New Zealand – Robins Have Wings

20 January, 201421 January, 2014

At Home on a New Zealand Sheep Farm

When we arrive at Pete’s Farm in Rangiora, New Zealand, just outside Christchurch, Gaye is the first to greet us. There’s a twinkle in her eye and she shakes our hands warmly. Pete is not far behind with a hearty, “Welcome, Welcome!” He looks like a sheep farmer to me, if sheep farmers have a look. He has a ruddy face and an easy smile.

SONY DSC — Pete and Gaye Hurst, proprietors of Pete’s Farm Stay

Gaye immediately shows us to our room with a huge picture window looking out over the back of their 100 km property dotted with their woolly charges lazily nibbling grass. Our bathroom is just down the hall, she says, and she tells us that we are free to relax in the den and family room of the house already occupied by cozy-looking couches and a pair of matching barcaloungers. There are more picture windows and patios for scenic daydreaming. She tells us that “tea” will be at 7; that’s what they call dinner in this part of the world.

After settling into our room, we decide to take a stroll around the farm, eyeing a group of sheep just beyond the backyard. Tanya wants to go into their pen to pet them, but I’m a little leery. I think we should wait until we’ve got a chaperone. What if sheep bite? We see some sheep a bit farther up the road that are close to the fence of their enclosure and I suggest getting closer to them, but as we approach they give us a hard side-eye and scamper away. Tanya entreats them to come back, but they are having no parts of us. I manage to get some good close ups of a little lamb that seems to know no better and its mom keeps her eyes trained on us.

Seeing that we may not have any luck with the sheep, we turn back toward to the back of the house where we spot the alpacas. If there is anything cuter than a sheep, it might be an alpaca. Tanya wants in with them, too. But having worked at Animal Planet, I’m all too familiar with shows like “When Animals Attack,” and I can see one of us getting a swift kick to the face from a cute alpaca, which wouldn’t be very cute at all. I also know that these animals are related to llamas and llamas have a nasty habit of spitting. So, again, I urge erring on the side of caution.

Just when it seems that I’ve taken all the fun out of our farm exploration, Pete appears and says, “Wanna see some sheep?” We squeal, “Yes!” He instructs us to put on “gum boots” before we go out to protect our shoes from sheep poo. He has a blue box of greyish pellets in his hand and he takes us to the pen just beyond the yard. As it turns out, I had no reason to fear these sheep. Pete shakes the blue box and the sheep come running towards us like loyal little dogs. They break into a wild gallop. It’s hilarious. We feed them the pellets that Pete calls “nuts” made of barley and other grains. They greedily scarf them from our hands, looking for more as soon as one handful is gone. The healthiest eater and largest of the bunch is a mama sheep who gave birth to a set of quadruplets, a rarity in the world of sheep birthing, according to Pete. Most sheep give birth to only one lamb, maybe two. I think she deserves more nuts that the rest. She’s one of 180 mama sheep on the farm. There are over 300 in Pete’s entire herd. He’s also got 4 or 5 cows for beef not dairy and the 10 alpacas out back.

I think Pete’s got a pretty good set up here, and he agrees, admitting that he loves his life of sheering sheep and welcoming American, Chinese, Japanese, Singaporean and Malaysian sheep-curious guests into his no fuss life. Meanwhile, Tanya seems to be squeezing the life out of a sheep nearby. She’s got a death grip on its neck. I’m sure the sheep is thinking, “Just let go and give me more of those nuts, lady.” She’s also cooing at them. Shearing a sheep was at the top Tanya’s list of things to do in New Zealand. I think it may have even ranked higher than any of the Lord of the Rings experiences we’ve done so far. But Pete’s seen at least one other person more excited by the prospect of close proximity to a sheep. He tells us the story of a divorced Malaysian woman that visited the farm and insisted upon taking a photo with the sheep in her wedding dress. We surmise that she was trading in her husband for the sheep. Tanya didn’t pack a wedding dress for this trip, but ever since I told her that we could to a farm stay in New Zealand, she kept asking, do you think they’ll let me shear a sheep?

At Pete’s Farm, they let you shear a sheep. In fact you learn to shear from Pete himself, a champion sheep shearer who could shear 200 sheep a day in his youth, before his back began to protest. He made a dollar per sheep, pocketing $200 daily. He remembers those days fondly over breakfast on the patio the next morning. He has a far-off look in his eye and a wistful grin on his face as he tells us that he left home at 15 to take up with a sheep-shearing outfit that went from farm to farm. They slept on the farm where they were to work and the farmer’s wife made the shearers a simple breakfast of porridge in the mornings and the farmer, called a cockey, would give them beer in the evenings after dinner. There was lots of beer drinking at sheep shearing competitions, too. Pete described them as rowdy events where the goal was to shear a sheep in a minute or less and advance through regional competitions.

Then it was time for us to try sheep shearing for ourselves. With gumboots on we march out into the pasture, this time with canine companions Jessie and Meg. Jessie’s job is to round up the sheep and bring them to the shearing shed at the far end of the property. I think Meg is just there for enthusiastic support. Pete ties her to a nearby fence and she goes into a mad barking frenzy, knowing what’s about the happen. Pete sends Jess out to collect the sheep. She half-heartedly yaps and circles them a couple of times, but it’s clear that she needs further encouragement. Pete gets out after telling her to get ‘em. Jess gets in gear and gives chase. The sheep clump together, running as bunch to get away from the black and white beast harassing them. They go one way, then the other, finding they have no choice but to head into the shed’s enclosure with Jess nipping at their heels. See Jess do her thing:

These are the same sheep that gave us the side-eye the other day and it’s understandable given what we’ve just seen. They know something is about to happen as they murmur and restlessly mingle in their pen. Pete explains that foaling happens in August, New Zealand’s winter, when it’s quite cold. The next big event on the farm is when the lambs are sold around Christmas for, well, you can guess. It’s a hard truth. This is how Pete keeps his sheep population to 300. The rest are for shearing, which mainly happens in the spring. But we’ll get to shear a sheep right now.

The sheep have migrated to the back of the shed and Pete asks if we want to catch a sheep. I’m game, but Tanya hesitates. She’s thinking she’ll have to run around the yard and chase one down. Once she realizes that she’ll just have to grab one from the small selection of sheep bumping into one another in the back of the shed, she’s turns into Xena, warrior sheep-shearing princess. She sets her sights on one terrified lamb that tries to hide behind its woolly brethren to escape her clutches, to no avail. He put up a good fight, but Tanya is determined. Pete tells her to put the sheep on his butt. He’ll submit after that. Tanya’s face turns red as she tries to bring the lamb down, but she manages to force his hind parts to the floor and then she has to drag it out through the clumping sheep for its shearing. Pete’s encouraging her along the way, “Good, on ya,” he says.

Pete’s already shown us the shears up close, not unlike the shears used to shave human hair, attached to string that he pulls to start them with a whir. Before we can start though, we have to name our little lamb-shearing victim and I choose the name Larry. It just seemed to fit. Pete starts by showing us the correct way to shear a sheep, putting the shears as close to the skin as possible and Larry seems as docile as, well, a lamb. But I think Larry starts to have flashbacks of his capture when Tanya gets ahold of the shears and things go slightly awry. See what happened:

Things turn out OK. We manage to actually shear a sheep without slaughtering it and we feel pretty good about ourselves. As our video explains, we only got about 1.5 kgs of wool from Larry, but most sheep produce about 5 kg of wool at $5 NZ per kg. That’s not a lot of money. The alpacas are the cash cows, so to speak, of the farm. Their hair can pull in $25 per kg. They only produce 2 kgs of hair, but their hair is sought after around the world for its softness. When we finally meet the alpacas, they rush us in similar fashion to the sheep because we are holding that blue box of pellets. Their round, long-lashed eyes blink at us expectantly. One pushy alpaca doesn’t wait for us feed him and tries to force his nose directly into the box. Eventually, they get bored with the pellets and plop down on folded legs into the grass.

