Shout A Round

Traffic jam on my ride to work

noreply@blogger.com (Brendan) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 21:57:00 +0000

Mt. Cook, NZ

noreply@blogger.com (Brendan) — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 23:31:00 +0000

White Island

noreply@blogger.com (Brendan) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 07:59:00 +0000

So, maybe not only in New Zealand, but not in many places... Two weekends ago, Shannon and I got to walk on an active volcano. But not one of those lava sputtering (or drooling, as the location may warrant) volcanoes, one that blows sulfur and ammonia!

White Island is a privately owned volcano (seriously - the guy wanted to say he owns one, and he won't sell it to the government) about 80 minutes by boat off the coast of Whakatane, in the Bay of Plenty. While it was a pretty gray day, it wasn't raining, so it was all good, despite the following day being picture perfect on shore (see prior post).

After arrival, you land in a dinghy that holds a surprisingly high number of people.

And then it's right into it. You're walking through a blown out crater past these mounds. They are like blisters, just waiting to explode with hot gas. Sweet.

A lot of the rocks strewn about have an obvious sulfur content.

Clearly volcanic rock lying around, and big chunks of sulfur. And of course, as you'd expect, bubbling mud.

There is one area with a high concentration of vents. This is the bit where you've pretty much got to sport the gas mask. Some people were still struggling with the air.

It seems pretty clear why that might be. Do you know how hard it is to use a viewfinder with a hard hat and a gas mask?

But you get there eventually, and when the wind is just right, and the steam goes the right way, you can see this tube into the earth, and what's coming out of it. Pretty wild stuff.

And way at the center of the crater is a lake. We didn't get awesome views of it you could still just make out the far side. As you can clearly see, that water is green. It was sold to us as a pH of -0.4, which I didn't know was even possible. The word is that every few years, the bacteria living in the lake changes and it turns red and blue.

There have been many failed attempts at mining operations on the island over the years. The remnants are clear. I can't imagine trying to live out there for three months at a clip. It would be pretty rough. On the days that the seas were too rough to take the boat around the point, they had to climb up and over a cliff before going to work all day in the sulfur mines. Fun.

The weather did clear a bit on the way out, and we got a good view of the island. On a clear day, you can see it from the shore of the mainland. As an aside, I find it interesting that the North Island is referred to as the mainland. All about perspective, I guess.

Easter

noreply@blogger.com (Brendan) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 09:30:00 +0000

This wayback post goes... really far back. To Easter, and a four day weekend.

We had decided to combine two trips into one based on our route. Part one was to head to Cape Reinga, the northern tip of the North Island. Part two was to swing through the Bay of Islands, and take the Cream Cruise, which is a historical route used to take mail and supplies to little islands. It's also an excuse to spend a day on a boat and swim with dolphins. Leading up to the trip, the weather was looking dubious for all but Friday, but we actually got lucky with some great weather until Monday morning.

An early departure Friday and a wise selection of route meant that we never really had serious traffic problems on the way north. We did our usual thing, meandering and stopping when it suited us or when something caught our eye.

The goal for the day kept shifting, but in the end, we opted to try to make it all the way to the Cape in case the weather turned. In the end, we managed to turn a sixish hour drive into ten, which is about par for us since we've been doing the "abroad road trip" thing.

Once getting onto the peninsula, we had a stop at 90 mile beach (which I think is more like 90 km beach). It's a popular stretch to drive on, as access is easy, and the sand is pretty firm. They even take buses on it. I think we could have gone for a cruise up the beach, as we saw 2wd's pulling it off, but we opted not to, as it was fairly busy out there (as beaches go) and it is tide dependent. Really pretty, and I bet if you get away from the accesses, quite desolate at times.

We made a Quick stop at Rawawa beach. This is up near the (claimed) purest deposits of silica sand in the world. I don't know for sure, but it's pretty shockingly white sand even across from the exact spot.

Then we made a break to the Cape.

This sign has a matched pair at the south end of the South Island. See upcoming post.

It didn't capture all that well, but in the shot below, see how there is a wave coming from low/mid left to upper right, and a wave going from sort of upper left to low/mid right? That's the Tasman clashing with the Pacific. You can actually see it churning about. Pretty powerful stuff.

