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…
I woke up in the middle of the night…in quite the panic. It felt like there were tiny claws pinching into my forearm…the thought occurred to me perhaps it was a huge spider. After hitting my arm and swiping the sheets I woke up Clayton so he could make sure the coast was clear. Clayton turned on the lights and looked on my side of the bed for any misshapen spiders. Telling me the coast was clear I relaxed and looked over to where I thought the creature would be.
It was still there.
Ace Ventura had missed the very large and long stick insect that was clinging onto the side of the mattress. To be fair I didn’t know at the time it was a stick insect, as they are docile and harmless. I just saw a huge weird looking insect. I may have flipped my lid a bit…and shrieked at Clayton to get rid of the insect. I thought it was understood that “get rid of it” means irreversibly destroy. Suggestions include flushing down the toilet, crushing until all that remains is a smear…you know. Destroy.
I was left very unsettled wondering where the mysterious creature came from, how it ended up crawling on my arm while sleeping, and whether there would more.
In the morning after much contemplation, I decided that the creature from the night before must have been a weta which I had seen once on a screen door. Disgusting creature.
Turns out it was a stick insect. How did I find out? Well, apparently when I asked Clayton to get rid of the insect, he took that to mean don’t kill the insect and throw it into the garbage can….alive. So as I was making lunch the next day, and I went to throw something in the garbage….the stick insect popped out of the top of the garbage can as soon as I opened the lid.
Stick Insect
Long story short…..we freed a somewhat maimed (1 broken leg) stick insect back to its environment on the tree outside the front door.
Stick Insect in Tree
Few observations after a week in New Zealand….
- Driving on the wrong side of the road may never feel normal
- The money is made from a synthetic paper that is really hard (maybe impossible) to rip
- They are really big on the metric system. Even distances on golf courses are measured in meters. The red marker is at the 90 meter mark and the white is at the 135 meter mark.
- They have $2 coins and $1 coins like Canada but they also have a 50 cent coin..which is kind of cool
- They call sausages hot dogs and real hot dogs are called “American hot dogs”. I also saw a sea dog on a chinese food menu yesterday. Sheila dared me to try it and it was pretty gross…like its cousin the hot dog it is a tube of random ground up meat. But in the case of the sea dog it is all sea food and is encased in a layer of batter and is deep fried. Pretty gross.
A Sea Dog...despite the labels claim that it is delicious it is in fact anything but.
Going to the Green Day concert for Sheila’s birthday tonight. Should be fun…
The second official road-trip I took Clayton on proved to be informative…for both of us. One of us learnt that a cow is not a sheep, and that sheep are smallish wooly quadrupeds. And perhaps that same one of us also learnt that chitons are not fossils. If you’re thinking “Wow…Sheila you should know better…you have a Biology degree for god’s sake” then you are right. I do know better The first week for Clayton in was educational, and he no longer points at cows and says sheep.
We did a bit of a tour north of Auckland, hitting Goat Island, Leigh, and Tawharanui. We travelled first to Goat Island which is a really cool spot where there is great scuba diving/snorkeling. We did neither. But we did check out the tide pools and will definitely head back in warmer weather for some snorkeling.
Myna Bag at Goat Island
On the way down to Tawharanui from Goat Island we stopped in the town of Leigh first, checking out the seaside and the wharf. There were quite a few people fishing off rocks (very common here in NZ) so we took our time trotting across the rocky shore, poking around in tide pools. It was my first Lord of the Rings (or LOTR as it noted on maps) re-enactments…first of many I’m sure. I found myself crouched beside a tide pool eagerly poking a dead fish…in a similar fashion as my good friend Gollum…although I didn’t whack my fishes head on a rock
Next stop was Tawharanui which is a well-known regional park on the North Island known for its beautiful beach and safe surfing. The drive started innocently enough. Green rolling hills, no cars on the road, sheeps on the hillside. It turned into another one of those “excellent” NZ drives…down narrow windy gravel roads which at some cases barely fit two cars (and I really mean barely) which goes on for what seems like eternity. But when you finally get there it is definitely worth it. We wandered down the beach, through some small caves and onto a sheltered bay. NZ can be a bit deceptive…the bright sunshine and harsh UV rays do not make up for the strong cold wind that always seems to be wherever you are.
Clayton Chasing Sheep
It was a great day of adventuring. Goat Island and Tawharanui are definitely places I will return to. Perhaps though not too soon in the future…some of the beach bathers may remember Clayton for his uncivilized behavior…chasing the sheep just off the beach.
Sheila had been to Omaha but had not been any further north so we decided to go for a drive. We didn’t really have any plans and just sort of stop at a few places along the way that looked cool. Sounds like a pretty bad strategy but it was a really nice day and anywhere on the coast is going to be pretty.