Soon, it’s time for our own dinner and somehow, Pete has found time to prepare a delicious barbeque for us with lamb chops, of course, steaks and kebabs. Gaye adds to the spread with potatoes, pasta salad and green salad, along with a lovely Cabernet-Merlot. It’s the time that we spend over meals with Pete, Gaye and their family that makes us feel most at home on the farm. We talk about our common interests, mainly travel. Pete and Gaye have traveled to San Francisco, Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon in the US and they are planning to go on a cruise of the Caribbean later this year, leaving from Ft. Lauderdale. They ask us where they should go in Florida when their cruise ends. Tanya, the New Orleans native, makes a pitch for her hometown. I have to pitch my birthplace Mobile, AL. There’s Destin and Pensacola along the way. We also talk US politics from gun violence to the economy.

One might make the mistake of thinking that Pete and Gaye are provincial, isolated on this farm in Rangiora. But they’d be horribly mistaken. The world passes through Pete and Gaye’s doorstep almost daily with each guest that passes through. (On our last day, we meet newlyweds and a group of girlfriends from Singapore.) Then, they get out and see it, too. Pete told us once while feeding the sheep that he and Gaye traveled to Japan for the wedding of one of their guests. He talked of how graciously they were treated. Tanya and I know that this is just a reflection of how Pete and Gaye treat their guests. Tanya extends her own heart-felt invitation over dinner on our last night. If Pete and Gaye ever make it to Washington, DC, they’ll get a home-cooked meal and our graciousness in return. Being in their cozy Kiwi home was just what we needed before own return home.

12 January, 201412 January, 2014

Taking on New Zealand’s Tongariro Alpine Crossing

The other passengers on the HotBus to Tongariro Crossing ask us if we want to play a game. Tanya and I say, “Sure.” It’s a two-hour ride from Rotorua toward Taupo and it seems like a good way to entertain ourselves. Rachel, originally from New York, but currently living in Germany, asks if we’ve played “Contact” before. Neither of us has.

The way Rachel explains the game, it sounds like a word game of tag. Someone starts by thinking of a word beginning with a certain letter. Other players have to guess the word by asking a question. If other players know the word that the player asking the question is thinking of, they have to say, “3-2-1, Contact!” and say the word at the same time as the player asking the question. If they’ve said the same word, the original player starting the game has to reveal the next letter of the word they are thinking of, helping to generate more questions and guesses. It was a bit confusing in the beginning, but once we started playing, it was tons of fun especially when you are playing with brainy people who choose words like barnacle and mitre, which happened to be the name of my high school year book.

Rachel is visiting her sister Alyssa and her father Brian who now live in Rotorua. Kent and Jo from Massachusetts are visiting, too. They have the same plan to climb Tongariro and are just as worried about whether or not they’ve dressed appropriately. It’s a chilly morning and it seems to be getting colder. By the time we arrive at 8 am, the winds have picked up and I’m a little nervous about what lies ahead. It isn’t made any better by the fact that our driver handed us information on what to do in the event of a volcanic eruption with a picture of an ashen and quite dead victim of Mount Vesuvius. Not very comforting at all. The instructions are even less so, urging us to stop and look for burning ash and flying rocks before running and then giving the opposite instruction not to turn away from flying rocks until you are sure they will hit you.

View Tongariro Alpine Crossing, Tongariro National Park in a larger map

(This was our Tongariro route. We traveled from the lowest point on the map, Mangatepopo Road, to Ketetahi Road at the top.)

With these notes in mind, we part ways with our new American friends and meet our guide Mel from Walking Legends Tours. She guides us over to another van to pick up lunch and snacks for the trip up, along with rain jackets that we put on immediately to shield ourselves from the wind. Mel has an easy-going way about her. She tells us that this is our trip and that we can go at our own pace. It’ll be a full day hike, about 8 hours covering 10 miles. While we can go at our own pace, we’ve got to be back by 4 pm to catch our bus back to Rotorua. Mel also gives more comforting instructions on what to do should Tongariro or its volcanic neighbor, Mt. Ngauruhoe, also known as Mt. Doom in “Lord of the Rings,” decides to erupt: Grab hands, turn and run. Sounds like a plan.

We aren’t the only ones making the Tongariro ascent. There appear to be at least a hundred others making the same trip and we start along with them single file up a modest dirt incline. Mel says it can get even more crowded during the summer months with as many as 3,000 people attempting the climb in a day. We progress across a narrow plank way and Mel tells us the park system is building and maintaining pathways all along the crossing. The land we are crossing actually belongs to a local Maori tribe and members sit on the park board as advisors to make sure that sacred areas are protected with the eventual goal of taking over management of the land. I am glad to hear this and I’m again drawn to comparisons to this nation’s Native Americans. Mel thinks that because New Zealand is a relatively new country, they learned from other’s mistakes and are taking a different approach of inclusion.

We start to scramble across some rocks alongside a pretty stream of water and small waterfalls appear. It’s here that we start to realize what a gorgeous day this is shaping up to be. The sun is high, the sky is a perfect blue and it is starting to warm. Not too long after this realization, we come to another realization that it’s time to put in some work, because we reached the “Devil’s Staircase” and we watch people trudge up a series of haphazard stairs built into the mountain. This is where a lot of people struggle, Mel says, adding that we shouldn’t stop because it is harder to keep going if you do. The key is to maintain a steady pace. Somehow at this point I am in the front and I’m in attack mode. I want to power up these stairs. I can see the next ridge and I’m using it as motivation. Behind me, Mel says, “Robin, you’re a machine.” I keep at it until my lungs tighten in protest. I’m practically wheezing and trying to catch my breath, while Tanya has fallen a bit behind. I tell Mel that I can’t keep the pace and she takes over, taking each step with a slight pause to slow the pace and Tanya and I are grateful. It allows us to recover and the walk feels a little more manageable. If I’d continued at the pace I set, I’d be one of the people we are passing, now, sitting at the edges of the stairs with withering looks of exhaustion.

Of course Mel’s words of encouragement help, “How are you doing, ladies?” “Is this pace OK?” “You’re doing great.” Before we know it we’ve conquered the Devil’s Staircase and Mt. Ngauruhoe, AKA Mt. Doom, looms next to us. Mel says we’ll see the mountain throughout our trek from varying perspectives, at times it will look smaller and at others bigger. We reward ourselves with a closer look for the moment and a water break. There’s a signpost here where previous trekkers have left their mark in stickers. Tanya and I think of an artist friend who has been leaving his bespectacled visage all over DC and we wish we’d thought to bring one of his stickers to leave behind.

We’ll get even closer to Mt. Doom, but not before passing through the much heralded “Helm’s Deep,” site of the epic battle between the last men, elves, a white wizard and evil snarling orcs hell-bent on taking over Middle Earth in the Lord of the Rings movies. This part of our trek is a pleasant surprise, particularly for Tanya. We knew we’d be traveling in the shadow of Mt. Doom, but now, Helm’s Deep? Tanya is beside herself. (Further research suggests that our guide may have missed the mark here, Helms Deep was actually filmed near Wellington. Oh well, it sure looked like Helms Deep. Don’t tell Tanya.) She stands with arms outstretched in one of the few flat areas on the mountain, soaking in the Lord of the Rings aura.

But we really are following in the footsteps of Frodo and Sam on the way to Mordor, and our own journey continues as we reach another ridge that we must scale taking us toward the Red Crater. Here the wind decides to attack us again, threatening to force us back down the mountain, but we are anchored by the stunning 360 views around us. The deep red soil surrounding a jagged crevice, evidence of previous lava flows, creates a stark contrast against the day’s crystal blue skies. It looks harsh and violent, yet beautiful and awesome at the same time. It also looks like something else. Tanya says, “Is it me, or does that look like a?” I say, “Yes, yes, it does.” We are both thinking of a part of the female anatomy and a Georgia O’Keefe painting flashes through my mind. We may have gotten a little loopy from the alpine altitudes.

