Bush and Beach

Bright eyed & bushy tailed at the start of the day!

We leave the caves to head to our final stop in New Zealand - Auckland!  I know, it seems like we've moved down here, but we only have a couple of days left of our vacation.  Steve has mastered driving on the left over the past two weeks and has no problems with the Auckland traffic.  It's actually nice to be back in a city again!  We stay at a B&B in Parnell, a pleasant neighborhood area about a mile from downtown and the harbor.

 It's interesting staying in the B&Bs because we're able to have more in depth conversations with locals and other visitors.  One of the big events going on while we're in New Zealand is the vote for the country's flag.  Everyone has definite opinions regarding changing it or leaving it the same, and has a strong theory on other people's choices, too.  It sounds to us like the flag will be changed....but the final count is in favor of keeping it the same.   So you'll still have to count the stars to tell the difference between the NZ & Australia flags.

We take the day to hike around the rainforest and beaches to the east of Auckland.  Hard to believe this is all within a 30 minute drive of the busiest city in New Zealand!  Our first stop is at the Arataki Visitor Center.  From here you have some pretty views of the bays around Auckland.  We then tramp along the cliffs for some dramatic scenery. 

Don't slip!

Next we trek to Karekare Falls in the western part of the Waitakere Ranges Regional Park....because we haven't seen enough waterfalls yet!  What's fun about this one is the popular swimming hole at its base.  We didn't know to bring our swimsuits, but the cold water feels good on our feet after the uphill climb.  Some people are rappelling down beside the waterfall - how did I miss signing up for that!

Not another one!

Deja vu..

The return walk downhill is relaxing and Steve manages to conquer a troublesome rock.

Another version of rock climbing

Can I grow these at home?

I love the forest!  It feels almost prehistoric, and there's very few people around (other than at the waterfall).  My favorite are the ferny palms - they are anywhere from a few feet high to twenty-five feet.  

Is that a triceretops peeking out?

Bubbling creek - I haven't seen that before in New Zealand (ha!)

1000 year old tree!

Steve is crouching in the stump of a kauri tree.  These are humongous trees growing to 165 ft, with girths of over 50 ft.  They live for about 2000 years (maybe not this one).  We see a live one later in the day, estimated to be around 1000 years old.

Steve is too tall to be a hobbit - he bumped his head coming out of the trunk.

Close-up of the sand

After a lunch break we go to the black sand of Piha beach.  The sand is very dark, but I'd actually classify it as more of a brown then a black.  It has a metallic sheen to it though, which my camera cannot quite pick up.  It's known for surfers, but we don't see anyone out there today.  The swim area is very narrow - the lifeguards have the flags cordoning off a region only about 50 feet wide. There have also been multiple movies filmed here.

I can't resist putting my feet in the Tasman Sea! 

Pedicure still looks good!

And the beach selfie

 

Mussels piled on the rocks.  Lunch!  Darn it, we already ate.

  

Love looking up in the canopy!

We go on last one hike in the rainforest near Piha.  More ferny trees!

Many different types of trees - I lost count!

We're not really bushwhacking - there's a path through the rainforest.

I finally got a good shot of the famous New Zealand silver fern.  I flipped up the tip so I could see the silvery backside.

Only one more day left before we fly home to Japan....or so we thought...

Waitomo Caves

After leaving Napier we drive to Waitomo, in the center of the north island.  It's known for the limestone caves here, home of the glowworms.  You can take a boat tour, but we like to do something a little more adventurous. 

On the way down

We start by abseiling into the cave.  It's like rappelling, but you just lower yourself down instead of bouncing off the wall.  When you start down you're facing the wall, but if you turn yourself slightly you see what's pictured above.  It's beautiful, and it feels like you're entering someplace no one's ever been before.  By the way, it's about 100 ft deep, so it takes you a minute to make your way down to the bottom.

Check out those deltoids!

The most famous residents of the cave are the glowworms.  When you turn off your headlamp, they shine like mini LED lights on the cave ceiling.  Gorgeous!  (It also reminds me I haven't seen a lot of stars since we moved to Tokyo.)  They put out "strings" to catch bugs to eat - and only get a few in their lifetimes.  You can see the strings hanging from the rock in the picture below.

They don't bite, do they?

