small, but TONS of meat. Coolers and coolers of every type of meat in every different cut and various marinades. Including tripe and oxtail. Other organs too. But it was awesome. I wish we had one like that. We decided that we were going to stick with our plan on taco seasoned chicken with red peppers. When we left the internet cafe, we saw downtown Napier just totally shut down for the night. At like 6:30pm. It’s a whole country thing! Nothing is open. Still outrageous. It was a beautiful night and we would have loved to just walk around looking at things.

After dinner, I made dessert using a can of strawberries with juice, simmered it with some more of my strawberry jelly that I had, a packet of citrus jelly, and then added a cut up banana into it. The banana was in too long (I didn’t realize how long it would take to reduce) and it broke down quite a bit, but in the end it was like soupy jam, but tasted awesome.
By 8:30 we were super bored. We were half an hour in to Astro Boy, but watching it in the kitchen on the laptop, unable to do anything else was just rather obnoxious. It was too early for bed, internet was expensive, nothing to do! We ended up getting ready for bed, setting up the van, and planning to finish the movie in the van, and not more than half an hour later, out like a light by 10:30!

April 20th! Glaciers and Pancake Rocks!

2010-05-14T07:23:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, April 20, 2010
-Got out of Wanaka a little after 7, the clouds were all around us near the ground, and when they weren’t, it was super foggy. I found it pretty, but I wasn’t the one driving through it.
-We made a bathroom stop and went into the café (smallest town yet, like three buildings and some houses) and they were super nice. They had no filtered coffee, but helped me out with figuring out what to order. No trim milk, but I had some of that and splenda in the car. It was like SUPER caffeine. For $4, it was tiny, but it was takeaway (that had added 50cents) so I at least got the lid, and it sent me through the roof. There was a German voice for at least half an hour. I was instantly awake.
-Now on to Fox Glacier! About half hour away, we came along the ocean beach, and for a good ¾ mile along the beach/road, there were rock pilings and branches all set up into designs and formations.
People had all formed these mini altar-esque things with them. A lot of the white rocks had been written on with peoples names and dates. If I had a marker, I would have done it. I could have spent a good hour just walking down the line looking at all the formations and writings on the rocks. It was very cool. There was a seagull that literally followed us down the line. He would sit on a rock very close to us, we would move down a few feet, he would fly down to right in front of us again.
-Fox Glacier was first, and the Access Road, and since you could actually see the glacier and the path to the glacier, we decided to make the trek. Big WIDE path of the glacier. An hour there and back. Climbed over rocks, crossed streams, up shaky paths. It would NEVER happen in the states. Never. Safety hazard waiting to happen. They were safe in the fact that we couldn’t get too close to it. On the way back took a mini side path to one of the melting streams and touched chunks of ice.

-After a very brief Franz Josef Glacier stop, we popped into a Four Square grocery store and I started to put our pita lunch together. Humus, spinach greens, red pepper from the night before’s salad, and deli ham. They were delicious. And then Tim had some more hummus with leftover broccoli and carrots while I had an orange. We each had two of the chocolate Afghan cookies.
-We made it to the Pancake Rocks and Blowholes right at high tide. We felt like we were walking through a corn field with the types of plant and height of the plant that was constantly surrounding us. The rocks themselves were pretty neat. The waves just beating down on them in high tide and seeing all the caves and crevices below the rocks was just as cool as the pancake effect itself. The formations were much bigger than I actually expected them to be. Not the rocks themselves, but there were lots of them in the area.
-A mini mouthwash at the store cost $9.
-Stayed the night in Wesport, at the camp we parked right next to the kitchen. There were two people in there already, so it was rather awkard to make out pita sandwiches, our broccoli/carrot/olive/hummus plate, and heat up the egg pie. They were at the table, so we had to go eat outside. It wasn’t freezing, but I would have rather ate inside.
-I was getting creative for dessert, so I made the apple and banana in a skillet, with the honey and peanut butter and then tim put his in a pita, and I scooped mine up with half a pita. It was seriously awesome.
-Spent time looking up hotels/hostels for our few days in Sydney before Mom arrived, Our biggest hurdle is the flight to Sydney right now. With our luggage the way it is, it just seems impossible. Impossible So we need to work on that tomorrow.

Black Wednesday: April 21st.

2010-05-13T05:47:00.000-07:00

Preface: Near the end, I sound like a manic depressive, note the date, and check out facebook for current pictures and note how much happier I look!

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

-There were Weka birds outside our car this morning, chirping away. We saw a lot of those yesterday, we thought they might be weird looking kiws at first, but saw a sign telling us we were stupid and they were Wekas. So we got ready, a little easier this morning than other mornings, not sure why. Maybe we are just getting used to it. Maybe it’s a little more methodic than it was originally, but we made our coffee in the kitchen and headed out.
-We pulled into Nelson, and the World of Wearable Arts/Collectable Cars Museum. It was smaller than I expected space wise, but had the same amount of stuff that I expected. The first room just had three ball gowns, one made entirely of wood, one made entirely out of copper tin things, and one involving an entire tea set on shelving as the bussle. Then there was a big show room, several were out in the room and stationary, but then 20 or so were on a constantly moving conveyor belt of mannequins, and then you read a card on your seat that talked about each one. I totally dug it, the materials were crazy, there were feathers and tea bags and car parts, and wood and ear plugs. Just very very strange. One looked like a brown big bird kiwi puffball. There was the South Pacific business suit with lots of sequins and craziness.
-The second half of the museum was the car collection. There was this crazy expensive luxury car that had real wood paneling and each back seat had a personal tv and the rear seats totally folded out like a lazy boy. That was pretty swank. They had a Delorian that Tim HAD to have his picture taken with.
-Nelson was like the Australia book jackpot. Of all the stores we had looked in so far, all they had was lonely planet for 60/70 bucks. This one had numerous brands, and those brands all cheaper. I gathered the best ones, and went outside to flag Tim into the store. We did our best logic and bought a small Lonely Planet Sydney book for $NZ28. That should at least last us the three days we spend there, and then we can look through Mom’s Australia book for the other cities.
-Lunch was a small bowl of nonfat cottage cheese, and a killer small bowl of fruit. It had mango, kiwi, grapes, pineapple, and canteloupe. Delicious and nutritious lunch. I miss healthy food.
-We started the drive leisurely to Picton, 3ish hours away. The weather stayed awesome and sunny with very few clouds, so we pulled off onto the shoulder pull offs a few times for pictures, listened to Tim’s ipod, it was actually a really nice drive. It’s just hard to fully enjoy how pretty and relaxing is. Its like, this is the most gorgeous place on earth, in the most beautiful weather, and we are stressing majorly about Australia and flights and getting our luggage to Sydney. Those stresses just overtake all that we should be enjoying, and its hard. We didn’t want it to be this way at all.
-Finally we had to say pause and go for a walk because we needed dinner groceries and it was getting dark soon. We walked down into Town Centre with this totally awesome little park right in front of the water to watch all the boats and ferries. Green grass, nice beach, benches, playground. It was the perfect place, and all we could think about was luggage. We saw the big big ferry turn around into the dock, so that was somewhat interesting, it was like parking a Cadillac in a bathtub.
- Back at camp, Tim made more calls on luggage with no luck and looked up a bunch of things online. That is when I saw my bank account and had a breakdown. I can’t even go into it here because I will flip out again. And its not like I am even having a good time here. (for those reading this far, remember that this was April 21st when I wrote this…) We are cold every night, we sleep in a van, we eat crappy grocery food that is super unhealthy for us, but it’s the cheapest they have, and nothing is fun. Gas is ridiculous, everything costs more than we expected, all just to burn my savings. Ridiculous. I lost it. I sobbed in the van for at least half an hour. At least. No consolation. Can’t go home. Don’t want to stay here. Just trying to focus on being with mom in Australia, even if that means still spending more money. It will be fun, and involve hotels, and my mommy.
-It was 7:15 before we made dinner, and following the events of the day, it was an epic fail. The chicken was the worst chicken tim has ever even seen. It was 65% fat, and the actual meat was awful. We tried skilleting it, adding the veggies and butter and salt and pepper (just to make it edible) but I had about two bites of chicken, some of the veggies, and olives. The saving grace was that Tim got Uncle Bens thai rice for himself, you just microwave it, but there was enough for us both. Total savior. It didn’t help that there was a group of Germans in the kitchen making an AMAZING smelling dinner. Then they watched How I Met Your Mother. We wanted to get away from them, so we went to the tv lounge to be online and eat our chocolate cake roll thing, but it was so cold in there that we ended up back in the kitchen in the back corner, which ended up ok.
-He tried to book our flight to Sydney on Emirates, even switching over to the camp computers that were hardwired in, but it kept showing up as an error. It was annoying, cause we really need to get those tickets booked before its too late.

