Which city has a larger population - Auckland or Oakland? - and other "quiz night" questions

Neither Jen nor Pete had previously had much interest, or proclivity toward, trivia prior to leaving for NZ.  But this is really big here. Almost every bar or pub seems to have a "quiz night" and not a week after arriving, we were roped into our first go at it with colleagues of Jen's at the hospital. And, since we promptly won, with first prize consisting of a bar credit for the next week...well, we were hooked and just kept coming back.

Dr. Kevin Jones ruled our team for the first couple months with an iron fist, and sarcastic wit.  Our venue of choice was the Red Lion Inn.  Pretty much each week you find the same teams and mostly the same people back for a go at it.  We really like the announcer at the Red Lion, who is both witty and has a very energetic and catchy way of speaking. Specially fitting were the way he announces the team names, with accents where appropriate.  We attended just about every Thursday night from our arrival until the Christmas break.  After that we had a bit more difficulty gaining traction with our team - Dr. Jones had left, and our numbers dwindled.  Still, we went when we could, and enjoyed the company of several different squads.

We were very successful at first because the team was well balanced.  That is the key to it, having a balance of interests and nationalities on the team.  Also it is key to have people with knowledge on areas that seem to be inordinately important to the quiz night questioners...so an ideal team has a movie and TV buff, a US sports nut, a cricketer, a rugby fan, a geography and history buff, a science and medical person, and people geographically dispersed between NZ, Australia, the UK, and the US.  When we had all that, we either won or were close.  The few nights where we were low on the diversity, not so good.

For instance one of our last weeks our team, named "Team America", was indeed four Americans and one kiwi, with had no knowledge of cricket or rugby, and we finished dead last.  Hopeless. But a week or so prior we had four Kiwis, a Brit, and our same four Americans, and we finished in second.

We had our specialties.  Pete does well in American sports, world geography and US history.  Jen in medicine, literature and 80's music. Kendra came a lot with us (we think mostly for the cider) and is very good at current pop music and culture.

Most of the time Jen and I don't feel like we are contributing at all, but then you realize that the one random question about which US president was on the $50 bill comes up, and all of the Kiwis and Brits around the table look at us hoping beyond hope that we have the answer (Ulysses S Grant).

First impressions are also really important.  On the first time I attended, Pete got an answer about Gwyneth Paltrow right (she had thrown a fundraiser for Barack Obama) that no one else knew the answer to...and that earned him three weeks or so of goodwill and of people thinking he was clever, despite the fact that during the next three weeks he just sat there in silence through questions on how many wickets various Indian cricketers had bowled in the 1976 Cricket World Cup, or what was the chorus of the theme song to this 70s sitcom from Australia.

We got so hooked on this that we even started doing all kinds of daily trivia contests on a few of the local NZ websites, most of which have a daily quiz. And it really has been interesting that since we have actually traveled the country more than most native Kiwis have, we have come to appreciate how good we have become at deciphering or guessing whether Matamata is in A) Northlands, B) Wairarapa, C) Waitake or D) Waikato.

The answer is D.

Now home for over 5 years (!) we really miss this...but are starting to motivate to find and join a local league and get to working on knowing (and then forgetting) random facts.

And the answer to the title above (which I chose because when people in NZ say Aukland, it sounds just like how an American would say Oakland)...well, the answer is Aukland...and not particularly close. 1.6 million in Aukland compared to just 460,000 people in Oakland. I am betting the typical Kiwi or American would split 50/50 on this not particularly close trivia question.

Best golfing experience ever, at Wanganui Golf Course (Belmont Golf Links)

Just for my own memory, I am finally finishing this post...five years later...

As I have previously mentioned, I am a bit of a golf nut. And given that I have never had the occasion to play so much golf as I have during our year in NZ...it was pretty awesome and quite literally my favorite golf experience I have ever had.

Golf is "playable" year round from a weather and course conditions perspective, though perhaps half of the rounds were played through fierce winds and rain, the kind of weather I would not play through in Denver where the weather is generally so sunny and lovely. But if you were going to be deterred by wind and rain here, you were rarely going to play.

