From northland on down..

New Photos from the desk of Tenny!! Get em while they're hot:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22304779@N00/sets/72157621580710174/

Windy Welly

It is with great sadness that I must announce that I have nothing really insightful to say at the moment. Not to say we haven't been up to much, because we've actually been doing a lot (Tenny is working on a new batch of pictures as I type), it's just that we've succumbed to the banality of city life for a couple of weeks while we figure out the master plan. Tens and I are chillin' in chilly Wellington, enjoying the incredible hospitality of her cousins Georgette and Emily, and getting caught up on all the boring stuff like getting our resumes ready for job hunting.

Actually the most interesting thing to happen in the last few days has been what didn't happen, to us at least. We had talked about going for a hike in the mountains to the north of Wellington, but changed our minds when we found out that the head of the national museum in Wellington died of hypothermia along the track.

http://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/65670/te-papa-ceo-died-hypothermia

I think the two of them were far higher and further than we had planned to go, but it's a healthy reminder that it's still winter and we're probably better off sitting by the heater watching Harry Potter. The strange thing is that I think they probably died the day we were vising the national museum, which is quite an impressive museum. Looks like we'll have to live vicariously through others, like our friend Jed, who just scaled Mt. Adams outside of Portland. It looks like he's excited, but he could also be trying to scare off a yeti.



So for the time being we'll stick to the lowlands, which is what we were doing in Napier/Hastings before we ventured down to Wellington. And I hate to admit it lest I be branded a yuppy, but we had a really good time at the wineries swishing the free samples of the reserve collections and pretending like we could taste apricots and oak (well, I was pretending at least, Tenny has a much more refined palate and can actually distinguish these things). Ahhh, who am I kidding.. anybody who uses the word 'lest' in a sentence deserves to be ridiculed. I'm not afraid to admit that I could get really used to having expensive glasses of wine poured for free, in fact Tens and I are already plotting a trip to the Okanagan to check out the local wineries back home. And if anyone is planning on buying New Zealand wine in the near future I can certainly attest to the fact that 2007 was a good year.

GOTCHA!!!!

Well after the rains finally ceased we got some really beautiful camping in on the northern most part of New Zealand at Cape Reinga and 90 Mile Beach before heading down the west coast for a truly EXTREME New Zealand experience. We camped at a small national park called the Trounson Kauri Park, which apparently due to the fact that it is entirely surrounded by pasture land has helped to keep pests out and increase the population of north island brown kiwi. So we set up our tents, cooked a hearty meal, covered our headlamps with red foil to dull our lights, and headed out into the bush an hour after sunset to see if we could find a wild kiwi.

We knew there must be some in the forest because we could hear a couple calling to each other as we were cooking, and sure enough after only 13 minutes of wandering the trails we found our superstar..


Amazingly this little guy wasn't even afraid of us, and walked right through our path about 5 feet away. At that point we figured it was easy peasy to track them down, but after another 2 hours in the bush the only other sighting we had was a beak poking out from around a tree. It's a shame that the picture doesn't show his beak actually, because it is definitely the most impressive part of the kiwi. It really is quite a miracle that any of these birds survive at all, considering that they seem pretty oblivious of anything that could kill them, and apparently they don't really rear their young at all, just turn them loose shortly after birth. But hey.. it leads to good times and after a really fun kiwi hunt we're not complaining.

football is football is football

After finishing up our two week stint on our second farm, puriri flat, we headed north in search of good views and warm enough weather for a little bit of camping. The first stop was a little town on the Bay of Islands named Russell, where we very unceremoniously got completely rained out..

So we took the opportunity to brush up on some of the finer aspects of New Zealand culture, by going to the bar and watching rugby for hours and hours. I don't think either of us really knows the rules of the game quite yet, but we do know that this guy stole Tenny's hair:

As we watched the southern hemisphere's version of the beautiful game we were also soothed to the easy listening sounds of 'Plan B' - http://www.myspace.com/planbduo (their musical skills are thankfully better than their web design skills) who played a variety of cover songs to a faithful fanbase of us and one other lady at the bar. They were really nice though, and didn't get too jealous when we payed more attention to the rugby than them.

