In which we visit the Rocks while the family is on the rocks. 

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As Newton once said, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So it goes with our trip – after the bliss and fun of yesterday, came one where everyone seemed to snipe at each other constantly. Even in the midst of this though, there were some gems to be had. 
I really wanted to spend some time at the Rocks, the oldest area of Sydney and where they have a weekend outdoor market. The market was so fun! The kids and I have been listening to “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and ever since we started the boy has been begging me for a towel, as he says he just doesn’t feel right without one. Thankfully, they had a stall selling Turkish towels and he was able to pick one out, so he now feels like a right hoopy frood. The girl picked up a heart locket charm for her charm bracelet and we munched on something that resembled a Turkish quesadilla from a street booth. The other stalls sold anything ranging from wooden kangaroos to semi precious stones, cupcakes and indigenous art, and of course one of those people who make space-y looking art from spray paint. There must be some rule that one of those must exist at every outdoor market. 


The Rocks Discovery museum is also there, a small place completely worth a visit. It goes through the history of the Rocks – from the first aboriginal peoples, the Cadigal, and their lives through their decimation at the hands of European disease then to the settlement of the area and it’s ill reputation due to being a naval port and then through to the 1970s, where the government wanted to demolish the Rocks and put in high rise buildings, displacing the traditional working class residents. A grass roots movement called “The Green Bans” which succeeded in preventing large scale redevelopment of the neighborhood. It retains a mix of old and new building as a result. The famous Harbor Bridge was largely built with the sweat of Rocks residents as well. 

The rest of the day involved getting back to the flat, more sniping, dinner and bed. I was glad to get to sleep, knowing the next morning it would be better, and it was. 
Let’s talk a bit about how the technology has worked so far – to start, the kindles have worked really well. All of last year’s Lonely Planet guides are available on Kindle Unlimited, which I got for the trip. There really aren’t many other great books to read on it, unless you’re a fan of Scottish bodice-rippers, so I’m not sure I’d recommend it otherwise and will probably cancel our subscription once we get to Ireland or Romania. We are still able to get Denver Public Library books though, and have been using that to get new fiction to read. Even with the guides, the world of travel has opened up considerably because of the Internet, Google maps, Yelp, Air BNB and Tripadvisor. Most places we haven’t opened the travel guide other than to get an overview for sights and things we may want to see, and I did this before I left by reading travel guides checked out from the library anyway. Instead of being limited to the places mentioned in the guide, we’re able to look ahead of time. You might think this prevents us from finding new and exciting places, but I’ve found the exact opposite. For example, we never would have found that tasty crepe place or even ventured to that neighborhood of Auckland without Yelp. 

I’ve booked all of our places online mostly through Air BnB or some variation thereof and they have all been fantastic, though need at least 24 hours notice as I’ve learned. Less than that and it’s a motel for us. For restaurants, we’ve either asked people, just walked around, or in the cities used Google maps to find places. Yelp isn’t used as much outside of the big cities – I think it’s more American. In the small towns, places don’t have reviews, but we just go to the busiest place on the Main Street and that’s served us well. 🙂 Only one of our restaurant findings has been truly disappointing, and this was one where one of us wasn’t feeling well and we just had to pick the nearest place.
In terms of phone and Internet use thus far, NZ was a bit rough. Wifi is not commonly available or is limited in time or MB. For our phones, we ported our phone numbers to Google Voice so we don’t have to change the numbers we’ve had for over 10 years. If anyone calls this number I should technically be able to get the voicemails sent to my email, but really, no one calls me. For other contact, I use whatsapp, Facebook messenger, and for calling FaceTime audio or video works well over wifi! In every country I’ve been getting a SIM card so I have a local number and can receive and make calls in the country, which has been useful. The best way to decide which SIM card to get is to ask the most teenager-y looking person about which is the best one! One thing I didn’t realize was that you can’t forward your US Google Voice number to an international number, but this really hasn’t been a big deal. In NZ the SIM card I got had only 250mB of data for the week! I used it all by the last day. Here in Oz I have 4 luxurious GB to use for 2 weeks, but even then don’t have good service everywhere! Wifi was plentiful in Sydney but I’m thinking it’ll be less so in the outside areas. I was hoping to not even need a SIM card but with the poor availability of wifi, it has been a necessity for directions at the very least and looking up restaurants and such as well.
I’m immensely grateful that I got a keyboard for my iPad before we left. It has become a second laptop and essential for typing out blog posts. I have an old 2nd gen iPad so it’s heavier than I’d like, but I couldn’t justify the expense of getting a new iPad Air just for that. But for now it seems to be working just fine. 🙂

