One of our neighbours cats has started stalking us. Yesterday he showed up uninvited in the driveway and followed Sheila to the door. Sheila convinced me to let him in (which really wasn’t that hard because I am always up for abducting an animal) and give him some milk. After we gave him an ill-advised massive bowl of milk and a few scratches we kicked him back out because we are pretty sure we are not allowed to have animals in our apartment. We (mostly me) laughed at the thought of the cat going home and puking up milk and the owners being really confused.
Anyway after kicking the cat out we continued on with our night and made dinner and ate. The whole time the cat sat at our door literally crying to get back in. Thankfully after a few hours he went away.
Our Cat
Fast-forward to tonight… Guess who was waiting for me at our gate when I got home from work? (our driveway and the property is surrounded by a 7-foot gate to keep criminals, door to door solicitors and stray animals away)
If you guessed a cat then you guessed right…he is impossible to keep out and hangs outside our door just waiting for the littlest crack to try to slither through.
Anyway our cat came in for another visit and we gave him some more milk and a piece of chicken. He is super friendly and follows us both around absolutely craving attention. I don’t want a cat but if I had to have one he would definitely be the cat I would want.
Still need to post a ton of pictures (like months and months behind) but am super lazy. Two videos from recent weekends though…with a Katy Perry soundtrack.
1. Sky Screamer Reverse Bungee
One of the 30 birthday presents Sheila got me for my 30th birthday last month was vertical bungee. I think Sheila thought that she might get away with not doing it with me but was definitely mistaken. It is hard to tell from the video but essentially vertical bungee is a cart with three seats and there is a bungee cord on either side of the cart and they add tension to the bungee then release the cart slingshotting you in a cart about 75 meters in the air. Sheila was not having it at first but after watching other people go she decided that it would be ok with her eyes closed.
It was pretty cool…launching up was ok but I wasn’t such a big fan of falling back towards the ground backwards on the first bounce. Despite the hesitation at the beginning Sheila did pretty well..:-)
2. Auckland Harbor Bungee
My first real bungee…I was really calm about it until like the night before when I started looking on youtube and came across a video of someone standing on the edge for what seemed like forever and hesitating then finally jumping. The video made me really uneasy and anxious.
Three of us went….Scott (one of Sheila’s co-workers), Sheila and myself. Sheila was along taking pictures and observing, maybe next time she will jump… It was pretty cool walking out along the bottom of the bridge that we drive on everyday and seeing the city from a different vantage point.
At the very beginning of the walk out we were probably like 5 meters above the water and it didn’t really feel that high. I was trying to calm myself down by telling myself that we were probably about 15 meters above the water and it was only a 40 meter jump so we were roughly 1/2 the total height. After another 5 minutes or so of walking we were at ~30 meters and it felt really high…then we took a 10 meter set of stairs into a pod and it felt even higher.
There were like 6 people that were there to jump and I was supposed to be #4. Scott was #2 and he was really calm on his jump…on the way down he was waving his arms like a bird which was pretty funny.
I ended up being #3 because the lady in front of me got out on the plank and couldn’t pull the trigger so she came back with tears on her face. Kind of added to my anxiety seeing someone not be able to do it… I was pretty sure I would be able to but I knew that it wasn’t going to be fun being out on the plank.
They strapped the bungee on me…it attaches to both ankles and there is a huge plastic piece right below your feet so it is really difficult to walk with it attached…you need to sort of penguin walk which is not surprisingly a little difficult on a plank 40m above the water. I was pretty nervous…. Scott and Sheila said from where they were standing I looked extremely nervous but in the video I am smiling and don’t really look that freaked out.
Being on the edge of the plank was by far the worst part of it…actually pulling the trigger and jumping was nothing. I was ok for the first part of the fall too but at a certain point I think I got uncomfortable because I was falling so quickly.
We were hoping to just hit the top of the water but it didn’t work out because it was low tide. I think they were dialing it in because Scott was a few meters from the water and I was a few feet from the water but pretty much all the people after me hit the water.
Sheila has started to make some posts and we are starting to clean up some of our pictures (dating back to like January). So there have been some backdated posts that we have been making.
I know this is on the top of everyones minds because I get tons of e-mail asking what the toilets are like in New Zealand.
Questions like: “Do they flush counter clockwise?” “Are they white?” “Do they use water or something else that I don’t even know about?”
Well I am going to set the record straight…
I am sorry to disappoint you all but the toilets are pretty much the same here as in North America.
