Scotty Shanbron and the Source o' the Stone

Scotty Shanbron, of 855 Cole street, was proud to say that he was prefectly normal, thank you very much. He was the last person you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because he just didn't hold with such nonsense....

So my old roommate and good friend from San Francisco, Scott, decided to make a trip out to New Zealand right about the time Andrea and I were planning a trip up to the north Island for a frisbee tournament and a bit of wandering around. So we coordinated our plans and Scotty joined us for an exploration of the beautiful North island.

The trip started out a little rough with the three of us plus Tom and Matt (two Dunedinites who were there for the tournament) squeezing into the tiniest rental car we could find for the three hour drive in pouring rain up to the tournament. We had planned to camp that night but thanks to Ray and Kate and a few of their friends we were able to crash on the couches of a little vacation home they had rented. Thanks Ray and Kate!!!

The venue - Ocean BeachThe winning team! (Small world, I traveled through Italy 8 years ago with Hayden, second from left)

The tournament was a blast. It was a very mellow 6 team round robin. Andrea and I were on the same team for a change which was a lot of fun. Saturday was a little bit drizzly and gusty but Sunday was gorgeous and allowed us to do a little body surfing prior to our first round game on Sunday. We met some really nice folks and enjoyed ourselves on the beach.

After the tourney we lingered for a while before saying our goodbyes and heading up the coast. Our first stop was in the little town of Tutukaka. We checked into a little holiday park and then wandered over to Schnappa Rock for a delicious dinner overlooking the yacht club and harbor.The pukeko at our holiday park were clearly used to being fed.

From there we wandered up the coast to a beautiful beach at Matapouri bay. By passing through a small cave and scrambling over some rocks we came to an area called the Mermaid Pools. They were a series of beautifully colored small pools that were sheltered from the surf by a rocky barrier. Unfortunately we left our camera's behind as we were worried about carrying them over the rocks. But here's a few picks from the beach...

Don't worry, she's not really drowning in that 8 inches of water

From there we went up to Paihia with a quick stop in Kawakawa for a look at the Hundertwasser toilets. That's right, toilets.

Andrea has been keen to see these toilets since coming to NZ. She had visited his architecture in Vienna and has had a poster of the Hundertwasser Haus on her wall since college. From Paihia we took a ferry to the cute little town of Russell and booked a boat cruise and dolphin swim for the next day. Russell was super cute and home to the country's oldest bar. The town is situated right on the water with a series of huge trees sheltering a row of colonial buildings along the waterfront. Just gorgeous. We ate and drank at the oldest bar before taking the shuttle back to Paihia for the night.The sunset from Russell was astounding

The next morning we headed down to the wharf and met up with our cruise. We were on the Carino NZ, a big sailing catamaran for a six hour cruise of the bay, stops for snorkling and exploring of one of the outer islands, barbeque and dolphin swim.That's our boat, and we went snorkeling by the rocks.

The dolphins were beautiful and a treat to see from the boat but the dolphin swim was a bit of a letdown. I was actually the only person on the boat that saw one of the dolphins from the water and what I saw was the briefest of glimpses of two dolphins passing directly in front of me then dissapearing into the waters.Drea driving the boat with her pinky, she's that good.

From Paihia we drove to Matauri Bay. The weather had started to turn so it wasn't the greatest beach experience but there was a cool hike up to the monument of the Rainbow Warrior that was sunk by French secret agents in the 1980's during "Operation Satanic". No kidding, that was the code name the French gave to the operation. It's an interesting story and definitely worth a read.

The rainbow warrior monumentSmall world #2 - the people that took this picture were the parents of one of Scott's friends from college. He had never met them before.

We then went back to Auckland to visit with our friends Alex and Tolcher and go see the band Old Crow Medecine Show. A great great show.A lousy, lousy picture.

The next day we wandered into Auckland to do a little shopping (it seems we've become addicted to Icebreaker clothing - really nice stuff) and then jumped on the ferry to Waiheke Island.

Beautiful flower just down the path from our backpackers stay.

The island is hilly, about 10 miles long and reknown for making really nice wine. We stayed in a very relaxed little backpacker and wandered all over doing a bit of wine tasting and pizza eating. We ended the night with more pizza, ice cream, fish and chips and having our picture taken and put on the restaurant wall. (Hey Scott, can you send me the pic ture in picture shot???) The next day we were trying to figure out the best way to visit Passage Rock winery, which we'd heard a lot about recently. The problem with the winery was it's location. Way on the other end of the island and a 40 minute walk beyond the end of the bus service. In the morning we went into town for a bit of breakfast and to plan how to make our way there. We stopped off in a little clothing shop to try on a few things and asked the lady who ran the shop offhand if she new how far of a walk it would be to get us out there. Her response left us all a bit surprised, "Oh, it's much too far of a walk. But you're welcome to take my car." She didn't even know our names. Anyway, after many refrains of "Are you sure???" and "Really?", we introduced ourselves and walked out with her carkeys for an afternoon drive out to the winery.

So incredibly nice!

The winery was everything we had been led to expect. Fantastic. Passage Rock Winery

We took the car back and gave many thanks. But that's when things started to go (to use a little kiwi-ism) a little pear-shaped for me. I started feeling pain in my back that gradually got more and more intense. I did a bit of stretching without relief followed by a brief massage from Andrea that didn't help either. Nothing I did could make the pain subside and it kept getting worse and worse and worse. I ended up laying on a bench and telling Drea to go ahead and call for an ambulance. Funny thing was, as soon as the ambulance got there the pain started to go away. The ambulance driver took us to the ferry back to Auckland (and saved us $12 in bus fares, sweet!). By the time we got there the pain was totally gone. But he'd called and arranged a pick up by ambulance from the other side so when we walked off the boat in Auckland, I jumped into another ambulance to the hospital. Several tests later and I found that over the last week of beer, wine, cheese, high humidity and little drinking water I had developed a pair of 2mm kidney stones. Lucky me. Drea and I flew back to Dunedin the next day. Thanks again to Kate for picking us up at the hospital and Alex and Tolcher for putting us up for both Wednesday and Saturday night and all of their help.

So sad.

It's taken a few weeks but I finally passed the last kidney stone the other night. For those of you prone to worry (I'm looking at you mom), I've been drinking lots of water and taking good care of myself since coming back from vacation.

More to come soon. Hopefully I get the next few posts out quicker than this one.

Dave