Picton to Kaikoura

After the beautiful ferry ride to the South Island I stayed in Picton for a few days, which was gorgeous.  On one of the days I went down to Blenheim for the Marlborough Wine Festival.  Unfortunately it was cloudy and sprinkling all day, but it was fun to be there.  There was live music, ok food, and lots of wine to taste.  Buses back to Picton ran from 3-7 and I got on one at about 5:30.  There were maybe 15 other people on the little bus, 11 of which were from the same family.  The matriarch took the bus microphone and did some announcing for the rest of us.  This included introducing everyone, so I had to admit that I was traveling alone from California.  She thought it was a shame that I was all alone so she informed me that I would be coming back with their family for a beer and lasagna, which normally I might not do but the family was big and they all seemed nice (especially the step-daughter that was talking to me assuring me everything was ok even though her stepmom was a little crazy), so I said ok.  They had an amazing property that I had driven by the day before and gawked at, so I was even more excited to spend a little time with them.  They had recently bought it and were in the middle of renovations.  I didn't get any great photos, but here is one that gives a limited sense of the view:

After Picton I went down to Kaikoura, which has deep pools right off shore that makes it a great place for whales and dolphins to live and hang out.  There were also pretty good ocean views:

I camped by the water one night and woke up and saw multiple pods of probably at least 30 dolphins each swimming around, doing flips, showing off.  This is the best photo I got of them since I caught one jumping:

This was also Valentine's Day, so I took myself out to breakfast and then stopped at a town down south where I got a facial (felt amazing after camping and hostels for 3 weeks!).  And this was my Valentine's Day evening in a nutshell:

A glass of wine, a cup of instant noodles with an added carrot, and a book while camping.

Cook Straight

Wellington

First of all another fitting piece of hostel wall art (I’m seriously meant to be here):

After New Plymouth I stayed in Wanganui, which is a boring little town, especially in the rain, but my hostel had a nice view of this river:

I also had my first rugby-watching experience here.  The sevens, a modified version of the full game that the All Blacks always win the world cup in, were going on in Wellington while I was up the road in Wanganui.  In addition to the games, it was entertaining to watch the cameras scroll across the crowd, because everyone dresses up in crazy costumes!  I guess it's their version of Halloween too.  And NZ won the tournament, so they did a Haka - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqnimvUMCAk&feature=related - there are plenty on youtube, I didn't know how to choose but this one is fine.  I guess it's a Maori war dance, and so it has to be led by a Maori member of the team.  It is always really intense, and usually at the end they stick their tongues way out, which might be where Pitbull got his signature move, Ally!

From Wanganui I went to Wellington, where I met up with a sister of a friend of a friend, her husband two kids (very cute little boys, one of which responded to an introduction to me with “plums,” .. “plums?”  “plums are like nectarines!”).  We walked around and came across a car show that was displaying the chitty chitty bang bang car!  It was pretty cool:

We had lunch, then they took me to another sister’s house, where I’m staying for the next couple days.  A real house!  Very cute with a nice living room and my own bedroom!

When left by myself with a fully equipped kitchen this is what I choose for dinner:

I started out at the grocery store picking up a small zucchini and a carrot but decided I needed a little more, so I found a small serving of peppered steak that I figured I could cook up pretty easily.  But then I went back by the veggies and decided to pick up a potato.  Then an onion looked good, and a bell pepper (which by the way is called a capsicum here; very strange).  So with all those things that sounded/looked so delicious, I decided I didn’t need the steak anymore.

Monday was Waitangi Day, the day the treaty was signed giving rule to England.  I learned that, despite what they tell you at Waitangi, things are not so peaceful regarding the treaty.  The translation of the treaty was not perfect from English to Maori, and the Maoris didn’t really know what they were agreeing to.  Apparently it turned out that they lost some rights, and have held annual protests about it ever since.

It was also Superbowl Monday, so when I came across a sports bar downtown that had the game on I decided to stop in and watch.  It is slightly less enjoyable here, since they just play New Zealand commercials rather than the hyped-up famous superbowl commercials of the US.  But it was still fun, and a good game, and of course everyone in the bar was friendly.  Not as many Americans as I would have expected, so most people who were rooting for a team were doing so somewhat arbitrarily, which was good since that’s what I was doing too.  But my team won!

Then I came back to the house I’m staying at and Anna had started cooking dinner!  So nice to have a delicious home-cooked meal half way around the world.  I’m going to cook for her Wednesday… probably either chicken parmesan or lasagna.  Today I'm going in to explore Wellington a bit more, and maybe stop in at the museum.

I had dinner with Anna and her sister and sister's family one night.  Her littlest boy (3 yrs old) took a liking to me, I think because I was wearing an orange shirt which is his favorite color (and mine!).  He was talking to me and saying the cutest things, the most memorable of which was asking why my hair was so long, and if I watered it to make it grow like that.

New Plymouth

What better thing to do on a miserably rainy day than update my blog?

And it’s been a few days.  A few cloudy, rainy days.  Most of one of them was spent driving, so that wasn’t too bad, and it’s still a beautiful country in the rain.  Speed limit:

Don’t worry, it’s in kilometers.  It’s also about how many dollars it takes to fill up my tank with gas.  And don't worry, I didn't take the picture... it's difficult to work a camera while driving on the wrong side of the road.  I am getting better every day at backwards driving though.  Every once in a while when I’ve been the only visible car on the road for a ways and then I see one coming at me from the other direction, I get scared for a second because I think they are in my lane, but then I remember I’m on the other side and everything is ok.