The buttons on a New Zealand Toilet
The biggest difference is that they all have two flush modes. #1 and #2 as depicted in the above picture.
They seem to flush really fast too so there isn’t really a spinning water motion like in toilets back home…it just kind of sucks all the water straight out.
I have decided to quit my job with Sapient and stay in New Zealand. Originally the plan was to hang out for a few months and then come back to Toronto but I had an job opportunity here and with Sheila here, it just made a lot of sense to stay. Still a lot of stuff to see and do here…
I am working as a business analyst for a consulting company so in a lot of ways it will be similar to what I was doing in Toronto except there shouldn’t be a lot of travel which is a nice change after 5 years of flying pretty much every week and living in a hotel.
So now that I am staying longer everyone should start making plans to come visit us…
At the beginning of our trip to Fiji we saw ads for swimming with the manta rays. The ad showed these huge rays that were like the size of a small whale or something so we really wanted to do that. Apparently the only way to do that is to fly to an island up north and stay a night on a resort out there. Sadly Manta Rays were not in the vacation budget…
So we had two other things on our list of things we definitely wanted to do… 1) Snorkeling and 2) Surfing. We kind of wandered around talking to different people that arrange trips from Port Denarau and Nadi and it was looking like we would need to rent a car or take a taxi to go surfing. Since we didn’t feel really 100% safe when we were in Nadi we decided that renting a car and venturing out on our own would be a bad idea.
So this left us with just snorkeling…while walking around Ndi there were tons of people that arrange touristy trips from the resorts and they all say a different trip is the best trip and come off as complete snake oil salesmen. I can only imagine this is how Merf comes off when he is selling urinal pucks and garbage bags. “My urinal pucks are carcinogenic free…blah blah blah”. All the pamphlets for the day trips sound the same too….so we decided to just pick one and go with it since there was no way to know what was garbage and what was good.
We went with Robinson Crusoe Island…I think what got us was that it had snorkeling and there was a full day with 2 meals. The lady that sold it to us was adamant that this was by far the best deal and the best trip and that she did not receive any commissions and was completely unbiased.
They picked us up at the resort and we were greeted by a dude in a grass skirt and guitar named Tequila. Kind of an unoriginal name but other than that Tequila kept the mood pretty high on the bus and said some really stereotypical stuff about Fijian people. The day was looking up…it was before noon and we were drinking beer and singing along to Tequila’s Fiji-accent rendition of The Gambler.
Fun Fiji Fact: They love Ann Murray, Kenny Rogers and Elvis….if you go up to someone playing a guitar in Fiji and request anything by those three they would know it. I am convinced The Gambler is their national anthem.
Boat going to Robinson Crusoe Island
So after a hour bus ride or so we arrived at the wharf and got on a boat that went through a mangrove type river thing and out into the ocean. First activity we did was snorkeling…it sucked…it was too choppy and they kept us close to the shore so all we saw was sea grass and a few fish here and there. Was really unimpressive and a huge disappointment…
A fish (Snorkling at Robinson Crusoe Island)
Next activity was sea turtle viewing…they gathered everyone around a pile of sticks and told some story about how the turtles come up to the shore and dig holes and lay eggs. Then the pulled the sticks off a turtle shell and they brought everyone in closer. Then a dude jumped up with the turtle shell on his back…so turtle viewing was actually a dude with a turtle shell on his back. I don’t think we were the only ones that felt a little ripped off after that.
Sea Turtle Viewing at Robinson Crusoe Island
Next activity was a group conga line thing…basically everyone got in a conga line I had Sheila behind me and a girl in front of me and this dude asked if he could get between me and the girl in front of me because it was his fiance. Makes sense whatever… so now I am behind this dude in the conga line. The guy that was organizing the dance pulled me and a goofy awkward kid out of the line and made fun of us for being behind guys in the line and basically called us flamers in front of the whole group. Awesome… so I move in behind a girl that is like probably 12. Me being behind a dude made me gay so I guess by the same logic me being behind a 12 year old girl makes me a pedophile….which apparently they are completely fine with on Robinson Crusoe Island.
Fire Walking at Robinson Crusoe Island
The next disappointment… fire walking. Fire walking to me means a long fire pit with red hot coals and some dude walking the length of it. Fire walking to the Robinson Crusoe people was a lame fire pit like 2 feet in diameter with nothing red hot and a dude walking on the non-red hot rocks. The looks on the peoples faces standing around the fire pit said it all..boredom.