All but a handful of the rounds I played here were at our home course, Wanganui Golf Course, but also known as Belmont Golf Links. It was a top 20 golf course in NZ, and established in 1894. Belmont is a tough but fair course.  It plays very long in winter and, with a steady or seemingly constant or relentless westerly wind, I would describe it as a difficult scoring course. But...the course can play relatively short in the summer, and with few trees or hazards, it can be somewhat defenseless on certain rounds and yield low scores. Other than the wind, it is not a difficult driving course, and its biggest ongoing challenge is lots of bunkering around somewhat elevated greens, and the fairly sloped and fast greens punish putting the ball on the "wrong side of the hole."  It has only two par fives, one on each side, and four very difficult par threes - three on the front for a par 34, one on the back for a par 36. It is a par 70 total measuring 5600 meters from the men's tees. Which sounds short for us Denver area golfers...until you realize that 5600 meters at sea level equates to about 6720 yards at a mile high. And the course is brutally long from the Championship tees, which I only played once.

Pretty much all of my rounds were undertaken as a part of the Thursday league or the Friday Club, or some kind of weekend long tournament event.  In fact, golf is much more structured and serious here (and yet at the same time so good natured and relaxed).  Every player has a handicap, or is working on obtaining one.  I only took part in competition play all year, no casual golf - playing strictly by the rules and in competition format, typically match play and a members Stableford competition. That is a major difference from the US, where so much play is casual, just a bunch of people playing and kind of keeping their own score. Each Thursday or Friday the club held a competition, where you threw in $10. $5 went to the club and $5 to an informally kept competition among the members. High Stableford points for the day (1st, 2nd and 3rd) won both pro shop money AND cash in the members competition. And there were other informal competitions each day. For instance, we went off in foursomes and almost certainly were playing a foursome match with your group. On the first tee, a toss of the four balls in play would net partners, and then match play with a partner would ensue against the other twosome. There were variations to this. Sometimes it was simply "better ball" where the winner of the hole on Stableford points won the hole, but often foursomes would decide to play combined Stableford team points, and probably the most frequent game was "better ball with ties decided by the second ball". If that sounds complicated, its actually not. And I would love to explain it. Over a foursome. Anyway, those foursomes matches typically were some form of Nassau, $5 (or a beer) for the front 9, and ditto for the back nine and the overall 18.  (And don't worry, NZ's strict drunk driving laws and frequent sober driving checkpoints had me collecting a combination of cash and not all beer. Not necessarily so with my opponents and partners of course : )

I did have the chance to play four other courses here - Ngamoto in New Plymouth, Paraparamua on the Kapiti Coast, Manawatu in Palmerston North.  All of those were also top 20 courses in the nation, and I loved each one. Paraparamua was the most acclaimed, as Tiger Woods had played the NZ Open once at that course. It was a truly terrific seaside links course.

One interesting factor of playing in Whanganui was having to do the math of playing both at sea level (literally) and in meters. This amounted to a 20% addition to every shot to get to my "distances." Before wind. For instance, if I came to my ball and was 150 meters from the hole, I had to add 30, to get to the distance I would be playing in yards, and at a mile high (what I am used to in Denver.) And there were more calculations to do - mostly the wind, but also the conditions. This course was located right off the Tasman Sea, and invariably played into, across or with a one to two (or often more) club wind. And in the summer, the grass got dry and a ball could roll 50-75 yards easily, specially around the greens when the fescue browned up. Meanwhile, after several days of winter rain, your ball pretty much plugged everywhere and with almost no roll.  So the club selection was seriously challenging.

For instance, it was not unusual to come upon my ball in the fairway, 130 meters out, but into a 2 club wind, and the course being soggy, and realize that from 130 (!!) I was going to need a LOT of club. The math went like this. 130 meters = 156 yards at mile high. OK probably a gentle 8 iron. But two club wind, so...6 iron.  Wait, that's not gonna get there. The ground is so wet. Better hit the 5. Low. And hard. And...the result...plugged five yards in front of the green. Ugh. Should have hit the 4 iron. From 130!

But a month later...playing a hole from 160 meters out (equals 192 yards at mile high)..i would be thinking hard five iron...except no rain for two weeks, so the ball is running forever, and with a two club tail wind, I might have hit a light 9 iron, and then would watch as the ball lands 30 yards in front of the green, releases, and finally runs off the back of the green. Geez.

You might imagine that I definitely tried to adapt and learn how to flight the ball lower and to hit low punch shots. And you would be right. I have never hit so many low punch 8 irons in my life.