Just beyond the crater, we can see aquamarine sulfur pools, appropriately named the Blue Lake and the Emerald Lakes, glistening from the dark and desolate terrain. Mel has been telling us about this place. Every time, I stopped to take a photo of some amazing view, she’d say, “It gets better.” Well, she was right. I’m not sure where to aim my camera at this point, there are valleys, mountain peaks and pools to be captured in each direction. We’ve reached the highest point along the crossing at 1900 meters, over 1 mile high.

But we aren’t done and we still haven’t passed the most treacherous part of the trip. Mel tells us that we are going to have to do a kind of moonwalk through loose dirt to get to our next stop inside the South Crater. The dirt is actually volcanic rock and it is still steaming. The scent of sulfur rises in the air as we get closer to the Emerald Lakes in the crater below. Tanya and I are approaching this steep descent timidly, slowly inching downward and carefully placing our feet. We can imagine slipping off the narrow embankment packed with people into the Red Crater or worse into the pretty, but hot pools of sulfur below. The people around us don’t seem to be as cautious. In fact, they seem reckless, practically flinging themselves in haphazard fashion down the dusty hill sending ash flying. I trust my own steps, but I’m a little wary that some daredevil will take me out in their wild wake. Mel tells us that that some people have turned this into a sport, donning skis in the loose ash to make their descent. Tanya actually fell a couple of times and I managed to teeter and catch my balance in a few close calls.

It seemed to take forever, but we made it safely into the South Crater where we celebrate our ascent to the pinnacle of Tongariro and pause for lunch. Packed sandwiches never tasted so good, especially with the tea and coffee that Mel brought along. She also shared some tasty New Zealand chocolate with peanuts. Here we get to know Mel a bit more. She’s been working outdoors for 8 years, mostly with kids and teaching them teamwork. She’s been with Walking Legends for a year and she loves that it gives her a chance to walk and talk with adults. She says she wasn’t the best of students and instead of going straight to college she headed straight outdoors to the school of life. I’d say she made a good choice. But she’s giving school another shot, studying to become a paramedic. She says she wants to help people. I think she’ll be great at it. We sure appreciate her help on this trip because we never would have made it without her, especially the Devil’s Staircase and that hellish volcanic ash skiing business a moment ago. We probably would have turned back long before now, but instead we made a video from the top:

Just as we finish lunch, Tanya looks up to see a guy wearing a New Orleans Saints hat. Tanya hails from New Orleans originally, so she excitedly asks the guy if he’s from New Orleans. He explains that he lives in Paris, but all of his family lives in New Orleans and he visits often. She’s thrilled. What are the chances of meeting someone from your hometown on a mountain in New Zealand? I’d say 1 in a million. Before we part ways, he tells Tanya that the Saints have advanced in the playoffs. We take this news on the final descent down the mountain. Along the way, Mel tells us a Maori legend of the mountains we’ve passed. Pihanga was the fairest mountain maiden of them all and all the warrior mountains were in love with her, but she was married to Tongariro who was very jealous and erupted with anger at the other mountains, fighting them all until he was victorious and sending them away to their current places in the mountain range. But “word on the street” is that Pihanga still had a thing for one of the mountains, Tauhara, and the pair made love children in a range of smaller mountains near by.

I love hearing tales like this. Earlier, she told us the legend of how New Zealand was born when Maui, a Maori demi-god, went fishing with his brothers with a magic hook. Maui’s hook pulled up a gigantic fish and he was so proud that he wanted to offer it to the gods. He told his brothers the leave the fish alone, but they were jealous and the wanted it for themselves so they beat the fish, the beatings created the mountain ranges of the North Island, while the canoe they were fishing in became the South Island. A more scientific explanation suggests that the area around Tongariro was formed by eruptions from 6 volcanic cones along the same mountainous chain hundreds of thousands of years ago.

But the volcanic activity here is not a thing of the past. As recently as 2012, Tongariro erupted, sending flaming hot rocks into homes miles away and belching sulfur into the air that could be smelled as far as Auckland and Wellington. The resulting mudslides did their own lasting damage to the landscape. We can still see Tongariro belching smoke as we leave it behind us and wind our way down the mountain through a lovely valley where the vegetation has returned and we spy Lake Rotorira in the distance. It’s at this point that our bodies begin to scream at us particularly our knees and feet. They wonder what possessed us to inflict close to 8 hours of punishment on them.

The zig-zaggy descent now feels like the longest part of our journey and Mel can sense that we are getting tired. She tells us about the plants that have begun to appear around us like the manuka, a pretty-smelling, delicate flower favored by local bees that produce New Zealand’s manuka honey and the flax plant that reminds me a bit of the gangly bird of paradise plant, used for years by Maori to make clothing. Earlier in our trip, Mel also pointed out the resilient mountain daisies with thick, hearty leaves that ward of frost and absorb water to survive long periods without rain. On a much needed chocolate break under a cool canopy of trees in an unexpected mountain forest, Mel invites us to taste the leaf of a pepper tree, once used as a numbing agent by dentists and sometimes added to spicy New Zealand dishes. Mel’s trivia is just one more thing that we love about this trip and it helps us forget how badly our knees and feet hurt. The chocolate was the perfect boost to keep us going another 30 minutes or so, moving at a steady clip to get us over knotted tree roots upended by the recent mudslides and across a fast moving stream to the light at the end of the forest…the car park. Tanya says, “Is that what I think it is?” And, it is. We’ve reached the parking lot and a covered sitting area where hikers who have reached this point before us are sitting quietly. It’s something I can’t understand and I ask, “Why is everyone so quiet? We made it to the end! People should be celebrating!” A few folks perked up with a cheer. Tanya, Mel and I cheer the loudest.

And, what better way to celebrate tramping from 8 am to 4 pm than with champagne? The Walking Legends crew is waiting for us with cold flutes of pink bubbly, not the après-hike drink most would envision, but one we totally appreciate. If we just liked Walking Legends before, the champagne made us fall totally in love. It was such a nice, thoughtful touch and we totally sing Mel’s praises to her boss. Before the champagne, we had a few stressful moments, thinking our bus to Rotorua had left without us, but it wasn’t our bus. Ours wasn’t scheduled to leave until 5, so we relax with our champagne, laying back in the grass still giddy over our accomplishment.

An hour later, we still haven’t left Tongariro because we are waiting for the group of Americans that traveled on the bus with us from Rotorua. Nelson, our bus driver is a little peeved. Nelson is rocking three gold chains and a thick gold rings on almost every finger. He’s like a Kiwi Mr. T and he’s ready to go. Finally, the New York-Massachusetts crew arrives looking a little worn and sunburned. They apologize for being so late. They thought they were making good time until they weren’t, stopping to offer help to a woman with a sprained ankle, and letting her companion borrow their phone. We swap Tongariro tales and Nelson softens in the front seat. Alyssa invites us for a dip in one of the thermal pools where she works at the Spa at QE. We take her up on the offer as we’d planned to hit the pools at the Polynesian Spa, but the Spa at QE is closer, just a block from our hotel.

The warm silken water from Rotorua’s active thermal pools is a welcome peace offering to our aching feet and knees. It makes me wish we’d had time for a thermal mud massage, too, but this will have to do, and it does. The company of our new friends is pretty cool, too.

9 January, 2014

Driving on the “Wrong” Side of the Road, Glowworms and Hobbits in New Zealand

I drove on the wrong side of the road and descended into a dark watery cave in an inner tube to see some shiny sh*t. It was fun! First, let me explain the shiny poo part. Going tubing, or blackwater rafting, to see the glowworms in caves at Waitomo is a popular activity in New Zealand because tubing is fun and seeing glowworms sounds cool. New Zealand is also one of the only places in the world that you can see these bioluminescent creatures.

