Auckland Day 2

Our second day in Auckland I had originally planned to go see Waiheke Island, which is where the rich of Auckland live and there are lots of arts and crafts shops, wineries, and gourmet food all in a beach setting.  However, they apparently want to keep the riff raff out by making the ferry very expensive and then also not making it easy to get around the island once you get there.  So, instead we went to the Auckland Museum.  It turned out to be very interesting.  I got to look at Maori exhibits and decorative arts, and Daniel spent the whole time on the third level which was a war museum.  I particularly liked this Maori meeting house and an exhibit on Maori rugby players.  They do the haka war chant in their opponents' faces before games.

They also had an exhibit with some live NZ animals and lots of stuffed ones.  Guess which one this is:

Daniel says it's the epitome of fake, but this bright green and metallic frog was real and even croaking. 

After the museum, we went to Mt. Eden, which is one of several volcanoes that Auckland is built on, and not all of them are dormant.  The view of the city was spectacular:

There is still a large crater in the middle that is considered sacred by the Maori and you're not allowed to walk down in it, but you can circle the mouth.

Afterwards, we both did some shopping, me at cute little boutiques in Parnell and Newmarket, and Daniel at various internet retailers trying to figure out how we could have consistent internet while in NZ.  We eventually ended up at a grocery store to collect some dinner supplies.  Daniel (of course it was Daniel) found this rather comical energy drink:

In case you can't read the can, it says, "Energize and Revolutionize with Seize Power Tangerine Energy Drink"  Daniel felt this warranted a special photo:

Australia wrap up and NZ beginning

Our last week in Hervey Bay was hectic as we packed, cleaned, and said goodbye to people.  The hardest was definitely the lovely people of St. John's and our Bible Study.  The evening service at St. John's is small enough that everyone obligingly collected at the front for us to take a picture.

We also took a picture with our Bible Study, but still waiting for Paul to send that one.  These two groups really made us feel welcome and our stay in Australia much more enjoyable.

We left for Brisbane a couple of days early so we could drive a day, relax a day, and then wake up at 4:30 in the morning to make our flight to Auckland.   We arrived at our hostel Minto only to discover that due to a loss of internet they didn't get our reservation for the night, but could host us the second night.  This really made me sad because Minto is a beautiful colonial Queenslander with entryways like this:

They even have antique claw foot tubs in the bathrooms.  They are also, clean and quiet and have a marvelous view of the city from the porch.

Instead we had to stay that night at Somewhere to Stay (they try to keep your expectations low with the name), a loud, grungy crowded hostel.  Thankfully there was a fun cat or it would have been a total loss.  It was really, really hot with no AC so we had to leave the window open and the people of Australia apparently rebel against screens as many buildings don't have any.  So I woke up with several mosquito bites including several clustered together in the arch of my foot that itch like murder every time I walk.  So, wasn't sad to leave it for Minto the next day.  Daniel drove out to the Gold Coast again to the waterpark so he could take several laps around the lazy river.  I stayed in town and took in the double feature of Breaking Dawn on IMAX (which came here a couple days earlier than in the US to my delight) and Moneyball.    I ate popcorn for lunch.  It was great.  We went to bed at 8:30 pm so we could get up at the crack of dawn.

Daniel's description of the flight is infinitely more entertaining than it was, which was I think part of his disappointment.  My only complaint was that was an hour too short.  I had managed to squeeze in Captain America (not exactly a 4 inch screen movie, but I hadn't seen it still) and only half of the Help. Now I need to finish it.  I was highly amused, though, that it was subtitled because they assumed you wouldn't be able to understand the Southern accents.  I suppose if I hadn't lived in NC for the last 10 years, I might too.

We got through customs considerably faster and with less hassle than in Australia, and had our little Hyundai Getz ready to go at the rental place.  It was just a 20 minute drive to our hostel in the Auckland neighborhood of Parnell, which bills itself as the creative quarter.  It's an interesting mix of ritzy boutiques, fancy restaurants, and a surprising number of hostels.  Old large homes seem to get converted to backpacker places when they go up for sale, I'm sure to the dismay of the neighbors.  We are in a pretty nice one, and very quiet.

We didn't do much that afternoon and evening.   We jumped ahead another 3 hours, so missed a chunk of the day.  For those of you keeping track that now means we are a full 18 hours ahead of Eastern and 19 hours ahead of Central.  We found a grocery store to do some stocking up, and then had dinner at the same chain Italian place that introduced us to sticky date pudding in Melbourne.  This time they had a new amazing dessert, the chocolate banana calzone with gelato.

Daniel was more excited about finding the Coffee News, and even found that little guy you are supposed to look for.  They also brought us pitcher of ice water that made his day.