Hot!

2010-05-12T03:51:00.000-07:00

Good lord Cairns is hot. Like holy whoa humidity. NOW I finally feel like I am in the South Pacific. Friday is a five star Great Barrier Reef Cruise and I could not be more pumped.

Snorkeling, fishies, hot, sun....maybe even a tan? Heaven forbid I get rid of this Vampiric skin I have been sporting for the past five weeks. Like really, I dont think I have been this pale since high school. This must change in the next four days. *fingers crossed*

Nessa would love it here. Sprawled out, meowing at everyone to bring her a cool beverage, swatting at every bird that squawks by (and thats a lot), but not bothering to move...*sigh*

I miss my kitties. But I like Cairns!

Adelaide Crows....

2010-05-11T03:32:00.000-07:00

Australian Football is for pansies. They might as well be male figure skaters.

Coach Mitchell would even bench these guys.....

Ouch.

April 19th.

2010-05-10T07:09:00.000-07:00

Monday, April 19, 2010

Alarm went off at 5:17, as planned. And as much as I didn’t want to get out from the warm covers, it was nowhere near the torture as the morning before. It’s almost easier getting up that early over around 7/8. We both were wide awake almost instantly. And it was still pitch black. The darkness is all the time. From 6pm to almost 7am. Its depressing. Like WAY depressing.
The darkness started lifting and we could see the beginning of the mountains around us as we drove to the Milford Sound. It was really cool. We went into the Homer Tunnel. Which looked regular at first, but it was about a lane and a half wide, so you didn’t know what to do if you came across a car (little did we know that it turns into a one lane at 7am (but it was early than that) and that eventually the lights turn on via solar power, but while we were in it, it was pitch black and curvy. Super creepy and nerve wracking. We came out on the other side and the mountains that surrounded us were completely undescribably. They were huge. They looked huge, and then you saw a tree or something only a tiny way up and realized they were about 10 times the size you actually thought they were. It was insane. And they were gorgeous. Clouds and fog hung low. Streams trickled down from places you couldn’t even see the beginning of, we saw places that we knew we would want to stop at, but kept driving so we were sure to make the boat on time. The mountains were covered by clouds, it was so weird and eerie, like full sized clouds had come down and were chilling in the valleys of the Mountains, it wasn’t mist, they were actual clouds. Strange.

We boarded the RV Sinbad. Breakfast was served free with the morning trip (love the free food). We ate pretty quickly, and made our way to the front of the ferry, where we stood the whole way out to the ocean. We passed a large rock with three seals, two adults and one baby, which was super cute since the baby kept squirming like it couldn’t get comfortable on the hard rock. Our captain was quite amusing, making fun of the Aussies, and making comments like, “Lets turn this girl around…and the boat as well…” We passed a waterfall that looked dinky and small, but were told that it was THREE TIMES the size of Niagra Falls.
It was just ridiculous, the size and majesticness of the mountains were unbelievable. We would be out, and you would see a tiny tiny fleck of white in the background, looking like a duck almost, and then you would realize as it got closer very slowly, that it was a full size passenger ferry. Just immense. There were waterfalls that started so high up, that they never hit the water below, they had turned into mist and blown away before it even hit the water. There were ledges, not tops of mountains, but just ledges that were 800m above us. I took a million pictures, and every single one of them looked like a photograph.

Fjord Facts: The Milford Sound isn’t really a sound, it’s a Fjord, some moron just named it a Sound before realizing it was really a fjord.
And.
There are numerous earthquakes in the Sound a year (oh, and). And that every 150 years, there are catastrophic earthquakes, and that they are about 150 years overdue for another one.
We slowly worked our way back to the Homer Tunnel, stopping at the Chasm along the way, and then back to Te Anau.
Got gas outside of Queenstown, drove through, just to see what its like. Very Vail like, at the base of the mountains, but 85% of all the stores and businesses were either nature/outdoor or crazy sports related. It was clear what the town made its money on, but it was a very cute town, looked decently cheap, and like the town would be very easy to live and work in. The trees were more fall-like than anywhere else. All leaves were gorgeous yellows and reds.

After Arrowtown, we then had a massive debate about how far to try and make it. We had been in the car for 10+ hours already, and Fox/Franz Glaciers were another whole 5 hours away, and I just did not want to be in the car anymore. But really, it was still super early (4ish) and there is no reason to get closer to the glaciers while we have nothing else to do. Tim wanted to make it there, but I just ugh. I had totally hit the wall. Decide to drive just to get it done since we wouldn’t be doing anything at the campsite anyway. Start the drive, by the time we enter Wanaka an hour later, we had lost our minds which including singing songs about how much it sucked to the tune of Christmas carols.

Wanaka Bella Vista to the rescue! Topped off with a preroasted chicken and salad from New World, all rolled up in an orange chocolate muffin to share. That right there made the night a total success, but it got even more productive when we spent the next several hours going through every single brochure, and planning the entire rest of the time in the South Island and the rest of our time with the stupid Spaceship.

Roos for yous!

2010-05-09T07:06:00.000-07:00

These are far too awesome not to share today....and then it punched me in the face....

Sunday, April 18th, 2010

2010-05-08T05:56:00.000-07:00

Sunday, April 18, 2010
-Going to the bathroom at 3:30 in the morning at a campground with super sketchy people around in weird camper vans (albeit just like ours) is beyond scary and I thought I would have a heart attack tearing back to the van.
-Can I just say that no bathroom should shut all the shower doors and stall doors at night, so you can see that no one is trying to kill you?!
-The night was so cold that I woke up with the blanket 100% over my head, and I am totally one of those people that cannot stand anything even touching my face when I sleep, let alone all the way over my head…
-We started at the Dunedin (Duh-Nee-Din) Railway Station first, really pretty, but not much to do.
-The Cadbury Factory tour is the most awesome thing on the planet for chocolate lovers. EVER. Chocolate waterfall, cups of warm chocolate straight from the machines to eat with a spoon, and handing out free candy left and right. Just the smell of the place could wake me from a coma.
-We learned that white chocolate is only cocoa butter, milk and sugar. So that was somewhat disturbing.
-I got to do the 45 minute Cadbury chocolate tour, so the next on the agenda was the 90 minute Speights Brewery tour. It was actually really cool since it is one of the last Gravity Breweries in existence. There were only two other people on the tour, so the end “tasting” session turned into, “Here’s the taps, here’s the glasses, go for it” Sidenote: This is the definite upside to touring in the off season, the tours are virtually dead and you get better service and its generally a lot funner.
-Skipped out on Larnach Castle. I don’t need to see some random dude’s house for $50.
-More Subway goodness (shocker).
-Jaffa’s need to come to the United States. This needs to happen, anyone in favor of chocolate and orange flavor combined, join us in this conquest.
-New Zealand farms deer. This seems very strange to me. Why would you want to farm them?
-Looks like we should be hitting the Te Anau campsite a little after 6:30. Its strangely still a bit light, I mean, don’t get me wrong, its still dark, but the gloomy clouds that have been around all day still seem to be reflecting a tiny bit of light. Maybe that can hold out….wishful thinking.
-Te Anau was a small but quaint town, the first store we went to, was a huge debate. We were in that store for at least 45 minutes trying to figure out what to do for dinner. I was feeling so crappy not having any vegetables or protein in my body. I wanted eggs or chicken, but Tim wasn’t feeling the chicken or cooking, but I didn’t want to eat plain spinach for my entire dinner. It was a big mess.
-Next stop, gas station to fill up before heading to Milford Sound in the morning, since there is no gas stations between the two towns. And even the word “town” I use lightly. We went into the Real Journeys office, (they are sure open late (8:30). We debated about whether or not to spend the money (100 each) on the cruise. But Tim really wanted to see the Sound, and other from the one end at a parking lot, there is no real way to see it unless on a cruise. So we booked one for early the next morning.
-We were quite annoyed about a lot of different things, and now we had to lug all of the cooking equipment and food and such to the cold camp kitchen to cook, at like 8pm. We were just miserable. Had to wash everything first, no towels, just gross. But we scrambled our 6 egg whites (using butterpacket since we had no spray) with broccoli, and put cheese on top. But at least we got free breakfast on the boat that next morning! That was a definite plus!!!
-Went back to the van, to put everything away and get settled for the night. It felt like it was raining at first, but it was more of a heavy mist, not as bad, but still. Just one more thing, AND it was pitch black. With one of three lights working in the back of the van. Pretty miserable. At least it was 12 degrees warmer than the night before!