Our first stop was Goat Island. It is supposed to be some of the better snorkling in New Zealand I think and there was a lot of people there snorkling and kayaking. Just from the rocks I saw a few pretty big fish cruising around. We decided it wasn’t warm enough to snorkel yet and that we would wait a few weeks and come back. We are going to Fiji next weekend and I am sure the snorkeling will be a lot better there anyway. Instead of snorkling we walked around a bit on the rocks and took a few pictures.
Our second stop was a warf a little bit further south from Goat Island. It wasn’t really a “tourist stop”…we just kind of drove around and ended up there. Was pretty cool…I imagine there are thousands of little coves like that all over the country. Highlight of the stop was a dead fish in a tide pool. Which one of us picked up…not going to say who. Seemed a little bit like Nova Scotia because there were a bunch of small fishing boats.
Next we stopped at a protected wildlife area called Tawharanua. It had a bunch of pastures with sheep, a bird sanctuary and really cool beach. The road to it was crazy…so narrow and windy and the locals were driving like retards. It was supposed to be 30km/h but most were driving like 50ish. At times it was down to one lane for both directions even around crazy corners. The beach was really nice and had a few different parts…there was like one section that had a lot of people on it then there was like a small cave that you could walk through and there was a whole different beach that I thought was nicer and had a lot less people. The water was really turquoise at Tawharanua.
Pictures from Goat Island, Tawharanua and the warf:
The second beach in Tawharanua
Woke up and wasn’t feeling jet lagged at all….yeah!
We had decided the day before that we were going to go on a day trip to Piha. Sheila had gone before by herself but was rushed so she wanted to go again. The drive was insane…really twisty/turny road that two cars can barely fit through and there is no shoulder what so ever.
About half way there a truck coming the other way was flicking its lights at us…we noticed but didn’t really know what dude was trying to tell us. A few minutes later we drove into a road stop…there was a cop breathalyzing the drivers. A drunk driving checkpoint at 11:00am…awesome. The cop could tell we seemed a little bit surprised by it and made the observation that “you guys are not from New Zealand are you?”….apparently it is normal here or something. Getting a DUI would be embarrassing anyway but could you imagine the embarrassment of getting a DUI before noon on a Friday? New low…
Sheila passed the breathalyzer and we kept driving….
Later while watching tv they showed an advert of a guy getting breathalyzed and getting thrown in jail for being on drugs so I guess they are testing for more than just alcohol. I also saw an advert/public service announcement warning people that it is never “ok” to shake a baby. The more you know…
We arrived at Piha a little before noon and it was overcast which kind of sucked because it was actually really nice when we left Auckland. Piha is a really cool cove with a huge rock in the middle called Lion Rock. The sand in Piha is kind of black and has really cool specks of shinyness in it. Even though it was overcast the sand was still so hot that it still hurt to run across. We walked around on the beach in the rocks and caves and took a bunch of pictures then went up to the top of Lion Rock.
Sheila had seen signs saying there were penguins at Piha the last time She went there but she didn’t see any last time. This time we ran into a park ranger/worker and he told us that they only come out really early in the morning or around 11pmish at night. So we didn’t see any penguins which was slightly disappointing but we still saw some pretty cool stuff.
Photos from Piha:
The Lion Rock in Piha
I left Toronto at noon on Tuesday and arrived in Auckland on Thursday at 6:30am. A bit of an odd feeling to be in the air for 17 hours and losing an additional 18 hours due to timezones but I felt pretty good when I landed and wasn’t really jet lagged for some reason. I guess the Halcion did its job because I slept most of the second flight.
Air New Zealand was pretty good..I had never flown internationally and not been in business class so I was a little concerned about that but the seats were actually pretty big and I was comfortable. I was able to switch from a middle seat last minute to a window seat which was a huge win…:-)
Since I had applied for a visa and was electronically approved I was expecting to have to provide some proof/documentation to support all the stuff I had filled out but for whatever reason the lady just stamped my passport and told me to keep moving… Funny how I get stressed about stupid things like that and it turns out to be nothing. I had visions of them rejecting my visa application on some technicality and putting me on a flight back to Canada and not even getting to see Sheila..:-(
Stepping out of the airport it was like mid-20′s and really sunny which was a nice change from the Toronto/Minneapolis weather.
We ended up spending most of the day just hanging out at the apartment and catching up on lost time. Around dinner though we decided to go to Takapuna since it was such a beautiful day.
Photos from Takapuna:
Flip flops + shorts in December...nice!
After a walk on the beach we went to a “hole in the wall” Chinese dumpling place and had dinner. Those of you that know me and my eating habits (steak and potatoes or lasagna) can probably guess that the dumpling place was not my pick but it was really good. Sheila is a little more adventurous about food than I am but I always end up liking the things she picks…:-)
-Clayton
