With just under 4 weeks left until we leave New Zealand, we set out on our last NZ excursion this past weekend to visit Wairarapa, the most southeast region of New Zealand's North Island.
There are still many things I wish we could have done or visited. A short list would include:
Tramping (Kiwi for Trekking) the Milford Track, a 3 day hike across the Southern Alps that represents itself as the "finest walk in the world"
Tramping the Tongariro Crossing, a single day hike (it takes 11 hours) across the 3 volcanoes in the central North Island
Basking on the fine beaches of the Coromandel Peninsula
Exploring the Waitomo Caves, near Hamilton
Touring Northland & Bay of Islands Regions
While the largest town in the area is Masterton, we chose to stay in Martinborough, a town well-known as a gourmet and wine destination. We had visited once before in February for the Martinborough fair but only stayed for a couple of hours.
Our apartment for the weekend
This weekend we stayed at the Claremont where each room is named after a grape varietal. To kick off the weekend on the right foot, we drove a short 15 minutes to the boutique town of Greytown for tapas at Salute!. Great food!
On Saturday, we grabbed a quick breakfast at Cafe Medici and then set off to explore Cape Palliser, the most southerly point of the North Island.
Even under gray mid-winter skies, NZ is a beautiful place. After staying at our cottage in Palmerston North for a few weeks, we start to lose sight of what's so great about NZ. Thirty minutes out of civilization and I find I can no longer suppress the urge to stop the car in the middle of the road (there's no traffic anyway) and get out to take a few pictures.
Surfing Palliser Bay
You'd be disappointed in New Zealand if you stuck to the cities and towns. The magic is in the small places.
Surf crashing on a nameless deserted black sand beach off Palliser Bay
We drove along Palliser Bay to the tiny Maori fishing village of Ngawi, a town with the remarkable claim of having more bulldozers than people. The bulldozers are used to pull the fishing boats & trailers into and out of the ocean every day.
Cape Palliser and Ngawi
A couple of kilometers along the precarious gravel road past Ngawi, we found a large fur seal colony lounging in the grass a few feet off the side of the road.
At the end of the road, we found the Cape Palliser lighthouse.
Harrison and the girls trying to look excited about the climb.
There wasn't much interest in making the 252 step climb, but I swung the momentum by setting out alone - couldn't resist the photo op! Cassandra then Mackenzie then Harrison & Trish soon followed.
... can't breathe ...
The views from the top were fantastic!
Cook Strait
As we returned to Martinborough, the weather finally broke. We made a quick pit stop to pick some Tylenol for Harrison and a Pinot Noir for Trish and I. Since the wine store was next to the cheese store, I couldn't resist a little bit of Molly's cheddar. I asked the lady behind the counter if she was Molly. She answered flatly that Molly was the name of the cow whose milk was used to make the cheese. Oops.
I am far from a wine connoisseur, but have always been satisfied with my tendency to prefer wines in the $20 - $50 range. The Ata Rangi winery produces some of New Zealand's most available wines. This might not be a good thing, but figured I would drink as close to the source as possible. I broke my usual rule and bought Ata Rangi's signature wine, the 2009 Pinot Noir priced at $75 NZD ($60 Can).
WOW! It was fantastic! It may be one of the best wines I've ever tried and stood well on it's own as well as with Molly's cheddar and the lousy BBQ ribs we ordered in for supper.
So why travel to a hotel in order to stay in for dinner? Well, our weekend rental was more of an apartment so came with a kitchen and a dining room. The weather outside was cold and rainy, the fire in our apartment, nice and warm. Harrison was not feeling well. I was starting to feel pretty damn good with my Ata Rangi Pinot Noir. And yes, we had pay TV (Sky TV) and there was a ton of great movies slated for Saturday night.
I know what you're thinking. Lame. Another factor was that although Martinborough is gifted with many good restaurants, most of these are based on the vineyards and their menus feature delectable gourmet choices paired to the wines they produce. What's the problem then? Harrison, Cassandra and Mackenzie. NZ diners would probably not have a problem with kids intruding onto their gourmet experience, but my pocketbook would object to paying top dollar for food that the kids would instantly judge as "disgusting".
Paua Shell
On Sunday, we decided to celebrate Father's Day with some shopping. First, we picked up some trinkets at Paua World, a store that specializes in crafts made from the Paua Shell.