Fire Show at Robinson Crusoe Island
As much as I hated Robinson Crusoe Island I must say their fire show was pretty legit. They twirled fire and did all kinds of cheerleader type pyramid things….was kind of cool.
In addition to the day trips Robinson Crusoe also offers multi-night stays where you can stay in their huts. I can’t imagine how much fun that would be!
We have been back from Fiji a month and change and I am just now getting to posting pictures…you would never know I am on vacation…
I decided to split the Fiji trip into a few different posts…mostly so I can write about how crappy Robinson Crusoe Island is…
We have been to Mexico a couple times and stayed on all inclusive resorts so we knew that going to Fiji and staying in a pay per meal/pay per drink resort would be a little different. Aside from having to pay for everything the biggest difference was just the mood on the resort…it was super calm and chill…a lot of families and older couples.
Not really knowing how much stuff cost we swam up to the swim up bar on Day 1 and looked at the menu. Beer were like $10 and mixed drinks were like $23…boo! All the restaurants on the resort were pretty expensive as well. We quickly realized that the litre of gin we bought at the duty free was a good decision and would be our savior at least for a few days.
Drinking Gin in the Pool
The resort was really nice…beautiful pools with sand right up to the edge of the water so it seemed like a real beach. Later in the week we walked to a few of the different resorts on Denarau Island and some of them looked a bit nicer but ours had the best pools without a doubt. It was nice to have a no-kids pool too so you didn’t have bastard kids splashing around and stuff…actually we were pretty much the only ones in the no-kids pool most of the time.
Pool at Radisson Fiji
The island that we stayed on (Denarau Island) is basically 5 resorts side by side and you can go from resort to resort and eat at different restaurants or sneak into their pools. There is a bus that takes you around the resort loop and takes you into the port which we used a ton. The port was super touristy kind of like a fancy strip mall with a bunch of separate restaurants…absolutely no locals that were not working. Most of the stuff in the port was pretty reasonably priced…we had dinners there and they were around $50/person. So we ate there a lot and also killed a lot of pizza on the resort.
Back to the drinks situation…the first day we had a bottle of gin but we had no mix and nothing that we could drink it out of in the pool. Also we didn’t really know if you were allowed to mix your own drinks and take them down to the pool…nobody else seemed to be doing it. We chanced it and picked up some insulated travel mugs and some mix at the port and tried to be pretty stealth about it (Some people later told us that it was pretty obvious what we were doing)…none of the workers said anything about it all week. While we were picking up the mix I took a picture of the same bottle of gin that I paid $70 for in New Zealand the day before that was selling for $140 in Fiji. Crazynesss…
We had planned on doing a bunch of day trips (surfing, snorkling, swimming with manta rays) but it was all pretty expensive so we decided to just chill in the pool for most of the week and only really left the resort to go to the port for dinner, one trip into the neighboring town Nadi and a day trip “cruise” package called Robinson Crusoe. More on Robinson Crusoe later…
Nadi was pretty poor…before we went into Nadi we kind of thought it might be a good idea to rent a car tour around for a day but after walking through the town we kind of realized that it might not be that hard to find trouble in Fiji. Some people looked pretty desperate and it was really run down and dirty.
All in all we had a great trip though…weather was almost perfect (a couple days were overcast but still warm) and we had a lot of fun.
Not a lot to say about this trip…not because it wasn’t fun but because it was like three months ago now (Posting this on May 17th even though I backdated it). So far behind on pictures and posts…I have finally convinced Sheila to start posting too so hopefully that will help us catch up.
But yeah…we had not been up the North West coast so we decided to drive up that way. Just looking at the map Shelly beach sounded cool because it was on a point in a bay and it was one of the only beaches in that area.
Not wanting to drive to a crappy beach (if there is such a thing in New Zealand), we decided to stop at Helensville and check the tourist information centre to see what was cool to do in Helensville. As it turns out there isn’t that much to do in the Helensville area…seemed pretty boring. We told the lady at the information centre that we were thinking of going to Shelly Beach and she agreed that this would be our best bet. She said it was a really nice beach…I don’t know if she had actually been there because she wasn’t really right.