The fact is that glowworms are maggots. Carnivorous maggots that excrete poop that glows in the dark. This shiny maggot poo attracts curious insects that get caught in their sticky threads. Dinner comes to them. Sometimes they eat their own. The maggots then morph into horny flies that must mate in 3 days before they die, going on 48-hour copulating sprees. They sound downright disgusting, don’t they? But somehow they are still spectacularly pretty, these neon-green, star-sized lights twinkling from the cave ceiling in total darkness. I’m one of 12 people on the The Legendary Blackwater Rafting Company’s Black Labyrinth Tour peeping the strange bugs while standing up to our knees in cold rushing cave water, clinging to a slippery inner tube.

DW_1_Labyrinth_Group_Floating under glowworms — We couldn’t take pictures of the glowworms ourselves in the cave, so the Legendary Blackwater Rafting Company provided this one. I’m sure we looked just as geeky.

I’ve attached myself to a Canadian family from Manitoba. Nadine has recently moved to New Zealand and her daughter Chantel is visiting with her boyfriend Andrew. Tanya left on the blackwater rafting tour before mine because we didn’t book our tour together and didn’t realize that we got separate times until we arrived. But Nadine, Chantel and Andrew seem like good partners in adventure and I become Canadian for a day. At the entrance of the Ruakui cave, our leader Matt tells us the Maori legend of the cave where wild dogs once guarded its entrance, attacking young hunter that returned for his revenge. Matt has plenty of other stories along the way, including tales of hauntings, and Kenan comes along to demonstrate what to do and what not to do, like hop into a pit of swirling water along the way. He’s a great model; he kind of reminds me of Keanu Reeves and I think that Tanya would be beside herself right about now, seeing that she has a ridiculous crush on Keanu Reeves.

Once inside the cave, we are instructed to turn on our goofy headlamps and slosh about in frigid water that at times is ankle deep, then knee deep, until it’s even deeper, requiring our tube. Somewhere near the start of the cave we crouch low to avoid bumping our heads on stalagmites that we’ve been instructed to avoid touching to protect the fragile natural creations. Navigating the low hanging protrusions was particularly hard for Andrew who is over 6 feet tall and I warn him to get low. Chantel sees humor in this and starts singing the rap song, “Get Low.” At one point we get in our tubes and practically lay backwards with our noses inches from the cave ceiling. But the most fun is hurling ourselves backwards down short waterfalls with our butts jammed into our tubes and landing with an echoing splash. I find myself with twins Ima and Iba at these points. The twins are from the nearby town of Hamilton and have recently graduated college. They are enjoying a pretty cool holiday together to celebrate. They are also hoping to get to Tongariro Crossing just as Tanya and I are planning in a couple of days. They are super friendly and I find myself asking often, “Are you Ima” or Iba?” which must be totally annoying to them.

At the end of the trip, we form a human chain with our feet resting on the tube ahead of us, holding the feet of the person behind us, with Matt and Kenan pulling us along. Our headlamps are off so that we can simply stare up at the “stars” of the cave. When we emerge, everyone has smiles, pleased to have made it out, and we pose sopping wet for one of the last semi-embarrassing photos (see below) that Matt and Kenan have been taking along the way. We welcome the chance to shed our heavy wet suits, which were soggy to begin with and, now, we understand why. Upon removal, we dip our suits in a tub of soapy water before returning them to our guides. Finally, there’s the hot shower and a yummy warm cup of tomato soup and a bagel waiting for us in the rafting shop.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Look, I’m blackwater rafting!

Tanya and I reconnect in the rafting shop and compare notes. She was adopted by a British family in the cave that made sure that she made it through safely and chatted her up about BBC shows. They were baffled to learn that Downton Abbey is such a huge hit in the US. Tanya is beaming as usual and thrilled as says this has been one of the best days in New Zealand so far. I agree. Then she says something surprising, which is that she thinks she wants to drive back to Rotorua. I’m surprised, because while planning this trip I suggested that we rent a car for part of the journey to get to the various cities and tours. She couldn’t imagine driving on the other side of the road and felt really uncomfortable with the idea, certain that she’d forget which side was the “right” side and collide with oncoming traffic after her mental lapse. I tried to convince, her it would be fine as I’d driven in Australia without meeting a catastrophic end. As it turns out, the only way we could get to Waitomo was by car, so I drove us the two hours from Rotorua.

Tanya was a ball of nerves on the passenger side, but it was a smooth ride down two-lane thoroughfares with almost no traffic past picturesque farms filled with black and white cows against lush green landscapes. The number of cows was startling. They seemed to completely cover hills and ridges at some points. It left us wondering, “Where were the sheep?” We spotted them on one hillside during our entire drive. We’d later learn that New Zealand produces a third of the world’s dairy and most of the sheep are on the South Island. We made it to Waitomo in one piece, with the exception of almost taking out a jackrabbit, which left Tanya feeling emboldened, so I handed her the keys. She drove like a grandma about 20 km below the speed limit the entire way.

We’d take some of the same roads past the same farms on a big green Hobbiton bus the next day. The bus was a little late. We stood outside the hotel waiting for our pick up, thinking every tour bus might be the one. But when I saw the giant green bus with the gold letters “Hobbiton” emblazoned on the side, I said, “I guess that’s our bus.” Tanya practically skips to get on board. She’s been waiting for this part of the trip with more than baited breath. She’s been practically hyperventilating to see some “Lord of the Rings” sites. You see Tanya is a fan – the kind of fan that watches a movie over 100 times. Now, I’ve seen the “Lord of the Rings Trilogy” and I enjoy a good sci-fi, fantasy flick along with the best of nerds, but Tanya takes her fantasy fandom to obsessive levels, to which she’d readily admit. On our trip to Barcelona she took binders full of “Twilight” fan stories with her to read on the plane. So, a visit to Hobbiton for Tanya is like a pilgrimage to Mecca for the most devout Muslim. It’s pouring rain when we arrive at “The Shire,” the tiny township built for the movies on the Alexander Farm in Matamata. But this does not dim Tanya’s excitement and I have to admit, I’m a little excited, too. Actually, I’m impressed. The level of detail that went into creating these little hobbit homes is, well, impressive, down to the adorable little mailboxes. I’m obsessed with them. They are probably the cutest creations I’ve ever seen.

Throughout our tour, we learn that Sir Peter Jackson, the director of the “Lord of the Rings,” is a stickler for details. After finding identifying the rolling hills of the Alexander Farm as the perfect place for The Shire to nestle, he needed the perfect oak tree to stand behind Frodo Baggins home. Apparently none on the Alexander farm were suitable, so he takes to his helicopter again and finds the perfect tree on another nearby farm. He pays to have the tree uprooted, cut into puzzle pieces and reconstructed on the Baggins property. When that same tree rots and has to be removed, he sends pictures to a set design shop in Wellington to have the tree reconstructed, it leaves wired on individually, for a cool $1.6 million.

There are more stories like this. A little girl is forced to pick and eat a plum over and over for one second in one of the movies. Our guide tells us that he went to elementary school with a boy chosen to be a hobbit in the first Lord of the Rings movie who Jackson had fattened up for the film. The boy had to put on 40 kgs, over 80 pounds!

Of course, Tanya could narrate this tour all by herself. She recognizes the open field where the hobbits celebrate when they return to The Shire after their great adventure. She thinks she can identify the exact log that Frodo hid behind to escape dark horsemen in the woods. She was positively ebullient in front of Frodo’s hobbit hole. Videos were made to document her presence. Sir Jackson would be proud. Later we visit the Green Dragon, the local hobbit watering hole for a couple of mugs of hard cider, where we sit near a crackling fire to get dry before our journey continues on the big green Hobbiton bus.