We got there with about an hour to spare for sunset, so we really got to take it in. Lovely spot. As NZ goes, it was packed with tourists, but it's not like it was really that busy. I guess the distance marker is a real destination, as all the backpackers wanted their photo taken with it.

I was more interested in getting the sunset, which turned out to be a bit anticlimactic due to the clouds. But that's how it goes sometimes. I did put together an extremely brief, incomplete time lapse of the event.

After a night camping at a reasonable, but somewhat uninspired DOC campsite (the most northern in NZ, mind you), we headed to the giant Te Paki sand dunes. This is the place where you can go sand boarding. Pretty easy idea - take a boogie board and slide down a sandy hill.

We got there pretty early, but didn't expect we would beat the guys who rent boards. We were wrong, but that turned out to be great. The place was desolate. We spent a long time hiking through the dunes. It was unlike anything I'd ever seen. I imagine this is what it's like in the middle of the desert in the Middle East. Truly beautiful. Watching the wind shape the dunes (and cover our footprints) was fascinating, if you could avoid getting sandblasted in the process. And running down the dunes was a ton of fun! Far more than going up them, which was really hard. I was sinking in to mid-shin on what we estimate is about a 30 degree slope.

We decided to leave, get a board, and come back. I'll be the first to admit that I thought it sounded pretty pedestrian, but I was sorely mistaken. It turned out to be a hell of a lot of fun!

Next time, we'll know to go early and prepared. By the time we left, the place was getting pretty crowded, and the vendors had showed up. But early in the morning - lovely.

This was the big event of the day. It was followed by lazy lunches on the water, checking out the local oddities, a stop at NZ's most northern pub (a bit of a dive, I must say), and some hit or miss weather for camping.

Sunday was a cruise in mixed weather Paihia to catch the Cream Cruise on Monday. We went through some nice countryside, but nothing particularly of note. We would up in Paihia only to realize its a tourist trap for backpackers. A very uninspired little place. So we took the ferry to Russell, across the bay, which was a lovely, historic little town. We saw a massive ray (sting? manta? other?), but unfortunately got no photos, as it was nearly pitch dark.

Monday morning came, and we awoke to torrential rain. Luckily, we hadn't yet booked the cruise, as we knew it wasn't looking so great. Turns out, I also woke up sick, so it's just as well, really. Really sick. As in, the sickest I've been in a decade. I took two legitimate, consecutive sick days. Ouch.

So we'll be back for the Cream Cruise in the spring or summer. And I hope back to the Cape, too.

Prices

noreply@blogger.com (Brendan) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 21:10:00 +0000

You have got to be kidding.

Airfare

noreply@blogger.com (Brendan) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 20:06:00 +0000

Just to prove that no good deed goes unpunished, Shannon and I are out 500 bucks for booking our Christmas travel early. Air NZ has put on a fare sale, and the change fees are 100 bucks more than the difference.

Awesome.

Tiritiri Matangi Island

noreply@blogger.com (Brendan) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 23:18:00 +0000

Reaching back to the catch up on the blog project... Somehow I've stuffed up the HTML on this post, and the "improved" Blogger setup is too much of a pain to try to sort it out.

A number of weeks ago now, Shannon and I spend two days and a night out on Tiritiri Matangi island, which is a bird sanctuary that's about an hour's ferry ride from city center.

The island was farmed in the middle of the 1900s and has been rehabilitated to its natural state and the bird life is now thriving, if not managed. There are a number of unique birds, including the takahe. Allow me to introduce Greg.

Greg has about a dozen friends, and they are the only birds of this kind left. At about the time of this writing, a few of them were going to be moved over to another island to try to start a new habitat.

The facilities on the island are from the farm days, as well as early navigation. There is a pretty nice bunkhouse that sleeps 15 or so folks. It was about two thirds full the night we were there. It's the red roof.

It's an excellent island for walking, as you can circumnavigate the whole thing in about three hours. And there is plenty of good bird life along the way, including the aforementioned takahe, fantails, hihi, bellbirds, saddlebacks, and many more. There are kiwi on the island, too, but we never managed to see one, despite a long walk in the dark. We heard one though.