My most frequent partners for my matches were Randy, Hamish, and Ross. On Thursdays, I often played with Randy, an older farmer, and I really enjoyed that. He was about a 26 handicap, loved the word "Bugger", was very adept at self deprecating humor, and was a good partner because he kept the ball in play and could win a lot of holes with that high handicap.  I probably played the most with Hamish, who became a bit of a regular golfing buddy on Fridays and joined me on my trips to other golf courses. Towards the end I also played quite a bit with Ross Francis and with a guy name Warren, who went by Jordy. Always entertaining and enjoyable. I specially liked playing with Ross, who was ten to fifteen years my senior, a steady player who's handicap was similar to mine. Here is a photo of me from the last foursome I played at the course, with Ross, Jordy and a young teenage golfer who's name I am sadly forgetting. 

And here's a photo of me and Hamish playing in New Plymouth.

But most of all I enjoyed the Friday club and the competitions. I have never looked so forward to golf as much as I did to Friday club. They even had three separate year long comps going on, the FedUp Cup (you got points for your weekly finishes) and my favorite year long comp was one in which the Friday Club kept track of your best score per each hole against your handicap, and you had a year long rolling low course score. On certain weeks you could gamble and gain a stroke on a certain hole but were bound to now keep that score you made that week, for better or worse. Serious fun on that one, and I was actually close and finished 2nd for the year in that comp.

It also contributed to my enjoyment for the year that I made TWO holes in one, and both on the seriously challenging 2nd hole, and in totally different conditions. The odds of making two holes in one on the same hole in a lifetime are infinitesimal, so, two in three months....Anyway, the second hole plays 130 meters from the gentleman's tees, is into a brutal left to right crosswind with the sea off to your left. It has a very small landing area and a false part of the green to the left, with a hill below it. A shot to the left quarter of the green generally ended up on a hillside about 7-8 meters below the green. And right is mostly safe, but if you got your ball up into a 2 to 3 club wind, you could lose it right and into this hill with knee high grass.  Without wind, not so tough. But I played the hole maybe 50 times and it was NOT windy about 5 of those times. Anyway...in March, I aced the hole on a totally calm summer day with a gentle nine iron. It was a perfect shot, landed about seven feet to the right of the pin, took a hop forward and then checked, turned left and slowly rolled in.  Here is a photo of me picking the ball out of the cup, and you can actually make out where the ball rolled through the dew to settle in perfectly.

Then in July, I was one of TWO people to play in the weekly comp, with another frequent partner named Joe Keating. It was a miserable day, 20-30+ knot winds, and raining sideways. Only six of us were dumb enough to play the course that day, but as I recall, Joe and I were both in the running for the FedUP Cup and the annual low score per hole comp, so we teed it up.  After the first hole we were already contemplating calling it a day and giving up. And then, on the second hole, with this crazy cross wind, I hit a perfect 6 iron, and it bore through the wind a bit, landed slightly behind the hole, and hopped backwards and plunged to the bottom of the cup two bounces and a short roll later. Amazing. Same hole, four months apart! I went a bit nuts and gave Joe this bear hug. Only to realize that while Joe was pretty excited about it too, he now realized that, in order for this to officially count as a hole in one, we had to play out the round. Needing a witness...Joe had to play it in with me. He was a seriously good sport about that, and thankfully the weather lightened up at some point to a more manageable 20 knot wind and occasional showers. So we got in the round, and once again I got a small hole in one trophy for the accomplishment.



Also, unbeknownst to me, Joe started calling people over the phone so that while i was expecting to only pay for a handful of drinks that day (as is the custom when acing a hole), by the time we got back to the clubhouse, there were about 20 guys waiting to claim the drink I got to buy for them : )

It was totally worth it.

And, while we are on the finances of all this...the dollars and cents are one more BEST part of the whole experience. Before we arrived, I had inquired about the membership for the year, and was told the family membership would be about NZ$1200, or about $850 US. Not bad for unlimited play for the year. But when we arrived, I was told they were offering a special to increase membership, and thus payed NZ$750 (US$550) for an entire year.  The kids all played several times, Jen probably played about 20-25 times - always between 3 and 9 holes - and well, i might have got my money's worth.

And, now to finish this very long post, here for preserving my own memories are my hole by hole descriptions...starting with the hole names and their lengths and handicaps.

