website worth checking out

So this really isn't about our adventure here but I stumbled upon this website the other day and thought that if you hadn't heard of it before it was worth checking out. Browse through the talks and see if anything interests you...

www.ted.com

I recommend the ones from Dave Eggers, Al Gore, David Gallo (incredible!!) and Amory Lovins

Can you tell I've been bored since Drea left?

dave

The parents Tiki Tour (day 1-2)

Hi everyone,

So my parents were in town for a week after Drea flew off to Ireland for a medical physics course (again, far to complicated for me to understand. Much less tell you about) Anyway, we decided to take rent a motorhome and take a Tiki Tour of the south island. (a tiki tour means basically a tour, don't ask me why they decided to throw in a tiki).

Day 1 - Dunedin to Christchurch
I dropped off Andrea at the airport on Thursday morning for her flight. What's amazing about catching flights in New Zealand (at least Dunedin) is that unlike the states you can get to the airport about 15 minutes before your flight and still get on board. We ran a series of errands before leaving Dunedin city (20 minutes from Dunedin airport) about 40 minutes before and got there with plenty of time to spare (oh yeah, plenty ;-)
From there I drove home, picked up Mom and Dad and headed out to Christchurch. We booked a night at the Chateau at the park (the swank hotel that Opus put me up in a few months ago for a training course) and were hoping to get there with enough time to use some of the amenities. Along the way we stopped at the Moeraki Boulders and marveled at the near perfectly spherical rocks along the beach. Yeah, rocks. We had a very greasy dinner at the Red Rocket, a church that had been creatively converted into a restaurant with an outer space theme, in Timaru. And then we arrived at the hotel around 9pm a bit on the tired side. We had a drink at the bar and planned our attack over the next few days before going off to bed.

Day 2 - Christchurch to Hokitika
In the morning I took off to go check out the campervan while the folks explored Christchurch. The camper (sorry, campa) had three beds, bathroom, kitchen and, of course, a steering wheel. Here's our sweet ride...

I picked up the folks around 11:30 and headed out of town to begin our adventure. We drove up through Arthurs pass on our way to the West coast. Our first stop after leaving the canterbury plains was Castle rocks. A series of rock formations that were along the side of the road.

From there we headed up the road to Arthur's pass village. The highest town in all of New Zealand (have you ever noticed how things in New Zealand are always "The highest" or "the first" or "the tallest" something or other, just an impression) Just out of town we took a little hike up to a place called Devils punchbowl. It was a nice little hike uphill that culminated in a beautiful waterfall. Here's a pic of us at the top.Devil's punchbowl
On the way up.

Our next stop was for a short Nature walk at Dobson's pass. The pass and the monument there were named after a surveyor, Arthur Dudley Dobson, the first (there you go again) European to discover the pass to the west coast. It actually snowed on us while we were up there.

Dobson's monument

A difficultly constructed section of the road through Arthurs pass

We arrived at our campsite, Lake Mahinopua, just a little ways outside of Hokitika. We cooked up a nice meal for ourselves and played some Cribbage before settling in for the night. Or at least trying to. It took about an hour of jostling around tables, cushions, bedding, dishes, and people, with about half an hour of intense giggling, before finally being able to crawl into bed.

So far an excellent start to our adventure.... Stay tuned.

The rents are in town! (and now I'm two weeks behind on the blog)

Hey all,

Well this week's been an exciting week this week (I had one beer when I started that sentence and my second when I finished, anyway...). My parents arrived on Saturday after enjoying a weeks long bus tour of the north island. We took them home and introduced them to Puff (Coco has gone missing this last week and we're a bit worried now, we hope she's found a secret spot to brood on some eggs and will return home soon) After getting settled we took them for a walk around the neighborhood. The first stop, of course, being the rest home around the corner. Just kidding mom and dad. Then we took them to the STEEPEST STREET IN THE WORLD!!! (according to the 1986 Guiness book of world records). We had a nice walk to the top and marveled at the parade of vehicles that struggled their way to the top. I think we were all impressed by the seniors tour group of about 10 that drove their tour bus to the top with everyone in it. I think we were even more impressed when they all got in and drove it back down. We ended the evening with dinner at the house (we remade the bangkok bean burgers from one of our earlier blog entries) where my folks regaled us with tales from their last weeks adventures.

Day two of their visit turned out to be just spectacular. We took them out for a full day of exploring on the peninsula and the weather couldn't have been better. Just gorgeous sun, mild temperatures and almost no wind. Our first stop was Larnach's castle. Flowers from their gardens.

Apparently this is the only castle in New Zealand. It was built in the 1800's by a banker politician William Larnach. It was a very interesting tour on beautiful grounds and I was surprised by the amount of drama in the guys life. Long story short, he moves to NZ, marries, builds a castle, has four kids, wife dies, he marries a younger woman, woman has affair with his son, he shoots himself in parliament, family squabbles. It's worth a read and if you visit Dunedin it's worth the price of admission.

From there we went up the peninsula to the albatross colony at Taeiroa head. I wasn't sure how great an experience we'd have as the albatross are only really active on windy days. They have an experience center and a tour you can take up to the breeding colony. However, when we pulled up to the parking lot there were sea lions (or was it seals?) frolicking in the surf and an albatross doing laps around the area. He must have passed immediately over our heads five or six times before we decided to head back down the peninsula to visit the penguin colony. We had a laugh trying to take pictures and video of the thing as it swooped over us. I think the empty sky to albatross ratio might have been 1 to 1. (at least when I was taking pictures it was)


<-- Drea's Picture










Dave's picture -->

It was getting close to dusk at that point so we hustled down to penguin place to try and see some of our endangered yellow eyed penguins. The experience was much better than I had been expecting. Typically when you want to view these penguins you go to a small hide along the beach and get very graining pictures in poor light from half a mile away. This place had a series of covered trenches interconnecting several viewing hides around the property. From there we were able to follow penguins up the beach to their nest without disturbing them.Two penguins coming up the beach

Here one of the penguins actually jumped down onto the netting above the trench.

All around a very cool experience.









Monday my parents did some exploring of the town while Drea and I went to work. I have to say the folks did an exemplary job of exploring the town. They took a walking tour, hit most of the towns museums (including the settlers museum twice, I haven't even been there once yet), took the taeiri gorge railway and developed a taste (some might say addiction) for flat white. coffees. When Drea and I got off work we took the folks and met our friends Tom and Claire at the local ice rink to go curling. It was an absolute hoot but surprisingly hard!
It looks like glorified shuffleboard but I don't think I landed a single stone in the target area. Which we followed up with some tasty indian food



Tuesday night we took my folks out for a nice dinner at one of the local restaurants on the waterfront and wednesday after work was an evening for packing as Drea was leaving the next day for her conference in Ireland and the folks and I were going to head up to Christchurch to start our Motorhome tiki tour (that's kiwi speak for a wide ranging tour). And much to our excitement Drea found Coco Wednesday afternoon after her being missing for about two weeks. She had gotten into one of the walled in courtyards down at the senior home and couldn't find her way out. She's currently being grounded.

Hope you're all well. More to come soon,
Love to all,
Dave (and Andrea who's not here at the moment)