Before digging into our New Zealand trip, two things.
Was spot on about the Super Bowl result and the pats covering the spread. As much as I find certain/most Pats fans insufferable, Bill Belichick is the greatest football mind there has ever been and going up against the green Rams coach/QB seemed like a no brainer. Old man Wade Phillips did a masterful job so count this as an all around win for the old guys.
The other thing about the Super Bowl was that it produced a flood of memories about them from my youth. As an LA boy was a Rams fan from birth, but watching them in the 70's get mauled in the playoffs every year led me down my lifelong love affair with the Raiders. Even after 40 years of time, they still pooped the bed just like I remembered. Screw them. And what the hell are they doing with those uniforms. The color blue of the helmets is no where near the color blue of the uniforms. It's like they have the color blind guy throw whatever they have in the closet together and no one dares say to the boss that they look like crap.
And then there is this...
The other note that I must say since I bitch about it often is that the weather in Taiwan has been delightful for the last couple of months. Cool at night with most days hitting the upper 70's/low 80's. No other gag here, just making sure that I give credit where it's due and don't want to sound like the grumpy old guy all the time cause I know in a month or so it is gonna get nasty again and we all know that I am gonna bitch.
OK three things. I would like to officially go on record as saying that I have never worn black face. It never occurred to me to do so and have never actually seen someone do that. I will say that I have dressed up as a woman for Halloween on several occasions and there are a lot of pictures, some quite unflattering, to prove it. Wonder if that is gonna ever be a thing that gets these dudes into trouble. Would I dare to that now? Not sure.
We returned from NZ on Saturday night and it was really great. Let me tell ya about it.
It's a 10.5 hour flight from Taipei to Auckland, and then another hour to our destination of Wellington. NZ is two main islands with Auckland at the north end of the north island and Wellington at the southern tip of that same island. Our plan was to drive around the north island for the majority of the time and all the indicators was the way to do it there is in an RV.
The place we rented from picked us up at 1pm and after a tutorial on all things rig related ( like filling with water/disposing of our grey water/waste) we hit the highway. Highway is kinda misleading cause all of the roads in NZ are two lanes and not very big ones for the most part. A good thing is that there are few traffic lights and slowing down in the little towns or at road construction is about all of the traffic you get.
We were on a tight schedule as for this night had made a dinner reservation for 7:30 at a winery that came highly recommended...Craggy Range Winery. As we anticipated a bunch of meals in the RV, wanted to have one nice meal on the books and the area around Hawkes Bay is said to have NZ's best wine region, this place was voted best winery in the world in 2014 and my wine guy subsequently said it was a picturesque setting. We had a lovely meal with Betty getting her cavegirl on with the giant rib eye and we all freaking out about amazing the hot sauce chili baked mussels were. The setting was as advertised and wholeheartedly recommend this area and location.
Google maps said the drive from Wellington to the winery was 4.5 hours and we had 5 hours to make it. The RV lady said that while speed limits in NZ are 100kph on the open road, we shouldn't take the rig over 90 kph. Doing the math, knew we had to push that 90 guideline and after a stupid glitch with the GPS, we were running behind. Not proud of it, but I pushed that bad boy hard and we made it to the winery at 7:35p in an amazing display of driving. Those RV's are not built for a smooth ride and the girls were tossed about pretty severely, but promised that after this that we had no other tight schedules and that I would keep it mellow the rest of the way. I thought I did but that opinion was constantly in dispute.
Reason I bit off such an ambitious first day of driving is that this area is where we wanted to start our tour anyway and thought getting the worst/longest of the rides early was prudent. Not only is this area cool for the wineries, but the town that is the hub of the region was appealing to me.
When one considers NZ as a destination, going to their cities is not alluring as while they are charming, there isn't much 'there' there as they are relatively new and don't have a ton of historical appeal. The one exception is the town of Napier, which is about midway up the island on the east coast. Why Napier was a must for me is the architecture. In 1931 a 7.8 earthquake wiped out the city, first by destroying many of the buildings and then a fire finished off the job. That only 250 or so folks died speaks to how sparsely the area was populated at the time.