Then it was back to the vineyards, particularly Ata Rangi, to buy some wine to bring home. I ended up purchasing another bottle of the 2009 Pinot Noir. The good news is that my palate didn't lie. Most wine critics rate it either a 96 or 97. The bad news is that the same wine critics estimate that it will be at it's best in 5 years.
Castle Point on a nice day. Our day was much worse.
On the way home, I wanted to take a 2 hour detour to Castle Point, but once again the heavens opened and Trish and the kids helped me to realize that a rugged coastline, a cool lighthouse and spectacular beach would all suck in the pouring rain.
So I kept driving back to Palmerston North and wondered when our next New Zealand adventure would present itself.
With 4 weeks to go, we're now fully focused on coming home to Canada. This idea dominates our thoughts with all the things we need to take care of before we leave on July 16 and the excitement at seeing friends and family and sleeping in our own beds, swimming in our pool and playing with our toys.
Tune in again soon for our opinions on the Best of New Zealand and my advice on How to Plan Your Visit to New Zealand.
How many North Americans have been to Fiji? Judging from my own circle, very few. Even less have been to the other South Pacific islands like Tonga, Vanuatu or the Cook Islands.
5:45 am in the Baldry household
So as part of our New Zealand experience, on May 22 we decided to take a break from the fall weather in Palmerston North and fly 3 hours north to Fiji, the most developed and well known of the South Pacific islands, for a week in paradise.
Girls are ready!
We flew to Auckland and then onto Nadi, the second largest city on the largest Fijian island of Viti Levu. Our resort, Outrigger on the Lagooon, was a family-oriented resort on the Coral Coast near the town of Sigatoka about half-way between Nadi and the capital city of Suva.
Harrison finds something at the duty-free store
Fiji is a popular vacation destination for Australian & Kiwi tourists traveling on package deals, similar to Mexico and Caribbean destinations for North Americans. As such, quite a few people at work had been to Fiji. I initially expected Fiji to be similar to Hawaii - both are volcanic islands in the tropical pacific ocean. I didn't expect Waikiki or Maui, but rather the smaller Hawaiian communities that we saw on Kauai. The people at work told me to expect a more "third world" experience outside the resorts.
I was expecting the Fijians to be Polynesian like Hawaiians or the Maori for that matter. However, the indigenous Fijians look like they could be African: tall, round faces, afro-textured hair. The other significant ethnic group (35% of the population) is the Fijian Indians who were initially brought to Fiji by English colonists to work sugar cane fields in the 19th century. There is considerable friction between the two groups as the indigenous Fijians feel that the Indians are "taking over". Migration patterns seem to suggest that the Fijian Indians have got the message and this population is on a steep decline.
Harrison at the Sigatoka Market
We didn't spend much time outside the resort, but what little I saw of Fiji would seem to agree with the comments I'd received at work. I found the stark difference between lush luxurious resorts and the extreme poverty in many of the towns that we drove through on our way to the resort similar to what I had seen previously on trips to Cuba, the Dominican Republic or Mexico's Mayan Riviera.
A family bure, our pad for the week
Our resort was beautiful. The grounds were impeccable. I rarely saw anyone cleaning anything which made me think that a lot happened at night. Because we were staying in a larger room, we qualified to have a personal butler or talai service. Harrison had visions of ordering one french fry at a time and then sending them back if the ketchup was not applied just right. It didn't work out to be that special and I'm not sure I would have paid any extra money for it if wasn't complimentary. Zac (anglicized from something much less pronounceable) and Salote were available from 4:00pm onwards and would appear close to 5:00pm with a glass of champagne for Trish and I and soft drinks for the kids as well as some snacks to hold us off until supper. After returning from supper, we would find our bed turned down with flowers spread over the bedspread and some kind of liqueur and tart (baked good not floozy) on our table. Nice touch.
This was very much a pool resort. The scene around the pool was fun for kids with lots of protected areas for small kids and tons of complimentary toys to play with. The resort animators were excellent. There was no swim up bar, but there were waiters & waitresses everywhere.
11:00am. Here's Brother John with our medicine.
The beach was a bit disappointing, although it's possible that this was just related to the timing of our visit as apparently 2 weeks before the beach had been closed because it had been badly damaged during a few rough storms. The resort is located along Fiji's Coral Coast, so the beach is made up of bits of coral that have broken off from the coral reef offshore. It's a little rough to walk on and there weren't many people that spent their days on the beach.