Food for Thought...or Thoughts on Food!

2010-05-07T06:05:00.000-07:00

Sultanas over raisins. Sweeter, but in a different nonsweet way.

There is something about bread in the Southern Hemisphere, can't be beat. Including Turkish.

New Zealand apples are FAR superior to Australia apples.

Fresh figs, while intriguing to eat, are delicious.

If you go to Starbucks, expect to have to wait to get filtered coffee. Even in the middle of the day, you are always the first one to have ordered it, so there is none made.

People don't eat healthy breakfast, in either country. Breakfast foods beyond muffins and pastries are nearly impossible to find.

April 17th: Spaceship Saga Begins.

2010-05-06T05:12:00.000-07:00

This is Milford. He is our Kiwi. He is no Myla/Nessa/Olivia substitute, but he doesnt puke in the carpet either!

Saturday, April 17, 2010
-Days are just better that start with a workout
-Until you pick up your Spaceship Campervan and end up sobbing in misery. It is very much not as advertised. He spent a lot of time showing us how to use the “features” but its really a mini van with shit welded to it. Not thrilled. It is skuzzy and dirty. There are crumbs still from the last people just sitting on the bench….the “cooler” fits about two water bottles, and that’s all. No microwave, only a gas cooker that has to be used outside. Just miserable and decrepit. (And that was just the things we saw immediately, the end list of crap is LONG)
-But we did find a sweet market that had awesome food and produce (fresh figs!!). Went in and was super pleased. There were stations after stations of awesome. Breads, meats, veggies, meats, dips, prepared foods, desserts, everything. I would have killed to be able to shop from there every Saturday, it was fantastic. And everything was cheap and looked great. Then we sampled some humus and actually got some to go with our carrots. Had KILLER hot chocolate sample spoon. If it probably wasn’t 1000 calories, I would have totally bought a mug. Bought small, but perfect looking galas from this super cute couple. They jammed as many apples as humanly possible into the bag. 5 bucks for probably 10+ apples. Bought a ciabatta, chocolate chip bagel, and a roll for Tim. The chocolate chip bagel was followed by Tim's quote, "It's like a chocolate chip cookie and bread had sex...."
-I like the South Island a lot better. The roads are much better, wider, nicer, and the landscape, while a lot like Iowa, is also more interesting. No hills to make me want to puke, at least along the coast that we are driving along. More cute towns to look at too. More sizable than the North Island, but nothing huge.
-We pulled into the Oamaru I site and stopped in, and they closed the door right behind us. Thankfully we somewhat got our Penguin question answered. It was either go to the Free Beach where you may see one yellow eyed penguin around 4:30 (it was 4) OR pay $44, wait til 5:15 for a production of Blue Penguins at 6 where you see 60 some from an ampitheater with lights and a narration. We choose to go now, and free. Within minutes of arrival, I heard a honking from the cliff below, looked down, and BAM. Penguin about 15 feet down. Chilling.
-The drive from the Penguins to the Moertaki Boulders was gorgeous. Right at magic hour, we followed right along the beach, through rolling hills with sheep pastures on one side, glowing sky, mountains in the back, and the beach besides us. It was perfect and calming. Totally juxtaposed with our background music of Kevin Smith being vulgar as normal.
-We got to the boulders, slightly disappointing since I was expecting much bigger rocks. There were more than I expected, just a lot smaller. So strange though, perfect spheres. I guess the biggest one was the size I expected them all to be. Cool to look at, very curious as to how they are like that, especially the ones that have the weird rock looking like they were broken once and glued together, but its rock…..they all have cracks in them, and some of them have shattered apart, so I wonder how much longer they will last. Or if there is more.
-We turned around the mountain to Dunedin, and I was not expecting a city quite so huge. Later we learned that there is a major university there, but nonetheless, we kept turning around the mountain and there was more and more city everywhere you looked. Lights galore! We ate our Hell pizza and went back to the camp, got internet, and arranged the car and bedding, but it was super obnoxious and cold and complicated.

April 16th. A million ways to be transported in 24 hours.

2010-05-05T10:42:00.000-07:00

Friday, April 16, 2010

-Alarm went off at 5:50,
-Calling a cab ended up being the smartest decision we made that day because it was raining. At first it just looked like a mist, but then it was definitely a heavy rain. We would have been wet, hot, sweaty, and utterly miserable if we had walked all the way to the ferry docks.
-The Bluebridge Ferry” One section had some small couches, others had airline seats all facing a tv, there was an outside looking deck, but with the rain, no point. We were ready to sit in the airline seats, but then I went to the café and saw that there were small tables with cushy chairs around them.
-We gave in to the glorious smells of breakfast, Tim left to go order eggs and toast. Absolutely delicious. 4 slices of toast, and scrambled eggs that Tim shared. The only jelly was a “Breakfast Marmelade” but it totally worked for me. More a citrus jelly than anything else.
-Tim just left to go sit in the airline style seats, I think he’s going to try and sleep, but he doesn’t seem to be doing to well with the pitching back and forth, and at times its almost a circular motion
-Riding on a train for 6+ hours is far less enjoyable when you have two people sitting directly across from you that want to chat the whole time….Which is fine for awhile, I actually would love to hear tidbits and facts that I didn’t know, but I also wanted to take a break from looking at all the passing mountains that I have seen for a week straight from the car
-The salt farms were quite interesting, they are big fields of water waiting to dry up to harvest the salt. Some of them were even pink.
-THERE WERE SEALS!
-If you are ever in Christchurch, stay at Hotel SO. It’s like you are sleeping in a futuristic spaceship pod. Complete with the ability to shower in 7 different colors, and blue glow lights under the bed. And the best hotel gym this side of the equator, and a HUGE laundry room for cheap. Adoration of the Hotel SO.
-Christchurch = Boston in New Zealand.
-Cathedral Square is a copy of Copley, and the blocks off of it are so totally filled with Bostonian crazies.
-Poppy Thai = Thai food that needs to be concentrated on, as to not INHALE in one glorious My Way Satay, bite.
-And to end the day, I hit the gym at 11pm….*sigh*

April 15th. Wellington makes us tuckered!

2010-05-04T07:29:00.000-07:00

Thursday, April 15, 2010

-Weta Cave: Basically the people that did all the cool stuff in LOTR. And a crap load of other famous movies. I would adore to work for them, but frankly I am nowhere near talented enough, especially in that line of the work (more actual art).
-St Pauls Church
-Wellington Zoo: Wallabyes, Kangaroos, Meerkats, HUGE Pelican, Sunbears, African dogs, Penguins…Tim touched one of the Kangaroos through the fence.