-s

In which we have a lovely day and learn not to take romantic advice from a crocodile

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After the explosive events of the day before, the girl woke up and felt just fine. Eric, on the other hand, caught whatever bug she had and was out for the count. Sitting on the couch downstairs and occasionally croaking out a request for some tea, he wandered in and out of an achy consciousness. It was shaping up to be another wet day and the kids and I made a plan to go to the Aquarium and Wildlife Sydney, a small zoo in the middle of downtown which features Australian wildlife. 
This was, all in all, a fabulous day. We hopped a bus to Darling Harbour and made our way to the Aquarium. On the way we had to stop for the kids to use the bathroom and found ourselves in a lovely cafe where we decided to return for lunch, as described by the boy in his post. 
The Sydney Aquarium is set up pretty nicely as it walks you through various underwater environs of the Australian coast. We walked through a series of “underwater” tunnels where the rays, sharks and other sea life meandered overhead. When we stepped in, I began to say, “You know, there was this scene in Jaws 3 where-” “NOOO!! NOO!! Don’t tell me! Not until we’re safely out of here!” the boy interrupted me. He then scurried through the tunnel as quickly as he could, waiting for cracks to appear. I keep trying to get them to watch Jaws before we go snorkeling at the Barrier Reef, but they keep rebuffing my attempts. Can’t imagine why. 


The newest animal I’d never heard of is the dugong, a sort of uglier manatee-like sea mammal. Yes, uglier than a manatee. 

The Wildlife Sydney was really fun. I’d never seen an echidna before! They’re so adorable, like a hedgehog that got hit with an enlarger ray. As one of the 2 known egg laying mammals, I’ve always been fascinated by them.


 And the platypus! They had platypuses swimming about in an underwater habitat! The other egg laying mammal! Suffice it to say, there was a lot of squee happening. But then we got to the koalas! And even more squee! Fun fact about koalas I learned: when the males are in heat, they develop a musky cologne on their belly that they rub on the trees to attract the lady koalas. The zoo also advertises the largest saltwater crocodile in captivity. We rounded the corner to the habitat and looked for several minutes, wondering if the dark shape below the surface of the water was the croc. After a good five minutes of staring, I looked up to see a small sign that read, “Sadly, our crocodile Rex died.” After this we stood back and watched the other tourists search in vain for the crocodile also, which was good fun. We read the other signs around the habitat, including one that told us that Rex had been a solo croc after EATING the two lady crocs they brought in to mate with him and try to make more little Rexes. Clearly, no one had ever tagged Rex in the “love your spouse challenge”. 
That afternoon we had a tour of the Sydney Opera House and I learned there was a children’s film festival happening there that night so we got tickets for that too! Eric dragged himself down to the Opera house for the tour, looking a bit peaked. The Opera house tour was fascinating – even though the building is a famous one that we’ve all seen pictures of, seeing it in person was spectacular. On the tour, we learned that Utzen, the Dutch architect who designed the building, was fired for coming in over time and waay over budget – initial estimate $7 million, actual cost >$100 million. I don’t know why Sydney was so surprised by this; anyone who’s ever gone through a remodel would have told you to expect it. I also loved learning that there are several different types and finishes of tile that go on top of the building to maximize brilliance but cut down on glare so you’re not blinded by the roof in the sunlight, just dazzled. 

We returned in a few hours for the film festival, to find the Opera house lit up for the olympics.  So pretty. 


The children’s film festival was delightful! We caught the opening night gala and watched a series of short films either geared toward or made by children. One of my favorites was Johnny Express where an interstellar delivery guy has a package to deliver to a new planet, only it turns out that he’s a giant on the planet and unwittingly causes mass destruction of all the little green people with every step! The kids’ favorite was a film called “Bunny New Girl,” about a little girl who starts at a new school…and wears a homemade bunny mask out of a paper plate her first day. Can’t imagine who that reminds me of.