After careful analysis I've also discovered the secret of the game, and contrary to popular theories involving 'skill' or 'fitness', I've determined that the class of a rugby team is entirely dependent on the name of its captain. Strange that England won the Rugby World Cup back in 2003? Not if you consider that their captain's name was 'Jonny Wilkinson', or that the 2007 winners South Africa had a captain named 'Paul Roos'. You'd think this would give New Zealand a good chance of winning in 2011 with a captain named 'Mils Miliaina', but I'm afraid my pick has to go to the Aussies, behind... Stirling Mortlock Anyone care to place a wager?

And the winner is...

Drum roll please.............. My brother Andrew, big shocker. Andrew correctly identified the splayed body as that of a beaked whale, and his pick is backed up by a recent report from May in New South Wales that confirms that beaked whales do come ashore once every blue moon.

In other whale news Tens and i spotted our first living whale (a boring run of the mill Orca) yesterday on what turned out to be an 8 hour fishing expedition from dawn to dusk. We were only supposed to go out until 2 pm but we didn't actually find a good spot until the end of the day when all sorts of stuff started flying into our boat, including an eel and a crazy little fish called a 'leather jacket' which croaked at us angrily when we pulled it up. Pictures will follow shortly, which reminds me I forgot to post the 2nd round of shots Tenny has meticulously logged on Flikr. If you haven't seen them already they can be found here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22304779@N00/sets/72157619491529149/

Hot Water Beached

We've said adieu to the Corromandel Peninsula, where we can now pretty much call ourselves local experts after spending three weeks, and have landed north of Auckland on an olive oil/vinegar farm called Pururi Flat. On the way out of town we stopped by Cathedral Cove and the Hot Water Beach, which is one of New Zealand's big tourist draws. On a lovely day you can dig a hole in the sand and bask in natural pools of hot water while looking over the shimmering ocean. Or on the crappiest day of the year however, when we visisted, you can look like an idiot trying to dig a hole which gets covered up immediately by the incoming storm surge. Let's say hypothetically you did decide you wanted to be that idiot, well then you'd look a little like this:



And let's say, again hypothetically speaking, that you tried to go around the rocks to find a more secluded portion of the beach away from the waves, and you had as much luck as we had that day, well then you'd probably find something like this:

Our host here believes that the poor belated soul was a pilot whale, but after looking at some pictures I don't think it is. The elongated snout would suggest a dolphin more that a whale, but I looked up what the largest dolphin was and apparently the internet is claiming that a killer whale is actually a dolphin. So now I am thoroughly confused..

A thousand gold pieces to the person who identifies this carcass!*

*depending on the availablilty of gold pieces successful entrants may receive a postcard

Seriously Bizarre

We picked up our new wheels while we were in Auckland, and are proud to introduce the newest member of our family:

Princess Silver Fern

She is a 1996 Subaru Legacy Brighton, with some sweet hatchback space and dual left hand driving side action. Within our first week we took her up into the mountains on the Coromandel Peninsula, where we did the Pinnacles Hike in the Kauaeranga Valley (Tens will have some photos up on Flickr shortly). And it was on her first night camping that New Zealand proved it isn't always as warm as it is cut out to be, with this being the scene in the morning after a long cold night:



Geniuses that we are we decided to test her by leaving a light on all night, and she passed the test by driving for another week before the battery completely died on us (Atta girl!!). Next test is to run her without oil (not even valvoline) in the desert for 5 days and see if the engine survives. If she passes that test then maybe, just maybe, we'll start taking care of her.

In other news Tenny and I were in deep discussion while planting some trees at our first wwoofing farm, named Tihanna, after something that I didn't understand (you get used to that after 2 weeks of Maori names all over the place), and began to ponder one of the great questions of New Zealand culture: what is the most famous band ever to come out of NZ???

Well I responded quickly that it must be Silverchair, to which Tenny replied that Silverchair was from Australia, and we proceeded to spend the next 10 minutes trying to get that damn 'wait till tomorroooooow' song stuck out of our head. And so the question was left unanswered, but some quick research reveals shocking results! Pretty much the opposite from Canada, where google reveals a whole bunch of artists that you never knew were Canadian, I was floored to find that there are almost no notable bands from New Zealand. Not even debatably notable punk bands, or opera singers, it's just a wasteland. There are only two musicians of note, the first being the person who wrote the music for the Rocky Horror Picture Show (mildly bizarre..), and the second being the New Zealand artist responsible for the greatest selling single of all time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfJe8hQ8ha0

Wanna know the rest hey... buy the rights!