Paradise
There was a coral reef about 200m offshore which meant that there were no appreciable waves to frolic in, but it did make for excellent snorkeling. I went out every day with Harrison and once with Cassandra. We saw beautiful purple starfish, sea cucumbers, eels, and no less than 100 different fish. And the water was about 80 F. Sweet!
Best shell find ever. This was about the size of a watermelon.
Don't get the wrong idea though. There are many resorts on Fiji's outlying islands, usually the ones advertising beach weddings, that have icing sugar beaches worthy of the cover of travel brochures. However, getting there can mean a lengthy (4 hours) ferry ride and many resorts are adults only.
Everyone enjoying the pool in Fiji
The weather during our week was typical of most tropical islands that I have visited - warm and volatile. The temperature never went below 26C even at night. Of the 6 full days we spent in Fiji, 2 were flawless, 1 was wet and the others were a mix of sun and cloud.
Lunchtime spot
It was easy to recognize that the resort catered to families. The clientele was at least 98% Australian. The resort had lots of activities organized in the evening to teach you about Fijian culture as well as some fun stuff for the kids.
Kava ceremony
The first night we attended a Kava ceremony. Kava is a drink made up of the ground roots of a local plant mixed in a large bowl, like the one in the picture above. It really does taste like muddy water, but has local anesthetic properties (my tongue went numb) and if you drink too much, "it'll lay you back". After some incantations, we (kids too!) all had to take turns drinking from the same bowl. And, you've got to chug it back all at once; this is not a sipping drink. Trish tried to take hers in a few ladylike sips, but was strongly chastised by the ceremony leader.
There were two racing nights where 10 captured crabs (on Tuesday) and 10 toads (on Thursday) were placed in the middle of a circular platform. There was an extensive auction process where people wagered up to $125 Fijian dollars ($70 Can) to "buy" a crab/toad. If your beast was one of the first 3 to crawl or hop off the platform, you could take home between $250 - $350. The crabs were fun, but the action was much funnier with the toads as this pile of amphibian suddenly exploded off the platform and into the crowds, scattering bodies and spilling drinks everywhere. Retreating adults tripped over squealing kids crouched to catch the bounding toads.
Of course, all our kids were then infatuated with returning from supper every night to then spend an hour braving the bugs to catch toads lurking in the well manicured gardens around the resort. Harrison took a night or two to build up his confidence, but proudly caught 17 "big ones" on our last night in Fiji.
Fijian fire walking tribe
We also went to see a show where some members of a distant Fijian tribe walked across stones that had been sitting in a raging fire for some 6 hours. Apparently this tradition is steeped in Fijian mythology. It sounded cool, but was kind of long and drawn out and they ran out of beer. I also suspected that it was a hoax.
Despite the less than optimal weather, our vacation still earned enthusiastic reviews from all of us. Through all our travels, Harrison has maintained that his favorite destination is our habitual spring break spot in Mexico's Mayan Riviera. In his mind, our trip to Fiji earned itself a new spot atop the list of favorite vacations. The resort, the Fijian people, the snorkeling, the cocktails ... were all enough to make Fiji a special place to visit.
A couple more pics:
Quiet indulgence
Fijian night at the buffet
Ahh ... this is where Fiji water comes from.
Cassandra with an Australian friend
More Australian friends
At the time of this writing, we have 40 days left in New Zealand. Although, we have one last weekend away in the Wairarapa & Martinborough region just north of Wellington, our focus now is on packing up and coming home. I went to the hardware store today to buy tape and bubble wrap and have started to hassle the shipping company to get things organized. As much as looking forward to our return to Canada, we are all looking forward to our whirlwind tour of Singapore, Bali and Australia.
The Maori are New Zealand's indigenous population. Although they have migrated to the South Island like most other ethnic groups, most of the different Maori tribes or iwi live on the North Island. Overall they make up roughly 15% of the total population of New Zealand.
The Maori are Polynesian in origin and gave New Zealand its original name of Aotearoa. They arrived here somewhere around the 12th century AD. Over many centuries of isolation, they developed their own language, alphabet and mythology. The Maori alphabet has the same 5 vowels as English, but only 10 consonants - p, t, k, m, n, ng, wh (pronounced as f), r, h, w.
As with other aboriginal populations around the world, they suffer from lower life expectancy, lower incomes, higher crime rates (50% of prison inmates in NZ) and higher rates of smoking, obesity and alcohol & drug abuse. They seem to lead a more nomadic lifestyle, frequently moving from one place to another.