In which the kids plan the day in Sydney and we ignore important foreshadowing

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Our first full day in Sydney and the weather was a bit gloomy. Just as well since we needed a bit of a morning off after the packed week in NZ. I found an Air BnB that looks remarkably like our place back in Denver, and is in a central neighborhood with plenty of restaurants and bars (Surrey Hill, for those of you that know it). 


Before leaving for the morning, I’d handed over the Sydney guide and map we picked up at the airport to the kids and told them that they were responsible for planning the day and navigating. They took to this with aplomb and began studying both. They came up with several alternative itineraries for the day, and the one they settled on was having dumplings at Din Tai Fung, then walking through Chinatown, then the Chinese Friendship Garden, then the playground at Darling Harbor. Perfect.

The girl said her stomach didn’t feel good and she was homesick and not eating enough. We tried to console her to little avail, and she somewhat glumly trudged after us when we left for lunch. The boy did a fantastic job getting us to the train station and then navigating us the shopping mall where the lunch restaurant was. We walked up stairs that twinkled in multicolored patterns and under a swirling metal Chinese Dragon. 


DTF is a Taiwanese dumpling and steamed bun chain and it was super yummy! We had the vegetarian gyoza, steamed buns and spinach with garlic. They had a little dish with sliced ginger in it and you put soy sauce and vinegar into it to make your own dipping sauce. The little detail I loved was that they gave you a bag for your belongings, somewhat like an upright laundry bag that they then covered with a cloth. So civilized! The girl, who doesn’t care for dumplings, instead chose the vegetarian fried rice which was tasty as well. 


As Eric has mentioned in his post, we stopped at a random shop in Chinatown which had notebooks and other paper products printed with English sayings, something of which was clearly lost in translation. 


After this we went to the Chinese Garden of Friendship and it really was lovely, though the girl’s mood continued to decline. The Garden was designed by Sydney’s sister city, Guangzhou and opened in 1988. It is a traditional walled garden in the style of the Ming dynasty, and the kids were given activity books to search for little figurines of the Chinese zodiac through the garden. There were large crowds of Australian White Ibis throughout the park, aggressive little critters they are. 


We made it to the fantastic harbor playground after that and all of the girls aches and pains and sadness seemed to vanish as she ran, climbed, swung and slid in what the boy kept calling “the greatest playground ever!” and which he describes in his post. We walked across the small bridge to the train station and boarded the light rail to head home. 
Once on board, the girl said her stomach didn’t feel good again and she thought she might throw up. Given that she’d been complaining of this all day and had just spent the better part of an hour frolicking freely without complaint, we patted her back and gave a few “there there’s” and said we’d be home soon, completely ignoring her. 
At which point she proceeded to vomit large volumes of fried rice all over the crowded light rail compartment. 
Sydney residents must have excellent reflexes, because they all jumped very quickly and no other passengers were hurt in the incident. I went into a state of shock and helplessly held out my hand under her mouth as if it would do anything other than make sure that I was covered in vomit as well. A kind lady offered us a tissue, which was nice but again, about as useful as a postage stamp at that point. 
Eric thankfully maintained some sense and insisted we get off the bus, NOW. We got off and stood there, dazed for a moment, until another kind person pointed us across the street to a warehouse and told us there was a bathroom in there. We made our way across and found ourselves in the midst of a massive flea market of sorts and got to the bathroom as quickly as we could. Once inside, I was able to clean the girl up as best as possible and we balled up her dirty over shirt and went back into the market. 
We all stood there for a minute, wondering what to do next exactly whilst surrounded by piles of plastic gizmos, Disney themed clothing and fake swords. I pulled out my phone to see if we could just call a cab home, but the wifi wasn’t working and I hadn’t loaded in a new SIM card yet. We started to look around for a new sweatshirt for the girl so she wouldn’t be freezing cold but they were all hideously ugly. I realized I could just give her my long sleeve shirt and we could make it home. 
At this point, the girl was feeling back to her old self and began chattering away nonstop, especially as we were in a flea market with about a million things she now wanted to purchase. “Let’s get those swords for our friends back home! I bet they have snow globes here! I like that shirt! Oh there’s stickers over there! That playground was great can we go again?” As Eric and I stared at each other over her head in disbelief while trying to ignore the acrid aroma of vomit that surrounded us. At that point, we realized the only way back was to get on another light rail, and we went back to the station to wait. 
Sydney has a system of cards which you tap at little pads at each site to get on or off the transit. We had tapped on when we first got on but didn’t tap off when we escaped after the girl marked her territory. At that point we weren’t sure whether to tap on again or tap off and then tap on. Thus began a comic and somewhat frantic tapping of cards only to yield multiple error messages over and over. I’d tap one and it would say “not accepted,” then I’d tap another one and it wouldn’t accept, then I’d tap another and it went through, then another one would say it had already been tapped on, and all the while the 4 of us are standing around this pole like total idiots staring at the tap pad and the Australians are staring at us. Eventually, I gave up and left it to fate and the transit police.