-Wellington City and Sea Museum has some WEIRD exhibit now that involves Alice in Wonderland, very acid trippy….
-KEYNOTE: The best things in this country, are free. It’s strange. The more money it costs, really, the less awesome it ends up being. Case in point, Te Papa is the best free musem you could ever visit.
-Te Papa is ginormous, you could spend days there and not see it all, but we did take our time in the Pompeii exhibit. There was a very cool 3d timeline movie to watch.
-Grocery store dinners rule our lives.

April 14th.

2010-05-02T23:26:00.000-07:00

Blast from the Past. Not so far away for you, but decades ago for me.....

Wednesday, April 14, 2010
- Left Palmerston North, and headed towards Castlepoint.
-The drive is gorgeous. The first part, the sun is still so low that everything gets hit with light in a totally different way than we would normally see. Its awesome. And the forests are so lush and thick and green right now. Everything is wet with dew. As we keep going the mist creates an awesome haze on everything. Its just sweet and magical to look at.
-We had to slow down later on because a truck was in the road herding a load of sheep from one area to another. They had just been sheared, and there were four dogs helping get them across the road. It was super cute as they trotted beside the truck, and then one hopped up into the back of the truck from a standstill. Quite impressive.
-At the edge of Castlepoint was a big beach that clearly flooded every high tide and then a long walkway up the ridge to the lighthouse. We parked on the edge of the beach, walked across and up the walkway. It was so ridiculously windy. I feared for my sunglasses even. It was as if the wind were going to rip my jacket apart. We went up, and a little bit past the lighthouse. It was really cool because when you turned around, you could see there was a tide pool behind the beach that we had parked at. You could also see the line in the water where it went from light aqua to dark blue. Tim said that must be where the beach ends.
-We visited Pua World, where even the toilets are made of Pua shells…
- 45 minutes outside of Wellington, we were on a mountainside, and Tim was getting super worried about how fast the gas gauge was dropping, and kept getting worried, so in the middle of the tiny mountain lane, he turned around and headed back down the mountain to the town at the bottom to get gas.
-Tim got a bag of Twisties. He got it only because it had a Penguin on the bag.
–In Wellington, we saw a building that had Hot Yoga on the top floor, and New York Pizza right below. It was quite amusing, the perfect building for the both of us!
-After a less than awesome day, we splurged with pita and humus appetizer, white sangria, Tim had pizza, and I had a very small Mozz/Tomato plate (and some of his pizza) and then baklava for dessert. All delicious.

Sydney Snippets.

2010-05-02T00:06:00.000-07:00

I know I am jumping the gun a bit, but this stupid internet situation is just not peachy keen! I will get back to the daily stuff, but for now, here's a glimpse of time in Sydney!

Madre in Sydney.

2010-05-01T05:20:00.001-07:00

Lori Nordyke is safely in Sydney. Today, she pranced around the Sydney Opera House, ate kabobs, and grooved at Hillsong.
Not to mention the Justice and Police museum, and the Hyde Park barracks, and the Rocks, AND grocery shopping.

Now she is curled into bed like a tuckered puppy, and has been since 8pm. Now lets see how early she gets up :)

And whiskers on kittens!!

2010-04-30T00:16:00.001-07:00

Today has been awesome.

My sweet friend Heather posted us in her Gratitude blog. For those of you visiting from her site, I promise that the lack of pictures is unusual for me. And should be solved shortly! Welcome. Come back every now and again! The lack of pictures is from the fact that the last two weeks in New Zealand I lived in a van and had serious lack of wireless. And now Sydney seems to have the same problem! In fact, I am in a mall right now. But this shall be remedied. So come back!! Leave comments, post questions, I love it.

Number two awesome. We just got done seeing Iron Man 2 on the largest IMAX screen in the world. Robert Downey Junior at seven stories tall, is fantabulous.

Three. My mommy comes tomorrow! We are touring Australia for two weeks with her. Sydney (been here a few days already), Melbourne, Adelaide, Ayres Rock, and Cairns. We are spending some extra days there, and then back to Sydney in a couple of weeks. Its going to be amazing.

The weather was gorgeous yesterday. We did a touristy bus tour and sat on the top deck. This also included Bondi Beach for the best smoothee of your ENTIRE life.

Speaking of food, we have had the same exact meal for the past two nights, and plan on having it again tonight. Chicken Tikki something or other with some bread and a huge tasty salad. I must learn to make indian food. MUST. Iowa severely lacks this.

GLEE AIRED LAST NIGHT!!!!! Most shows here are a full season behind. NOT GLEE! The second season opener was bright and shining at 8pm. LOVE.

Ok. Today is happy.

April 13: Kiwi Cars and Mount Mordor.

2010-04-29T03:29:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Te Puke, NZ
- We had been seeing all the super cute kiwi bird traffic signs, like The Faster You go, the Bigger the Mess. With a cartoon kiwi.
-Kiwi 360 Tour. We waited and waited and finally our guide, Simon, came out chugging coffee and said we could pick any car. Private tour on the Kiwi Cars! The pack house, one of the coolest parts of the tour. We went up and watched all the rows of workers, having kiwis dropped to them from a constantly moving conveyor belt. The belt had a computer that weight each individual kiwi, and knew which line to drop it down based on its size. It was pretty insane, and all of the workers packing the boxes of them and sending them down. There were HUGE Kiwis, and we learned that the reason we never see them is because Asia is willing to pay for the bigger ones and they get them first. The pack house was really fascinating to see.
-We also learned that in New Zealand, in order to collect unemployment, you must work during fruit season. You cant claim there is no work during packing season, because there always is, so much that they bring people in for it.
-There are three kinds of kiwis, baby kiwis are more unique, while Golden kiws are newer, but common here. Those are sweeter in taste with smoother skin, and of course the green kiwi.
-Matamata, the homeplace of all the LOTR phenomena is overrated. The tours end up being $65 a piece, 2.5 hours long, and all you saw was the scenic background of the movie. There are no hobbit holes or anything left. So we decided that was a total bust and just took a picture at the Hobbiton sign.
- We circled town a few times for various reasons, the last few being that we thought we should hit Subway in order to not have another day of no eating til night time. Same bread choices, the white cheese is cheddar or swiss, and we have no idea what the yellow cheese is. If you want it left untoasted, then you want your sandwich “fresh.” And the bread was so delicious, even the Subway bread is awesome!
-Honey Hive. They had two indoor hives, a kids section, beauty section, sample section, cooking section, ice cream setup, fudge setup, tables, information and books. It was large. We looked at the bees, and moved on to the samples. We sampled three different honey wines, “mead.” And I liked them so much, we actually ended up buying two bottles. Tim also tried the honey whiskey. We learned that its called a honey moon because the entire month after a wedding, the men would drink only mead in order to produce male offspring.
-Taupo. We didn’t have time to go to the actual Thermal Park, but the National sites were still open. Most were a bust, but Huka Falls was a rushing river that came out into a mini waterfall, and that was actually really pretty. The water was ultra blue, just like it all seems to be here.
-Traveled around and down Lake Taupo, the largest lake in New Zealand.
-Whakapapa village road, leads to Mordor Mount. We kept driving and driving, it was no dark, and we were totally in the middle of nowhere. There were kiwi signs though! So we kept looking for them. Still headed down this dark long straight road, nothing, no lights in sight, and then BAM! We see this huge chalet all lit up. It was so weird and jarring.
-The higher we climbed, the foggier it got. Slowly, and it was really really eery. But very cool. We were enveloped in the mist, wth only darkness next to us. And fthe temperature had dropped dramatically, therewas even snow on the ground. Finally it got so thick with fog that Tim couldn’t really even see where he was going, so we turned around and went back down, the but slow eery drive through the mountain fog was fun enough for me.
-Stayed in Palmerston North at a glorious Bella Vista.

Sydney.

2010-04-29T01:26:00.000-07:00

We should have moved to Sydney.

I wish I had a million dollars for clothes.

Everything here is adorable.

No wireless in the hotel, and expensive on kiosk. More to come.

Promise.

My mommy is here on Saturday!!!!

Suckface.

2010-04-29T01:23:00.000-07:00

We have another reason to hate HATE HATE Spaceships.

I won't go into details.