However, unlike North American Indians who have been marginalized from society on reservations and Australian aboriginals who seem to hold a similar status in Australian society to livestock, the Maori hold a prominent position in New Zealand society. They are quite evidently proud of their heritage and although there is some friction between the Pakewa (European New Zealanders) and the Maori over historical gripes, the two ethnicities live together in relative harmony.
The most well known export of Maori culture is the Haka war dance that the All Blacks, New Zealand's all star national rugby team, perform to intimidate the opposing team before each game. Maori warriors used to do this prior to battles to frighten the enemy.
This blog is about our visit to Rotorua, the cultural capital of the Maori people in the middle of the North Island. We spent 5 days in Rotorua between April 6th and April 10th, 2011.
We drove 5 hours in the evening on April 6th to arrive at the beautiful boutique hotel, the Regent of Rotorua. This hotel looks like it would be more at home in South Beach than in Rotorua. The owner, Darryn, really went out of his way to make sure that our stay was perfect including offering advice about the good and bad in restaurants and attractions in and around Rotorua.
We started our first day in Rotorua with a hearty breakfast at Fat Dog. The kids enjoyed the dog themed everything. We walked off the carbs by browsing the shops along Tutaneaki St before heading off to the Polynesian Spa for Trish's 11:00am appointment. She disappeared into the spa section of the facility for the Stress Buster massage while I escorted the kids to the "family spa" section which featured 3 separate pools warmed by geothermal heat to different temperatures. We wasted 2 and half hours playing colors, Marco Polo and "who can wait in the cold air outside of the pool while Dad floats lazily". The kids and the mentally handicapped adults on the side of the pool laughed hysterically as I blindly bashed my nose against the railing while playing Marco Polo. While I felt the sting of the handicapped people's ridicule, Cassandra encountered a similar impact to her face underwater knocking a triangular chip out of her front tooth.
Cassandra ruins her perfect teeth with a chip to her top incisor
Recognizing that Cassandra would need MAJOR orthodontic work, Trish had already taken Cassandra to an orthodontist before leaving Canada. He only charged us $20 for the opening consultation. He said "professional courtesy" after hearing that I was a doctor. Although appreciative, I think it was his way of saying "Don't take all this work ($$$$) to another orthodontist".
After a pretty quiet lunch at the spa, we spent the rest of the afternoon recklessly careening down Mount Ngongotaha and the Redwood Forest at Skyline luge. With three different tracks covering 4 kilometers, we all had a blast and no one chipped any teeth.
I bought a nice bottle of wine to enjoy at our hotel, but later struck out in our choice of Italian restaurant Nuvolari where we enjoyed a less than ordinary meal. It has proved to be almost impossible to get a decent Italian meal in New Zealand. This place was worse than most that we have tried.
Trish didn't sleep at all that night. She waited until our dentist in Pointe Claire opened in the morning (1:00am in New Zealand) and then e-mailed her the picture above to ask for immediate advice. She felt better when our dentist reassured her that the repair would be relatively simple. [It has since been repaired by a local dentist in less than an hour for $65].
After a fitful night of tossing and turning, we chose to spend most of Friday at Te Puia, an outdoor museum/sanctuary/memorial to the Maori culture. The day started with a demonstration of the many different types of Maori dance, including a stand-in from some of the audience.
We then followed our Maori guide on a tour of the park where she educated us about the Maori culture. The highlights of the tour were the national carving school and the geyser park where there were at least 10 geysers that seemed to be erupting almost continuously.
Maori War Canoe that seats 100 people
Hot, steamy and smells like rotten eggs!
Predictably, the kids only got really excited when it was time for a swim in the hotel pool. Admittedly, this was easy on Trish and I as well as we silently took in the warm late afternoon sun over a glass of Riesling only disturbing our sleep-deprived haze from time to time to repeat the parental mantra "That's enough fighting kids!".
Having learned our lesson with our lousy restaurant choice the previous evening, we followed Darryn's advice and sat down at Seismic Gastrobar for dinner. Great steak and burgers and if we hadn't already been back in our beds at our hotel, it was supposed to be fun at night too.
Well deserved reward after a day of culture
After a full day of culture on Friday, Saturday was about fun. We set out to visit Hobbiton, the actual New Zealand movie set for Frodo & Bilbo's home in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. On the way there, we made a pitstop in Tirau, a cosy town with Christmas shops and antique boutiques ... and a community center shaped like a giant dog.
