a blog about the cultural experiences my husband and I have because of our work abroad...what's delightful and beautiful about different countries and cultures...what we have learned from living and working in countries other than our home country...and how those experiences have changed us

Friday, July 5, 2013

New Zealand: rest and relaxation down under

Living "in the field" can be a little rough. Fortunately there are some benefits. MTI provides extra PTO to employees after two years living and working in the field. (Can you believe it? We have lived in Cambodia for two years now!) Stephen and I decided to use the extra time off to finally make our dream trip to New Zealand a reality! (The timing couldn't have been better!)
We started off our tour of the whole country in the largest city. Auckland is a harbor city at the top of the North Island. On our first morning we walked along the harbor front and then took a ferry ride to Devonport Island. The sunlight was super bright. We bought new sunglasses but even with those I had to squint. The air is so clean and clear that nothing blocks the light, no air pollution or high humidity.
We arrived on Devonport Island just at 3pm and found that the coffee shop we wanted to sit down at, have a cup of coffee and enjoy the view, was closing.
Fortunately they were willing to make us coffees to go. Businesses in New Zealand aren't open at all hours of the day and night like other places we are used to like Phnom Penh and Singapore.
Our hotel in Auckland was The Shakespeare, a pub downstairs with rooms upstairs similar to the McMenamins in Oregon and Washington in the US. Stephen tried some of the local ales on "draught"; I discovered New Zealand hard cider and love it.
It tastes so much like fresh crisp apples. And since I'm now allergic to raw apples this was a refreshing treat.
Auckland is a hilly city and some of the streets are a bit steep. So any walk was a pretty good workout. We walked through the park near the University of Auckland to the free museum one of the days and to the top of Mt. Eden on a different day.
The main reason for taking the hike up to Mt. Eden was for the amazing views of the city and both the east and west coasts. It just so happened, though, that the day we decided to take the multi-hour hike was the only day it rained nearly nonstop. So when we did get to the top, the clouds and haze blocked all the views. We enjoyed ourselves anyway, despite getting completely soaked.
From Auckland we rented a car and drove to Rotorua. In the Maori language "roto" means "lake" and "rua" means "two". Lake Rotorua was the second lake discovered by the Maori chief who first explored the area.
It was in Rotorua that Stephen and I went to a traditional Maori cultural performance and dinner. The Maori are the native people group of New Zealand and are Polynesian people similar to Hawaiians.
For our dinner (which was a feast!) the meat and some of the vegetables were steamed in a covered pit in the ground.
Also in the same region as Rotorua was the movie set for Hobbiton in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films.
Stephen and I are big Lord of the Rings fans so taking a tour was high on our priority list. And we were not disappointed.
The movie set is located on an operating sheep farm way out in the countryside where there are no power lines or other such modern signs of human presence.
When Peter Jackson, the director of The Lord of the Rings, found the site he was amazed by just how perfect it was and how little work they had to do to erase modern civilization and create Hobbiton out of the landscape.
Being on a movie set brought out the actor in Stephen! :)
From Rotorua we drove through the middle of the island to the coastal town of Napier. The water and black sand of the coast were so beautiful I just kept taking picture after picture trying to capture it accurately.
Stephen waited patiently for me. :)
Napier is in the "Hawkes Bay" region which is one of the many wine regions. We took a wine tour on bicycles. :)
New Zealand specializes in white wines but in the Hawkes Bay wineries the Syrahs (red wine) taste of black pepper. All the wines we tasted during our trip had unique distinctive flavors. And a couple ranked as our all time favorites.
There are several bike rental places in the Napier area so the next day we rented some more bikes and took a two hour ride on just a small section of a long bike trail that runs along the coast. How perfect is that?
New Zealanders refer to themselves and are known international by the nickname "Kiwi". This comes from the flightless bird the Kiwi, indigenous to New Zealand and the national symbol. We were able to see a couple of Kiwi at the National Aquarium in Napier. Because Kiwi are usually nocturnal, their habitat in the aquarium was dark. This was the best picture I could get. (Incidentally, the plural for people is Kiwis while the plural for birds is Kiwi.)
The aquarium was fun but after we left, we walked along the beach and saw this crazy sight: hundreds of seagulls were diving down to the water. As we got closer we saw that it was a fish frenzy. The fish were too big for the seagulls to catch.
But a fisherman on shore was reeling them in one after another.
After Napier we drove all day on a different highway to make our way back to Auckland. The roads were narrow and winding but had hardly any traffic. Just outside of a little town where we bought delicious berry pies we stopped to walk along a gorgeous beach on the Bay of Plenty.
So that was the first half of our trip: the North Island. But everyone we talked to said, "the South Island is the most beautiful." We couldn't imagine how it could be more beautiful than what we had already seen, such as this waterfall!

1 comment:

  1. We LOVED the North Island! Auckland, Rotarua, Gisbon, Hamilton (I want a horse farm there), Lake Taupo - all amazing. You showed us so much more!

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