SKYDIVE!

Do it. Skydive. It's SOOO worth it. On Thursday, following our Rotorua adventures, we headed down to Taupo to jump out of a plane at 15,000 feet. Well, the plan was originally 12,000 but then we got talked into more... but absolutely 100% worth it. Here's the day:

We stalked the weather to find the perfect day - and we found it. Sunny with a few clouds. Perfect. We showed up for our jump at 12:30ish. Got the low down and all the options. Audrey got overwhelmed and teared up... ok... cried a bit... but not "ugly cry" - just cute nervous, overwhelmed cried. Right?? We decided on 15,000 feet. The highest you can jump tandem. AHH!

We got geared up. Met our tandems and basically jumped on the plane. Everything is done for you. You just do what they tell you which is "Put this on," "Smile at the camera," "Here's your tandem - have fun!" You just have to trust your tandem and off you go. Josh and Sam - calm, cool, collected, and excited. Audrey - nervous and excited and swaying side to side to avoid thinking about jumping out of a plane. Hey - it's nerve racking!

We got on the plane and then it was business time. Audrey was in the zone and good to go. We all were on a total high and crazy excited. We made it up to 15,000 feet and one by one jumped out of the plane. Simply put - the COOLEST experience ever. Like nothing you've ever done. Would TOTALLY do it again. You free fall for about 60 seconds, but it's not a stomach dropping feel the whole way - after the first 7 seconds or so you just feel like you're floating in place with an intense wind pushing against your body. It's so crazy. Then they pull the parachute and you simply float to the ground. It's silent up there and you can see EVERYTHING. It's so so so amazing and I encourage everyone to go somewhere beautiful and just do it. I may of had tears at first, but I was thrilled afterwards - so great!

Here's the after shot. We did it! 15,000 feet!!

Hangi

So after the luging and a little shopping, we were set to do a traditional Maori Hangi. It's basically like a luau but for the native people group of New Zealand. You have a traditional feast that's cooked underground, see a cultural show, do a tour of their property, and basically get sucked into tourist world... but hey - you gotta experience it, right? We weren't experiencing the amount of people that were actually there, but overall it was a really fun and enlightening time. We learned some cultural dances and symbolism and ate like the natives... this is a mish mash of clips from the cultural performance...



After the whole experience, Josh took us to a hidden gem he found last time he was in New Zealand - Kerosine Creek. It's a waterfall/pool area that's heated with those darn underground thermal things and it was really fun - people leave candles all around so there's totally mood lighting provided. As you sit in near darkness, you can look up at the stars and get lost in them. No Orion or Big Dipper.... but there is the Southern Cross and other constellations that make up the southern sky. Simply breathtaking. A great way to tie up our time in Rotorua.

luge me!

We took a gondola ride up to the top of Rotorua... from there you can pick your poison and luge down the tracks. We felt like kids again as we raced down the tracks... ps... Josh is a cheater! Just kidding... I'm just jealous of his luge moves... onward to the HANGI! More to come...

rotten-egg ville

So Rotorua has a ton of hot thermal pools and therefore smells like sulfer... which smells like I made an egg salad sandwich last week and left it out on the counter in the hot sun with the windows closed. All the time. Everywhere. It's kinda like living in Gilroy and not knowing that it smells like an Italian restaurant ALL the time. Which... to be honest... I really like :)

Anyway - we started our day off with a walk around the city -- seeing the boiling mud pools, the lake filled with swans, and soaking up the... smell. Ick. Town = pretty. Smell = bad. Next... the luge.

glow little glowworms, glimmer glimmer...

Well we picked up Sam on Tuesday and headed for Waitomo - the center for caving in New Zealand. Man - we are so hardcore, huh?? Sam and I did the Labrynth and Josh and our friend Jessica did the Abyss. The Labrynth is where you climb down into a cave, walk through the caves below, through all the water and danger that lurks below (i.e. fight off huge flesh eating eels!! Well, not so much human flesh, but still...), jump off waterfalls, and tube below the earth's surface while gazing at glowworms - one man nearly had a heart attack and had to be evacuated!! Pretty cool, huh? All Josh and Jessica did were repel down a little cavern (70 meters or so... *yawn*), rock climb along the cave walls, zipline through the caves, climb up silly waterfalls, and then do some tubing (copiers!) BORING!! Actually - they did a lot more of the "hard core" stuff... Sam and I thought it was child's play so we passed. :)

After the caves we were off to Rotorua for the night...

Pictures to come --

Sam's here!

Sam made it from Pasadena and we've had a relaxing time thus far... picked her up from the airport, made it to Mission Bay for breakfast, walked around Queen Street, checked into our Piha "bach" and had dinner at a restaurant overlooking the city -- I'm still in shock Sam made it the whole way through without a nap, but hey - she's hardcore.



Yesterday we made it to Ponsonby for some shopping, cafes, pedicures, and martinis... I love when Sam's in town. :)

Today we dropped her off at her cousins for a little family time and we'll pick her up Monday for a week of glowworm cave tubing, dolphin swimming, luau-type activities, biking and vineyard touring, and maybe skydiving... (yikes!) Don't freak out (mom and dad) - we'll be fine and keep you posted as the week unfolds. What a week!

he's officially a man.