Tirau's i-Site
Without further ado, we arrived at Alexander Farm to take our tour of Hobbiton. We had to sign a pretty hefty confidentiality agreement before embarking on the tour stating that we wouldn't post any pictures on the net, because the same set will be used for the upcoming Peter Jackson movie, The Hobbit, now filming in New Zealand. So these are the only two pictures that I'm allowed to post, but I have a ton more with video footage as well that I can show you when I get home.
The experience as a whole was pretty cool but being a HUGE fan of the Lord of the Rings in both print and film, I'm certain I'm more than a little biased. The guide, who was pushing 80, was dead on in all his facts about the movie and what angle this shot or that shot was taken. For example, at the beginning of the first movie, the Fellowship of the Ring, when Gandalf comes to Hobbiton to attend Bilbo's 111th birthday and the kids chase his wagon, where did Gandalf let off the fireworks? And where did the scowling hobbit stand?
Entrance into Alexander Farm & Hobbiton
One of the most interesting factoids was that Bag End, Frodo and Bilbo's prized hobbit hole in the hill, was supposed to be in a hill underneath a huge oak tree. Alexander Farm did not have any suitable oak trees, so they bought one from a farmer down the road (for NZD $11 000!) and had some tree expert take 1000s of pictures of where all the branches were located. They cut it into bits and reassembled it on the set and then had students stick 250,000 fake oak leaves on it. All this for 12 seconds of screen time!
Well, at least I liked it. The kids seemed to enjoy it as well, but Trish, who has no interest in anything related to Lord of the Rings, felt it was a bit long and expensive to walk around someone's farm.
A 1 year old lioness who was just starting to perceive kids as "snacks"
The final event of the day was a visit to Paradise Valley Springs Wildlife Park. The big draw was a lion cub that the the kids could pet. It ended up being a half-decent zoo for something 30 minutes outside of the thriving metropolis of Rotorua. The lion cub was not as cuddly as we expected, but still sat still long enough for the kids to stroke it's body through the cage.
Other highlights included interacting with all sorts of local wildlife that the kids could feed or ... smooch ...
Doe, a deer, a female deer ...
Huge trout in the Ngongotaha Stream
... marveling at the gigantic rainbow trout in the Ngongotaha Stream, replenishing our water bottles in the Te Waireka Spring and catching the 8 second event of lions copulating on film.
The selection of restaurants in New Zealand is somewhat limited. If you like lamb and steak, you'll be happy here. If you can't live without Italian, Szechuan or Mexican, stay far away. Sushi is so-so, although there is an excellent Japanese restaurant close to us in Palmerston North. There is however an excellent selection of Thai, Indian and Malaysian cuisine. We successfully introduced our kids to Indian food at a Parnell St. restaurant in Auckland. Now we eat Indian as a family at least once a month.
We took the kids to a Thai restaurant for our last meal in Rotorua. Darryn's suggestion to go to Amazing Thai was a great start for the kids to eat some more sophisticated Asian food. Since then we've brought them for Dim Sum at a local Chinese restaurant, imaginatively called "Chinese Restaurant".
Mt Tongariro
After a busy few days, we took our time on Sunday morning before sitting down for brunch at Capers Epicurean. On the drive back, we were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the active Tongariro volcanoes (Tongariro, Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe) without cloud cover. Once again, I tested Trish's patience by pulling over every 5 minutes to take more pictures.
New Zealand has 3 big cities: Wellington (North Island), Christchurch (South Island) & Auckland (North Island) which I would rank in that order, Auckland being a distant third. It also has 3 "touristy" towns: Queenstown (South Island), Taupo (North Island) and Rotorua (North Island). Queenstown is hands-down the best experience we have had in New Zealand. Taupo was also very fun. We all felt that Rotorua "stretched" it a little bit. The town itself is not that attractive and the adventure attractions like the luge and Zorb seemed somewhat irreverent beside this "sacred Maori area". Like saying "Don't miss your chance to bungy above St. Peter's Basilica."
No particular story around the next picture. Trish didn't want to eat here for some reason.
[Insert witty joke here]
After our trip to Rotorua, we spent 5 of the next 6 weekends at home. I was on call Easter weekend and we went to see a rugby game in Wellington on May 6th.
The biggest travel update that I have waiting is our trip to Fiji which will be the subject of the next blog.