But its miserable.

Although thanks to the brilliance of one Sydney pharmacist, we avoided a $200 copay.

April 12: Kiwis and Cathedral Coves

2010-04-28T03:14:00.000-07:00

Ok editing my own journal entries is far too time consuming. So now, we are going to bullet point it, then maybe we might catch up. If you have questions about any of it, leave a comment! Please! I like comments! Even the silliest questions or comments are loved ☺

Monday, April 12, 2010
-I learned my Grandmother got facebook. This is hilarious and awesome. Wrapped up in glory.
-Gas is $NZ 1.81 per litre. In American terms, we pay $US 4.88 a gallon. That is sick.
-Kiwi birds lay HUGE eggs, we learned and saw one at the Kiwi House and Museum, a very cute and worth it museum.
-Above museum had cows. Tim had to go and have a chat with them.
-Weather was perfect, sunny, slight breeze, warm!
-We saw crap loads of sheep and cows. I mean THOUSANDS. In one day.
-The town of Waipu was disappointing, not much to it
-We stopped in the parking lot of Sheep World, decided not to go in
-We got to Thames. In order to get there, you go through a very strange landscape. Its super flat and there isn’t really anything but field grass, and there is nothing for miles and miles. No houses, no signs, no fences, no signs of life. Just flat. And then you see the Mountains near Thames pop up. Its not gradual, hills then Mountains. Its flat, flat, flat, really high mountain.
-Thames was on the closer side of the mountain, and clearly was an industrial mining town. Small, kinda grungy, didn’t really have any frills or lace, just the places needed to live and work in the mining/industrial industry.
-We were the only ones on our mine tour. The guide was nice at first, and led us into the mines with his limp. He did a bit of talking first, and as soon as he could tell that we were actually interested and going to ask questions, he sprung into uber high gear and had a great enthusiasm about it. It was clear that he really liked doing this. I had felt bad about making a gimp man drag us through the mine right at closing, so that made me feel better.
-It was a small mine, but the second most rich on the island. He said that back in the heyday, it pulled 3million (I think) but some totally absurd about of money out in gold. We did the mine tour first, and it had these mannequins in it, and the first one we came to scared me, but then they were almost cute. 70s porn star look. After the mine he brought us over to show us how the jaw crusher worked, the pounding sticks, and then how the mechanical sifter worked, and he turned it on. Which was really cool, I had seen the super old wooden ones somewhat work before, but never a mechanical, more productive one in full swing.
-Next stop was Cathedral Cove: We hit the parking lot a little after 5, the sign said it was a 45 minute walk, and we pretended to ourselves that that meant 45 minutes there and back. Knowing full well that that wasn’t the case. It was a LONG walk, made longer by the fact that the trails weren’t too even, with holes and roots and things. And they were constantly going up and down, super steep in both directions. Mom could never have done it. Straigh up and straight down at times. And it didn’t help that you were almost always surrounded by trees and brush, so you felt like you were constantly walking away from the water. Finally we could hear water, and then went down several sets of steep stairs, and bam, there you are. It was a lot bigger than I had expected, and a lot less commercialized. There were only a handful of people still down there (we passed by maybe 10 people on our way out) and the whole thing was just perfectly serene. No gift shop, no signs, no food stand. 100% nature except one small roped off section because of falling rocks. It was beautiful.
-Tim took his shoes off and played in the water, of course getting more wet than he wanted We got back to the car just in time though, 5 minutes later, and we wouldn’t have been able to see our hands in front of our faces.
-Tim ended up using a water bottle to keep the brights propped on.
-Dinner was a fish and chips place, I had to scrape off some garlic aoli, beetroot, carrot, and onion off my burger. Who puts that stuff on a burger?
-We had a super hard time finding a hotel, but finally we settled on a sketchville place in Mount Maunganui. I nearly froze to death.

April 11: We gained a car.

2010-04-27T03:06:00.000-07:00

Sunday, April 11, 2010
We watched this little kids show about Rugby for awhile, and then SkyNews was really the best option. Tim left to go get the car while I sat in the room (though I was willing to go down to the lobby to make it easier) with all of the luggage. We had some trouble figuring out how to get the luggage in the car since there was some weird sloping in the trunk. We ended up with two in the trunk and two in the back seat with one of the blue back packs, the orange bag, and the information bag. The city was so weird sitting on the left hand side of the car and not driving. It wasn’t the left line driving, or the driver on the right, it was that I was NOT the one driving on the left.
Auckland doesn’t seem to have suburbs to the north. It was city, and then country. A lot of fruit and bread stands everywhere. It was only 15 minutes to the Bee Center, the GPS was by far one of our best purchases for the trip. Took us right there. The store was really just a corner of the café, but we looked at it a bit, sampled a tiny bit of honey, and then wandered through the café until we found the menu outside. We had planned on eating breakfast there, but there was no breakfast food. Which was weird. How are you a Honey place that doesn’t feature honey at your café? No breakfast or honey foods.
On our way up to Waitangi, it took us through the side roads, so it was pretty solidly country. The country side was absolutely crazy. It had flat fields like Iowa, but huge rolling hills and mountains like Colorado, but then lots of trees and ferns and palm-ish trees, so it felt like we were in a jungle at times. I watched the roads for quite awhile, trying to help Tim with some of the iffy parts. But the terrain was just so weird, you could never put your finger on what it was like. To one side would be mountain, and the other side a flat plain. And then every once in awhile was ocean, BRIGHT blue or aquamarine ocean. So awesome. One can only take so many pictures of the country side, so after I awile I just had to stop.
After awhile, the GPS started us down a gravel road. LONG LONG story short, we now have to check the GPS anywhere we go. We probably added over an hour to our drive towards Waitangi. It was beyond ridiculous. The gravel roads were well done, but they wove up and down the mountainside and probably turned all the way the other direction every 50 feet or so, and it was constant side to side jerking, plus the vibration of the gravel, and Tim’s need to constantly shift between gears up and down the mountain, I was getting seriously ill. I couldn’t do anthing besides focus on my stomach not churning. Up and down and up and down and back and forth. It was miserable. And the gravel never ended. We lost a lot of time having to go 15mph. Especially since the lanes were only really big enough for a car and a half. And to one side was always a drop off. It was constant need to watch and be aware of coming cars. And there were none. For an hour. It was ridiculous. The amount of time we were wasting on a miserable road, Tim was beyond pissed. AND she did the exact same thing, trying to take us on a gravel road, for 12 miles. We stupidly listened, took half an hour, and now we shall never do that again.
We finally got to the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, and almost knew instantly that it was a mistake. We both thought that this was the biggest Maori attraction and that this would be where we got all our Maori experience in. Clearly not. We even debated whether or not we should pay the $40 to go in. Up past the giant flag pole where the Treaty was actually signed, and into the Treaty House. We weren’t really sure what the house was for. Like, that was where the meeting was and things, but the overall presentation of the house was super scattered and not very well done. But really, it seems to be that the Kiwis act the same about the Treaty as we do about Thanksgiving. We celebrate it full tilt, but in reality, it is us stealing an entire culture away from the Native People. We finished up the Treaty house and then wandered over to the Maori house of sorts, just a really big room with ornate carvings on both the walls and ceilings. Pretty cool, we had to take our shoes off before we entered. That was really the only worthwhile part of the Treaty Grounds. Still having not eaten an actual meal of the day by 6pm, we inhaled a good portion of pretzels that we still had.
We got as far as Whangarei and it was almost too dark to go, but we had seen signs for Whangarei Falls which is the most photographed waterfall in all of New Zealand. We had to search a little bit to find it, but we did, so we made the trek down. By the time we got down there, it was pretty dark, but we could still see it. Didn’t spend too much time down there, there were some locals and we got the impression that it was a place that high school kids and locals went and got drunk. Back in the town, for the most part, the town was completely dark. No signs were lit, no street lights, very few house lights. It was really eery. Almost like there was no one there and the town had literally been abandoned. We found the Bella Vista, with free internet, and got a room. It was absolutely fantastic. It was brand new and super super clean. Small, but who cares? It had a fridge and a microwave and a pretty bathroom. It was a bit cold, but the heater helped. We even got a baby carton of trim milk for our coffee in the morning. AND prepackaged cookies in the room. Two little packets of two baby cookies. But they were delicious considering how starving we were. We debated on delivery from Hell Pizza versus Takeout for way longer than we should have. They were small-ish, 4 small pieces each, and yet, I ate the whole thing, and could have eaten more. It wasn’t really anything special, we were just so hungry that anything would have been delicious.