The hihi and bellbirds were shockingly loud. This video shows what it was like to stand near a feeding station. What you can't really tell is that they are swarming around you, and they are much louder than the video indicates. It's shocking, really.

It turns out, there is also great coastline and plant life as well. Makes for a pretty lovely day of walking around, taking pictures, and snacking.

There are penguins on the island, too. When we were there it was nesting season, so you could look into the penguin boxes through the glass tops and see mothers keeping eggs warm. They seemed to not be bothered by the visitors.

After a windy night we awoke to find that the ferry ride out was going to be a rough one. So rough that they took the boat away somewhere safer during the day. It turned out to be a pretty serious ride back, with six or seven foot seas and gusts of about 100 kph.

Another lovely place, right outside of Auckland.

Photo of the Day

noreply@blogger.com (Brendan) — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 22:42:00 +0000

Sunset from the side of Mount Eden the other night.

Rugby World Cup

noreply@blogger.com (Brendan) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 22:36:00 +0000

I haven't posted much about the Rugby World Cup being in New Zealand, other than my skepticism of Auckland transit being able to handle it. All in all, the city hasn't been as out of control as I had expected, save the opening ceremonies that were a bit of a disaster.

Shannon's folks were here for the start, and we did all go down to the opening festivities - at least part of it. It was all spread out over the city, so you really could only get to one place and you were stuck - there were just far too many people and far too few roads closed to traffic. But it was cool to see the giant waka come in to the harbor. One was sent in honor of each team, and the people in the boats then paraded through downtown. There was live music, fireworks, and general partying.

People were on good behavior, for the most part, with everyone supporting their countries but being fairly chill about it. Public transit absolutely fell on its face, with trains and buses basically shutting down. But ever since, it hasn't been too big of a deal.

Shannon and her folks went to the Samoa v. Namibia game in Rotorua while they were here and had a great time. While we've gone and watched a number of games in pubs, including most of the US games, but I was pretty well resolved to not get to see a game myself.

But, sometimes, things go your way. These appeared on my desk on Thursday afternoon, and last night we went off to Eden Park with a handful of my work colleagues and watched the England v. Scotland game.

Tragically, my camera batteries gave up the ghost about two minutes into the game, so that's all I have. What a great atmosphere though. It was a great game to watch, and a huge rivalry. Unfortunately, despite controlling the game, Scotland managed to give it away in the last two and a half minutes.

Tonight is the end of the pool matches, and there are still a few teams to be determined for quarter finals. Should be an interesting few weeks to go!

Brewing Update

noreply@blogger.com (Brendan) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 03:38:00 +0000

Brown ale is coming out of the bottles. It's actually much better than we expected. It's slightly on the sweet side but it may have a little too much priming sugar.

An IPA is in secondary fermentation/bottle conditioning. We know that we've overprimed it. We're having a little bit of runaway beer. But, it seemed like it was tasting pretty good before bottling. It's got a lot of potential, if we can keep it in the bottles...

Small Airplanes

noreply@blogger.com (Brendan) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 20:45:00 +0000

I recently took a flight on the smallest commercial plane I've ever been on, a Beechcraft 1900D. It sports 19 seats in a 1-1 configuration, has a hump in the middle of the aisle to allow for the center wing spar, and no flight deck door (as they are not strictly required under NZ CAA rules).

The most interesting part was surely during our heavy crosswind landing, where I could watch the centerline yaw back and forth.

Free

noreply@blogger.com (Brendan) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 21:24:00 +0000

Canoes

noreply@blogger.com (Brendan) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 09:32:00 +0000

Maori canoes in Viaduct Harbour, presumably for the Cup.

Tonga Invades!

noreply@blogger.com (Brendan) — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 08:01:00 +0000

It would seem that the Tonga rugby team arrived today in Auckland for the opening ceremonies. Tonga took over the whole place.

My office is a good six or seven hundred meters from the closest part of the airport, and the whole place was gridlocked with red and white clad supporters. This went on for hours. Even the slackest employee was forced to work more than his or her normal 8 today, because they sure couldn't go anywhere.