We also got to do a little inner tubing in the caves.

Whee!

And spelunking, too!  Yes, we're in water, a few feet deep in this spot.  It was deeper in other parts of the cave.  Steve got "caught" by our guide - he told us we could get off our inner tubes, and stand, but didn't mention it was over six feet deep.  Steve popped out of the tube and immediately went under.  The guide didn't find it so funny when Steve told him he almost lost a boot. (Safety first!  If you're going under, take off the heavy shoes!)  We're wearing boots, wet suits, and protective coverings (the purple & pink - now you know why a lot of photos are in black & white!) that belong to the tour company...wonder if the guide is responsible for any missing/damaged items?

Do THEY bite??

Turns out glowworms aren't the only species in here.  Our guide explains there are eels, too.  THAT'S what I've felt brushing up against my leg!  I'm glad he didn't mention them until near the end.  He's a couple of feet long and a couple inches wide.  We saw three at once.  I'm starting to hear the theme music to Jaws...





Finally, we get to rock climb out the 100 foot cliff.  Not too difficult, except for the one small negative degree angle...and when you're short with a bum knee, you have less hand/foot hold options.  Luckily, I didn't get stuck so we're able to continue our New Zealand adventure.

Steve made it up with no problems.

Hawke's Bay & Napier

We hoped to leave the rainy weather behind in Queenstown, but it followed our flight to Napier, in the north island. (BTW, we did have to go through security in Queenstown.  But they don't have a liquid limitation!  We saw people carrying cases of wine on board.  I was mildly jealous - most of our wine was at the wineries, waiting to be shipped to Japan.  Not that I'd pull out a cork and start drinking on the plane...wait - could you do that?) 

After staring at people with wine bottles all morning, we couldn't wait to visit our first wineries in Hawke's Bay.  Steve was especially excited, because this area is known for red wine, and not just pinot noir.  We happily walk in to Vidal for a tasting.  We enjoy a couple of wines enough to buy.  We pull out our paperwork from the wine exporter, and our pourer pauses....he says they (the exporter) only handles the Marlborough area wineries.  Eek!  We never turned in our paperwork.  However, it's a small wine world in New Zealand, and he calls the company for us and she confirms that they only pick up at the Marlborough wineries.  Luckily, Vidal is part of Villa Maria (in Marlborough), and he can ship down our Vidal wine, the few bottles we have with us, the bottles we anticipate buying within the next day, and our paperwork, all for $10.  We are very thankful for his help, and realize when we heard conflicting stories in the beginning about how the exporter works, we should have just called them ourselves to find out the story.

Rain, rain, go away

After our winery visits, we're happy to check in at our hotel, where we enjoy another ocean view (technically, Hawke's Bay).

We go back to Elephant Hill winery for dinner, and enjoy a drink in their lounge.  I also discover that Bluff oysters deserve their reputation as the best in the world.  We're lucky enough to be there just as the season opens.  Yum!

I gobbled them down so fast I forgot to take a picture before I ate them.

Fire, water, vines - nice!

Many quilting designs here!

The next morning we walk around the town of Napier.  There was an earthquake in 1931 that destroyed the city, but they rebuilt in the style of the time, so it's filled with gorgeous art deco details.  I wish we had a couple more hours to walk around here.  I took lots of photos, though, as I'm sure I'll get some quilting designs out of the architecture!
 

I could use this on a quilt I'm working on now!

Even the sewer grates are pretty!

From here we stop at a couple more wineries, then bring back our loot to Vidal for shipping.  The car feels pretty empty, since we're down to the six bottles we can bring back to Japan duty free. 

Running Around

Usually when I visit somewhere I try to find a book to read that takes place in that location, usually fiction, maybe historical fiction if it's appropriate.  Sometimes it helps me to understand the geography, sometimes I'm able to better picture the scenery in the book, and sometimes it helps with the culture.  Before we left I did a couple of searches for books that take place in New Zealand but I kept coming up with next to nothing.  I was even able to get Amazon to specifically search for New Zealand, and all it would find would be quick read romance books (that can take place anywhere and are not something I like, anyway)....except for The Luminaries.  It won the Man Booker Prize, but the "regular person" reviews were just okay.  I decide to try it. 