The bus makes one last stop at the Hobbiton gift shop, of course. Where Tanya takes to skipping again. She is excited about the prospect of finding elf ears to wear on our trek towards Mt Doom on the Tongariro Crossing tomorrow. She bounds up to an unsuspecting store clerk to ask if they have elf ears. They don’t, according to the clerk. Tanya is crestfallen. Upon seeing this, the clerk suggests that she may be able to find some in Welllington. This is not very comforting since we aren’t in Wellington at this moment. We continue to wander around the small store with a substantial “Lord of the Rings” figurine cabinet and strong promotion of the recent Hobbit movie in the form of caps, mugs and books. Tanya purchases some postcards and Gandolf stamps, before concluding, “This gift shop sucks.” But don’t think this has soured her on the Hobbiton experience. Back on the bus, she’s gotten over the lack of elf ears in the gift shop and renews her quest for them, much like a resolute Frodo Baggins determined to destroy an enchanted ring in the fires of Mordor.

7 January, 20147 January, 2014

Maori for a Night: Haka, Hongi and Hangi in Tamaki Village

Our driver, Wallace, is explaining to us that our bus is our canoe, or waka in Maori. The name of our waka is Kiwi. This is important to remember, he says, because if we don’t and we miss our canoe we must “walk-a” home. Wallace has got jokes, but he also has tons of instructions for us. He’s training us to become a good Maori family tribe, or iwi, before we reach the Tamaki Village, about 20 minutes outside Rotorua.

First, we must learn the proper greeting, “Kia Ora,” which means hello, but like “Aloha” for Hawaiians, it could also mean good-bye or maybe even answer the question, “Are you well?” according to Wallace. If someone greets you with Kia Ora, you should always say Kia Ora in return, it’s only polite. Then, we work through other basic terms like haka, which is the traditional dance of warriors that we’ll see, and hangi, the earth-oven-prepared feast that we are all looking forward to later.

Our waka is quite international with Germans, Mexicans, Indians, Swedish, Australians and Americans aboard and our journey together represents the journey that Maori, led by Polynesian explorer Kupe, made from their former home Hawaikinui, 1,000 years ago to search for a new land. Kupe called their new home, Aotearoa, or the Land of the Long White Cloud. As the legend goes he and his wife spotted the long cloud over the land and took it as a sign to stay.

Our journey ends with us standing around a dusty amphitheater. Our leader from Massachusetts bravely stepped forward to represent our canoe and now stands with other waka leaders to participate in a traditional ceremony called the “Powhiri,” a challenge, then welcoming of new tribes, followed by the hongi, a greeting where two people press their noses together to embrace the same life breath. Everyone was transfixed by the Powhiri and remained silent to respect the tradition. It looked like this:

(this looked way better in person and on my mac until i uploaded to youtube!)

After the real Tamaki villagers decided it was OK to welcome the new Tamaki villagers, we were invited into an otherworldly, seemingly enchanted forest where the trees enveloped us and warm fires flickered. Tamaki villagers showed us to different parts of their village to share their culture and customs. Tanya and I start at the house where the warriors, namely our waka leaders, must learn the haka and how to make the most fearsome face, complete with bulging eyes, protruding tongue and guttural grunts. Our waka leaders tried, but I was left mildly amused rather than scared.

We continue through each home, experiencing Maori culture intimately amongst the trees. Tanya tries her hand at “poi,” a dance typically done by women that may have started as a way for men to train their wrists during battle. Women swing a soft ball, originally made from flax, on a piece of string of varying lengths in elaborate patterns. They make it look really easy. According to Tanya, looks can be deceiving. She said she had trouble controlling the ball, which can go flying if you swing too hard. I tried a children’s game called Ti Rakau that would eventually train them for better stick handling in battle. I stood in a circle with two other new villagers holding a stick and awaiting a call to move left or right, releasing our stick in time to jump and catch the stick next to you. If you miss you are out. It was an insane combination of musical chairs and “Simon Says.”

We had a pretty good explanation of Ta Moko, or the Maori face tattoos, from Awhitia the day before, but here we learned more about how the tattoos are created with a tool made of bone to scratch into the skin and another to inject the ink. The scars were created, allowed to heal and widened again and again. The Tamaki storyteller says many warriors died in the process, but it was considered honorable to do so. The tattoo was like their form of identification, it told their personal story of who they were and where they came from, and their carvings were another form of storytelling revealing legends and genealogy.

By now, we feel honored to be honorary Tamaki. We watch our hangi meal get hoisted from a smoky pit, layer by layer and our mouths water. But first we watch more performances in the wharenui, or meeting house. I tell Tanya that I am more impressed by this than a luau I attended in Hawaii last year. There’s something about this that feels personal. The same people that shared their Maori traditions and stories are now performing the songs and dances that their ancestors passed to them. It doesn’t feel like a big production, but rather a real, honest exchange of culture. It really does make us feel at home.

The hangi feast makes us feel even more at home. In fact, it reminds us of Thanksgiving. Everyone is heaping their plates with pork, chicken, sweet potatoes, potatoes, carrots, stuffing and I can’t even remember what else. I do remember the smoky flavor of those potatoes and the tenderness of the chicken. That was some good stick-to-your-ribs-eating. We also enjoyed the company of an Indian couple from Mumbai that was off the Queenstown the next day. Sadly, the wife was vegetarian and couldn’t enjoy much of the meal.

When we return to our waka, we feel like we’ve really bonded as an iwi. Wallace asks us to sing songs from our countries and Tanya leads in singing the Star-Spangled Banner, our Mexican family members sing “Cielito Lindo,” also known as the ay, ay, ay ay song, the Australians sing “Waltzing Mathilda” and all the others jump in with their traditional tunes. We love each rendition and cheer each other raucously and then Wallace ends with his own song, an American one, “She’ll be coming ‘round the mountain.” He sings as he whirls us around and around the Rotorua rotaries in our big white waka on the way back to our hotels.

4 January, 20147 January, 2014

Oh, the People You Meet in Auckland, New Zealand

Awhitia Mihaere is a true force of nature. We don’t find this out right away. It reveals itself slowly, like the plot in a good mystery, and with each story she tells or life experience she shares. We get a clue when we meet her outside the Auckland Art Gallery or Toi o Tāmaki in Maori. (The Maori name of the gallery is important to note, as you’ll see later.) We were running late to meet her and we apologize. She tells us that it was no problem because it gave her more time to meditate and she greets us with a warm embrace.

I have even more of a hint of Awhitia’s powers than Tanya. When I told my friend Lisa that I was planning to go to New Zealand, she told me that I had to meet Awhitia. Lisa was attending a women’s leadership conference in Bali when she saw Awhitia give an incredible speech in her native Maori language. She knew she had to meet her. Lisa’s friendship with Awhitia becomes my good fortune and one of the best days in New Zealand so far.

Toi o Tāmaki turns out to best place to meet Awhitia because each piece of art within seems to release an intense reflection, memory or personal story for her. For instance, I tell her that I am struck by the presence of a Maori translation with every art piece. She tells us that she joined a march in Auckland with thousands of other Maori to push Parliament to have Maori recognized as the official language of New Zealand, Aotearoa in Maori, meaning the land of the long white cloud. In 1990, Auckland did just that and now Maori translations must appear in its public spaces, on signs and buildings.

A painting called “This Land is Ours,” by Buck Nin, inspires more protest talk. It depicts a 1975 march from the northern town of Te Haupa to Wellington led by Dame Whina Cooper to protest the loss of Maori land at the hands of the government with the rallying cry, “Not one more acre of Maori land.” As Awhitia tells the story behind the painting she beams with pride, remembering a Maori heroine in Cooper and her own role, joining the march as a teen. She seem so moved that I had to ask to take a picture of her next to the painting, which made her ecstatic. She pumped her fists in the air after I snapped the shot.