So Josh killed 4 roosters yesterday. Yep. He took out the Burch's roosters because they were waking them up far too early and being mean to all the nice little egg-laying hens. So they are no more -- well, that's not true... they WILL be chicken enchiladas tonight. Yikes!



disclaimer - this footage may be too graphic for some viewers... although no killing was shown, I'm not going to lie... some of the remains (i.e. headless bodies FROM A FAR DISTANCE) have been caught by videotape. The ONLY reason I approved putting it on our blog (because we don't want to lose you as faithful readers!) is because Josh insisted that his manhood be shown via the WORLD wide web and the fact that Burch's 6 year old daughter actually watched the whole process and wasn't scarred for life... in fact, she thought it was cool and even crafted a cute little song about it... weird and kinda morbid... but true... hey - you were warned.

the seals of san fran...

So we went back to Muriwai but this time not for the sunset... apparently this particular beach has an overwhelming population of gannets - yellow headed birds larger than seagulls - living on its cliff sides. Although I'm not a huge fan of birds, we had to take a look for ourselves. Umm... pretty crazy.




There are HUNDREDS of them just chilling on the tops of these flat cliffs, soaring in the coast's offshore winds, looking for a place to land where they won't be squawked off, grooming, and, of course, mating like rabbits (apparently it's that time of year...). It reminded me a bit of the seals off the pier in San Fran... but birds... and in New Zealand... kinda... :)

p.s.

ps - after the hobbit adventure they let us feed baby lambs... so, yes, it was worth the $60... :)

get ready LOTR fans... get ready...

...it's time for Hobbiton. We finally made it! Josh was OVERLY excited and I was so freaking pissed that we had to pay $60 for some holes in the hillside... but to be honest... it was pretty cool.

We arrived in Hobbiton and heard the story behind how it came to be in Matamata. Apparently Peter Jackson and someone from New Line Cinema flew over NZ looking for a shire-looking place... they flew over this property and saw the big tree (the "party tree") by the lake and thought it was perfect. I mean, they picked a great location because you cannot see or hear anything that would get in the way of production from this location. Not a powerline to be seen, not a freeway to be heard, just beautiful rolling hills with mountains in the backdrop - pretty perfect.




Our guide told us lots of facts about Hobbiton -- and although I wasn't as stoked as Josh was to be there, I must admit - some of these facts are so crazy that they have to be repeated --

> The oak tree above Bilbo's house that is in all three movies a total of 40 seconds was not there naturally. Peter Jackson didn't want it to be computer generated so he sent out a scout to the neighbor's property and negotiated a price for one of their trees. He then cut it into little pieces and numbered each one, brought it back to the set, reconstructed the tree by bolting it back together, and hired film students to spend their summer tying on fake leaves from Taiwan... all for 40 seconds of film time... Ridiculous!

> They had NZ's Army come in and create a road from the main entry to the farm to the set area. It had to be structurally sound enough to support all the trucks and big rigs coming in with set supplies, food, generators, hobbit feet, etc, etc... the ARMY. They also had a mandatory "no fly" zone over the farmland before, during, and after their time filming to protect from leaked images of the set...

> There's one scene in the movie where the hobbits are all drinking away -- that scene was scheduled to take over 8 hours to film but Peter Jackson wanted to use real beer in the shots. However, he didn't want a bunch of drunk hobbits rolling around set. Solution: Buy a brewery from the south island, ship all its brewery parts to the set, and brew your own beer with only 1% alcohol. What? Want to build rock looking fences around the hobbit properties? Rocks are heavy, so why not make them out of styrofoam and spray a thin layer of concrete over them to make them look real? Not a problem when you BUY a styrofoam making company and a styrofoam recycling center from Wellington and transport their whole facilities up here to produce stones for the set! That Peter Jackson -- he's got some serious cash-ola.

> I asked if they knew how much Peter Jackson/New Line offered them for using their land and such but no such luck -- the family hasn't told a sole. I'm guessing MUCHO monies...

pinnacle pick up

After our camping adventure we made our way down the coast to the city of Thames... now, I use the word "city" lightly because it was basically one long strip of cafes, restaurants, banks, and stores with some surrounding houses. Pretty small "city" - but nonetheless the biggest one in the Coromandel...

We stayed in a hostel the night before the big climb. We were set to do a trail called The Pinnacles. It's a 3-4 hour hike to a hut way up some mountain-y hill and then another hour (and 813 stairs) to the top peak - the Pinnacle(s). Then you spend the night in the hut and hike back out another trail (4-5 hours) the next day... pretty sweet. On our way out the hostel door, our landlady (who was quite interesting in herself with her flesh coloured tight spandex pants and crazy cats) asked if we had room for one more in our car - not for her (thank goodness) but for some "tall English bloak" down at the other hostel. We said sure and picked up our new British friend, Dominic.