We got off at our station and tried to tap all the cards again, with another set of error messages that basically read, “Stop it you dumb tourist, you’re just blocking the actual Sydney residents from getting home.” 

A few blocks later, we were back at our flat, the girl was in a hot bath, and Eric and I both had drinks in our hands. I felt like a terrible parent for ignoring the poor girl’s complaints all day and blowing them off as homesickness, and apologized to her to which she replied, “Oh, that’s okay mommy. I feel better now! Can we go eat some sushi?” Lesson learned : when your kid says their stomach doesn’t feel good, stop putting food in it. You might think I would have figured this out before now, but sometimes it takes true pyrotechnics for an education to sink in. 

-s

In which we see the glow worms and my children electrocute themselves.

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We woke up in the morning and were finally warm, having left the electric heater on all night.New Zealand is cold. I knew that, of course, from researching before we left and helpful tips from current Kiwis, but we hadn’t yet been to a hotel or Air BnB without central heating. Yesterday we woke up with our toes frozen and able to see our breath as we spoke. Henceforth, I only looked at places with both central heat and wifi as well. You know, the essentials of life. 
The previous evening, Celia, the home host/property manager, had come by to meet us and brought us 6 farm fresh eggs from her chickens, 2 of which were green shelled! We had a delicious breakfast of fried eggs, leftover baguette, pesto and cheese. 
It was also NOT raining, incredibly, and we took a stroll on the property to the trout stream just down the way. Along the way we met Pat, the farmer who owns the property, and his dogs, one of whom accompanied us to the stream. 


This was an idyllic place and it made me wish it had been a bit warmer so we could have picnicked there one night. The girl found herself lost in quiet contemplation on the little bridge. (Picture completely staged, people.  She never sits still for this long.) 

On the way back we ran into Pat again and we had a long chat about the state of farming in NZ. He runs a dairy cow operation, where he gets calves from the dairy farmers in the spring, raises them to the yearling stage and then sends them off to the stud farm and then the dairy for milking and having their calves, and then the cycle repeats. One of his dogs (the big brown one) is a working dog and does all of the shepherding and moving of the herd from one area of the farm to another, where the happy looking cows (I think) munched on grass. At one point the cows started humping each other, which of course the boy exclaimed upon. Turns out, horny cows will hump anything, even without a bull around. Go figure. The actual farmer way of saying this is that the cows are approaching heat. Somewhere around this time, the girl grabbed onto the metal wire fencing to get a closer look…and electrocuted herself on the electric fence. Thankfully, it’s not a big shock and she was more slightly zapped then injured, but STILL. 
After this, a drive across country to go to the Waitomo area. I’ve been trying to plan a trip that’s a bit more off the beaten path, and for the most part we’ve been able to do that and have loved it. Here, I failed. There’s supposed to be a hike from a highway stop a bit away that shows a lot of limestone formations and is stunning and unique. Here’s the first part of the hike. 


We started on the hike and thought, oh it’s pretty! Then : Umm…this is pretty muddy. And later: Oh man we’re now covered in mud again. Shortly thereafter: Here’s a pool where the trail is flooded! We’ll go around! And then, came an impossible flooding of the trail and we were forced to go back, though not before the girl electrocuted herself AGAIN on another electrified fence. Not to be outdone, the boy was curious how this felt and shocked himself on purpose. Yes, these are my brilliant children.

Once they stopped buzzing, we headed back to the car and admitted defeat and stepped into tourist land of the Waitomo Glowworm Caves. Eric has something of a phobia of caves and underground caverns, so it was the shorter 45 min tour we chose. The caves themselves were discovered by Tane Tinorau, a local Maori chief, and Fred Mace, an English surveyor, where they made a raft and floated into the caves and saw the glowing lights. A bioluminescent “worm” which is actually the larval stage of a small fungus-gnat (doesn’t that sound pretty) lives in the caves and lights it up from the inside, like a starry night outside. They don’t allow pictures, so here’s a stock one from the web – it really is magical, though you do feel a bit hustled in and out of the cave in true tourist fashion.  While in the boat, floating with the lights around, I started to sing “Kiss the Girl” from “The Little Mermaid,” until I was shushed by unappreciative tourists.  