Awhitia’s activism actually seems to be her way of life, tightly woven into everything she does. She started a school in her home that has grown into a Maori institution that teaches students the Maori language, cultural arts and healing. She’s also a traditional birthing practitioner, helping modern Maori women give birth the way their ancestors did through ancient practices that her ancestors taught her. Besides massaging Maori women’s bellies with traditional oils during labor she encourages them to practice old traditions like having their placenta read to learn their child’s life path and then burying it in a place of their choosing so that the child always has a place to call home. Tanya and I think this one of the most beautiful concepts we’ve ever heard, and it’s at about this point that we start to realize that we are in the presence of a force of nature.

As we continue through the gallery, Awhitia shares more about the bright, bold pieces that we see and her connections to them. For one thing, she’s friends with the indigenous curator of the museum and she knows many of the artists. She points out paintings by some of the first Maori graduates of Auckland’s prestigious Elam School of Art and others that showcase Maori patterns. When we see an installation featuring provocatively titled books and colorful, primitively molded sculptures, the books remind her of her work as an indigenous cultural adviser in a prison, where she advised the prison on Maori traditions that should be up held by law. She brought romiromi traditional massage healing practices into the prisons along with an ancient traditional Hawaiian practice of peace and forgiveness, ho’oponopono, practiced by her husband and his people. Tanya and I can’t believe that we’ve uncovered another facet of this woman’s life and we tell her so. She admits that she’s had to scale back her prison work because of the negative energy, but also because her mother told her that she was doing too much.

Awhitia’s stories inspire us to share our own stories of race and culture in the US. We admire her ability to trace her ancestry to its beginnings, something many African-Americans try desperately to do. She said the movie “Lincoln” infuriated her because while Lincoln legally freed the slaves, she says they weren’t free because they were taken from their land, moved from one continent to another. For her, and in Maori culture, owning your own land and having a place to call yours is the essence of freedom.

This inspires Awhitia to share her ancestors with us. We search the gallery for a small room featuring gilded framed paintings of stately looking Maori men and women. She points to a grey-haired and bearded man with a serene face filled with tattoos from hairline to chin. “This is my ancestor,” she says proudly. Ihaka Whanga is her great grandfather 3 times removed on her mother’s side. Then she points to her ancestor on her father’s side Tawahaio Matutaera, who bears a more fierce countenance wearing shark teeth earrings and carrying a weapon made of whale bone that can lop a rival’s head off. Both men were chiefs of different tribes. Ihaka Whanga of the Ngāti Kahungunu and Tawahaio Matutaera of the Tainui, but both men wear the face tattoos known as Ta Moko from hairline to chin, indicating their status as chiefs and carrying their genealogy lines with one side of the face tracing the maternal line and the other the paternal line.

We think it is incredible that these leaders have been immortalized in oil and given a place in the gallery. Awhitia says that she is grateful that she always has a place to visit her ancestors and she thanks them for letting us spend time with them before we leave the gallery. We continue to bond over lunch at a down town sushi spot where Awhitia shares photos of her children, grandchildren and her Hawaiian hubby who is also a lomilomi practitioner, working with her in the art of massage in the birthing process. It was great to learn more about her family and we all feel like we’ve been girlfriends since forever.

After lunch we go for a stroll in Albert Park, bordered by the art gallery and Auckland University. It’s a lovely vibrant green oasis on a hill in the middle of the city with perfectly placed bursts of hot pink and purple flowers. We are drawn to the pretty iron fountain at its center and we sit on a bench nearby to let the sun warm our shoulders. And then we do what best girlfriends do. We take selfies. It was a perfect way to spend an afternoon and a great way to gain a genuine sense of a place through a very genuine person.

More than its monuments and natural landmarks, it’s the people that make a place and this turns out to be the theme for our third day in New Zealand. Tanya and I decided that we wanted to check out Auckland’s party scene our last night in the city. We set out down Ponsonby Road on a Thursday night to find almost every restaurant and bar closed. We’d pretty much give up around 10 pm when we decide to head back home, but we are stopped by the sound of karaoke crooners at a bar called Poof decorated with a comic strip theme. We’d walked past earlier in the evening and it was totally dead. Tanya said, “It’s karaoke, you know I have to go in.” And, I know she does. It’s the only thing happening on Ponsonby, so I’m game, too.

Tanya doesn’t really need to look at the songbook to know that she’s going to sing “Proud Mary.” But we look anyway to see if we can find a song that we can sing together. I never get the phrasing on Proud Mary right. That’s when Odin appears. He basically asks what we are doing there. He’s polite about it, but it’s clear that he’s shocked to find two black girls in a bar in Auckland, especially, two black girls in a gay bar in Auckland. Things start clicking. There’s a big Roy Lichtenstein-style painting on the wall saying, “We are the rainbow people.” Tanya remembers that the word “Poof” in Britain is often used to reference gay men. Then it hits me that there are way more men here than women. Odin continues his inquiry, he keeps asking, “Where are you really from?” After convincing him that we are from Washington, DC and that we are in Auckland on vacation, he invites us to hang out with his other friends, who are a few of the other straight people in the place.

Odin, Scott and Craig have taken their married friend Brett for a night out and the only place they can find is this spot. Scott tells us that Jan. 2 is some sort of national holiday and that’s why everything is closed. We pretty much have the same conversation with Scott as we did with Odin explaining how two black girls walked into a gay bar on Ponsonby Road in Auckland and with all the pleasantries dispensed folks start singing. Odin has decided that he and I should sing a song together and suggests, “The Power of Love.” I’m thinking Huey Lewis and the News, so it sounds good to me. But before we sing, Tanya, who has perfected her Tina Turner impression, decided to turn the bar out with Proud Mary complete with hair tossing and shimmying. There isn’t a crowd more appreciative than this group of gay men.

Then I find myself called to sing with Odin, who up until this point has been telling me how beautiful he thinks I am and I keep thanking him, flattered while noticing that he may be a tad drunk. It is very apparent later in the evening when he is walking around the bar with one flip flop on. At the point we start to sing, he has two flip-flops on, at least, I think, and I realize that I haven’t a clue what song we are singing. Never heard it before and I can’t catch the melody because Odin cannot sing. He is the epitome of bad karaoke singers in flip-flops. So, as he sings to me I try to jump in when I think I hear the hook, but our duet is tanking horribly and it’s one of those really long songs with like 10 verses. It’s as bad as it sounds. When it ends, Odin says, “I totally carried you.” He’s a funny dude. So, I think I’ll be his friend, in fact, Tanya and I decide we like these guys. Scott and Brett are in a band so they pretty much kill all the old 80s rock songs and Scott steps in to help a couple of girls failing horribly at singing “Roxanne.” You can clearly tell who has karaoke standards and know their way around a karaoke song book and those who don’t, but it’s all good and its all love in the only bar open in Ponsonby.

Scott really wants to impress us with more of his rock stylings and invites us back to his place for a jam session with the guys. I still have to pack before we leave for Rotorua and it’s 1 am, but Tanya is raring to go. “It’s our last night in Auckland,” she says. I know she’s right. This is part of the adventure. So, I gotta go. We do a very Kiwi thing on the walk to Scott’s and stop for meat pies at the local gas station. Well, they do and I just have a taste. Brett gets a Thai Chicken meat pie that wasn’t that bad. Craig, who once lived in San Fran and now lives in London, gets the traditional cheese and meat pie, which was pretty disgusting. The interior looked to be the consistency of mud.