Day 3: Devonport (Stars Hollow of New Zealand)

2010-04-26T02:04:00.000-07:00

Saturday, April 10, 2010.
Nine hours of sleep later, 9:15 to 6:15, I have some time to kill. We decided on Devonport today, mainly because we aren’t exactly sure how we could get around Waiheke, or even what there is to do close to the pier. But in our book, Devonport has a three-hour walk mapped out for us, so we figured why not? My calves are dying though, it’s for sure. All of these hills, been wearing my blue shoes, I don’t know how these women do it in their 5 inch heels. Like seriously. I struggle in flats.
Tim was somewhat forced awake around 8, by my moving around and making coffee and such. We got out of the hotel around 8:45 and walked down Hobsen Street instead of our normal route towards the Pier. On the way, we saw an Irish Pub that we decided that we were going to have dinner at. Tim bought a Feijoa (later we learned, pineapple guava) and apple juice at the Ferry terminal. Tart, but tasty. The ride only did take 15 minutes, but it was so beautiful and gorgeous, I wish it had lasted longer. We got off the ferry and started walking down the street in hopes of finding a café, and found a Esquires coffee, went in and got Americanos (had trouble with the milk and sweetener part, but they were super nice and got us our trim milk).
It was a really nice route, perfect sunny day. We saw this awesome dog playing in the water, it almost refused to get out when called. On the way to the mount, we found this super cute grey kitty that came straight to me and wanted cuddles. It was awesome. But then it was starting the trek up to North Head. It was absolutely breath taking the view up there. It was a super steep hill (go figure, in New Zealand, no way!) but we made it to the top. We sat on the hill for a while and never wanted to leave. There were some things up there still from the military fort that we explored. The sight of the city and the ocean all at once was just ridiculous. I could be there all day. It took us a little longer to get to the base of the next Mount. Mount Victoria. It was a lot higher than the other one and our feet were starting to hurt a bit, so we skipped it and headed back down Church Street to Victoria Street where the shops were. Little further down the street was a bunch of cute cafes, so we picked one, Sierra Coffee. Tim had a pesto, egg, cheese, and bacon Panini that was to die for. The sauce and the bread were delicious, while we stopped in a pet shop too that had little kittens for sale. All pets look so happy here, it’s nice to see. Devonport was just a happy chill place. Everyone was leisurely and happy and relaxed and nice. It’s so strange that you can see Auckland across the water and yet they were too completely different in style.
After our sandwiches we headed towards the Navy Museum, but we saw a supermarket on the way! It was the most exciting thing. We went in, and found that the produce didn’t even look very good. I thought it was super expensive at first, but we ended up getting 3 braeburn apples for approx 80us cents. Good enough for me! But we did end up buying American oranges, because the others just looked bleh. So we got that fruit, zip lock baggies, sugar free jelly!!! And then a box of Milo duo and some other fig cereal. I need to make a calorie chart because this whole kJ thing is messing with my head big time and its super annoying. That, and all of the measurements are in grams. Also obnoxious.
By the time we made it out of the grocery store we had 10 minutes to haul it back to the dock to make the 2:15 ferry. There was another at 2:45, but I didn’t really want to sit for half an hour if we could help it. We jogged as fast as we could with the amount of people on the sidewalks and our bags, I didn’t think we would make it. We didn’t launch off until probably 2:25 or so, so we lucked out. Back to the hotel we went, with our load of awesome groceries. We put out all of the travel brochures that we had acquired, and the travel book that I had circled things in, and split things up between the north island and the south island and decided to conquer all of the things we wanted to do in the north island so we could get a better idea of what to do with our three days with the car outside of Auckland. It took us a really long time, especially since Tim hadn’t really done much research of touristy stuff, so he had to learn what all the stuff was first.
Got to the muddy Farmer (Irish place) and we walked in and it was pretty bare. But the décor was awesome, the music was sweet, we were instantly at ease with it. But we didn’t know if we sit on our own or get seated. So we just stood there like idiots for quite a few minutes. The bar girl totally ignored us. I tried to catch eye contact, and nothing. It was really quite annoying. Finally I went up and asked a different new bar girl, we were to sit anywhere, asked if we wanted menus, and then said we go up to the bar to order. Weird. We headed to a Starbucks like coffee shop (Esquires) for a dessert beverage while we made use of their free hour wireless. While we were there, an American family came in, and was just so stupid and ignorant. I really hope that we don’t act that way. They were also loud. They kept complaining that the internet wouldn’t load and kept asking us if ours worked and were just super rude. While Tim was looking at his email, I went over and looked over the juices and found a fizzy lemonade that was 40 calories (thank god for real labeling) so I bought it and when I was paying, the nice Asian worker asked how our internet was and said that he had checked the back and he had no idea why theirs wasn’t working. I told him ours was fine. The fizzy lemon drink was FANTASTIC. It was like a bubbly version of a melted lemon icy. Totally dug it. We finished up the rest of the 60 minutes, and headed back to the hotel. Our first goal was to get a load of laundry started. Seeing as though the hotel had washers/dryers for 3bucks, while the place half a block down was 6bucks a load, AND we didn’t know the next time we could so easily access them, we washed everything we had that had been worn. One of the eight channels on our tv seems to show all American movies, so we had Night at the Museum on in the background as we reorganized our suitcases for more convenient travel. Tim’s took awhile too, but he had his own system of packing. I turned on Rugby to wait to journal, and within minutes I knew I would never make it, so I just went to sleep. But it was later, much later than any other, at 11:15pm. We win!

Day 2: Auckland

2010-04-25T04:53:00.000-07:00

Friday, April 9, 2010.
Slept for a solid 11 hours. It was amazing. We both woke up at 7:30 refreshed and feeling good. I was happy about this because I think that means that we are going to be pretty settled in time wise from here on out. 7 hours time difference, handled! It took us forever to figure out the lights the night before, because you have to put your key in a slot next to the door in order for your lights to turn on, and to use the switches, you have to flick a switch next to the plug in. Very interesting, and hopefully we get it figured out easier eventually. We left the room around 9, and found the War Museum that was Tim’s number one on the list.

We kept walking and walking and walking, we weren’t lost, but there were plenty of points where we had no idea where we were headed, but we finally got to where there were signs and we made it to the park. Up the longest, and steepest hill ever. Longer and just as steep as the one to our hotel yesterday. But the path was absolutely gorgeous, lined with super unique trees and green grass. Beautiful. Top of the hill, and across a park was the great big war memorial. Very picturesque. Lots of Maori things, pretty much the entire history of everything New Zealand. Tim really liked the World War II exhibits. And penguins.

We headed back down the pretty hill and started walking towards the bank for our 2:30 meeting since it seemed like a long ways away. We had gotten the GPS working by then, so we at least had that to tell us how to get there. We arrived around 1, so we had a lot of time to kill we had planned on wandering the area while we waited, but there was really nothing there, so we went in and asked if we could have our meeting early. The bank lady came, we signed the forms, picked our account, and got our cards. After 45 minutes of slow itouch internet at the attached cafe, we started walking towards the transit place to see if we could use a payphone to order the haunted walk tickets. No luck, but we found a bunch of transit maps and decided that tomorrow we had nothing to do and we really wanted to get out of Auckland. Not that there is anything wrong with Auckland, we were both just bored of it already to be honest. It sounds awful, but there really isn’t that much to do here. Museum wise or other wise. And walking anywhere takes a really long time and is a hassle. So we were both excited at our decision not to live here.