On the drive between Helensville and Shelly Beach we passed a Macadamia nut farm…we joked about going in and taking the tour that they advertised. I thought it was a joke but apparently it was in fact not a joke for one of us…J
If Shelly Beach was back in Canada it would probably be overrun with people and everyone would think it was awesome but by New Zealand beach standards it was not great. It kind of seemed more like a mud flat than a beach…walking around in the water was kind of gross because the mud was so soft and the water was really muddy/murky. It got its name because of all the crushed shells…most of the beach above the muddy waterline was crushed up white shells.
Shelly Beach
There was a ton of little crabs too…Sheila wasn’t wearing her glasses and was worried the entire time about stepping on them.. Not sure if she didn’t want to kill a crab or didn’t want to hurt her foot…:-)
So after walking up and down the beach a bit and enjoying a slightly warm beer we decided to jump back into the Vitz and go somewhere else. Somewhere else ended up being the macadamia nut farm that I thought we were only joking about going to. So we pulled into the farm…got a couple macadamia nut ice creams (which was incredibly good) and went on the complementary self tour. There were a lot of fun facts about macadamia nuts…none of which I can remember. Seems like all these food related tours is a commercial for how healthy eating that particular food is….pretty sure if there was a cigarette tour here they would tell you how darts are the super food and cure cancer…:-)
As you can see in the picture below macadamia nuts grow on trees like apples and have green shells. I think they must be roasted like coffee or something to get the brown dry shell.
Nuts
Macadamia Nut Fun Fact:
As you can see below if you run out of gravel when constructing a driveway you can substitute macadamia nut shells.
We found a really great beach like 15 minutes from our apartment. I say we found it like nobody else knows about it but it is actually really popular I guess…we just hadn’t realized how close it is to us. It is on the west coast (facing Australia) which is the coast which has the coast that has the more dangerous waves.
Muriwai Beach from top of the hill where the Gannets nest
The first time we went to it the waves were not too bad but the last time we went they were pretty crazy. I had only seen waves even close to that size or quickness during hurricane Juan at Peggys Cove. I don’t think by a lot of peoples standards they were that bad though. I am very nautical so they wouldn’t have been a problem for me…
Like my nail polish?
The beach has black sand which sounds cool but it is actually not that awesome…it gets ridiculously hot on the feet and seems to get everywhere. Sheila’s car is full of it and the other night she tried to take a hit from her puffer and there was black sand in it. So that is my biggest problem in life right now…the black sand. Things are pretty good…
Muriwai Gannet Colony
We layed on the beach and got some sun and also took a walk out to the point where people were fishing. While we were out by the people fishing we found the Muriwai Gannet Colongy…I don’t know much of anything about birds but it was a pretty impressive number of them and they had a bunch of baby birds too which was kind of cool. I hadn’t seen that many birds since they closed the landfill in Kentville…I loved that place.
The water is still really cold…one of these days I will go in it for a swim instead of just wading up to my knees and going back to the towel to lay in the sun. It is still early in the summer!
Sort of fell behind with the updates lately. It is now January 12th and I have a ton of pictures and have done a ton of stuff since my last update. I think I can catch up in 4 updates… Rotorua, Stick Insect, Muriwai and Fiji.
So here is Rotorua…
Sheila had done a weekend trip before I arrived in NZ and one of the places she stopped at was Rotorua. Rotorua has a ton of boiling mud sites, geysers and a M?ori exhibit called Te Puia. M?ori’s are the New Zealand indigenous people and are the equivalent to natives in Canada.
Dude doing his thing during the show. I learned that they stick their tongues out to intimidate people not just to make them laugh.
We decided to make it a day trip. In hindsight we probably should have made it an overnight trip because it was like a 3 hour drive each way…seemed like we were driving the entire day. Was really cool though…a lot of really cool scenery between Auckland and Rotorua. We made a stop at Agrodome (a petting zoo type place outside of Rotorua) where we saw some sheep and took some pretty funny pictures.
Sheila made me wear this hat and take a picture at Agrodome.
Te Puia was cool…the geyser stank so bad of sulfur and it was blowing all over the place so it was kind of like taking a bath in rotten egg water. It looked pretty cool when it went off though…especially the boiling mud. Sheila liked the Maori dance/show thing but it wasn’t really my type of thing. They made everyone take their shoes off and get into a small building (like 50 people)..it smelled so bad of stinky feet…hahaha
The geyser at Te Puia
Part of our plan for the day was to see the hobbit village from Lord of the Rings but it didn’t work out because we ran out of time. Another day I guess…
It was pretty cool walking out along the bottom of the bridge that we drive on everyday and seeing the city from a different vantage point.