Hole 1:  Exodus, 322 meters, 6 HC, slightly uphill hole - narrow and lumpy fairway, always directly into the wind, with bunkers right of green, and a steep drop-off left of green. A tough starting hole, you had to bore a drive through the wind and leave yourself anywhere from a long iron in winter to a short bump and run in summer.

Hole 2:  Seaview, 130 meters. 14 HC. I described this earlier when discussing my holes in one.  A very exposed par three with very small landing area with a hill above the green to the right and drop-off/false green to the left.  Relatively short, so easy with no wind, but ridiculous when there is a 30 knot wind off the sea and to your left, which is pretty much always.

Hole 3: Redan 364 meters. 8 HC. Downhill and usually downwind, a rolling fairway split in the middle by a hump with light rough.  Green is bunkered right and left. It was a driver-mid iron in winter, and during the summer or in heavy wind, you could almost drive the hole! During the summer the green would not receive a shot, so you had to land twenty or more meters in front and run it on.

Hole 4: Outlook, 341 meters.  The #2 stroke hole on the course, and one of only two holes with no bunkers.  Long and straight, but right into the wind.  And the green is narrow and has drop-offs on either side.  Laying up and hitting on is the smart play, but why be smart?  Instead, you go for the green, roll off one side and have a very tough chip. It was not uncommon to be green side in two and after two chips and two putts, you were left to wonder how you'd just made a 6. Again.

Hole 5:  Moors, 308 meters. 16 HC. Get one back if you made bogey on #4.  This is the easiest hole on the front nine year round.  A short par four, very downhill.  I found the best play was a long iron to the fairway, just a 90-100 meter wedge into the green.  The green is slightly downhill and usually into the wind, and is surprisingly hard to hit, specially with the number of poor lies you can find, even in the fairway.  Lots of pars to be had here.

Hole 6:  Lands End, 343 meters.  4 HC. A straightaway, relatively lengthy par four that plays into the wind, OB left and dense bush right, but still pretty wide open for the drive, which interestingly, plays back over the 5th green.  The green is long and narrow and protected left and right w pot bunkers. A great hole.

Hole 7: The Slope, 146 meters. 12 HC. A difficult, very uphill par 3, requiring a long to mid-iron. Deep bunkers to the left. Come up short or right and the ball rolls down into various swales.  A ball can look like it is sitting in the middle of the green and come rolling back off the front and end up 30 yards down right front of the green.  Go long and a very sloped back to front green awaits. My handicap always fluctuated such that I wouldn't often receive a shot on this hole...but I needed it.

Hole 8: Long Tom, 497 meters. A long par five which can be reached in two in summer but is really a three (or four) shot hole in winter, depending on the wind.  The tee shot is downhill and relatively wide open.  Poor tee shots left might be lost into a cow field, and balls pushed right usually require creative shot-making to advance the ball around this majestic pine to find the fairway again.  The rest of the hole is uphill, with the second shot needing to clear a ledge in the fairway.  If you don't clear it then you are left with a  very uphill and slightly blind long third shot.  Otherwise you have a relatively flat lie and wedge shot into a long but narrow green that drops off to the left or is bunkered right.  A really good par five.

Hole 9: Terawhiti, 115 meters. The 18 handicap hole, a 115 meter, downhill par three protected with two bunkers on both sides of the hole.  Relatively easy hole if played on a calm day, but a somewhat difficult green to locate if played into the prevailing "westerly" or worse, a gale.

Hole 10: Alma, 365 meters. 7 HC. Making the turn, you are far from the clubhouse, and play my favorite hole on the course, a beauty of a par 4.  The tee shot is blind, over a high hill that is about 150 meter carry and to a wide, really lumpy fairway that is split in the middle by a ridge.  A decent drive easily clears the hill and then the hole runs downhill with a mid-iron into a large green protected by bunkers right and drop-off to the left and back.  This hole typically plays downwind, and makes keeping the ball on the putting surface very difficult, specially when the course was dried out in the summer.

Hole 11:  Encampment, 454 meters. 17 HC. The easiest hole to par on the back nine, a straightaway par 5 of short length given that it is downhill and downwind.  From the teeing area, the hole drops 50 meters to the fairway below, which is flat, and during the summer the ball would run and run, leaving a mid iron into the green, which is protected front and both sides by deep and awkward bunkers.  The hole offers much in the way of strategic thinking - where do you want to leave you second shot so that you can have a good look at birdie since the green has some interesting slope and spots for hole locations.