I enjoyed talking with our waitress.  She had a Spanish accent I couldn't place, and she told me she was from Chile.  We chatted a bit and I told her it was just really nice to hear a Spanish accent again.  Durham has so many Spanish speakers, I feel a little lost if I don't hear it from time to time.  It's not just the Mexican food I miss :)

While we were out and about last night we walked past an Anglican church we decided to try this morning.  I wasn't paying a great deal of attention to it in the dark, but later discovered it's the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity and is even in our Lonely Planet book as a must see.  It was a beautiful church with modern stain glass.  Here's a one of the windows.

It was a pretty small congregation for such a large building, but the service was nice, and the music very pretty.

After church we headed to the Waitakere Ranges and Karekare Beach.  It's not very far from Auckland and very beautiful.  It meant driving on another of those terrifying one lane twisty roads that are technically two lanes, but it was worth it.  Here's the view of the Ranges:

They had a fun frame you could pose in that Daniel felt was a challenge to fill the whole thing:

Then it was on to the black sand beach of Karekare.  When they said black, they meant black. I was envisioning some black sand mixed in with regular sand, but that was not the case, as you can see here:

It's that color because of the volcanic soil and iron or something.  There was not an informative plaque as I had hoped.  It reminded me a bit of Cape Cod in that you had to hike through tall sand dunes before you could even get to the beach.  They also took you by an interesting forest.  There's a cookbook by Molly Katzen called the Enchanted Broccoli Forest.  I swear this is it.  I couldn't get over how much the trees reminded me of broccoli stalks:

We also passed some large kouri trees:

And this beautiful stream:

The beach itself was a bit surreal.  Daniel and I both expressed it as very Lord of the Rings-esque.

The surf was very rough and the water was cold.  It was only about 70 degrees out anyway, so we did not swim.  We headed back to downtown Auckland to take in some of it's sights.  I even found this helpful sign pointing home:

And happiness in a cup:

Haven't had a Starbucks mocha with toffee nut syrup in months.  Overall, a good first day.

Day 1 of New Zealand, In Which My Movie Rights Are Severely Curtailed

Awesomeness that did not happen:
We did not arrive in New Zealand without a printed itinerary, resulting in our forced deportation back into Australia including immediately buying full price return plane tickets.

What did happen
The check-in person in Brisbane for Qantas warned us that this deportation would happen, and then she demanded that Lara go to a paid Internet station and print out an itinerary.  I came in from the bathroom and pulled out the same confirmation sheet that I had to show to another agent to prove that I had paid for an extra bag (they charge you much more if you don't book it online, but then the computer doesn't seem to write it down anywhere).

I then hid the sheet, never showing it to any government representative in New Zealand, waiting for them to cuff me and drag me away as I occupied New Zealand.  I don't know if they have a constitution, but it was going to be a memorable ride as they violated what rights I do have.

Well, thank you, Qantas lady, for building up the most exciting legal moment of my life, and then forcing me to watch it drift away, like a Kiwi in the wind.  I was going to sell the movie rights as Brokedown Palace 2: Prison Conditions Not So Bad as BDP1, But Still Accidentally Hilarious (working title). Qantas has been going downhill lately. Just recently there was a major stop to all flights because of work problems.  People were sleeping in airports.  And now employees can't print out an itinerary.

The New Zealanders were mostly concerned with rogue fruit and dirt.  They like foreign tourists, but they do not like our contaminants.  Many signs showed obtuse graphics of plants and resulting high dollar fines.  So we threw everything away.  We forgot the trail mix.  It was sitting on the luggage at the inspection station.  A NZ marine shouted, "We've got a live one. Fire in the hole!" as he hurtled toward the nuts and fruit with a cross between a sawed-off shotgun and a flame thrower in one hand a and a clipboard in the other.  The heat caused the halon sprinkler systems to fire off, filling the customs area full of gas.  We escaped with nothing more than the charred remains of a hiking snack.  There's a reason they don't sell it to you cooked, you know.

Okay, that didn't happen either.  Since Broke Down Palace involves drug mules, why not make me a trail mix mule in BDP2?  But they let us keep the trail mix, which again ruins the movie options.  It was not the droid they were looking for?  So what else didn't we have to throw away?  Oh, well.