After consuming meat pies, Scott breaks out a 2001 issue of the British Marie Claire featuring Odin as the bachelor of the month, his wide blue eyes staring out from its page. He answers questions like what’s his favorite movie: “There’s Something About Mary” and his favorite city, “London.” It’s awesome. The guys immediately start teasing Scott for having the magazine so accessible in his room with the page dog-eared. More wholesome hijinks ensure and we settle into Scott’s den converted into a music studio and listen to him and Brett play their favorite songs, mostly from Brit and Aussie bands, because there aren’t many popular Kiwi bands. Then he goes Canadian with some Bryan Adams. They aren’t bad. Tanya is enjoying herself thoroughly and doesn’t look like she wants to leave. But all good things must come to an end. We met some fabulous people in Auckland on our last day and we wish we’d had more time to spend getting to know them. But we’ve got to go. We have more adventures ahead in Rotorua.

2 January, 201428 March, 2014

Wine Tasting and Good Company on New Zealand’s Waiheke Island

By the end of our Waiheke Island Wine Tour, Tanya and I are tightly hugging our fellow tour-goers and our guide, Wayne. It could be that we are really tipsy or we just really like them. Maybe it’s a little bit of both. When Wayne picked us up from the Waiheke ferry, we had no idea what to expect other than tasting some good New Zealand wine.

We already enjoyed our 40-minute ride from the Auckland Ferry Terminal across the slightly green-hued Hauraki Gulf to Waiheke. Despite the grey skies and light sprinkles, it’s a pretty ride. I was particularly struck by the old Auckland Ferry Building, a marigold-colored edifice, standing stark against Auckland’s more modern steel structures. Families gravitate to the rear deck to snap the perfect shot with the Auckland skyline as a backdrop. Arriving at Matiatia Bay on Waiheke is just as picturesque with its mouth holding a nice collection of sparkling white sailboats and yachts.

So, when we exit the ferry, we are ready to taste more of Waiheke and drinking wine is always better with good company. It turns out we have good company in fellow Americans, Steve and John from Chicago, Mike and Vee from Christchurch and Mei and Dan from Singapore by way of the UK. We didn’t know we’d all be the best of wine tasting buddies right away; that came after four or five glass tasting flights at three impressive New Zealand wineries.

We start at Jurassic Ridge Vineyard and Winery operated by the impressive Lance Blumhardt, a former geologist and neurologist turned award-winning vitaculuralist, specializing in vegan wines. He’s already pouring wine for another group when we arrive and we squeeze into his tiny tasting room for our firsts tastes of New Zealand wine. We politely sip his Syrah Rose and Sauvignon Blanc, trading places with the first group between pours. One of the ladies in the group happens to be from the Washington, DC area, too, Great Falls, VA in specific. She lives in New Zealand now and she and a friend from LA are on a road trip across the country. She complains that her friend keeps getting into the drivers side of the car before realizing her mistake in a country where the driver sits on the right, not the passenger. As we chat about the DC area, the woman from LA throws out a statistic noting more men per capita than women in DC. Tanya and I look at her incredulously and ask, “Really?” But this conversation sounds like something from an episode of “Sex in the City.” Back to the wine.

With the Jurassic Ridge tasting room all to us, our tour group starts to loosen up a bit. Particularly when Lance pours his baby, a Montepulciano that calls his Sophia Lauren of wines. It’s Italian, round and full-bodied. Naturally, this wine gets a lot of attention, winning a gold medal and champion trophy in New Zealand’s top wine awards. It seems to be well deserved. The Montepulciano is delicious. It’s fruit forward with a hint of spice, like my favorites reds, Zinfandels and Malbecs. While enjoying this flavorful concoction, I ask Lance if there are similarities between his life as a neurologist and a winemaker. First, he says the obvious, doctors and wine makers like to drink wine. But then he says something unexpected, cleaning. He says just like in a operating room, you have to keep wine making equipment sterile to keep out bacteria or anything to alter the winemaking process. I’m tempted to buy the Montepulciano, but this is just our first stop. Mike and Vee have been here before though and they stock up before leaving.

We drive deeper into Waiheke to reach our next winery, Obsidian, on the way Wayne shares more about the history of the island through his own family history. He’s a native to Waiheke and his great-great grandfather came to the island during a particularly violent period in New Zealand. The British were intent up on removing the indigenous Maori from the land and paid men to fight in exchange for the land that they would eventually take from the Maori. He talks about the Musket Wars in Waiheke, in which one Maori tribe decimated all its rivals when its chief was introduced to the musket.

But the Obsidian Vineyard is nothing but peaceful. The tasting space is outdoors under an awning in full view of the vines. We start again with a Rose, followed by a great Chardonnay, stored in recycled oak barrels for a more balanced blend of oak, citrus and butter flavors. I see that Steve is impressed and Tanya and I definitely like it. So much so that we get bottles later. We also taste their Montepulciano, Syrah and Reserve Cabernet Merlot. All seem to be on the more mellow side, smoother and maybe lighter than what we tasted at Jurassic Ridge, but still good in its own way. Wayne and the sommelier here share more about the history of wines in New Zealand, noting that the country has only been growing wine for 35 years. I’m surprised to hear this because you always seem to hear about how great New Zealand wines are. Their reputation suggest years of cultivation, so to speak. But the explosion of vineyards has only occurred recently.

Our final stop on the wine tour is apart of this explosion and where our wino bonding really took place. The Peacock Sky Vineyard is the perfect setting with rows and rows of vines blanketing the nearby hills and the quaint tasting room nestled below. Wayne tells us that peacocks actually frequent the place, released by a woman who once owned them. Besides the beautiful landscape, the table scape for our tasting is pretty eye-catching, too. Our sommelier is already pouring pale pink sparkling wine into our glasses and there is an assortment of goodies placed neatly on a tasting card to be paired with our wines. It’s almost too pretty to eat, but at the same time, we can’t wait.

First, we are encouraged to taste the sparkling wine and we happily oblige, toasting each other a Happy New Year. Next we try a Chardonnay and we are instructed to do a mouthwash to taste the citrusy burn along the sides of the tongue. Then we taste a bite of what looks to be chicken salad in a pastry with the Chardonnay and the citrus magically disappears. Their wines seem to have more magical properties. Their Rose enhances the red peppery spice of a tomato soup, an oaky Merlot Malbec turns chocolately with a piece of gooey fruitcake. We all marvel at the transformations taking place in our mouths. Tanya and I say this is the best fruitcake we’ve every tasted, it’s moistness dispelling any thought of using at a doorstopper. Steve tells us that his grandmother made a delicious fruitcake that he remembers from his childhood. In his attempt to recreate it, he found that molasses was the secret to the moist texture.

We start to learn more about each other through stories like these over a gorgeous and delicious lunch, which we pair with more wine and champagne. We learn that Mike’s nickname is Stubby from his last name Stubberfield and that he and Vee used to throw incredible parties. Mei and Dan talk about life in Singapore. We talk about politics in the US, UK and Christchurch and we even talk about moonshine. There seems to be no end to the things you can favorably discuss with a little help from some well-fermented grapes. This leads to all the hugging at the start of this post. We hug when we exit the van at the ferry, thinking it will be our final goodbye, then we realize that we are all boarding the same ferry. We hug again when we disembark. The wine definitely has something to do with this, but we genuinely like these people and we hope to stay in touch.

At the ferry terminal, we realize that we are steps away from Auckland’s Viaduct. Steve and John are staying at the Hilton modeled for a cruise ship near by. Steve mentions that the area was redeveloped for the America’s Cup in 2000. They point the way to the outdoor space before we hug yet again.

The rain from earlier in the day has completely dissipated and the sun has returned with a vengeance. We peel off our layers and embrace the heat with a slow stroll along the Viaduct. Here are some of the things we saw along the way.

1 January, 2014

Ringing in the New Year in Cozy Digs and a Cool ‘Hood in New Zealand

Tanya loves our AirBnB home away from home. I’m standing outside of our rented garden apartment with our luggage while she screams, “Oh my God! It’s so cute! It’s so cute!” immovable inside the doorway. She’s like someone who just won the car on the “Price is Right,” unable to contain her glee. When I get inside I’m totally with her. There is no other way to describe this place but cute, not cute in a saccharine way, cute in that cozy Anthropologie way. If you are a woman and you’ve shopped at Anthropologie, you know what I mean. It’s perfectly accessorized with neatly framed wall hangings and interesting coffee table books.

