Trip to Fiji - because of visa requirements!

So, a week and a half after Karla and Tom left, we flew to Fiji for a week. The terms of our visa are such that we can visit New Zealand for 18 months over a 3 year period but have to leave every six months for one day. Fiji is a 2 1/2 hour flight northeast of New Zealand and boy what a difference in weather. While we had some rain during the week there, we had a few lovely days. All in all, it was a really relaxing week. We only took one tour and just sat around the resort, walked the beach and visited the little town of Pacific Harbour.

View from the pool! What a hardship. I think I was drinking a bloody mary at the time.

We took the Jewel of Fiji tour on Tuesday. We took a long boat on the Navua River to a Fijian village where we were met by a warrior who escorted us to the village meeting house. The group (all 16 of us on the tour) elected Ernie to be our chief and represent us as we were welcomed by the tribe. Actually no one in our group wanted to be the first to drink kava and he got stuck. Kava is made from the root of a pepper plant produces a drink with sedative and anesthetic properties. Kava is sedating and is primarily consumed to relax without disrupting mental clarity - so they say. It does leave a tingling, slightly burning sensation on your lips and in your mouth for a while. The roots are dried, ground up and then mixed with water. Kava looks like muddy water and sort of tastes like muddy water. I will admit that it wasn't as bad as I expected. We then visited the pre-school in the village. There were two little kids that stood out - one because he was 'all boy' and full of himself and one little girl because of her name. The little boy was called Abie - short for Abraham Lincoln and the little girl was named Margaret Thatcher. I can't remember the name of the other children but they were all named after well known world leaders. We watched the ladies weaving mats and making cloth and stenciling the cloth (tapa painting.) We learned how to crack a fresh coconut so that it splits into two perfect halves. So simple and I'm happy to share the secret with anyone that wants it. We tasted fresh squeezed coconut cream and watched them unearth our lovo lunch (cooked underground). After lunch, there was dancing and a closing ceremony.

What really surprised me was when our guide wished us all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. While I knew what the date was, since it's Spring in New Zealand and apparently summer in Fiji, the thought of Christmas been around the corner was really foreign and seemed out of sync.

The warrior welcoming us to the village

Chief Ernie being given instructions about the kava ceremony

The kava powder is in the bag in the kava ceremony bowl

Water is poured from a bamboo shoot into the kava bowl and the powder is squeezed in the bag and mixed with the water - yum yum!

Greetings and welcoming speeches are shared with the tribe and the visitors

The little boy kneeling  is Abraham Lincoln and the girl in the pink top is Margaret Thatcher. The kids sang several songs for us and shook our hands to welcome us. The man holding the little girl is Nim and he was our guide in the village. The teacher in the pre-school is his wife. They live in the village.

This lady is weaving a mat that they use to cover their floors

All the members of the tribe are family members. This lady is Nim's grandmother and is 87 years old. She weaves every day and teaches the younger members of the tribe how to cut the palms, weave and all the old ways of doing the various crafts.

These are Nim's cousins and they were weaving a basket that will be used to carry food from the lovo to the meeting house for lunch

The lovo is being uncovered.

There;s fish in coconut milk in one of the packets, chicken in another, that's cassava in the front of the lovo pit

  See the basket he's using to take the food. That's the one he was weaving earlier.

This is mahogany planks that they use for the lovo pit. It's not that mahogany is necessary, it's just that they can get a truck load of mahogany for $20Fiji. Mohagany is native to Fiji. Can you believe they just b urn this beautiful wood in a fire pit?

Dancing and cavorting!

Here's our illustrious chief dancing.

Chief Ernie thanking the tribe for allowing us to join their tribe and thanking them for their warmth and gracious hospitality.

After all this, and taking time to buy some crafts from the village ladies, we got back into the long boats and motored to the waterfall. These boats sat very low in the water and were quite a trip when we went through the rapids. Needless to say, we all got wet. Here's us at the waterfall. I couldn't convince Ernie to swim in the pool at the base of the waterfall. Several of us did and several didn't. Probably because it was raining and the water was quite cold but I wouldn't have missed out on something like that.

