Motueka and Kaiteriteri

I (Debi) took my first trip alone to see my English friend Paul. He is working in Motueka as a Pear picker. I took the ferry over to Picton and caught a sketchy bus to Motueka. I checked into my hostel full of senior citizens and found Paul. We headed out to have some beers and catch up. Unfortunately, Motueka isn’t a happening town and most of the bars close at 10pm. To finish off our night we walked around the town in the dark for two hours. Paul was working the next day so I took a day trip to Kaiteriteri (translation: food hurry hurry) on my own. It is mainly a holiday spot for vacationers and has the most beautiful beach I’ve ever seen. Golden sand and blue/green water. The sun was very hot to sit under so I caught a boat to one of many beaches in the Abel Tasman National Park. I did some walking around the park and eventually made my way back to Kaiteriteri. I took a nap on the beach before I headed back to Motueka. I met up with Paul again and we went to the coast to have some beers with the sunset. We found a bar open until 11 to finish the night off. We walked home and I manage to lock myself out of the hostel. Luckily it was easy to climb the fence. I spent my last day in Motueka exploring the city and returning “home”.

February in Wellington

Nath was our first visitor and spent a couple days with us. We took her up Wellington's Cable Car and made a stop in The Carter Observatory Planetarium. We had a lesson in the Southern Hemisphere stars. We also took Nath through the Botanical Gardens. Our second visitor was Mr Anderson but we were unable to catch him on film.


For Valentines Day Kitch made heart shaped Rice Bubble Squares (aka Rice Krispie Squares)
Deb working hard in her blue scrubs


Kitch exploring The Red Rocks Coastal Walk

The Zorb

On our second and last day in Rotorua the decision was made to try 'The Zorb'. If any of you are Amazing Race fans you'll know exactly what we are talking about. Basically you roll down a hill in a ball with water in it. The pamplet says "waterfall meets rollar coaster" and we agree completely. We changed into our bathing suits and were taken up the hill in a car. When we got there they filled our ball up with luke warm water. In order to get into the ball you have to dive in head first. So great....who doesn't love diving into anything head first. They zipped the little hole up and off we went...down the hill. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN. We both laughed the entire time and were in no control of what was going on. The staff caught it on film which is how we got these great shots.

Rotorua

We took our first overnight trip this past weekend. It was New Zealands national holiday long weekend and we were happy to get out of a very busy Wellington. We booked a tour bus from Wellington to Rotorua. It promised to show us water falls, volcanos and the largest fresh water lake in the southern hemisphere. Instead we got open farms (meaning the animals could jump out at you, not fun for Debi) and random pit stops. We were not impressed but excited to get off the bus after 7 hours of travel. The first night we checked out 'The Lava Bar' (the bar attached to our hostel) and met a Swiss guy. He filled us in on life in Switzerland including their neautrality, the black money and the alps. We also bonded over our shared red and white flags...just doing our part for internation relations. Canada and switzerland have never been closer. We eventually made it to bed and were the last ones in our room to go to bed and the first to get up the next day as we had to meet our tour bus at 7:15am - brutal!
We were on a five stop tour for all day sunday. Our first stop was at the Maori arts and crafts museum and thermal wonderland. The maori people make up 15% of the NZ population. They moved over from the other polynesian islands between 1000 and 1300 AD. Maori is the other national language here and is taught in schools. We were glad to get the scoop on all things Maori. We then took a train through the thermal valley and saw hot springs and boiling mud! The mud is between 90 and 95 degrees celsius and boils and jumps like crazy.


Our next stop was to Paradise Springs where we saw natural springs and went for a walk through paradise woods. we then made our way to the agrodome for the unique new zealand experience - a sheep shearing show! In New Zealand there are ten times more sheep than people...and the same number of cows as people...what can we say it's a farm animal loving country. So after we learned how to shear sheep and milk cows (skills that i'm sure will one day come in handy) we were off to our next stop - the skyline gondola and luge! That's right people in honour of the upcoming olympics we took up the sport of luge. Although luge is a bit different here. We were in little carts and had to steer our way down a big hill. Super fun and since we were in the adventure capital of the north island so we felt like we needed to have a little adventure in our lives. Our last stop was the Polynesian spa. It was a natural thermal spa which sounds really relaxing and wonderful but since all the heat is provided by the volcanoe heat (aka sulfur) there was a slight odour (and by slight we mean over powering). So we only lasted about half an hour but it was cool and we were able to go from one to another getting increasingly warmer and our skin getting increasingly better - apparently...




After our tour we went back to our hostel to get ready for dinner. We went to a local hotel for a Maori concert and hangi. We had food prepared in the traditional way - buried in the ground under a stone oven. It was really good and served in buffet style (who doesn't love a good buffet!) We saw Maori songs and dances performed on stage. It was cool to see and learn more about maori legends and performance.

Marlborough Wine Tour

Today we took our first journey over to the south island to take a wine tasting tour in the marlborough region, We took the ferry over and got picked up by the tour right at the ferry docks. We were on tour with a scottich couple and a young woman from japan. Altogether we went to six vineyards (one of which was owned by the cinematographer of harry potter - how's that for a NZ celebrity connection!) We also sampled homemade olive oils and our last winery had liquors and hard liquor to sample (cause that's what you need after a day of drinking wine...shooters!) All in all it was a super fun day and we both enjoyed tasting the wines and seeing the beautiful south island scenary.