Finally...a look back at New Zealand

With the luxury of free, unlimited internet (thanks to our family and friends for making our stay in the Netherlands so comfortable!), we now have the opportunity to share our thoughts and photos from our 5 week trip to the North Island of New Zealand in late February and March. (Of course, I have added incentive to complete this as we are getting ready to leave for our next journey! Stay tuned for Iceland!)

Background: We left Antarctica on February 22 and flew from Christchurch on the South Island to Auckland on February 26. We departed New Zealand on March 30.

Mode of transport: We rented a reasonably priced Toyota with high mileage from Ezy Rentals, a company which actually has a category of rentals (of which this was one) called El Cheapo.

Accommodation: A large portion of our nights were spent in our tent at Holiday Parks, purpose-built lodging and park with communal and well-equipped kitchens, bathrooms and sometimes extra bonuses such as mineral hot pools. Holiday Parks offer a wide variety of accommodation - from tent camping to cottages with all amenities.

Weather: Mostly fantastic! March started off with warm, sunny weather - perfect for the beaches of the Northland. When hurricane force winds and heavy rains came, we switched from tent camping to budget accommodation under a roof and altered the itinerary so that we spent the ugly days in the wonderful Te Papa Museum in Wellington.

Our Route: From Auckland, we traveled north up the Northland Peninsula to the very northernmost point, Cape Reinga. From here, we continued to the Coromandel Peninsula and then to Rotorua, a town located in a geothermally-rich area. After enjoying the mud pots, geysers and geothermal pools, we headed to the Art Deco towns of Napier and Hastings to enjoy the architecture. We traveled all the way to the southernmost tip of the North Island for a couple of days in the big city of Wellington. We then returned to the center of the island for much improved weather and a stunning 4-day backpacking trip on the Northern Circuit, which includes the famous Tongariro Crossing. We stayed on in this wonderful area to play amongst the recent mud flow of Ruapehu volcano with our friend, Anne, and her buddies at the National Historical Society. Anne joined us for an incredible tour of an active volcanic island (White Island) and we ended our trip after a quick loop around the under-developed and largely Maori (the original New Zealanders) East Cape.



Our Top Ten List: It really was a fantastic holiday, so it's difficult to restrict our highlights to just 10...but here goes...

1. The warm, sunny weather and the fantastic sandy beaches of the Northland Peninsula, especially the beaches at Tapotupotu, Pakiri and Ahipara, where Michiel got his first real taste of boogie-boarding.

2. The awesome (the word truly applies) girth ("omtrek" in het Nederlands) of the last remaining giant Kauri trees on earth.



3. The multi-story, multi-media, and FREE Te Papa Museum in Wellington. The exhibits are so large and so jam-packed with interesting information, we spent the greater part of two days there.

The picture below is of the city of Wellington from the Botanic Gardens, which are reached by cable car and then enjoyed by walking downhill through the extensive collections.


4. Hiking the Northern Circuit. The huts are clean and well-equipped and the hut wardens are friendly and helpful...but more importantly, the scenery is spectacular - emerald green lakes, red craters, steaming thermal vents, lunar lava rock landscapes and more!







5. Getting a specially guided tour of the Ruapehu volcano mud flow (lahar) with the foremost vulcanologist in New Zealand and then being invited to stay high up on the volcano in a ski lodge that was closed for the season.


6. Diving and snorkeling at Poor Knight's Islands. Known as one of the best sub-tropical diving sites in the world, we were delighted to swim with scores of beautiful fish and rays. Michiel was also very excited to be using his diving certificate after a 6 year break.

7. Exploring White Island, an active volcanic island that had been mined for sulphur.

8. Visiting the colorful and aromatic geothermal areas of Wai-o-tapu and Orakei Korako near Rotorua. We were especially enchanted by the gurgling mud pots.





9. Having Michiel cook a lovely meal in a hangi, a traditional Maori underground oven that uses the geothermal steam from the earth to prepare tasty morsels.

Here are some examples of the fabulous Maori carvings and meeting houses.



10. The ease of traveling in New Zealand! With ever-present Holiday Parks(with uniformly good-to-excellent facilities) and fantastic visitor centers known as I-sites, which you can find in most towns, getting around New Zealand is simple and essentially worry-free.

As I said, this doesn't really even start to scratch the surface...but in the spirit of brevity, we hope that the pictures speak for themselves.

A Quick Dublin Visit

In all of my wisdom and internet searching, I thought that it would be cheaper to fly from the US to Europe via Dublin than directly to Amsterdam. That's how we ended up spending just over a day in Ireland. (As it turns out, flights within Europe now only allow you to check one piece of luggage per person and that piece cannot weigh more than 50 pounds. Most low-cost European air carriers charge so much money for the second piece of checked luggage that I'm not sure that we ended up saving any money with this routing...but we did have a nice day!)