Half of the city must have turned up. Pure madness! I reckon this is a sign of things to come in the weeks ahead.

I've got to give it to them though - that's the first real Tour de Force of fan support I've seen - even more than the All Blacks supporters. I think that if the expected happens to the USA team, I might have to pull for Tonga, if for no other reason than the fans seem to really get into it!

Photo of the Day

noreply@blogger.com (Brendan) — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 00:28:00 +0000

Sky Tower

noreply@blogger.com (Brendan) — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 21:57:00 +0000

The Sky Tower is one of the major tourist attractions in Auckland, at least if you read the literature. it's also expensive to get to the top. My thought is that the free view from the top of Mount Eden is just as good, if not a little better, unless you really like boats.

But when we landed on two for one entry, we went for it. And it was a good view from the top, no doubt. Worth it at half price, for sure. Tricky to take photos though. The way it's lit, there is a lot of reflection on the glass from the interior lights.

This guy is about to jump off. It actually looks kind of fun, except on windy days when they have to let you dangle and settle before you fall.

Rangitoto Island

noreply@blogger.com (Brendan) — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 05:03:00 +0000

Not quite as long ago, Shannon and I took a ferry over to Rangitoto Island. It's an extinct volcano in the middle of the harbor, about 25 minutes by ferry. It was last active ~600 years ago. It's set up for day trips at this stage, but back in the day, there were batches over there and a bit of a settlement. Now it's just a nice place to hike around for the day.

You can walk around about half the island easily before going up to the peak. It's all volcanic rock along the way, and I think the only thing that I've ever been to that resembles the big island of Hawaii.

We happened to steal a trip over on what turned out to be the best day of winter, as far as I'm concerned. Sunburns were the big worry of the day.

Moisture burning off in the morning sun. It's really extinct.

Something that is really cool about this island is the network of old lava caves that you can walk through. Some are bigger than others, some go nowhere, some go through. It's a mixed bag. I suppose you could probably play around in there for quite a while. We walked through one and I stuck my head into another. We saw some Canadians that took a rope and went deep into one of them. Pretty cool stuff to explore.

Brown Ale

noreply@blogger.com (Brendan) — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 22:11:00 +0000

New batch of brew is in the fermenter, a brown ale this time. It's slowly starting to bubble...

This is a much more involved method than last time. The fridge smells like hops...

Visitors

noreply@blogger.com (Brendan) — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 21:55:00 +0000

Continuing the catch up... writing this is much more difficult working in an office.

A while back, our friend Ashley came to visit. As a guilt trip to everyone else, I'll suggest that she's the only non-family member to make it out to see us (exclusion to those that have tickets booked)... But unlike her trip to Australia, this time, she brought a friend and we all got to hang out and see some of greater Auckland region sights as well as just catch up.

We made it out to Piha and Kerekere beaches, two of the local black sand surf spots. Lovely as usual, even midwinter.

We also took a trip out to Waiheke Island, which tends to be a crowd favorite. For the middle of winter, it wouldn't have been possible to have better weather. We did a little wine and beer tasting (sampling the island goods) and spent a little time on the beach, eating delicious fish and chips (or just chips) and drinking the local brews. Not a bad way to spend a day.

The following Monday was a day off so we could continue taking advantage of the amazing weather and head out to the Coromandel Peninsula. We went to Cathedral Cove for the bulk of the day, which was a lovely place to lay in the sun and drink a bottle of wine. Believe me when I say that it beat the hell out of working.

It's a pretty small little beach with a rock tunnel that is now closed due to falls (Shannon says it's legit) and a waterfall on the other side. Pretty nice spot. I'd love to go back with a kayak.

We took the very long way home, which not only afforded us a lovely sunset on the west side of the Coromandel, but gave us the chance to stop at Waiau Falls on the way.

Sadly, after that, our guests were away. But good times. Always nice to see a familiar face down in these parts.

Auckland Transit & RWC

noreply@blogger.com (Brendan) — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 03:04:00 +0000

The Rugby World Cup is being held in New Zealand this year. There are matches all over the country, and it's generally a good thing. Auckland is where the final, and a number of big games are going to be held.