I get through about 300 pages (of 850) but then a library e-book I had on hold came available.  I have to switch to reading the library book, because of the limited check out period.  And I just can't get back into The Luminaries afterwards.  It wasn't awful, but to remember the dozen characters and their interactions was too much effort after a week away from them and while on vacation.  The book takes place during the gold boom in 1866, and is written in the style of a book from that period.  So paragraphs last longer than three chapters in a James Patterson book (an author I don't like).  It's well written, and descriptions are incredibly precise, and there is some action and mysteries, but it takes five pages to get to the point of a single question a character might ask (after lighting a cigar, having to close a window, poke at the fire, etc, etc).  However, if I hadn't been interrupted, I probably would have finished it.  And if you love the writing style of the mid-1800s, you'd probably enjoy it.

New books to read!

More books to read!

Flash forward - at the Auckland airport before flying home, I stopped by a bookstore and saw shelves & shelves of books with many authors I've never heard of (Is it like the good wine?  They won't export the good books?).  I'm going to look up some of these to read at a later date!

Still beautiful scenery!

Back to our trip, our luck with the rain runs out the day after we return from Milford Sound.  We wake up to an overcast drizzle.  The original plan was to rent bikes and ride along a bike trail from Arrowtown to Gibbston and visit some wineries there.  Instead, we decide to drive about an hour over the mountains (different range from the ones to Milford Sound) in the hopes that it won't be raining on the other side.  We want to see Rippon Vineyards, supposedly the most photographed winery in the world due to its beauty.  Unfortunately the rain follows us here, too, so we don't get the pretty picture. And we thought the wine was just okay, too.

What we saw...

What we should have seen...

All is not lost, however!  Near by is one of my favorite attractions - a maze!  So even though at our B&B we have two umbrellas and two very nice ponchos sitting in our luggage (and yes, it was raining when we left) we have to pay $3 each for cheap plastic so we don't get soaked in the maze.  

Just a small portion of our maze.

What's funny about mazes is that I love them, but I'm so bad at them.  I was born without a sense of direction (much to my father's frustration when he tries to give me driving directions) and it carries over to mazes.  One time in a corn maze my mother had to come find me after I'd been in there 45 minutes longer than the rest of the family (and I was in my thirties at the time).  On another occasion my 5-year-old niece had to help me through a Christmas light maze (I'm not exaggerating...and yes, I was the adult in our partnership).  This time Steve takes the lead, and it only takes us an hour to get through it.  I didn't think it was as fun though, so next time we're going in separately.  Hey, with all the time I spend in the maze, at least I always get my money's worth!

Thanks to Steve's amazing (couldn't resist) skills, we still have time to drive to Arrowtown.  Previously it was a mining town that has now become a nice tourist destination.  The old miner cottages have been turned in to shops and restaurants and creates a picturesque downtown.  We finally purchase some New Zealand wool items while we're here - another souvenir item on our list!

Milford Sound

Luckily I have friends who told us Milford Sound was the most beautiful place they had seen.  So we make the long trek from Queenstown to check it out.  They're right - it's so majestic.  It should be up there with the Grand Canyon and Everest as one of the wonders of the world.  So lots of pictures again.  (BTW, it's actually a fjord, not a sound...but I'll let you look up the difference between the two!)

That's a glacier on top of the mountain!

I put in this picture to try to give you a little bit of scale.  That's actually quite a large boat out on the water.  The mountains are as high as 5500 ft (over a mile high!) but because there's nothing around to put it in perspective, they only seem about a tenth of that.  For Steve, it's seeing a helicopter fly by - it's near the top of the mountain, and looks to be about the size of a fly.  Just amazing! 

We're lucky during our overnight trip - most of the rain occurs while we are sleeping.  Milford Sound is one of the rainiest places on Earth.  They tell us it receives more rain than the Amazon rainforest.

All those white "lines" in the mountains are actually waterfalls.

We have the sun peak out a little bit, so my camera is able to pick up a little of the true colors of the mountains.  You would think from the near vertical sides that they are solid rock, but they aren't - lots of greenery is growing.






And of course, there are hundreds of waterfalls, too...with the obligatory selfies taken with them.

Practicing my photo skills again - trying to capture the power of the waterfall.