 OK, so the main reason Ernie didn't go swimming, besides really cold water, is that as our chief, he decided to offer himself up to the waterfall gods so that we all had a safe swim. Actually, as we were walking to the waterfall, he took a really nasty fall on wet concrete stairs. He hit hard and then slid down three stairs. Thankfully, he didn't fall into the torrent from the pool of the upper waterfall into the lower waterfall - a drop of about 12 feet into the lower pool. He was sitting/laying on the ground yelling don't touch me - oh my back. I thought he seriously hurt his back. Thankfully, it was only bruising. I don't mean for this to sound glib as his bruising was very severe as was the swelling afterwards. We've been back in New Zealand for 2 weeks now and he is still purple and shades of green and yellow on his back. Obviously the gods were please with his sacrifice because we all had a safe swim. We walked back to the long boats and traveled down the river for a short time and then transferred onto bamboo rafts. Talk about rickety and scary! We road the rafts for a little while and then transferred back to the long boat to pass through the rapids and back to Navua to end our trip. What a day! It was great! Of course, Ernie may not agree with the ending of the day.

This brings us up to Thanksgiving! While New Zealand doesn't celebrate this holiday, Joelle and Trevor do. We have a fantastic dinner of wild turkey, mashed potatoes, dressing, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, gravy and pumpkin pie with ice cream. It was great being able to celebrate the holiday with our New Zealand family - and Leslie - our new family member!

We'll be heading to Farewell Spit next week and I'll catch you up with that trip next week. Miss all of you and we are so thankful for all our family and friends!

West Coast Trip with Texas Friends

Continuing on with our trip with Karla and Tom. We left Wanaka in pouring rain and drove to Jackson Bay. Stopped at the Claypot for whitebait fritters, which is their specialty. The guide book said that you might be able to see blue penguins on the drive to Jackson Bay. In fact, there were penguin crossing signs on the road. Obviously penguins don't like rain because we didn't see a one! The guide book also recommended the Craypot. What the book failed to mention was that the Craypot was the only restaurant in Jackson Bay and it was quite an experience! But oh my, the food was really good!

Yes, this is it! The only restaurant in Jackson Bay. Of course, Jackson Bay only has a population of 20 - maybe 25 on a good day.

We then went on to the Fox Glacier. We were able to walk up to a viewing point for the glacier but did not walk on the glacier this time. Ernie & I actually did that 6 years ago when we were last in New Zealand with our friends, Heather and Brian.

Looks like a little snow drift but the glacier face is actually around 30 meters high

After the walk to this viewing area and stopping for a lot of photos, we got back in the van and headed for Punakaiki and the pancake rocks and blowholes. The rocks are limestone formations that have eroded to form huge stacks and several amazing blowholes.

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OK, look at the rock formation on the right and the rock in front - doesn't that look like a dog's head?

There was a great walkway to the rocks and on the way back to the car park, we passed several great specimens of the famous New Zealand silver fern. This is the symbol that the NZ All Blacks use along with most anything you see from New Zealand. The silver fern is a tree fern that can grow up to 10 meters high. We also came across a weka making his way from one side of the trail to the other.

The weka (woodhen) is a flightless bird that is endemic to NZ

While NZ is in the process of updating their roads and replacing some of the heavily used and more dangerous one lane bridges, they still have not replaced this one. See if you can figure out what is unusual about this bridge.

In case you haven't figured it out, yes those are train tracks going down the center of this one lane bridge. While the sign indicates that the opposing traffic has right of way, I contend that the train has right of way all the time.

We got back to Blenheim and gave Karla and Tom some time to get to know Joelle, Jasmin and Trevor before heading to Hanmer Springs and then Christchurch for their return to Austin. On the way to Hanmer, we stopped at the seal colony in Kaikoura and went to a sheep shearing show.

This is Ram Man. He's the resident ram on the sheep farm.

This was the candidate (victim) for the shearing demonstration - a  before shot

This is the poor fellow after the shearing - ouch!

And here's Ernie with something he hasn't had in a long time - HAIR on top of his head!