Hole 12:  French Pass, 173 meters. A difficult, long par three. It is often I have cursed at the fact that this hole is the #13 handicap hole, as I rarely made par but never was getting a stroke either.   It  has a big mound right, OB left and a sand trap the entire right side of the narrow green. Could range from a driving iron to an 8 iron depending on the conditions - wet or dry, down-wind or cross-wind. 

Hole 13: Bunkers Hill, 341 meters. The # 3 handicap hole on the course, a long dogleg left that plays directly into the wind.  Even a really good drive in winter would leave you with a long iron into a green with a wonderfully penal pot bunker front left, and two bunkers right of the green as well. Absolutely classical bunkering around this hole. This was one tough hole.

Hole 14: Dress Circle, 270 meters. 15 HC. the quirkiest hole on the course.  A short and wide open tee shot with a mid to long iron puts you within 80 meters of the hole.  Easy, right? No.  The next shot is straight up a 25-30 yard rise, generally into the wind, and if you don't make it all the way to the middle of the green your ball is likely to fall off the false front and roll back down to the bottom of the hill and leave an awkward 40 meter pitch up the hill to a green that slopes severely back to front. 

Hole 15: Belmont, 405 meters. A long dogleg left par four playing down off that same hill and down wind.  In the summer the ball would run and run on the fairway and leave a short iron but in the winter I almost had to just play it as a three shot par four - driver, 4 iron, wedge!

Hole 16: Balgownie, 305 meters, 9 HC, a short and straight par four playing into a cross-wind, fairway is bunkered left and a giant mound right protects the otherwise wide open tee shot.  The green is bunkered in the front and left and had lots of bail outs long and right, leaving these fun chip shots to a lumpy green.

Hole 17: Tiger, 342 meters. 11 HC.  This is a mid length, slight dogleg right with two dominant pines guarding the right side of the fairway. For some reason I always seemed to drive well on this hole., which usually plays downwind, shortening the hole. But par was still a good score - the green has classic bunkering front, and left, and the green is sloped away from the bunkers, making getting the ball to settle in close a chore.

Hole 18:  Inlay, 385 meters, into the wind.  A brutal and terrific finishing hole, and the #1 handicap hole.  Very long and directly into the wind.  A good drive bisects two fairway bunkers and carries a ridge and goes forward to leave a long iron approach.  An average drive and I would just play it as a par five.  The green is huge, bunkered left and right, and sloped back to front, severely so in the back third.  When the greens were cut for tournament play, you had to keep the ball below the hole on your approach. Five is a very good score on this hole. Four laps the field.

I am not sure which I more eagerly await: playing that wonderful course again, or the post-round banter and beer with the good people I met there. Until next time!

G'day mate!

We were not sure we were going to make it all the way to Australia when we originally left for NZ ten months ago.  But, as we realized it was only a relatively inexpensive, 3 hour flight from Auckland, we decided we would have to do it (as opposed to making a 15 hour flight from LA for instance.)  So when Jen saw that there was going to be a medical conference in Adelaide, the largest city on the southern coast of Australia, we took the occasion to also throw in a side trip weekend getaway to Sydney.

Jen left NZ and flew first to Melbourne, the biggest city in Australia.  She visited with Cameron Waterman, and his aunt and uncle, Sam and Michelle Cameron at their home, and they hosted her for the night, and she got to attend their church the following day.  Then she flew on to Adelaide for her conference.

Jen described Adelaide as a decent size and otherwise unremarkable city on the southern coast of Australia. Her lack of photos are telling.  But she enjoyed the conference and the food and the dancing one night when the conference had a 70's/80's hits band : )

After the 3-day conference, Jen flew to Sydney to meet Pete, who flew in from Wanganui that same day.  Amazingly, with no working cell phones, they found each other in the airport (like old times!) and took the train from the airport into the main city center.  Our hotel was located in the perfect spot - right by the wharf, the opera house, walking distance to the Rocks neighborhood with its restaurants and cafes galore, and across the street from the Botanic Gardens.

Thursday we had a great cafe lunch at a French cafe, sharing a baguette sandwich, an Aussie meat pie, and lovely coffees.  Seemed verry Aussie.  And we walked the wharf area, and parts of the Rocks.  Here is a shot of us from the Rocks looking back to the Opera House.

That night we got all "dolled up" for our big night out...

