Day 2: Sailing in the Bay of Islands

We took off at 10am this morning aboard the Phantom with a wonderful couple named Robin and Rick.  The Phantom is a 50 foot yacht with enough room to hold 10 guests along with our hosts.  The weather was just ideal. 

Sun, great wind and DOLPHINS!!!  We were accompanied by bunchs of these amazing creatures.  They were swimming along side of our boat for quite a while this morning.  And when I say "along side," I mean they were right there.  I think I could have touched them if my arms were just a little bit longer.  These guys were so close, that one of them even spit on Brian in a swim by spitting.  It was just so cool getting such an up close look at them.  And no, we didn't swim with them.  The reason we got to spend so much time with the dolphins is because they were running away from the group that was trying to harass them in the water!

Around lunch time, we anchored just off one of the many, many little islands that are sprinkled all over the bay.  Rick offered to anyone who wanted to swim the opportunity to swim to shore.  Sounds like fun to me, and I thought it would be good exercise after being in sloth mode for 2 days.  So Brian jumps in ... "is it cold?"  He says it's not too bad.  So I take the plunge.  I don't know what Brian thinks is warm or hot, but that water was beyond a shadow of a doubt COLD.  Let me rephrase ... FREEZING COLD.  Brian is sitting here defending his judgement of the water temperature, describing it as "tepid."  Yep.  I'm not buying it.

So Robin served a gourmet lunch on board the phantom.  Let me tell you guys, these people have some good cheese.  Oh, and Rick collected fresh mussels that they served along with a fish they had smoked. 

Everything was SO fresh that I was wondering where they keep their cow to make their own cheese. 

After lunch was a wonderful, relaxing ride back to Russell.  Who knows what the evening holds for us.  We are off to hunt down another beach and find a look out point.

Day 1: Auckland to Bay of Island

So, day 1 was an easy day ... sort of.  We have a car rented to get around while we are here and these people all drive on the wrong side of the road!  And they put the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car too!  I'm quite thankful that Brian stepped up to take on the burden of NOT crashing the car before we left the city of Auckland.  It was trial by fire navigating through a city with a traffic circle at every street crossing.

We managed to get out of Auckland in one piece, and in less than a full hour which was a small miracle considering we didn't really know where we were going.  We drove 3 hours north to the Bay of Islands area where we took a ferry over to a quaint town called Okiato.  The scenery was everything I thought it would be and more.  We saw sheep, cows and ponies grazing on the hillsides as we passed through town after town.

We are staying in the home of a couple named Gary and Paula who are very hospitable.  The view from our apartment is just stunning.  We are overlooking a small inlet.  Paula has put together a beautiful hillside garden which we explored when we go there.  We also took a short hike through an area that looked almost junglesque.  Dinner was at a bayside restaurant in Russell called "The Duke."  Speaking of dinner, we paid a small fortune for our meal.  I think my three week stay here is going to make me seriously appreciate the cost of living at home.  These guys had a $23 hamburger on the menue.  That's right, I just wrote "hamburger."  This may well be the first vacation where I come home weighing less than when I left! 

So, no pictures for the next couple of days as the computers at the place I'm at can't handle an SD card!  Sorry!

The View From the Otherside of the World

Well, I'm actually here now!  I left my house 26 hours ago, flew over the Pacific ocean and have landed in a most amazing country.  I expected the 13 hour plane ride to be something to endure, however, Air New Zealand put us on a brand new plane with all the latest and greatest features.  I actually slept for a solid 6 or 7 hours, despite being flung around like a rubber ball in the hands of a 9 year old boy! (The turbulance was impressive!)  I just kept thinking that the water would make a nice, soft landing if something were to go wrong.  (That's called positive thinking.)  Hopefully Brian (my brother-in-law) will be here soon and we can get started on our journey!

Earthquake!?!? Really!?!?

So many people have asked if the earthquake in Christchurch will affect our travel plans that I thought it about time to throw up another pre-trip post. 

The short answer is that we are still going.  We are not schedule to even be anywhere near Christchurch until the 15th and the place we are staying is north of the city.  The majority of the damage is in the central part of the city with the epicenter of the quake being a bit south of that point.  Our schedule only puts us there for one night as a stop over to the wine country and Hamner Springs (about an hour + northwest of Christchurch).

I'm waiting the hear back from the places we have booked to confirm that they are interested in hosting a bunch of crazy Americans. (Really, who goes into a war zone when they don't have to?)  If they can't, we will probably stick to the west side of the island to stay out of the way of the clean up efforts.

The most difficult part of this is delicately asking people who may be digging themselves from under a mass of rubble that was once their home, if they want to continue forward with our plans or make other arrangements.   I pray that they are all okay, not my our sake, but for theirs.  The pictures of the destruction are down right scary and I'm actually feeling a bit lucky that we didn't book the trip for February which was my preference.

Almost time to go!

New  Zealand, here we come!  I'm leaving on the 26th and Dave leaves March 5th.  I can't believe our trip is almost here.  An entire year of planning, coordinating with friends, relatives ... it seems like it's going to take a small nation to have all of our responsibilities covered for three weeks we're gone.  Let me just say thanks in advance for everyone's help in making this trip happen.

I will  not have a computer or netbook with me, but hope to catch a laptop here and there to stay in touch while we are gone.  So check in often to see how we're doing!

 

-Nicole