A few rousing games of miniature golf, a dip in the hot water pools, some great food and drinks in Hanmer Springs got them ready for the long flight back to Austin. We had a little time to drive around Christchurch so they could see the 'red zone' (the areas damaged by the earthquakes) and then on to the airport. We said our goodbyes in the car park (so much easier than dragging out the goodbyes.) They got home safely and spent the next week working through jet lag. We do so miss them and look forward to seeing them in May when we return to Austin.

That's all for now. Take care and don't forget - only 26 more shopping days to Christmas!


 

Texas Friends Arrive!

Our friends, Karla and Tom arrived the next day and were so glad to finally be off planes. Considering the travel time to get to NZ, they were dealing with the jet lag pretty well. Collected their luggage, loaded the van and headed south for Dunedin. On the way there, we stopped at the the Moeraki Boulders. I've never seen anything like them!

So here's the explanation about these boulders. They are classed as septarian concretions and were formed in ancient sea floor sediments. They were formed by a process similar to the formation of oyster pearls where layers of material cover a central core. For the boulders, the core was a fossil shell, bone fragments or a piece of wood. Lime minerals in the sea accumulated on the core over time and the concretion grew into perfectly spherical shapes up to 3 metres in diameter. The original mudstone seabed has since been uplifted to form coastal cliffs. Erosion of the cliffs has released the 3 ton boulders which now lay jumbled across the beach. Further erosion has exposed a network of veins which gives the boulders the appearance of turtle shells.

We arrived in Dunedin around 4 pm and arranged to tour the Speights Brewery and have dinner in their restaurant. It was a great tour and a super dinner. They still brew their beer in the original copper tanks. The next morning, we boarded the Taeiri Gorge train for an all day excursion. The weather was pretty cold and that suited our Texas friends quite well! They views were fantastic.

The next day, we left for Wanaka and several days exploring around Fiordland and Queenstown. While we were there, there was snow on the mountains, the winds were really wicked and then it snowed overnight.

Here's when we arrived.

Here's the same mountains after the overnight snow. Again, our Texas friends were ecstatic! We drove to Queesntown one day and had a great time. We drove the Crown Range to Queenstown and it was an amazing drive - had snow down to the road and thankfully none on the road. I must admit though that the drive out of the range down into Queenstown was one of the scariest I've done in a long time. There were at least 7 switchbacks down the mountain, one right after another. I was having trouble making it around some of them with the van, I can't imagine a large truck trying to navigate them. Queenstown is absolutely beautiful laying along the lake and with the Remarkables (mountain range) in the background.

This photo was taken from the gondola at the top of one of the mountains surrounding the city

Actually, before we rode the gondola, we road the jet boat on the Kawarau & Shotover Rivers.

Here's the boar we rode. These boats travel up shallow channels at speeds of up to 50 MPH in water less than 2 inches deep. They do 360 degree turns and try to drive as close to cliff walls or bridge abutments as they can - all for the thrill of it. It was GREAT!

Here's Ernie all prepped for the ride. I'm already in the front of the boat waiting for everyone else to load on

A shot of the Remarkables from the boat.

Another view of the Remarkables as we stopped at this resort to pick up two more riders.

 After the jet boat ride and lunch, we rode the gondola and then rode the Skyline luge a couple of times (see skyline.co.nz) to see what the luge ride is like. you ride down a concrete track on a wheeled sled. The handlebars are the brakes (pull forward to apply brakes, push forward to release brakes and fly down the track.) What fun!

Having so much fun created an awful thirst for us so we just had to go to the Below Zero Ice Bar. Yes, an ice bar. The bar is made entirely from over 30 tons of crystal clear, hand-sculpted ice. The walls, the bar, the furniture, the sculptures and even the glasses are all made out of ice.

I'm going to end this post at this time since I need to put the turkey in the oven and start getting food ready for our Thanksgiving dinner. While New Zealand doesn't celebrate this holiday, Joelle and Trevor do. They all had to work today and Jasmin is in school. We'll have our dinner tonight when they all get home. What's sort of cool is that while it is Friday today, it is Thursday in the US and we are celebrating on the real US holiday.

Hope y'all have a happy thanksgiving and don't stuff yourselves too much.