...and went to the Opera House where we saw a play at the drama theatre called Hay Fever.  It was an old British comedy about these layabout and idle rich country folk, and was very entertaining.

Friday we woke and took the commuter ferry to Manly Beach, a really nice beach town just a 30 minute boat trip from downtown Sydney.  We started out with a short walk around Manly Beach, and were amused by old guys in very skimpy bathing suits running on the beach, huge numbers of surfers out in the ocean and kids out playing beach volleyball in their school uniforms.

After a delicious cafe brunch at a place just off the beach...

...we then walked to Shelly Beach and around the National Seashore area.  We took in lots of great views over the ocean, and of the lovely little sandy coves and beaches that dot the shoreline. We were amazed that right outside such a cosmopolitan city, you could find little coves to go snorkeling!

We decided to walk the 5 or so mile out to the farthest point, and were rewarded with views of the Tasman Sea and even all the way back toward Sydney Harbour and the Sydney skyline.

Realizing how far we had to still walk on our return to the ferry, we began stopping more frequently,  but each cove seemed to have its own cafe, and so we had a couple coffee stops to fill our awesome day together. Here was the view from one such cafe.  Not shabby.

Finally after a return ferry trip, it was off to a great sushi dinner at a restaurant just a short walk from our hotel.  To adapt a line, "Toto, I don't believe we are in Wanganui anymore."  This place was flash!

Saturday we walked the whole area again, visiting the Botanic Gardens in the morning, having another cafe lunch in the Rocks, and enjoyed the mild late Fall weather.  We saw very pretty views of the harbour bridge and opera house.

A friend of ours, Jared, had lived in Sydney, and he recommended that we go armed with peanuts to the Gardens and try to attract tropical birds.  He emailed us pictures with birds draped all over his family - cockatoos, lorikeets, you name it.  And indeed we saw both of those kinds of birds and more, but our attempts to coax them out of the trees made us wonder if we were on "Candid Camera" and he had just photoshopped the birds into his pictures, because they were not biting on what we were selling, so to speak.  A local guy told us they only came out of the trees in the early morning? Maybe he was in on the joke? Maybe Jared is a bird whisperer and didn't realize that he has actually missed his calling in life?  At any rate, here is a shot of a couple lorikeets in a tree...

...and here is a shot of the famous kookaburra.  We saw this in the tree and a local guide told us it was very rare to actually see them in the park, so we felt quite lucky to see this guy.

Later we took a tour of the Opera House, learning about the whole process of designing, and building this architectural icon.  It was interesting to learn that Sydney understood the opportunity before it 60 or so years ago, and indeed set out to build such an iconic wonder!  It has a lengthy and interesting and even slightly sad history, and fortunately, our tour guide was hysterical and should be doing stand-up comedy work.  He made an already fascinating tour even better.

Our last night we went out to dinner at a brewpub in the rocks neighborhood. And then we did our best mid-40s attempt at bar-hopping, which means that we went to one other brewpub, and then went home to fall asleep : )  though in our defense, we did get a little lost finding the one pub on foot and once again seemed to walk the entire city, and were pretty exhausted.  That, and we are not that much into bar hopping : )

Sunday morning we checked out early and went to Sydney's Darling Harbour.  This was our first spot on the entire trip that we could have skipped.  It was very commercialized and hokey, and, as is often the case in spots like that, our breakfast was very average.

Oh well. Even that couldn't put a damper on our enjoyment of that city.  And from there it was on to the airport and our flights back to Wanganui.  What a trip, what a city!

Kendra leaves for Colorado! Sadness

So Kendra here one more time...

I leave New Zealand in two days : ( A trip that I originally approached with apprehension and, frankly, fear, has actually turned out to be an incredible experience. Coming here as a gap year, taking the time off of college; it actually gave me an incredible time of growth, allowing me to really prepare for my future!

One of the most important things I have experienced this year has been my youth group, Ekklesia. An incredible group of 18 to 25 year olds who all are kind, fun, and passionate about God. For me, it has created immediate relationships and social plans, some of which blossomed into great friendships! Weekly Wednesday meetings for prayer, worship, messages, and amazing testimonies have radically changed my faith, as well as introducing me to some brilliant people. The last one was at our house...