I’m still glad we saw them – I had been feeling a bit regretful about missing them, so the trail flooding was, in the end, a good thing. 

-s

The Black Sand Beaches and the Playground

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When we went to the black sand beach area, we found this amazing American ninja warrior play set. There was some logs you had to step on, some things you had to balance on and had to climb. And there was a twisty thing, monkey bars and stuff like that. It was this little loop which was fun and also a little dangerous too. Mom wasn’t going to let us play on it but dad said we could and I am so glad of it!! But we couldn’t go back in the morning. 😭😭

Black sand
One type of black sand is made near volcanic explosions like places near the Ring of Fire. The other type of black sand is made out of fine grains and minerals. In New Zealand, we were on a Black Sand beach but it was the one made from the volcanic explosion. 
They had tools to separate the black sand from the other minerals and they used it by using a magnetic thing because there is iron in the black sand. 


-lb😀🐋

In which we go mountain biking in a California redwood forest…in New Zealand

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One of the big things Eric and I were really looking forward to was mountain biking in Rotorua. California redwoods were imported there in 1901 to support the logging industry and while they didn’t really take off as a new source of timber, some part of the forest remains. The upshot is that in the middle of New Zealand is a gorgeous California Redwood forest just begging to be ridden through. 
We asked to stay at the farmstay an additional day since we figured we wouldn’t want to bike and get muddy and then have to pack up and go somewhere, and man, were we grateful for that decision later! It made me even happier that we had been able to add some flexibility into our schedule and not have everything booked solid before we left. 
We called the lovely people at Planet Bike in the morning and made sure they had rental bikes for us. They were so nice, even to switch the brakes so we wouldn’t have to brake backwards with the back wheel brakes on the left! I was so glad of this at many times in the ride. The kids were fitted on fat tire bikes, a first for them! And we were off on the muddy trails. Both kids tried to hit all the mud puddles as fast as they could so that by the end of the day they resembled little else than mini mud monsters. We had them strip before they got back in the car.


Riding through the forest was so, so beautiful. The entire time I was riding I just couldn’t believe how happy I felt. We ran into maybe another 3 people along the way and the feeling of cruising through a dappled forest with birds and animals chirping about you is unparalleled. The girl got a bit nervous at times with the isolated feeling, and I told her assuredly that it was impossible to get lost in this forest. 


About 5 minutes later we got lost in the forest. We had taken a bit of a wrong turn and found ourselves off trail. We used my phone to figure out the compass directions and headed that way, only to find ourselves in denser forest and the clear disappearance of the trail. Under his breath, Eric asked “you sure this is right?” And I replied quietly so the kids wouldn’t hear, “ummm, not really.” Out loud we acted like grown ups and kept saying that we were going the right way. 
After we came back out to where we had made the wrong turn, we simply turned around and saw the right road about, oh, 5 yards from where we had been. Eesh. We were able to make it back to the trail and then, the fun part after all the hard uphill riding we had done! Going downhill on a muddy trail with bumps over tree roots was exhilarating! 
We had initially intended to go to the Waikiti hot spring before going home, but instead decided to head back to the farmstay to make lunch and de-mud first. After this we didn’t feel like the long drive to Waikiti and instead went to the Polynesian Spa hot spring in town and loved it. There was a pool for the kids to frolic in and they made some friends with two local Kiwi kids who gave their opinion on US politics (Summary: Trump is bad, Clinton is okay but not as good as Obama). Given that I couldn’t tell you anything about who runs New Zealand, I’m amazed at the overall cultural dominance of the States in this regard. 
Back home for a peaceful night in, having made some pesto pasta at home for a simpler night of food comfort. 

-s

In which we commune with the Hobbits.

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The rainy day in Rotorua continued for much of the morning. This was a blessing in that we needed some downtime to just relax and not do anything for a bit. It was going to clear in the afternoon, so the kids and I thought this would be a great time to visit the hobbits! Eric’s interest in people is directly proportional to their relation to him or how much shorter they are then him, and given that hobbits are on the low end of both, hold little fascination for him. He chose to stay in town and go for a swim at the aquatic center.