Tanya Chattman — Tanya beeming in our AirBnB appartment

It’s like our AirBnB host Kirsten is speaking to us through the blue-tinted Wonder Woman sketch (of the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman, of course) hanging in the dining room and she’s saying, “Stay awhile.” We like her. We like her a lot. I suggested to Tanya that we stay in an AirBnB home because the site that allows people to rent their homes to travelers has taken the travel world by storm and I wanted to give it a try. I knew a few people who stayed in AirBnB spots and loved them. We feel like we’ve hit pay dirt. Tanya says it’s so much better than staying in a hotel. It makes us feel like locals and it’s the perfect launching spot for our New Zealand adventures.

I’ve come to be in New Zealand because of my friend, Tanya. New Zealand wasn’t really on my bucket list. But, by now, you know how I travel. I’m an opportunistic traveler. I travel when the opportunity arises and Tanya tapped me to be her travel companion on her dream trip to New Zealand. When I say dream trip, I mean that literally. Tanya had a dream that she would go to New Zealand one day, even before the Lord of the Rings Trilogy that she loves so much. When she awoke from her dream, she started saving mileage points and when she had enough, after years of business travel, she said, “Robin, you have to go to New Zealand with me.” She knows I can’t turn down a good travel invite, so here I am in Middle Earth.

After sipping tea and coffee on Kirsten’s balcony, lined with potted herbs and petunias, we step out to explore our new neighborhood, Ponsonby, which happens to be one of the trendiest hoods in New Zealand and another reason why we love our new home away from home. We are two blocks from Ponsonby Road, the main drag, one long continuous row of boutiques, restaurants and cafes with outdoor patios. The robust entertainment console on our Air New Zealand flight, complete with a concierge section, said that brunch was a big deal in Auckland and recommended a place called the Richmond Rd Café in Ponsonby and we go in search of good food.

The search turned out to be longer than expected. According to Google Maps, the Richmond Rd Café was a 25 minute walk from Ponsonby Road, which when we started out, didn’t seem that far. The walk took us through Ponsonby’s picture-perfect residential streets with real white picket fences covered in bougainvillea and other exotic flora. Soon we stared to appreciate our home and gardens tour, marveling at each Victorian-style bungalow. And then we started to feel a little uncomfortable when we caught a couple walking across the street staring at us. Tanya smiled and waved hello. They smiled and waved hello back, but we suspect that we look a little out of place. Then a car drives by and someone yells something inaudible, but rude sounding from the window. We hope it’s not what we think and we continue undeterred. Finally, we reach the café, not near other cafes or restaurants, but a block away from a supermarket and next to New Zealand’s version of a Pet Smart. We are wondering how anyone could recommend a place so far off the beaten track, but then again, as a traveler, you are always looking to do what the locals do and here they do brunch at the Richmond Rd. Café.

The menu is short. There’s breakfast or lunch, so we opt for breakfast. But first we have a couple of questions. What’s the “agria” in the Truffled agria loaf with wilted greens poached egg and a choice of bacon or Portobello mushrooms. Our waitress explains that agria is a type of potato mashed and served in a style that is somewhere between a hash brown and a potato pancake. I’m sold. Tanya asks about a dish with “hallumi,” it’s a type of cheese made from goat’s or ewe’s milk. She opts for the agria, too. It comes out super crisp in the shape of a triangle jutting from our plates and decorated with the egg, spinach and the most glorious layer of bacon, I’ve ever seen. It was quite tasty and our waitress was happy to welcome and make conversation with two Americans. She said it was good that we came when we did because on New Years Day there’s a line to get into the place.

With hunger satisfied, we make our way back to what we call the “real Ponsonby,” with way more foot traffic. A little brick alley marked “The Lane, caught our attention. The gated green space filled with outdoor eateries was attached to the Ponsonby Produce Market, which was also attached to a bakery. We decide to stop to get a few things for the fridge in our apartment. I love markets anywhere and this one is adorable. Tanya is a cheese fiend so we stop by the cheese counter where we meet James, who hands us several samples and then Tanya sees her cheese. It is, actually, a cheese bearing her name, spelled Tania, and she has to have it. Turns out it was pretty good. James asks why we’ve come to Auckland and we tell him that we are here for New Year’s. He’s dumbfounded. New Year’s, he asks? It’s clear that he wants to know why we’d come to Auckland to celebrate New Year’s and we explain that are doing more than celebrating New Year’s in Auckland. He seems relieved to hear this and suggests that we go to Mt. Edna for some of the best views of the city.

But there are some pretty good views right on Ponsonby Road, Auckland’s landmark the Sky Tower, a seemingly distant cousin of Seattle’s Space Needle in Toronto’s CN Tower, pops up over buildings and slips out from side streets as we walk. We walk as far as we can, taking note of cool places to eat or grab a drink later during our stay. On our way back to the apartment, I’m intrigued by a park with pieces of buildings strewn about its grounds. The pieces are part of an installation to beware of urban sprawl and the loss of old buildings filled with history. Western Park has a history all its own as Auckland’s oldest park. Further exploration reveals an oasis in the middle of Ponsonby and another great view of the Sky Tower. We let one of the steep trails lead us down a hill to a bench where we worshipped the sun and communed with birds, before heading back to the apartment to really rest before celebrating New Year’s.

We contemplate several New Year’s options and settle on dinner in the Britomart area at one of Auckland’s Top 50 best restaurants, Café Hanoi, a modern Vietnamese dining establishment with a moody interior of exposed brick and sparse wooden tables and chairs that somehow feel cozy. We start with a Cava to toast the close of 2013 and the beginning of 2014 and have some of the freshest spring rolls we’ve ever had. But our pick for the best dish at Café Hanoi is the Bún chá, Hanoi-style grilled pork with rice noodles and basil and mint, served in the tastiest broth ever. We used our ladle-shaped spoons to scoop up every last drop.

Our plan after dinner was to linger in the Britomart area to have a drink and find a place to watch fireworks, but many places in the downtown destination, hot with Auckland’s young and the hip, were reserved for ticketed events. So, we follow the crowd to the Sky Tower, which we are told is the source of the New Year’s Eve fireworks. The streets have been blocked for pedestrian traffic and we stand at the intersection of Queen and Victoria streets to await the light show. A diverse crowd thickens around us with mobile phones and cameras poised for the big moment. A flickering of the Sky Tower’s pinnacle starts the countdown and at midnight a blaze of fireworks shoot from its top in a gorgeous display. We join in with the ohs and ahhs with each fantastic burst. The display ends with the Sky Tower bathed in multicolored glow. The crowd immediately disperses, having seen what they came to see. Tanya’s take away: the whole thing seemed really phallic. She has a point. We both notice how orderly the crowd is, minus a few hoots and hollers, there is no pushing, shoving, gunfire or any such deviant behavior that we can see. We do happen to see a couple of overachieving revelers hurl just shy of their shoes, but the drunk are the same everywhere, right?

We realize that we don’t have any New Year’s revelry left in our tank and head for home. We choose to hop in a cab driven by a jovial woman named Sue, who also happens to have little patience for traffic jams of any kind. She immediately sets about urging people to hurry up and cross the street so that she can turn. She chides a car filled with partygoers for blocking the intersection, but adds with a smile, “Happy New Year!” All the while, she turns back to complain about how awful the traffic is, but her voice is warm and cheerful and I think she secretly enjoys the back up, showing us a her back way to get us home. We are thankful and we trudge up to our super cute apartment, thrilled that we are among the first in the World to ring in 2014. Not a bad start to the New Year or a trip to New Zealand.