Some of the girls in this youth group have truly become very good friends for me! We have weekly coffee "catch-ups" (Kiwi term) which always end in laughs and good times. When Alannah, a good friend of mine in the beginning of my trip, went to University in Palmy, it simply meant I got the chance to go down there to spend one more coffee date with her. Everyone has been very welcoming!  Here is a perfect shot of Tiare, Kerry-Ann and me having fun while out on the town.

My work has also been a true blessing! I wanted to find a job to earn a little money and to give me something to do, but Mint Cafe truly exceeded all of my hopes! I worked between 2-4 days a week, occasionally as much as 30 hours. By the end, I had finally begun to have regular shifts on Thursday nights and Sundays, with other shifts coming and going. And I still had great flexibility to take time off for travel.  It was an incredible job with an amazing staff and boss which made it fun and welcoming! We even had a little party at the end, which most of my co-workers came to!

Of course, because of work I hadn't been able to go on all of the trips that the family went on. I hadn't been to Wellington, but my friends Tiare and Kerry-Ann decided to take me down for a night on the town! We went shopping, visited Te Papa (the national museum), went out to a few bars (hey, it's perfectly legal at my age in NZ!), and visited Weta Workshop the next morning (prop creators for LOTR, Avatar, and lots of other movies). It was an incredible last weekend with the amazing friends I have made while being here.

Then, in the very last week of being here, my dad took my for one last trip up to Taranaki, re-creating another trip I hadn't yet done. Despite heavy rain, we drove up the "Forgotten World Highway", a gorgeous, rarely used highway in the Taranaki region. Halfway through was the "Republic of Whangamomona" a small town that had declared itself a republic in the late 1800s (it was a tiny little bar and hotel in the middle of nowhere...still fun though!)

We then visited a lovely waterfall, which was pretty swollen by all the rain (yes it was still raining.)

Upon making it the coast, we tried to take a beach walk at Tongaporuto (a town that is actually about 10 summer houses...) but got turned back by vicious wind and surprise! more rain, which had caused the river to be too high to make our way along its banks and out to the beach where my family had previously explored. Instead, we took a shorter walk on the other side of the river, getting to the northern beach at Tongapurutu, and seeing beautiful sea caves and cliffs, and these weird little boulders that are imbedded in the limestone.  Heres a selfie of us from the bluff above the beach.

The next day was spent in the Egmont National Park, doing walks to other beautiful waterfalls, the "Goblin Forest" (forest of very gnarled, moss covered trees...very middle earth-y!), and lava created pools.

All in all, it was a wet (yeah...still raining) but very beautiful trip, and a lovely way to end my year in New Zealand.

This has been an amazing time, and I am so grateful for all the incredible opportunities that I've had in this beautiful country! Great friends, beautiful scenery, amazing job...what more could I ask for? Goodbye to New Zealand, hello to the USA once more!

Lake Waikeramoana and Te Urewera National Park

We asked Kendra, who has only weeks to go before returning to the states, what she wanted to go see before leaving NZ.  Number one on her wish list was Te Urewera National Park, a very remote bit of wilderness in the Eastern part of the North Island.  There are two ways in and out of the park, and they are dirt roads - one from the northwest side from Rotorua in the middle of the country, and one from the town of Wairoa, which sits on the Pacific Coast about halfway between Napier and Gisborne.

Last Saturday we dropped Jen off at the airport for her trip to Australia (more on that in a later post) and set off driving the five hours to Wairoa and spent the night in a holiday park there just off the river that bisects the town.  What a relaxing evening under the stars!  

Waking early, the girls and I took a drive through very shire-like countryside to Lake Waikaremoana and the Park.  An interesting side note to Te Urewera is its name! From Wikipedia...The name Te Urewera is a Māori phrase meaning "The Burnt Penis", from the tale of a Māori chief who died after rolling over in his sleep while lying too close to a camp fire.   Yes, you read that right!  Lindsay was seriously grossed out, but also giggled a bit, when she found out.

Our first stop was for a hike up, up, and up to a lookout of the Lake.  It was a gorgeous hike and it afforded a view of the entirety of the area.  The Lake is huge and surrounded by hills covered in dense virgin forest and rock outcroppings. And lake itself is beautiful to look at, the water crystal clear and having multiple colors, as you see the greens and blues of the lake bottom.  So it is pretty stunning, as this pictures shows. But I also liked this photo because it was windy and made for fun artwork with Lauryn's hair : )

Descending from that overlook, we drove to the Visitor Center and set out on a tramp to the neighboring Waikareiti Lake.  It was an hour long uphill walk through very dense native bush and forest.  Here is a pic of the girls on the hike.