After a bit of a drive we found our way on the Hobbiton set. One of the things that’s amazed me about NZ is how little things are commercialized to the way they are in the States. I mean, if this set was in the US, there’d be some sort of big theme park around it and multiple ways for them to sell you things. Here, there’s a small car park, little cabin like building, smallish gift shop and … That’s it. You board a bus to take you to the set and the gate to enter isn’t even mechanized. The tour guide has to hop out of the bus, open it, wait for the bus to pass, then close it and hop in! A stupid bit of detail but it’s things like that which fascinate me sometimes.

Onto the hobbits! 

The set is really lovely, I have to say, and you feel like you’ve been dropped into the Shire from all angles. Given that it had just rained, everything was green and misty. They take care to keep everything as it was and real – the gardens are actually growing vegetables. I could see Frodo and Sam walking through the space, and Gandalf riding in, and the big party under the magnificent tree. 


The set is just the exterior fronts – you can’t actually see into Bag End as that was all filmed on a set. The only Americanized thing I would have liked for them to do would be to pipe in some of the soundtrack music as you walk around. As it was, some of the other people on the tour whistled and hummed it the entire way for us. 
After that it was home and some tasty Indian takeaway. TV here is a bit limited where we’ve been staying so the kids are getting a new education in prime time offerings. They’re loving the Australian version of The Voice, and are hoping to catch the next episode to follow along!

In which we make our own hot pool and chill with the sheep

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It’s about 8:30 in the morning and the weather outside is foggy with a constant downpour of rain. We’re in a farm cottage where we’re staying for two nights, having rolled in yesterday. Most of my morning with the boy was spent in trying to figure out how to operate the wood burning fireplace so that it heats up these chilly rooms, and I think we’ve just gotten it figured out. The chill and wet don’t seem to bother the animals much, and we awoke to a concertina of birds, roosters and sheep.
I suppose it will surprise no one, including myself, that there will be times of friction among the four of us in such close quarters for so long. I know it’s only been a few days but the mentality is different than a week away where you know you’re going home soon. Yesterday morning was one of the first, where the boy was mad at me about having to write his blog post, the girl was mad at me for god knows what, I was annoyed at both of them and Eric had taken off for a peaceful sunrise stroll in all of this which annoyed me too. After a bit of a tearful breakdown, we managed to pull ourselves together and all cheer up again. 
Our day yesterday then turned into a lovely one, starting with hot water beach in the morning. This is a unique place on the Coromandel peninsula’s East Coast, where a hot spring that feeds to the beach runs under the sand to the ocean. If you bring a shovel at low tide and dig a little pool, it fills with hot water and you’ve got yourself a little hot tub (sans jets)! The boy had great fun trying to figure out the hottest spot to dig and how to make sure we had a nice warm pool to relax in. The weather was cooperating thankfully, and we had several hours of sunshine and low 60s weather to enjoy the hot water in. Low tide was at 9ish and we spent the next hour and a half relaxing in the warmth while the girl ran up and down the coast in a state of bliss at being on the beach. 


After this we drove down the east coast on our way to Rotorua,stopping for a nice lunch at the Sands cafe in Whangamata before heading a bit further inland to the Karaheke Gorge. Here, there was a mining facility and mining railway that are now ruins, with signs marking the way. We went for a little walk through one of the old mining trails, which was damp and verdant. I am wowed by how quickly nature reasserts itself when manmade places are left to ruin. 

We walked through one of the old mining tunnels which at one point became pitch black – I began to feel a sense of closed in panic, and the girl began to whimper as well. We had our iPhone flashlight to help, though it didn’t entirely light up the tunnel. At one point we couldn’t see an end to the darkness and all began to get scared, until a large group of Chinese tourists came through the other way and, well, I felt a bit silly for being scared. 
After this we made our way to Rotorua from where I write this post, staying at a farmstay a little way out of town, and trying to decide what to do with ourselves on this rainy day. 