I learned a lot about the locksmith business when I took my dreaded key that took ten minutes to get my car to start in to Kiwi Cuts.  It must be a booming business in Northland because I had to go in 4 times before I caught the locksmith when he wasn’t out on a job!  He took my key and decoded it, based on 8 different spacing levels and 4 different depth levels, occasionally using a little magnifier.  He then entered this code into a database, along with my car year, make, and country of origin.  Unfortunately, no matches were found.  But I mentioned I had another key and he lit up, examined it compared to the first one, immediately determined there were slight spacing differences, and found a match with that one!  So he made me two brand new keys that work like a charm.  No more stress over that!

I’m still debating about whether the drive up to Cape Reigna was worth it… it was definitely cool to see the top end of the country, and where the spirits of dead Maori step down the roots of this little tree and into the ocean, and where the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean meet… ok it was worth it.  A family asked me to take a picture of them and of course I obliged, then they asked if I wanted a picture of myself and I tried to say no, but they insisted and we agreed it would make mom happy.   They proceeded to take about 8 pictures, from every angle, with the lighthouse and ocean in the background, etc.  Here’s one:

Close up of the sign so you can tell how really in the middle of nowhere I am:

Camped in Uretiti again on my way back down, and caught this cool picture of the moon (top left corner) and clouds around sunset:

Yesterday in New Plymouth I walked around town and then found a park with some really cool plants and it was so green!  Since it was raining it felt like a huge rainforest.  My friend compared it to Jurassic Park.

In one section was this cool gazebo:

 Ok, off to figure out how to spend the rest of my rainy day here!

Kerikeri

This has been my home the past 3 days:

It's right in between the two trees (you can see that better in this one):

There is also a river down below where the chairs look out.  It's a perfect spot, because the trees shade the tent in the afternoon so it's not too hot at the end of the day.  I wish I could say I planned that out, but no, my sense of direction is still bad.  My first full day here I decided to check out a couple of the local wineries so that I could buy a bottle I liked (to waive the tasting fee) and have a bit that night and a bit the next night.  I didn't even come close to finishing the bottle over the two nights, but decided not to take the rest with me.  View from one of the winery drive ways:

And from the other's seating area where I hung out for a little while after I had lunch in their restaurant:

Anyway, I got a bit lost on the way, and ended up at signs toward Waitangi, where I was planning on going the next day, and much further away than the wineries I had in mind.  So I turned around and found the wineries, but the next day it was easier to find my way to Waitangi, as I had already been 1/2 way there!

Waitangi is where the treaty was signed between the Maori leaders and the British to give the Brits control.  It's a nice little place with walkways through a jungle-y forest, and then great views of the Bay of Islands.  I also took a ferry across the bay to Russell, a tiny little town with some nice beachfront cafes.  I'll have to put up pictures of that later though as I can't find them on my computer, and I think it's time to go check on my key!

Uretiti

Things have funny names here, like Uretiti, the beach where I camped last night.  View from the shore:

Since I hadn't bought a sleeping pad yet, and the ground was very uneven and sharp-looking, I slept in the back of my car, which was very pleasant.  btw I think Tomatina, and Tina for short, is winning the name game for the car so far.  Then I drove into Whangarei (pronounced "Fangarei" - Wh = F here), where I had coffee and bought a sleeping pad so I can camp tonight (I also bought a flashlight and headlamp since I couldn't find mine last night), then continued up through green hillsides all the way to Kerikeri, one of the largest towns in Northland but still much smaller than St. Helena.

The hardest part about backwards driving so far is to adjust to so far is that the turn signal and windshield wiper controls are on opposite sides.  A few times I have gone to put on my turn signal and the wipers come on instead.  This was ok on the first day because it was raining, but the next day when it stopped I had to quickly force myself to learn the correct side so it wouldn't be so obvious that I don't know how to drive here...

Off to find a place to camp for the night!

Byzantium

I couldn't think of a good title for what is expected to be a post filled with random things, so I decided on the name of the cafe I'm hanging out in to use their free internet, which is not nearly as common as in the states.

First of all, after a long, stressful day of figuring out how to get access to some cash, here is my new car:

Thanks for the name suggestions, Esther... I'll probably see how she (or he Es, but I think cars are usually considered to be female) drives for a few days and then decide, but ideas are nice.  I had my first experience of driving on the wrong side of the road today, which isn't as hard/weird as I expected... maybe all my work towards left-handedness has something to do with that?

Here is the park across the street from the cafe:

It rained today, which made me question my plan for the next couple days of going up north to the beach, but the guy at the hostel said that since it rained so much today, it is likely to be nice for the next few days, so the plan is still in place!  Hopefully I will get some better pictures up there, there isn't much exciting about another city.  But the hostel had this nice piece on its wall by my room:

And here is Auckland's ferry building:

Just a little bit on food:

On the street by my hostel there are two places that seemed unavoidable - Burgers Wisconsin, which claims to have the best burgers in the world, and a pizza place that claims to have the best pizza in the world!  I would feel like Elf trying to impress that girl (was it Zoe Deschanel?) with coffee if I brought someone to the burger place, but the pizza was pretty enjoyable, I must say.  

By far the most common food in Auckland is sushi.  There have to be 10 sushi place on each block!  I don't know how they all stay in business!  Normally I'm not the hugest sushi fan, but the german couple that sold me their car wanted to get some after the transaction was closed, so I accompanied them, and it was pretty tasty.  I got a variety box, which had some rolls I had never seen before, including one with pineapple and avocado, and one with tuna salad and bell pepper!  Strange.