Dublin and Ireland have been in the news quite often lately for the encouraging tales of the strength of its economy and the incredible growth and development of commerce and tourism that is happening there. We were expecting to see a city bursting with rich-looking, new buildings, gleaming streets and shiny, happy people. We didn't.

We did find a very busy city with lots of evidence of Polish and other Eastern European immigrants, who weren't particularly well-suited for the service industry as they don't smile easily and aren't terribly warm or friendly, and lots of interesting historic structures.

We tackled the task of attempting to see all that Dublin has to offer in one day by using an I-Walk podcast that we downloaded from the excellent Visit Dublin website. These electronic walking tours loaded onto our mp3 players were a good way to learn a bit about what we were seeing while covering lots of territory. (If you go, do the Guinness I-Walks; they are the best of the bunch.)

After walking more kilometers than we could keep track of, we opted to go to the Jameson Distillery for a tour. In the first couple of moments, the tour guide informed us that he was going to choose 4 volunteers from the group for a special tasting. I nudged Michiel and convinced him that this was the right time to not be shy. At the end of our very quick trip through the original storehouse, we came to the tasting room, where we all had the choice of a straight glass of whiskey, a glass on the rocks or a glass of whiskey mixed with cranberry juice or ginger ale (my favorite!). Michiel was, indeed, chosen as a special taster. He received 5 shot glasses filled with brown liquor. He was first asked to choose his favorite among three of the Irish whiskeys (all made by Jameson). Once he chose his favorite (Powers), he was asked to choose between the smoky tasting and harsher (only distilled 2 times) Scottish whisky (Scottish whisky is spelled without the "e") and the smooth Irish whiskey (distilled three times and the barley is not heated with the peat that gives Scottish whisky its smoky flavor. Finally, he was asked to compare the Irish whiskey to an American whiskey, which is distilled only once and is aged in a new wooden barrel.

Michiel (and all of the others, even the Scotsman) found the Irish whiskey to be the smoothest and tastiest of the bunch. The contestants ended up being some of the best-selling liquors in the world: Johnny Walker Red and Jack Daniels. Here is Michiel enjoying his privileges as a taster. (He even received a certificate to show that he is a certified Irish Whiskey taster.)

We couldn't call it a complete day without going to a real Irish pub and drinking the uncarbonated variety of Guinness sold in Ireland and listening to live Irish music.

I'll spare you the details of our poor hostel accommodation that had no water and end this little chapter by saying that we are now enjoying spring in the Netherlands. The grass and trees are green, the flowers are blooming, the newborn lambs are jumping and hay fever is again a regular phrase in my vocabulary.

South Florida

We are now in South Florida for a few more days before heading across the Atlantic. We are staying with my mom in Hollywood and spending lots of time getting our affairs back in order after being gone from the States for so long (i.e. taxes, bills, personal maintenance, appointments and interviews, and catching up on the blog).

While we are here, I (Sheri) am meeting with one half of the student group that I will be taking to Tanzania with me in July. I am again working for World Challenge Expeditions leading a group of high school students on a one-month trip with the primary goal being leadership development and team building. This year, the group will be made up of 4 students from an American school in Palm Beach, Florida and 4 students from a school in Northampton, England. It will be a small group to manage - especially since there will be 3 adults! I'll be sure to post the stories later in the summer.

Michiel and I are learning how to deal with heat and humidity again and are working on some "savage" tans. Though we find Southern Florida really depressing, with its never-ending parade of retail centers, frighteningly bad drivers and flat, monotonous landscapes, we've been entertaining ourselves with shuffleboard tournaments (WooHoo!), a day trip to some nice tropical botanic gardens, swimming and a trip to the Florida Keys. We ended up cutting our Keys trip short, though, because of the exceptionally high costs of camping ($52 for a private campground!!! and $31 for a State campground, which often are full), the unbearable heat and the ferocious biting insects. On the plus side, the snorkeling at the reef off the coast of Key Largo was wonderful and well worth the trip and the architecture of the homes in Key West was delightful to see.

Here are some highlights:

Sunset from our campsite: Bahia Honda State Park and Michiel amongst the mangroves at John Pennekamp Coral Reef SP

Key West homes

Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens also features blown glass sculptures by Chihuly strategically placed throughout. The plant above (left) was, indeed, real - Michiel had to touch it to believe it.

This sculpture is a representation of the sun. The one on the right is a display of plants of Madagascar interspersed with glass tubes.