There were some casualties in Australia, too.  The extra bag was not that big, so we pushed it to 23 kg each on four other suitcases.  When it hit 23.3kg (remember, they can't print an itinerary, so rounding doesn't work either), some stuff had to go.  Reusable shopping bags, our full tube of toothpaste, tea, a couple of spoons, a tupperware, some spices, two boxes of jello, saline solution, fish oil, Lara's giant merged gummy vitamin super-vita-ball,  and one box of pudding mix.  All of this hit the trash as we scrounged on the airport floor to account for the slight changes we had made in our bags after we last weighed.  Even before we left the house there were painful decisions. Out went  little things that you don't want to have to buy again, and sentimental things, like the years-old emergency backup underwear that had extended many a laundry cycle.  I think Garth said it best, “At first they're constricting, but then they become a part of you.”  So, yes, I left part of me in Australia, which, if Hervey Bay does not incinerate its trash, will be there for decades to come.

But we made it here fine, and we already have cell phone service (our US numbers goes through to NZ).   We want to stay connected with everyone.  And also, sometimes we want to be disconnected and discover different parts of the city until we are done and call each other (hint, if you get a cool gift from us, Daniel probably wasn't the one spending hours picking it out).  Internet access reminds me a little of our experience Italy right now.  There is one spot on the bed that works in the hostel room.  Stray just a little bit and it disconnects.

More will follow on Auckland, for the next couple of days, and then the rest of New Zealand.  Lara will of course be able to present more than just logistics.

The picture is of the sky needle, not the space needle, in Auckland.

Laundry and Humility in a Clothesline Country

I have not been defeated by the laundry in Australia, in the sense that even though it's a tropical environment, I still wear clothes here,  very consistently.  But I believe in tactical retreat - I will live to launder another day.

My future return may involve a second hand dryer, or a large toaster oven, a death ray turned on low, or some other technology to help me optimally get quick, soft  laundry.

Top 10 Things About Our Washing Machine and Clothesline vs a standard washing machine and dryer

• Save money
• Save carbon and other emissions
• No need to buy brillo pads - your towels are scratchy enough straight off the line
• Experience the fastest run of your life as you dash through the house to get the clothes off the line when you hear rain
• Experience the humbling power of clothes pins to lock onto clothes while you try to save them from getting wet
• Experience the joy of rewashing those rainy clothes
• Save money on fabric softener - it ain't going to be soft anyway
• Violate UN conventions and almost boil your clothes at 200 degrees F and then torture them at 13 rotations/sec
• Experience new found respect for past housemates who rejected the idea of building a clothesline to save the environment, lower costs, and annoy the home owner's association
• In metric, we've already reached ten, so we are at the end of the list.

I'm talking about first world problems here, but that's where I live.

Back home, laundry is my thing around the house.  I can't cook. Except in very limited circumstances, Lara doesn't want me to cook. I don't care enough to clean well or often enough.  I get lost in the grocery store and make multiple calls to make sure I'm getting the right thing, and then I still forget an item ("you put two items on the list on the same line - of course I didn't get one - the line was checked off when I got the first item").  My home improvements projects take longer than some pregnancies.  The ceiling fan was bought before Christmas and was barely in operation before the Summer heat began. A year later, one small part remains undone.  Yard work takes years as my grass seed scatters and my trees wither under the North Carolina sun. But once every few weeks, I can turn very large piles of our dirty clothes into large piles of clean clothes.  It is a predictable thing, and it can be done in huge batches, factory style.

Not so here.  There is no dryer, and there's only so much room on the line, so you have to plan in advance.  The washer has a digital display with confusing error codes that stop the wash, sometimes a few minutes after you step away, and you only discover the problem when returning three hours later (yes a full cycle can take three hours).  The front loading door locks when you start the wash, so there is no adding a last minute shirt or sock that was hiding in the bottom of the basket.  At 800 RPM, the spin cycle can shred old clothes (this is not theoretical in our case - some of my shorts are becoming chaps).  If the filter clogs (code oE I think), you have to clean it out at the bottom of the washer while leftover water gushes out of the front of the machine.

I am no longer competent at my thing.  I am slowly clawing my way back.  I have figured out the error codes and was able to avoid major machinery surgery when I found the filter.  I am trying new techniques to get the clothes less stiff. I may have some solutions by the time I leave.  But I will leave a humbled man. (I wrote this earlier.  As we leave a bit earlier than expected, I have moved to a state of acceptance, not mastery).

The above picture is a foot and a half of jeans that stand straight up, on their own.  Look carefully and you'll see that the jeans are not actually attached to the line.  Many times when you take the clothespins off, the clothes stay on the line.  Some stretchy clothes have spandex woven into them - ours behave as if they had built in Aqua Net.

We're heading home (after New Zealand)

Thank you for all of your letters, e-mails, blog comments, tweets, wuphs, and faxes.  The voice of the people has been heard!  We are coming home early.  We are starting New Zealand on Saturday instead of in 2 months.  That puts us back in the US before Christmas.