-s

The trip begins

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After a four hour layover at LAX we got on a plane to go to New Zealand. The plane flight was 12 hours long, luckily for us we rested on the plane for a bit and that helped combat the time zone change. When we landed we had to wait in a long line for customs and that took a good while, but we were rewarded when we finally got to the breakfast place called the scarecrow and ate a ton. Yum!!! After eating, and a lot of bad temper from Lu we finally were welcomed in to the warm and full of light apartment. After that we decided to crash and after that we went to eat ramen at a ramen place. Also yum! After that we walked over on to a bus and went to the museum, walking up to the museum we met a very nice lady that worked for the museum and she gave us a tour of the museum! After the incredible tour and some exploring the museum we decided to go home and sleep.

Maori meeting houses 

 The Maori, as you might be wondering, (unless you are a New Zealander)were the first to cross the ocean and settle in New Zealand. The interesting thing about the Maori is that the Maori had sailed across the ocean to new land and  the amazing thing was that the Maori had sailed acros the ocean, not in ships like the mayflower but in ships with two pontoons that had a flat deck sitting on the pontoons and that could carry up 100 people at a time. 
 Now enough of that and on to the Maori meeting houses. The meeting houses were used as a community house, or a place of peace, and if you started a fight you would be kicked out until you calmed down. The meeting houses were also considered, and not like a church or a house of worship, a sacred place ,where usually no food was allowed and no shoes were allowed inside and religious ceremonies were held there. The meeting houses were also called by other names such as a wharenui, whare rūnanga, or a whare whakairo. Also the meeting houses all had a name, and that name was usually a legendary hero, a legendary god, of a famous ancestor. And lastly the houses were sometimes given as a wedding gift.



  The Maori meeting house,above, was the meeting house that we saw at the museum. The meeting house used to be panted red for the grand opening of the museum but after months of chipping the museum finally got the original color and now they are weaving new panels for in between where the paint was chipped off. 
-HF

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It was time to rent a car and begin the harrowing process of driving on the left. To be real, it wasn’t nearly all that bad but I did get tired since you do have to pay attention and be thinking about being sure you’re on the left all the time. An Australian friend told us to remember at all times “your ass is on the line” and I have repeated that to myself over and over. The biggest thing to get used to is that EVERYTHING is backwards – the signals are on the right of the steering wheel and the windshield wipers are on the left so, as Sonia commented on my last post, every time you want to change lanes or turn you end up turning on the wipers. Every. Damn. Time. however, given that we are traveling here in winter, this is actually useful since it’s most likely just rained and we need to clear the glass anyway. 

The girl insisted on crepes for breakfast, and now that we had a car we found a creperie and made our way there. I’ll do a separate post at some point on how much I love the Internet for travel and how different these trips are with it. The creperie was situated in a little modern farmer’s market/food court (is that what you call them?) where not only did we get a delicious crepe but then stocked up on bread and cheese for our lunch. 


We drove from Auckland up the western coromandel peninsula coast. This took an hour longer than it should have because Eric was the navigator. This enabled us to cross the bridge to the western northland peninsula and have some beautiful views of Auckland city. once when going north over the bridge, and then again when going south. We’re so lucky. 
Once we actually got on our way it was probably one of the most beautiful drives I’ve ever taken, comparable to route 1 on the California coast line, except that to the right was either verdant hills with grazing sheep or a prehistoric looking tropical forest. One thing about traveling with kids is that you stop at playgrounds, which you wouldn’t otherwise as an adult. The fun part of this is that these are much needed breaks for everyone! 


After we finally made it to Coromandel, we realized that well, there wasn’t much there that we wanted to stay for and there wasn’t much in the way of accommodation, so we decided to drive east to Whitianga. After after a tip from a friend who recommended the NZ Frenzy guidebooks, we knew to take a stop at the Kauri trail along the way. It was so peaceful along the trail – didn’t see another soul along the way. Someone in our group found this disconcerting and made the interminable 6 minute hike crying most of the way. The trees, though, are truly magnificent and it felt like we had stumbled upon a hidden, secret gem of the island. 



Here in Whitianga, it was a bit of work to find a place to stay that was within our budget. I know NZ is pricier than some other places, but with a long trip like this we can’t really spend over $200 a night anywhere. We’ve found ourselves in a decent motel near the beach, but decided only to stay here 1 night instead of 2 and spend more time in the Rotorua region. I’ve also learned that last minute air BnBs don’t work so well and so at least 24 hours notice will work better – all valuable learning, no?
Tomorrow, off to hot beach and then make our way to Rotorua.