We gained about 1000 feet as we climbed, and we were happy to arrive at the lake's edge and just marvel at it for a while.  If Lake Waikaremoana was clear and multicolored, it was nothing compared to Lake Waikareiti.  You could see thirty feet to the bottom at spots, and where the bottom was green, the water appeared the same, and where it was sandy, it was clear, and in other spots it was blue.  Unreal.  Not sure if this pic does it justice!

This lake is also famous in that it is dotted by islands, and the largest of them has a permanent lake within it...so...you guessed it, it has a lake on an island, which sits in a lake sitting on the island of New Zealand.  Only in NZ!  

We rented a row boat, and endeavored to paddle out to this island. We enjoyed the experience and the adventure...but man oh man was that difficult, and I am not sure we would do that one again.  We always seemed to be going straight into the wind, and we felt like we were making no progress, and either we would go too far left, too far right, and seemingly never where we wanted to go! Anyway,  the girls were superstars and all took turns, and I helped too, but mostly laughed as the girls struggled with it, and took these pictures on our very small boat!

We did circle one of the islands, but had been told that landing on the one island (the one with the lake on it) and hiking to that aforementioned lake was forbidden due to trapping and poison baits that the DOC had set in order to eradicate possums, stoats, weasels and rats and re-introduce native birds to the islands.  That ended up being OK with us because that island was about twice as far of a row as the little island we did circumnavigate, and I think we would have been out there all day on that rowboat if we had to make it to the further island!

Back on dry land, we completed our hike back toward the visitor center by taking a loop and seeing some waterfalls, which were pretty remarkable...

...but by the end of that hike we were all so exhausted from the walking and the rowing that we wanted nothing more than to check into the DOC holiday park at the Lake and get some dinner.  We checked into our cute little cabin (four bunks and a little table) and then had one of those awesome hot dinners while camping (2 minute noodles thrown together with some chicken I had cooked before leaving) and then Kendra and Lauryn trounced Lindsay and me in numerous games of Euchre :( but we had a great time.  And we were just about the only people in the park - we only saw one other couple at our holiday park.

One last note on our day there - the weather was unbelievable - sunny and relatively warm, and not that windy.  And it was clear, so at night we could see more stars than we thought existed, specially since we were about as remote as we ever had been while in NZ.

But overnight a huge storm moved in and the wind howled, and we woke to grey skies, heavy winds and cold temps (more typical for this park apparently) so...time to get moving!  Still, we did a few more hikes while in the Park - to Mokua Falls, a huge waterfall that drops some 100 feet or more from its stream bed and down this steep valley, then is met up with by another stream and waterfall that drops in from the other side of the valley.  The next picture shows a tall waterfall falling the valley below, and what we didn't know at the time of taking this picture was that we were standing just over an equal size waterfall which meets up with the one we were photographing.  The two rivers met below, and the scene was something out of Lothlorien in Middle Earth! 

I will also include these following shots at the waterfalls of the girls, who were awesome on this trip.  I had taken off to find a spot to climb down to the valley, and never knew these pictures were taken until I downloaded them later.  Nice work, girls!

Finally we left the park, but stopped by on an NZ Frenzy recommendation to see the "ferry lakes" that are just outside the park.  Apparently some of the water from the Lake is pumped out and into a man-made lake, and the water is used for a hydro-electric project on the east side of the park.  We were super glad we did this short hike, which was way off the beaten track!  The lake was even more crystalline than the others we had seen, and the lake bottom was green or blue in places, hence the name fairy lakes, and so had this ridiculous appearance of being phosphorescent green or blue.  The trail was overgrown and it didn't appear that more than a handful of people come out to this remote spot every month or so.  So another very obscure and beautiful spot in NZ that we could hardly believe.  This picture was taken by Kendra, and hopefully you get a sense of this spot!

After a long stop in Napier for time on the beach, some dinner, a little soccer for Lauryn...and some more pictures of the girls...

...we drove home to Wanganui to end a long weekend. We were really glad we had made the trip to this spot which so many kiwis have not even heard of, let alone visited.

Hard to get to? Check!  Remote native setting? Yup! A feeling like you have gone back in time to the mid-1950's?  Definitely! Unbelievable never seen before attractions? Of course!  Sounds like a place you should get to!