We've enjoyed our time here in Australia, especially the people we've met.  But things like hitting the kangaroo and a lack of Taco Bells and free refills are moving this part of the journey toward the French movie spectrum.  We've always been aiming for a trip more like Napoleon Dynamite.  Sometimes it's better to walk in the cold to watch Netflix with friends in Durham than it is to walk along a tropical beach in Australia.

So we are moving on to a month of moving around New Zealand to take in  a country, that short of Flight of the Conchordes and Lord of the Rings, we know even less about than Australia.

The International Global DanPark is arranging a parade for our return.  We will arrive in a stretch Prius, to be sensitive and stuff.  But since the Prius motor doesn't have enough power to do a stretch car, the Prius will have to be towed by a V10 diesel truck.  It will have an EPA bumper sticker to be sensitive. The minibar will be stocked entirely of ice cold Diet Coke with free refills.

Live Every Week Like It's Shark Week

So the title doesn’t have much to do with this post other than we did see a shark today and it’s one of my favorite Tracey Morgan quotes.  My day actually began really early.  I woke up for some reason at 4:20 and was surprised to find that the sun was rising.  We have a magnificent view of the beach from our hotel room, and I can’t say I’ve ever been up to witness a sunrise over the ocean before.  I decided to grab the camera and take a few pictures before I went back to bed:

We were very pleased with our hotel.  The Gold Coast is very built up with high rise hotels, casinos, and clubs, so I was glad to find a place that rented apartments away from all the noise.  I got a great rate (I guess most people want to be in all the hub bub of Surfer’s Paradise) and top floor one bedroom facing the ocean.  Wahoo!

In addition to the lovely beaches, the Gold Coast is the home of several amusement parks.  We got a multiple park pass, and the first day we hit Sea World.  I haven’t actually ever been to a Sea World in the US, so I can’t compare, but I did notice the absence of Free Willy.  No whales at this one, so I guess they made a successful break out in Australia.  Willy stayed free, no sequels here.

They had a few rides, but the main objective was to see the shows and animals.  The animals were a hoot, even the untrained ones.  We weren’t there long and I caught this pelican and another bird with their mouths open at the same time:

We went to a sea lion show, and then road a roller coaster.  Daniel and I kept remarking on the inefficiencies.  The people weren’t lined up for each spot.  They didn’t load and unload at the same time, there was no place to put your belongings, etc.  We really felt they needed to get a team from Busch Gardens down here to give a seminar.  We both remarked that we were nerds and needed to let it go.

We went afterwards to a place where you could touch stingrays.  Daniel decided they were too slimy, so he just took my picture:

We also got to see some tidal pools where you could touch starfish and sea cucumbers and such.  The sea cucumber was really soft and squishy.  I made Daniel touch it just because I knew it would gross him out.  He looked disappointedly at me and said, “You’re supposed to protect me from these sorts of things.”  They also had a huge coral reef viewing tank where we saw the sharks and huge sting rays, and this school of fish that was all bunched up together:

Then it was on to polar bears, where I learned that they actually have black skin underneath the white fur.  This one was doing some fun flips for me.  I decided to move on after he pulled up a huge mangled fish carcass he had put aside for a snack.

It was on to the penguins, who are soooo fast it was impossible to get a good picture of them in the water.  I went up to the top viewing area and found out that most of them were snoozing, where it was much easier to get a picture of a sleeping penguin:

Of course, it wouldn’t be Sea World without a dolphin show.  I managed to snap it at just the right time to get four of the dolphins leaping over the boat with the trainer in it:

We kept with the theme and had fish tacos for dinner, and stopped to see the beach at Surfer’s Paradise.  Daniel finally got to see the surf again:

Brisbane

The object of Brisbane for me was to cram as many big city delights in as possible.  We left Wednesday morning and drove the 3.5 hours south into the city.  Brisbane is big, more so than I had expected, so I was kind of glad we were staying in an out of the way B&B in a close suburb.  That meant we had free parking, and the room was very nice, too.  It was different than other B&B’s I’ve stayed in, though.  There was actually a small table in our room and a mini fridge, and they had stocked our room with our breakfast supplies so we could eat in whenever we liked.  For Daniel one night this meant 1:30 in the morning when he got the munchies.  Thankfully they supplied us with enough stuff he got a real breakfast, too.  Here’s a picture of our little table all set up:

It was also the chance to use all the groupon/living social deals I had collected since it isn’t popular enough in Australia to have it anywhere but the big cities.  The first one was for a sit down Chinese place.  Well, that’s what the picture looked like.  It was actually a very, very hard to find hole in the wall noodle bar with not very good food, so that was disappointing, especially after spending an hour trying to find it.  However, it did enable us to see the CBD of Brisbane at night, which was very pretty.  Brisbane is laid around the dips and bends of the Brisbane River, so you are never too far from water.    Here’s some of the city along the river:

