Two Years in KiwiLand: September 2009

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Waihi Beach Weekend

A friend of mine, Jay, has a family bach down in Waihi Beach. We all got the invite to head down there for the weekend as sort of a combined weekend getaway and a going away party for our friend, Chi, who has recently quit PwC and will be spending the next few months in Thailand gaining a teaching certificate in Yoga of all things.

We had a great weekend spent lounging by the beach, hiking to another nearby beach, playing some intense ping-pong tournaments, and relaxing.

Michelle, Karen, me, Alex, James, Paula, and Fi in Jay's bach

Stone skipping contest at one of the local secluded beaches

A nice beach we took a hike to

Michelle, Paula, Chi, Jay, Paul and Fi on the hike

A view of Waihi beach and the ocean

Michelle, Paula, Paul, Jay, Fi, and me

Sunset over Jay's bach

Jay, Paul, Me, and Michelle

A game of soccer

Paul shooting a rainbow out of his hands

A little trick photography by Chi

Me lounging on the beach

Waihi Beach

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Winter Tongariro Crossing

A group of friends and I decided to take a long weekend trip in September to go back to Tongariro National Park to do a bit of skiing and just spend a weekend away from the big city. It is about a four hour drive from the city so we left work a bit early on Friday in order to make it down in a decent time.

We rented a bach in the town of Ohakune. If you remember, I visited the area a few times in the past, and this is where I originally did the Tongariro crossing back in January. The intention was to attempt some skiing but with me being a novice and some of the others not really in the mood to break their ankles attempting to learn, along with the fact that the weather was forecasted to be quite nice, we decided to do something different.

Chi, Paul, and I decided that we would do the Tongariro crossing again but this time in the winter! We had to rent crampons to climb the snow and ice and decided to do a guided tour as we weren't quite sure what to expect.

It ended up being a great day and was not overly difficult. The going was a bit slower in the snow but the scenery was quite different and still very beautiful. The funniest part of the day was when we got to the top of red crater and decided instead of using our crampons to slowly hike down the hill that we would slide head first all the way to the bottom. It was a huge hill and probably not the safest thing in the world but it was heaps of fun. Chi had the best slide down as she flipped over several times and almost took out all of the spectators at the bottom. Definitely worth doing the second time in the winter!

Mt. Doom in the Winter

Me and Chi

Mt. Ruapehu

Chi and Paul when we first started to see snow

Hiking higher...

More snow...

At the first crater

Me, Paul, and Chi at the base of Mt. Doom

Paul on the frozen tundra

Time to put the crampons on

En guard!

At Red Crater

The clouds rolled in for a bit

We were on about a meter of ice as evidenced by this sign that is usually about waist high

And it started to clear up again!

Check out the reflection in the lake

Wine Connoisseur

A few weeks ago I started attending a 5 week wine tasting course - excuse me, it's a wine "profiling" course as it is much more than tasting. It is led by one of the 257 Masters of Wine in the world. See some more details about the course here.

I decided that it would be good to learn a bit about wine as I really didn't know anything. The course has been very interesting but so far I've learned that I don't have an extremely sophisticated pallate. I'm taking the course with two friends from work - Paul and Jay. Jay seems to know his stuff a bit, but Paul and I have trouble distinguishing what aromas the wines are from the aroma wheel - "fresh cut grass", "tomato leaf", "mellon". It has still been a great course keeping my interest for the 2 hours as I've learned a good bit about different wines. So far we've learned about the aromas (of white wines), learned about the different types of grapes, taken a factory tour in Kumeu River, learned of the astringency of red wines, etc. I feel slightly more sophisticated but still have a couple of weeks to go to get my diploma...

Muriwai

There are a ton of nice beaches around Auckland, but one of the more famous ones is called Murawai Beach which is only about a 40 minute drive from town. I went there a few weekends ago with friends and spent the morning exploring the area. It has black volcanic sand and is very picturesque. This beach is really popular and crowded in the summer time but was pretty empty in late July / early August when we went.

It's also famous for its gannet colonies which just look like slightly nicer looking seagulls (still annoying though) to me.

We had a nice time at the beach hiking around and exploring some of the caves. I was able to drive out on part of the beach so I took the "Beast" off-roading again. It was a beautiful day, especially considering it was still actually winter.

The Beast on the black sand beach

Me and Michelle enjoying the views

Maria, Brian, Fi, Paul, Me, Karen, Michelle, Chi

Paul and Me

Exploring the beaches

More exploring the beaches and caves

Me at Muriwai

A large rock with one of the gannet colonies on top

Gannets

Closer view of the gannets

Me with a nice view of the beach

Fi, Paul, Michelle, Chi, Karen, Maria, Brian

Chi being a hippie

Saturday, September 12, 2009

90 Mile Beach and Cape Reinga

So I had a week off of work in September. The original plan was to meet up with my buddy, Keith, in Thailand or somewhere else in Asia but those plans fell through so I had a week to spend around New Zealand. My buddy, Paul also had a couple of days off so we decided to head up North for a bit. This was my first time heading north of Auckland.

Paul and I drove up to Keri Keri and stayed at the Top 10 Holiday Park there. The weather wasn't supposed to be good the next day and we had planned to take a trip out to 90 Mile Beach so we tried to reschedule to the following day. To our luck as it turned out, they were not able to reschedule.

90 Mile beach is actually only about 55 miles long (why kiwis? no one knows). It's well known as it is also considered to be a road and able to be driven on by 4-wheel drive vehicles. While we did have the Beast with us, Paul and I decided to take the tour instead as it would eliminate our need to drive and we would have boards available to bodyboard the famous sand dunes.

The drive up north was not looking promising as it was overcast the whole way and raining, however we were lucky that as we approached the beach, the weather cleared and it ended up being a beautiful day.

The drive along the beach was beautiful. We made several stops to take in the scenery. The sand was full of shellfish (Tuatuas) which you could pretty much dig out by the dozen everywhere you went.

The next stop was the famous sand dunes. We were all given body boards and had to hike to the top of the dunes (a steep and tiring walk) where we then took a running start and surfed headfirst down the dunes ending in the river below. Paul and I did this 3 or 4 times before tiring out from the hikes up the dunes. On the last ride down, a group of 5 of us decided to race down the dunes. This didn't work out as expected as I collided with another guy in front causing a chain reaction of all of us wiping out and tumbling down the hill. Everyone was OK after getting the sand out of our ears, eyes, and nostrils.

After a further drive, we ended up at Cape Reinga which is the furthest northern point on the main land of New Zealand. There is a famous lighthouse there and it is a very important Maori spiritual site. This is also where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean and you can see the different currents come together.

After a long drive back, we were going to stay another night in Keri Keri but the hotel had cockroaches running around and we weren't sure what we would do the following day anyway so we decided to head back to Auckland and go golfing the following day. It was another great trip.