We saw this awesome gelateria and just couldn’t pass it up since it had been a few hours since our light brunch. We shared a double scoop of Italian cookies and cream, which was awesome, and the NZ favorite, Hokey Pokey, which became our favorite too. They also had mango and grapefruit, which would have been awesome. We walked back up Queen Street to double check the Aotea place and the Victoria Market. We even bought a loaf of gorgeous ciabatta from the place we saw last night for dinner tonight. Aotea still was nowhere to be found, and then we walked a long, long LONG way to the Victoria Market, finally found it, and it was a huge huge piece of trash. It was old creepy people selling their crap. But there was a really pretty park across the way that was having some sort of production going on, so Tim looked for grocery stores on the GPS while I watched the shoot from a bench over looking the big soccer field. There were no grocery stores in under a mile away, and our feet were hurting already. We looked in every convenience store between Victoria Park and the hotel. All of them were small, gross, and Asian. Most had gross looking produce. After many failed mini marts and the nasty smelling Asian super store, we went up to the hotel. We had picked up a brochure at the airport and found two decent looking restaurants close by the hotel.

One was Elliot Stables, which was very cool. It’s a U shape of very small food stalls, but the stalls were big enough to have a few tables in chairs in them, with menus at the door, and then tables inside the U. So you picked a table, and then went to the different stalls to order. After much debate, we picked DeNiro, and yes, it had his face on it. I picked the DeNiro salad. Tim got the white wine risotto. The waitress kept asking what we wanted to drink, so finally Tim got wine. After a very disappointing meal, we went a few doors down and ate at a Creperie with this super charming French man as our waiter. He convinced me to add ice cream to my caramelized apple and cinnamon crepe, and Tim got the honey, banana, and almonds crepe. They were delicious. A perfect end to the lack of a meal. And the charm of the guy was adorable. One thing we have learned at all the restaurants though, they don’t come back and check you after you got your food, until you are done, and they ask if you want dessert, and if you say no, they walk away and never come back. You have to ASK them for the check. Which is really weird and annoying, but I guess we will just have to get used to it.

When three become one....

2010-04-24T04:22:00.000-07:00

Ok, so, I feel like my lack of internet has totally made this suffer. So I thought maybe I would give you some abbreivated journals. This first one will be the longest (I swear) since it really encompasses three days....

Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday, April 6/7/8, 2010.
Somehow I managed to drag myself out of bed at 6:45 in order to get a five-mile run and a shower in this morning before we left. I thought it would make me feel better in the long run, and I think that it probably did. Left after a hard goodbye to the cats, we were lucky that they were their normal morning selves and not extra snuggly, as that would have ended in me crying a lot harder. I figured the drive would be the worst part of the trip, but between the four of us and the conversation, it wasn’t actually too bad. Pulled into Minneapolis and ended up eating at Don Pablo’s, Tim had made a comment about the lack of Mexican food in New Zealand, so it was figured that we should have Mexican food.
Finally we headed to the airport. We got checked in (they needed our visas, which was obnoxious, because regular tourists didn’t need them) and waited outside security for a bit. Mom took pictures, the inevitable was avoided. But finally we hugged our good byes. Somehow the “See you next week” helped. Mom managed to not cry until we were in line for security. We walked around the shopping center portion of the airport for a while, just trying to kill time, but with the weight and bulk of our giant backpacking backpacks and drawstring bags, we couldn’t meander too much. Got to the gate, and the fact that we had a solid 24 hours of travel ahead of us finally hit. The misery that was to be experienced was just like, uh… what? It’s clearly not hit either one of us yet. We have no idea what we are doing and what compelled us to do so. Everyone else seems more excited for us than we are (minus Dad). But I think the misery of the travel is weighing heavier on us right now than the idea of being in New Zealand. The first half hour, at least of the flight was super rough. Uncomfortably so. Our seatmate started to get chatty, then calmed down until landing. It was turbulent various times, but never as bad as that first part.
Landed. Got slightly confused and frustrated when trying to find the proper terminal for our big flight. Found our gate, disappointed that there was no real food or shopping here since we had three hours til take off, which means at least two til boarding. We got changed into comfy flywear soon after our $8 Starbucks snack and got ready to board the plane. Walking onto the flight was ridiculous, mood lighting, all of the staff was super cute and peppy. The in flight entertainment started as soon as safety instructions were over, which was so nice and different than other flights. Over 50 movies to choose from, 50+shows, music, games, interseat chatting. I want to fly V Australia everywhere. Each seat had a blanket, pillow, eye mask, earplugs, and headphones, and they later passed out water bottles that could be refilled at filling stations on the plane. There was also a snack bar further back. Tim and I picked Avatar to watch first (despite my huge battle to never see it). They turned the lights down from the calm sunset lighting to the nighttime blue lighting. It was super uncomfortable and restless for the first 2.5 hours, but then the teenager said he was moving to the back of the plane, so Tim moved to the window and I got to lay out and sleep on two seats for three hours. Right before breakfast, the mood lighting came back up to sunrise esque.
Landing was pretty sweet, getting to see Australia for the first time. We didn’t think we had to go through security again though, so when we learned we did, we got a little more worried with the time crunch that we already had. And annoyed since we had to chuck a full bottle of purchased water. Sydney airport was super hot and humid. We finally got in line to board and when we got up there I got through, but Tim got pulled aside .It turned out that Tim’s visa application had the wrong birth date so something got weird and it just needed to be fixed. We got it straighted out and got onto our Emirates flight. The double decker plane. Definitely a different vibe in this plane. Quite older and more ghetto. Also, having come from Dubai, it definitely had a different culture. There were the women not just in the burkas, but totally veiled, which is very strange to me. All of the plane instructions were in Arabic first, as well as the reading materials. Just got a strange vibe overall. We didn’t take off until 45 minutes after scheduled take off time due to a long wait on the tarmac, but it seemed to be ok, because there was the individual entertainment again. Including movies not yet released in the US. An interesting feature is the three different camera views that you can watch as you fly. Underneath the plane, pilot view, and from the tail. Overall, the flight was the smoothest of them all, despite being a double decker plane. So after 35 hours of travel, we were finally in New Zealand. Even from out the windows it was clear that it just looked different, you couldn’t pin point it very well, but there was something about it.
We got to customs, up to the first checkpoint, and there again, because of the weird birthday, there was trouble. It was hard to hear her, but finally we figured out what she was saying and we had to go sit and wait on a bench while they double-checked and we were okayed. Made it through customs and found the bus relatively easy. The driver was a maniac, and super fast, I thought we were going to have made it 25 hours of travel, ad then die on the bus ride to the hotel. The bus finally got to the CBD, which was a lot like Boston’s Financial District, and Tim picked one of two spots that we could get off. Only, once we got off and started in the direction, it was up the longest, most steep hill I have ever seen. I need to remember to get a picture of it, because hauling 70 pounds of luggage, or giant packbacks and then our mini packs up it, not really knowing how far we had left was miserable. But finally we turned at the top of the hill and went straight for another few blocks and made it to the hotel, and was very pleased. Queen bed, TV, couch, mini kitchenette with sink, stove top, mini fridge, toaster, and microwave. Good enough!
We wandered the direction of town, after we had gone back up to the room for our jackets (once the incredibly intense sun goes down, it gets chilly quick). We went into a mall-ish area and found this AMAZING store. Everyone here dresses exactly how we would want to dress if we could find the clothes. This store was like hitting the jackpot. Same with shoes. Everyone’s shoes here are phenomenal. Girls, boys, its sweet. We both have a feeling we are going to end up buying way more clothes than we should here, and shoes. Moving along, we found a store exactly like Foster’s in Philly, so that was cool. Saw a LOT of Subways. AND a Pita Pit, which was almost disturbing. Wandered around looking at different stores. It seems that it is all little food kiosks, fashion stores, and weird convenience stores with a few businesses and banks intermixed.
It was only 5:30, but we were starving. The place we picked was called Invito. The service was interesting. They just didn’t seem to pay attention, like we were supposed to ask for everything. We were seated outside, and there were heaters, it was fine at first, but near the end of the meal I was getting really cold in my jacket and jeans, despite having worn the same thing only hours before and been sweltering. I ordered the Greek Lamb Salad, and almost instantly regretted it when Tim ordered Lamb pizza, because I had wanted pizza, but wanted to stay healthier. We waited for quite awhile before our food came. But when it did, it was delicious, my salad was really good, including the lamb, and I snagged a bit of Tim’s equally as delicious pizza. But waiting for the bill, we waited and waited, and waited. Finally we asked for it and she seemed surprised. Our goal was to stay up til 10, but we could see that that was unlikely. My body was still hungry, and at home it was around 2 in the morning, so I think it was just super confused. Back up the hill, made it to the hotel and switched on the TV. About 10 channels. None of them interesting most of the time, but because a few were New Zealand based, we were enthralled for a while before Tim started falling asleep. Although, New Zealand commercials are quite fantastic. So we said forget the organizing and picking the next days events, we just went to sleep. At 8:30. Assuming we would be up at an ungodly hour and could do all those things then. The bed was soft, and I am pretty sure I was asleep in less than 60 seconds.

