Welcome to New Zealand (NZ Part 1)

I made it! That's right - I am in the great country of New Zealand, currently in Palmerston North, in between Wanganui and Wellington on the North Island. It's pretty frickin' sweet!! This blog is covering a very busy weekend, so prepare yourself for a long one, filled with pictures and anecdotes!

It was quite an adventure getting here, let me tell you. So I was hanging out in the hostel, waiting for the time to go to the airport. Finally, after not getting the shuttle, we called for a taxi. Ugh - LAX (the international airport in LA) is SO inefficient. I had to check in first, right, and then check my bags separately - so annoying! Well by that time, the line was so long, I knew that I would be in it too long to make my flight. I asked a nice security guard to push me forward, and so he did, and off I went to security check-in, which was another hugely long line. I was about 3/4 of the way through, and my flight was boarding. AHH!! Freak out - I asked another security guard to help me out, and he pushed me forward again, radda radda ra, long story short, I go running to my gate and jump on the shuttle to my plane 10 minutes before my plane was scheduled to take off. I got on the plane just in time! Shout out to Mark Vink for being available to help me out in my time of stress! :)

Air Tahiti was so cool - they gave us flowers, there were flight movies, I got a blanket and a pillow to myself, and the food was mostly edible. :) Everything was in French, so there would be a 5 minute message in French, right, and then a 30 second message in English. I don't really know if I got all the information I was supposed to get. Oh well - I made it safe, right? Oh, and stopover in Tahiti, so beautiful! Hmm, trip ideas for next summer? :) Anyway, I made it safe and sound to Aukland, although my bag never actually left Los Angeles, so that was cool. I was mostly excited to see Bec!!!!!!

Her and her friend Vanessa (Ness) drove up to meet me at the airport and take me on a road trip adventure.

And so it began. As we drove, we saw lots of beautiful sights:

And we made the obligatory stop at the famous L&P bottle:

Pretty yummy drink! Hmm, the road says... PUKE road?!?!?!?

Well no, it's pronounched POOKY. I had lots of lessons on how to pronounce things correctly, particularly names of towns and roads. :) Fortunately, Bec has been able to translate most of the language barriers between me and the other Kiwis (New Zealanders). But I'm learning.

On the way, we stopped to look at the waterfall at Owharoa (I know, everyone loves waterfalls), and we ended up making it into an adventure! We saw the waterfall from the road...

But we decided we wanted a closer look, so we hiked through the woods on this small path, up a hill, not really knowing where we were going, not really dressed for the occasion, and we got right next to the falls, but we couldn't actually see them through the forest...

Oh well - fun times, ducking under limbs and climbing over trees. :)

We road-tripped it down to Tauranga where Ness and Bec have a good friend, Karleen. We stayed with her family for the weekend, which was sweet. Her mom makes the most amazing food!! Anyway, that evening I had my first mince pie, which frankly, was amazing. I'm totally hooked. Later on we went to a hot pool, basically a swimming pool sized hot tub, and we relaxed a bit. Then bed, finally! A real mattress. :)

The next day was sure to be busy. I took a shower (mm, so nice) and we prepared for our trip to Rotorua. Karleen had it all planned. Our first stop was the mud pools and hot springs. Boiling mud - so crazy!!

And it smelled like eggs... New Zealand was made, basically, by volcanoes, and there are still some active volcanoes in the area. Mostly there are just the hot springs.

It was a beautiful autumn day - although it's actually winter here now - you'd never know it! It is a bit cool and it rains more often, but I think it's still very nice out, I think. Anyway, we walked around, saw the Zorb (people inside a giant ball rolling down a hill) and someone bungee jump off a crane. We did not partake. We did walk around a carnival/market thing, which was cool. It was right by the water where we saw lots of black swans waiting for people to "accidentally" drop some food.

For lunch I had a New Zealand sausage (kind of like a hot dog, only better) and pumpkin soup - different from our pumpkin. Very good. And then... the luge!! We went to the Skyline where we road a gondola up a big hill...

With smiles on our faces...

Especially when we decided to have a little fun with the buckets going the other way, down the hill. We thought it would be fun to just stare at them a bit, you know, have some laughs. They weren't looking... so we waved obnoxiously at the oncoming one to make sure they would look at us. In response, they prepared themselves for us, and while we were staring at them as they passed, two of them MOONED us!!! Butts pressed firmly against the glass, we got a full view! We DIED laughing - it was hilarious! We couldn't believe it!! It was all over from there. :)

Although the view was quite pretty from the top. :) Anyway, we got up there, and it was time for the luge. The luge is basically, you get in a little cart, and you roll down a big, winding hill. We decided to start with the scenic route, since it's the easiest, and we'd never done it before.

Of course, I crashed - on the scenic route!! I took the turn too quickly, and off I came, scraping down the hilly, ending with scratches on my belly and a giant bruised lump on my hip. :( It was pretty hilarious, but I can't sleep on my left side for a while... haha. No worries, we made it down the rest of the way just fine. Of course, the intermediate and advanced tracks... I went down them, but I went very, very slowly. I don't think I like speed very much... I'm okay if we take this slowly. :) It was still fun! Whenever there was a picture to be taken down the luge or up the lift, we planned out our faces: bored, frightened, asleep, poised, absent minded, angry, etc. :) They were some good shots, although we didn't actually buy any.

On the way down the gondola we tried to do some funny things again, you know, dancing for the other people, etc. No ars sightings that time around, thankfully! But we still had a good time being 12 again. :)

That evening we were able to pick up my bag at the Tauranga airport. And who do you think we saw marching off that plane? It was Helen Clark herself, the New Zealand Prime Minister!!

She was head down all the way out to her car, so this is the only picture I got. People here don't much like her, so whatever, but it was kind of a big deal to see her, I suppose.

Anyway, it was another good meal that night - Mrs. Elphick made lamb chops with roasted veggies and potatoes, including my first kumara, the best vegetable ever, which we don't have in the states - and another good night's sleep. The next day was Sunday, so of course, we went to church. After lunch, we took on the Mount - Mount Maunganui.

We decided to walk up the hill instead of around because it's pretty. And so we did. And it was. We saw a few of the 30 million or so sheep that live in New Zealand. I thought it was cool at the time. But I've seen lots more sheep since then. They dot the hillside wherever you drive.

We made the hike up, though we got a little separated - they wanted to sit for a bit on the way up - I just wanted to get to the top, so I continued on my own. We met up at the top of the hill, and it was unbelievable. On one side you could see the town, and on the other side it was just islands and ocean. It was so beautiful.

I definitely had a good walk up!

We walked back down a different way, and we ended up going down a very steep path with lots of steps. We made the walk a bit more fun with song, but singing was not so easy once we got to the hard part. It was beautiful, and worth it, of course.

After we went out for ice cream - yum! We were pretty tired, so we went directly home to put on jammies and have another great meal of mince and rice. Mince is basically a meat gravy. It's pretty common here, though this is my first exposure. I'm totally getting the recipe...

We had a good sleep that night, after watching Sunday Theatre - The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. I'm anxious to see Prince Caspian - geeky, I know. But whatev. :)

That basically concludes the whole of the weekend. The next morning Bec, Ness, and I set out for Palmerston North. There are a few pictures from that trip, but they are on another camera. That's for another blog. This one is long enough!

Thanks, Karleen and family for a wonderful first weekend in New Zealand!! It was grand, and more than I could have expected! (It's very lucky to be able to travel in a place where I know people - staying in homes and with families rather than only in hostels and on my own... I'm liking it so far.)

Make sure you comment on this one - and there will be more to come! I've got a whole five weeks here in NZ. This was only the first weekend!