I worry about all the visitors.

Transit here isn't geared up for the volume of folks that will be coming. Shannon and I commented about how full a bus was one recent Sunday afternoon. Weekend transit is pretty thin.

A couple weeks back, we took a cab, and the driver didn't know where one of the major train stations was. Not a good look for a country showing off to the world how they can handle big events.

There are a few weeks to go. I hope that the city can shape itself up to move all these people! I also hope that being as close as we are to Eden Park doesn't make this place insufferable for six weeks.

Photo of the Day

noreply@blogger.com (Brendan) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 11:03:00 +0000

Photo of the Day

noreply@blogger.com (Brendan) — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 10:07:00 +0000

Tongariro National Park & Central Plateau

noreply@blogger.com (Brendan) — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 09:56:00 +0000

Continuing with the catch up...

A while back, over Queen's Birthday long weekend, Shannon and I went down to the Tongariro National Park, despite knowing what the weather was supposed to do. The plan was to do some hiking - possibly the Tongariro Crossing, possibly some day hikes.

Despite a fairly pleasant drive down, it turned into mostly a washout by the time we got there. Over the course of the weekend, we never saw any of the three mountains there (Ruapehu, Tongariro, Ngauruhoe), even driving halfway up one. But, on Saturday, before retiring to a lovely fireplace and wine, we managed to swing a run out to Tawhai Falls during a break in the weather.

After a lovely evening at the fireplace, we did try to go for a more substantial hike. It was absolutely pissing down for the duration, so we didn't go as far as we had planned, but did make it to Taranaki Falls before deciding that coffee was more interesting than a march in the rain.

It's funny how fast the weather can change in the mountains. You can probably speculate where we had been before crashing these people's lunch, and the weather was just fine.

Onward to the town of Turangi, where we stayed in a fairly eccentric fishing cottage. The whole area is apparently great for trout fishing. Lovely rivers to go stand around in, if nothing else.

This also allowed us to get a quick stop at the south end of Lake Taupo, which was quite lovely.

On Monday though, we most likely hit the best part of the journey, most unexpectedly. We wound up at the Tokaanu Hot Pools. Now, while there is a commercially developed set of pools, there is also a DOC area right behind it with a little loop through some pretty active geothermal areas. There is tepid water, bubbling mud, tar pits, and even little geysers. Our understanding is that this land is still owned by local Maori tribes, and someone has built a rather sweet tub system fed by a geyser.

I'd try to describe it more, but I really think the video will do it better justice.

Rotorua

noreply@blogger.com (Brendan) — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 14:01:00 +0000

Yesterday was the start of the "way back when..." series when I catch up with the old blog. Today, we revisit a trip to Rotorua quite some time ago.

Rotorua is near the center of the North Island, and is a hotbed of geothermic activity. The whole place smells like rotten eggs from the perpetually bubbling mud and geysers. This type of activity shows itself down to the south end of Taupo.

Rotorua the town was nice enough. Some people call it Roto-Vegas because there is a lot of neon, but I hear there is no night life. Go figure. The lake was cool though. In the end though, we didn't stay too much longer than a snack and some rather quick lake time.

Instead we went out to Lake Tarawera, where we hung out for the afternoon and camped. As you can see below it went from low clouds and blowy to sunny and blowy.

We even had an interesting sunset.

The next morning the wind had died, so we had nice flat water, and could even see the massive crater that had been looming over us overnight.

Before leaving, we stopped at Tarawera Falls, which is the product of an underground river exiting the rock. It was really quite impressive, but perhaps more so is the fact that there are freshwater eels there that can climb it. Well played.

Lake Karapiro may have been the real hidden gem. Just south of Cambridge, which is just south of Hamilton (so sort of in the middle of nowhere) was this lovely lake. Perhaps it was because the light was just right on a lovely autumn day, but we were really jealous of the folks in the campervan who clearly weren't going anywhere (what, with their wine and all). I don't recall wanting to clear out.

Photo of the Day

noreply@blogger.com (Brendan) — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 12:16:00 +0000