My bed glows blue.

2010-04-16T07:01:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I meant to post a decent post tonight, since we are about to embark on a two week, sleep in a van, eat in a van, breathe van, adventure. I am sure we will get internet at some point, but don't know for how long or actually when the next post will be able to be. Thus the desire for a glorious post tonight, but that didn't happen, and I blame the hotel. It is amazing. Beyond amazing. Our room has free wireless, its like a spaceship, the bathroom is an opaque pod, and you can shower in 5 different colors of lights, there is a wall remote for the 10+ light features, the bottom of the bed glows blue...AND THERE IS A GYM. Not just any gym, but a huge glorious gym and sauna. Needless to say, thats where I spent my evening as Tim did laundry in the hotel sweet laundry room that even provided the soap!

But today was pretty different than the other days so far. We were up at 5:45 in order to make it to our 8am ferry across the sound from the North Island to the South Island, and then 5.5 hours on the ghetto train to Christchurch where we pick up our van tomorrow. I totally dig Christchurch though. Its what i thought Wellington was going to be. Love it. Boston, Denver, and a little bit of something new all rolled into one. Hint of Amsterdam. We ate at Poppy Thai for dinner. I could have eaten that dinner all week. I cleaned my plate, and for those that know me...thats unheard of, unless its dessert....it was awesome. And then top that of with a great hour and a half in the gym. Dig. Now its 2:10am and I hope I can drag my butt back down there before we take off tomorrow.

These pictures were take two days ago (I think two...) at Castlepoint Lighthouse. An hour totally in the wrong direction, but when you see the other pictures, you will understand that it was totally the right move.

Now for some trivia of the day:

You don't say red pepper or green pepper here. Its all called Capsicum.

Maori pronounce "wh" like an f.

Kiwi plants can grow 6 inches on a hot day.

Kiwi plants are either male or female.

Breakfast Marmelade is lemony orange jelly.

Filtered coffee, = real coffee.

Fresh = not toasted sandwich (mainly from Subway on our budget)

Cathedral Coves

2010-04-15T03:11:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, we arrived really late, but were of the last few to make the trek down to Cathedral Coves for the day.
By the time we got back to the car after hiking in the bush, it was pitch black, but as you might be able to tell, it was worth it.....

Flying Away on the Spaceship!!

2010-04-14T13:02:00.000-07:00

Change of original plan. I shall be sleeping this for the next two weeks:

Hello back pain and cold sandwiches!!! Click the link to actually see the company, its actually a really sweet deal and will probably save us several hundred, if not more than that, dollars.

We are going to the Weta Workshop (click link to see) and I am pretty excited about that. And the zoo, and the Te Papa (YAY for being open til 9 on Thursdays!!)

Ask away!

2010-04-13T04:34:00.000-07:00

As I am totally exhausted and cannot form proper sentences, I propose this to you, ask us anything about our trip so far, or anything related, New Zealand, why we are crazily doing this, anything!

Proper posts to come when I have slept and have better internet.

Randoms:

-Hotels here give you a milk carton when you check in. For your coffee in the morning. The U.S. should adopt this.

-Hotels also seem to be closed by 9pm. The U.S. should NOT adopt that part.

-Mead is honey wine. The term "honeymoon" comes from men drinking mead for the first month of marriage to promote male offspring. Bet you didn't know that!

http://www.formspring.me/clarenordyke

Bits and pieces.

2010-04-11T05:45:00.000-07:00

(Us on North Head)

Things we have learned so far:

-You have to ask for your check at meals, or you will sit there for hours.

-Feijoa is pineapple guava.

-Hokey Pokey is delicious. So is lamb pizza.

-Apparently we have an affinity to eating at Irish Pubs in foreign countries.

-Kiwis treat the Treaty of Waitangi like we treat Thanksgiving. It was an awful thing we did to the native culture, but we celebrate it anyway.

-Pita Pit is everywhere. And Subways are like Starbucks in the US. There is one on every corner.

-Milo is the best cereal on the face of the planet.

-The sun here is far more intense than anwhere in the states.

-Barefoot in gas stations = totally normal.

-North Head is the most beautiful mount I have ever seen.

-20 celsius is about 68 fahrenheit. Aka awesome.

-Grocery stores in the Auckland CBD are non-existant.

-I was born in the wrong country fashion wise. It brings out a creepy shoe desire in me.

The Maori part of the Waitangi Treaty Grounds. And us being giant goofballs.

That's all I have for now. I have a million pictures and a million things to say, but this is my first online-ing ability and its 1am. So when its regular, I promise there shall be more!

there. here. both.

2010-04-08T19:10:00.000-07:00

Alive in Auckland. 35 hours of travel BLOWS.

36 hours.

2010-04-04T11:31:00.000-07:00

24 hours later...my suitcase situation has barely changed. I just can't bring myself to put the stuff in it. I have the list. I have stuff gathered. Just go in! However, this whole shoe saga....I need a suitcase for shoes. (Never thought I would be one to say that)

I am the ultimate list maker. And including my wedding, I have never loathed looking at list more than I do right now....

Edit: Packing is a nightmare. My suitcases weigh 84. I have to cut down to 70. And that's just GOING. Coming back after a few months....screwed.

FYI.

2010-04-02T20:51:00.001-07:00

PS. If you haven't picked up on it yet. Here's the quick synopsis.

-We are moving to New Zealand on Tuesday.
-We have no jobs.
-We have no place to live.
-We have holiday working visas.
-This means we can be there for 12 months.
-Here is where you can catch up on our lovely antics and photos.

Questions?

T Minus the weekend...

2010-04-02T20:38:00.000-07:00

We leave in four days. I have a list of things to do for every day taped to the wall. And at the end of every day as I cross off the day, and add all of the undone things to the next day.

Needless to say, the stress is building up. The nerves are too. Somewhat. It's like I am super excited to be there, I am not nervous at all about being in New Zealand, without a job, without a place to live, not knowing what the next day brings. I have zero problem with this. What does worry me, is that I won't be here at the same time. I can't take care of my house, I cant hang out with my family, and especially, the loves of my life, the kitties. Myla has been acting weird since we got back from spring break, and I have no idea how this will affect her. They have each other, and Chris will be here.

Thats another thing, who knows how long that will last. He is a homebody, and even if this is his home, I worry about how much time he will spend here, and how well he will actually take care of it. I will come back and find 3 month old dishes, the bathroom hasnt been cleaned once, and the sheets are beyond repair. Or he will leave a door or a window open and Olivia the Escapist is gone. Or that he will leave something out and they will get sick. See? This is why I can handle the unknown country of kiwis, but the fear of leaving here is MUCH worse.

I won't even get into the sheer terror of watching my bank account drop this low...thats a heart attack waiting to happen!

But anyways, I have a list to get to, and things to fret, but sometime soon, more excitement will kick in. I am sure of it!

Gonna Fly By...

2010-03-07T19:05:00.000-08:00

30 days to go...blog is up.