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.

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.

Will post the pictures Sheila took later.

Shelia Posted a story about being woken up by a stick insect here and our trip to Goat Island/Tauranga here.

I just made a post with some pictures from Shelly Beach here.

Hopefully we will get a rainy day so I can clean up the rest of the pictures…:-)

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 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…

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!

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.

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.

Nut Driveway

Shelore at Muriwai

The black sand is merciless on your feet on a warm sunny day….even with flip flops on the sand gets on your heels and over your toes….there is a lot of wincing and whimpering as you run from the parking lot (which is sand) over the dune and down towards the water.  The parking lot is sheltered by a sandy ridge, making it the warmest part of Muriwai.  Once you are over the ridge and settled on the beach there always seems to be a strong cool wind so it’s never very hot (except for that sand!).  The water is also not so hot…all in all not an awesome place to bask in the sun and lounge in the water – but beautiful all the same.

Muriwai has a bit of a bad rap for drowning…tourists…surfers….New Zealanders….I have to say that I was really sceptical about the “dangerousness” of the west coast waters.  But, after a couple of uncomfortable situations where I felt how fast and strong the waters are here – I am now a bit afraid of the water which I have had a hard time coming to grips with as someone who has spent half her life in the water.

To the left side of the beach is a rocky outcrop where the fishermen are (always where people drown).  Looks like a lot of fun – will definitely have to give that a try at some point.

There is a large Gannet colony at Muriwai.  It was baby season at the gannet colony which was super cute.  We might have taken a ridiculous amount of photos of the gannets – but got some pretty wicked ones of the gannets in flight.  Who would have thought that I would move to New Zealand and become a bird-lover?

Baby Gannet

From on top of the Gannet colony you can see for miles the black sand beaches and sand dunes that stretch up towards the tip of the north island.  The pictures really don’t do it justice.

Muriwai Gannet Colonies and Coastline

Google. Maps. Suck.  In New Zealand.  A less than direct route to be sure – but we certainly got an eyeful with the giant dog and giant sheep made out of corrugated cardboard along the way.  Never seen that before J

Clayton discovered the unique traffic safety ad campaign launched across the highways in NZ.  Of course we don’t have a picture of them – and can’t find any posted on the internet – but it is a “clever kiwi” campaign where kiwi birds make wise decisions about their driving, including: clever kiwis nvr txt n drv, clever kiwis take power naps, and Clayton thinks he saw one suggesting that kiwi birds should smoke dope and drive.  Clayton.

I had described to Clayton how Rotorua smells….like being trapped inside a massive vat of boiled eggs.  As usual he thought I was exaggerating -  however I was, if anything, under exaggerating.  Rotorua is situated in a geothermal belt powered by sulphur.  There are boiling mud holes and steaming water everywhere.

We thought we would visit the Agrodome and catch a Sheep Show as it seemed like a funny/fun thing to do (nothin but mutton), however upon arriving at the Agrodome we discovered it cost $100 to watch some dogs chase sheep and watch a sheep shearing.  Maybe not a $100 funny.

We mulled over the option to Zorb, or to visit the safari nearby, but ended up deciding on a more cultural experience at Te Puia which was pretty wicked. The singing/dancing reminded me of the luau in Hawaii which brought back awesome memories of romantic photos in front of a setting sun with my cousin Laura   Te Puia is also the home of the NZ Maori Arts and Crafts Institute which was awesome as well.

I took this - and it rocks

We wandered through Te Puia after the cultural show – in the rain because after a full day of sunshine driving in the car it rained the few moments we had to wander outside – and got rained on by a sulphur geyser.  It was not wicked.  Clayton hadn’t quite believed me about boiling mud – but I believe this settled that debate.

A boiling mud pool

One day in Rotorua was definitely NOT enough.  Apparently we missed out on the luge, and probably a better place for looking at pools of steaming coloured water/mud (Wai-O-Tapu) not to mention the Lord of the Rings tour at nearby Lake Taupo, so I guess we will just have to go back to Rotorua.