Dominic probably deserves his own post because he was SO FUN! He was really funny and laughed a lot and we had a good time with him. We actually ended up hiking the whole way up and back with him and then met him for drinks the evening following... pretty cool guy. Back to the Pinnacles...

We made our way up the STEEP climb to the hut, had lunch, and then continued up to the top... it was gorgeous!! We could see clear from the east to the west. The climb from the hut was pretty well paved and had plenty of stairs to the top. 813 we counted. There were also sets of ladders and pegs to climb up near the top. But we made it... all intact.

We spent the night in the hut - room for 80 in just two rooms. There weren't traditional bunk beds, but you basically laid side by side the person next to you... no seperation... the hut wasn't full, so we had some room to spread out, but there were a few interesting characters -- a group of 12 highschool aged girls that were facinated that we were from the States/Canada, German and Holland school teachers on spring break, an I-know-everything-about-the-States pessimistic Kiwi, and, of course, the mummy moaner. The moaner woke everyone up with a creepy "MMMMMMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAA" at like 2 in the morning! It sounded like a cow was just outside the window. The next morning everyone was trying to guess who the sleep moaner was... our money was on the the 60s something short shorts man... only because we could see his TIGHT whity tighties due to the fact that his shorts were THAT short... now that's just wrong...

top of the coromandel to ya!

The weather finally cleared up and we were able to do some camping... some very remote camping... We took the long gravel road to the top of the Coromandel as far as it would go and then set up our tent with nothing but the ocean in sight (and of course sheep... you can't escape them).


The drive up there was gorgeous -- bright blue ocean and rolling green hills. We did a bit of tramping around once we got to the top (there's an 8 hour round trip hike that will connect you to the road that you would eventually hit if there were more roads up near the top - but instead of roads NZ wants you to hike it... typical...) but mainly just relaxing and enjoying our view.




We literally were the only people there so it was nice to have the peace and quiet and the top of the Coromandel to ourselves for a bit... although there was a dead puffer fish on the beach which was pretty awesome -

prince caspian land

Although the weather wasn't so much on our side the first couple days, we still wanted to make our way to the beautiful Cathedral Cove. You may know it as the portal from the train station to Narnia in the movie Prince Caspian - for them, going in the middle of summer, it was bright blue water and white sand... for us, in the beginning of spring, we got the same awe-inspiring feeling but without the blue and white part... more gray and tan. Eh. Whatever. Still cool.

Josh and I discussed coming back during summer when it would have that tropical feeling - and we think it would totally be worth it... so just be forewarned - you may get a repeat blog in a few weeks time, but that time with sunshine and white sands.

carve me!

So the first couple days on the Coromandel were windy... I mean WINDY. There were recorded speeds of the wind at 65 meters per second -- that's fast! Needless to say it wasn't ideal hiking or site seeing weather so we opted for an indoor activity... we did some bone carving!


Our friends here told us about this place in Whitianga that you can carve your own necklaces from cow bones. This cute German couple (and their blind dog) walk you through the process step by step, but you are actually doing all the shaving, carving, sanding, and polishing -- it was really cool! And I must admit... we were pretty dang good at it. Cool thing was - we ended up with some fun homemade necklaces/souvenirs... Looks like we found our calling - cow bone grinding...

we're alive!

We're alive! We're home! We'll update our blog with fun Coromandel stories soon.
But don't worry (mom) we're alive!

teen wolf and chip!!

Congrats to our newly engaged friends Miss Lindsey Baker and Mr. Joey Olsen!!

We love you both dearly and wish we could have been there to witness the proposal

(you KNOW I would have hid in the bushes... crying... and then jumped out even before Linds said "yes" and screamed "Do it Linds! Do it!!").

Can't wait to come home to that rock on your finger, missy... love you!! xoxo

we survived... barely...

So we just finished the kids' camp here at Carey Park... it was chaos. It was mayhem. It was out of control... but we made it. For those fellow Redwood Camp-ers, the week would be comparable to a Jr/Jr Higher Combo week, half of them Angel Tree kids, run by CILTs, with about 4 program staffers. Chaotic. For those non-Redwooders it was a bunch of 9-12 year old kids, 1/2 from social workers programs and the rest your normal, crazy 9-12 year olds (i.e. fist fights, swearing, you know, the usual pre-teen testosteronie attitude stuff...) that were in the care of 16-17 year olds hands with minimal adults on site to help out...

Josh and I were in charge of the helpers program -- it was fourteen 13-14 year olds that were basically in charge of keeping camp running... they did the dishes, served the foods, stocked the bathrooms, did the washing... it was a lot of work for the helpers, but even more work for Josh and I to break up their flirting or tracking them down to get them to actually work!! There was one point on Thursday night when I had 5 of my 8 girl helpers in tears, locked in bathroom stalls because they were so upset about what the other helper girls MAY HAVE said. It was the most drama filled week of my adult life... poor Josh had it bad with his overly flirtatious boys as well...

Needless to say, we're both ready for a break... tomorrow is road trip #3. We're heading off to the Coromandel for over a week! We'll check in from the road...

PS - LOTR fans, our trip to the Coromandel may be ending with a trip to Hobbiton... yep... get ready...