We also had tickets to see a play that night, Sweet Charity at one of the arts centers.  I hadn’t heard of it before, but it’s a Neil Simon play that actually was very popular when it first came out—nominated for 12 Tony Awards.  It was funny and the actors were really good, but admittedly had a less than happy ending, which I wasn’t expecting.  Still, it was good, and Daniel even liked it even though it was a musical.  It was a little odd, though, because they did the whole play in American accents.  Daniel commented that he didn’t come half way around the world to listen to a Jersey accent.

The next day was my pamper day.  I got my hair done.  I was in desperate need since I hadn’t had it cut since Sydney and it was poorly done then.  Daniel met me for lunch and we went to the first big mall we had seen in a while, too.  They don’t seem to like malls very much here.  It’s mostly strip malls and even the malls can be very sectioned so that you have to go in and out to get to the next series of shops.  I got sushi, which is cheap and plentiful in the cities here, but isn’t to be found in Hervey Bay, and a Gloria Jean’s Coffee, which we are also lacking in HB.  Afterward, I had a groupon for a traditional Thai massage, which was awesome.  Here’s the main area of the place, where they served me tea and spring rolls while I waited:

That night I had another groupon, this time for a Thai place in the West End, a hip downtown neighborhood.  It was really good, some of the best food I’d had in while.  I had the mixed entrée starter which was a spring roll, curry puff, money purse (hadn’t had this before, but was really good), and a fish cake:

Then I had an excellent green prawn curry with rice in a fancy silver bucket. 

Daniel got a spicy mixed seafood noodles with prawns, squid, and scallops that came with these pretty carrot flowers.  I studied them for awhile, trying to figure out how they did them, and I’m still not quite sure:

The last day in Brisbane was the Good Food and Wine Show.  This was AWESOME!  It was just tons and tons of food, kitchen gadget, and alcohol vendors giving away free samples and doing cooking demonstrations to get you to buy their products.  Ha!  I’m not that weak.  Well, I got some cheese, chocolate, and avocado oil, but not much.  Most people bought trolleys on wheels and filled them to the brim.  However, buying lunch was completely unnecessary.  It was like if the Costco Sample section was the size of a football field.  It took me three hours just to walk through all of it.  I also got to see a show at the celebrity chef theater.  I went to see two of the guys on Masterchef Australia.  I hadn’t heard of either before I got here, but they are a really big deal here.  Sort of like if I got to see Emeril and Paula Deen together live, sort of thing.  They were really entertaining, so I enjoyed it. 

I was sort of awed at the amount of alcohol, though.  It wasn’t just wine, but hard liquor, too, and you could sample as many as you liked as many times as you liked, so I could see how you could get sloshed pretty quickly.  I tried to limit myself.  I laughed out loud when I was this vendor, who should have been letting people sample their product:

There were also classes you could take in cocktail making, cupcake making, pasta, and barista skills, but they all cost extra, so I just sort of looked in every so often.  Eventually I could eat nor drink anymore, so I called Daniel to come collect me and then dump off again at Queen Street, the shopping district in Brisbane.  It was pretty immense, and I spent another good couple of hours in there.  I really liked this store in particular, which still had all the fancy race day dresses in the window since the Melbourne Cup was this week:

I had just said to Daniel that morning how I would give my eye teeth for a Starbucks Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate, and lo and behold, there was that beautiful green logo!  Sadly, I had a bit too much of an American experience there as they did not have the salt sprinkles for it (which is the whole point, thank you very much).  That seems to happen to me about 75% of the time at home, too, which is really frustrating.  Get on that Starbucks!  Anyway, so I was about to get my second favorite thing, a mocha with toffee nut syrup, only to be informed that they wouldn’t have toffee nut syrup until next week.  Curses!  A pumpkin latte or a peppermint mocha were not to be found, either, since it is almost summer here.  I actually whined to the barista, “I came in here to get a taste of home, and you’re telling me you don’t have any of my favorites?”  In typical Aussie customer service fashion, he was polite but couldn’t help me in the slightest.  I just gave up and walked out sans drink.

All my shopping worked to Daniel’s advantage, as I spied some street vendors selling German bratwurst and Nutella crepes.  No parking anywhere, though, so I had to buy it all and balance it while Daniel rounded the block and then came back and picked me up.  We eventually found a parking lot to pull into and consume our goodies.  Then it was off to the Gold Coast, just an hour away.