Apparently Milford Sound has their own penguins, and this is their favorite beach, but they had already headed out so we missed them by a couple of weeks.  They said there are sometimes some stragglers, so we keep looking, but it looks like they've closed up the summer home.

There are no penguins in this picture.

This is why the mountains are so green - the trees literally grow on top of the rock.  A layer of moss will develop, and from there other plant life, and eventually trees.  There's no soil.












The boat travels quite quickly, and even Steve's hair is blowing in the wind.  The water is pretty calm though, so no worries about seasickness (though apparently there was a bad trip a couple of weeks ago).

Hey look - is that another waterfall?

Home, sweet home!  For one night, anyway.

We have a delicious buffet dinner, and have a wonderful time talking with our table mates. (A German couple and a Kiwi/Aussie couple - we were all around the same age - how did they know to seat us together??  The seats were assigned before we arrived.)  Then we head to our comfy cabin.  It's actually a little bigger than I thought it would be.  We have some noisy neighbors though...ask us and we'll tell you about it!   I don't think it's suitable for printing. : )  

The next morning we leave our cove and head out to the end of Milford Sound, to sail in the Tasman Sea.  The length of the Sound is a lot less than we thought - it takes us barely 15 minutes to reach the sea.

Beautiful sunrise!

Here are a couple more pictures where I'm trying to capture the magnificence of the mountains.  Again, a good size boat, and I'm not even close to fitting the entire mountain in the picture.  From now on when I see/read The Princess Bride I will think of these mountains as the model for the "Cliffs of Insanity."






Then there are three seals lying on the striped rock below.  I purposely didn't zoom in on them.

Wait - I'm not just trying to show another waterfall, am I?

Not only is Milford Sound incredibly beautiful, but it's also one of the most unique places in the world.  The rainwater creates a layer six to thirty feet deep on top of the salt water.  The fresh water is "dyed" by tannins from the plant life, causing the salt water to be very dark and cold.  This allows animals and plants that are normally hundreds of feet below the surface to be quite close to the top.  We stop by the Milford Discovery Centre, located in Harrison's Cove, in order to check out the underwater environment.  We're the only ones from our boat to elect to do this, and the day trippers haven't made it out yet, so we get a private tour.  Lucky!

The highlight of the Discovery Centre is the Underwater Observatory.  The display to the right shows the thickness of the windows.  I believe they are a type of plexiglas, not true glass (it could not withstand the pressure).

We descend the thirty feet down into the Observatory.  I should have taken a picture of the "room."  It's like entering a sci-fi movie.  I kind of worried HAL was going to take over the controls.  But through the viewpoints we are able to see lots of fish and plants in the "garden."  

When our guide joins us a few minutes later, she's excited to see all the fish by the windows.  Usually that means something large and/or predatory has disturbed them, and they are seeking shelter.  We keep gazing out the windows, hoping to spot a shark or dolphin (both had been seen recently), but like with the penguins, nothing.

Black coral - the name comes from its black skeleton.

There are no sharks in this picture.

We head back to the Visitor's Center in our (private) water taxi, and I can't resist one last waterfall picture.  Turns out this one is taller than our 46-story apartment building!  It also provides the power for the Visitor Center and surrounding area.

(Maybe) my last waterfall picture...

On our drive back to Queenstown we make a couple of stops.  After a few minutes' walk we visit The Chasm, where the Cleddau River has created a pothole effect in the stones as it runs through the rocks down to a gorge.  I believe this is about fifty feet deep (in the picture).

I don't think this hose is safe...

Then in the parking lot we get some New Zealand wildlife.  Kea - New Zealand parrots!  We had been warned about them.  They love to explore and manipulate items (and will work together to accomplish a goal).  They especially like to investigate man-made items - and if you leave anything strapped to the roof of your car, it will be destroyed by the birds in minutes.  





We also have to take our picture at the 45 Degree Latitude!  The only places it crosses land are in New Zealand, Chile and Argentina.  
 







I find another great sign, too (but the seal sign still holds the #1 spot).  It's not unusual to see this when you're driving in New Zealand.

Okay, one more waterfall picture - we didn't see these on the drive down; it must have been the rain last night that caused them to form!

How many waterfalls do you see?

And here's what the road back to Queenstown looks like.  This was a nice mini-vacation from our vacation!

When are we in cell service again??