Even though the worldwide depression was being felt in this corner of the globe too, the city fathers rallied and rebuilt the town in 3-4 years and as the dominant style of architecture at the time was Art Deco, this city is a snapshot of that and their downtown is mostly that kind. I am not an architecture student and while I appreciate a nice structure, I can't discern between a Gothic, baroque, Romanesque, neo-classical with any confidence. What does speak to me is Art Deco and getting a chance to see the world's finest example of a town built entirely in that style made this a must.
I hope the girls enjoyed it too cause I was in heaven. The town knows what they have too as the offer tours and have street performers playing era specific music on the streets, old cars, etc. Booked us a walking tour for the AM and it was sensational. They first showed us a film about the earthquake for perspective...not only was the town wiped, but there was a giant shallow bay to the north of town that was raised up by the event and is now dry land. Spent the next couple hours tooling around admiring the sights. I don't know what it is about Art Deco that hits my soul in just the right way...perhaps it is the lines and fonts, the use of pastels, especially that particular affinity for the pink and green that is so soothing, or my predilection for that Raymond Chandler era noir, but damn. If you like Art Deco, this is a great spot to consider, and if you are a lover of it like me, you will be ecstatic.
One more Napier thing. Hard to see it here, but they had a Starbucks.
Babydoll spotted it and was ecstatic in doing so. There are a handful more in NZ and were told they were in towns we passed through, but this was the only sighting on this trip. I am documenting the rules of the game and hope to have those done by summer. I am stumbling over the language about how hard to punch someone. Whenever I describe this game to someone, especially if they are unaware of Punchbug (losers), they kind of recoil in horror when physical violence is implied. How to describe the degree of the punch and how it has to be exponential to the players involved is so far elusive. If it is you and your stupid J-O college buddies, then really hard. If you are with the girls, it should be a tap. Some PC landmines in there.
We did an afternoon drive of a couple/three hours to our destination of Rotorua. With a population of 4.5 million for the whole country, there just aren't that many cities and most of the towns you go through consist of a dairy (which is a low budget 7-11), perhaps a gas station and that is about it. The scenery is lovely with endless miles of dairy and sheep farms. It is hypnotic in a good way.
Rotorua is a town in the Toupu thermal valley. Toupu was a super volcano that erupted in 186AD. Knew NZ was active volcanically, but learned a lot more. It is caught between two tectonic plates and the entire nation has been pushed up only within the last 25 million years, so is a baby geologically. The entire landmass is old sedimentary seafloor and there are little volcanoes everywhere. The super volcanic thermal area we drove through made me think of Yellowstone, it is sort of like that with magma pools not far(5km) underneath, which makes the whole region have hot springs and evidence of past eruptions, many within the last 300 years, everywhere. This area doesn't have giant volcanoes like Rainer or Fuji, but is rather one giant valley filled with old caldera lakes and stuff pouring out of the ground everywhere. We got in late afternoon and had a tour planned for the next day.
Will take a detour here to talk about RV life. Everyone we know that has been to NZ said to do the RV thing and since I'd never spent the night in one, thought it would be a good experience. The rig we got was well quipped with a stove/fridge/shower, plenty of space to sleep, WiFi...you name it. Things are far from each other there and they don't have an extensive rail system, so driving is the only option. The RV culture is vibrant and there are campgrounds of all kinds. There are two classes of RV...self contained or not. Self contained means that you can stop anywhere and don't need to power up or need bathroom facilities cause they are all on board. There are camp sites everywhere for both and we used an app called CamperMate to figure out our next stop. The first night, we pulled into a parking lot on the water for instance. Even though you are self contained, you do need to dump your waste and hook up to electricity to recharge. I had not pre-booked spots cause wanted to be as spontaneous as possible, which is not in my typical Virgo comfort zone. What we would do is once the day was done, we'd look up our place for the next night and reserve a spot if needed. Night two we booked at Top 10 Blue Lake in Rotorua as we needed to dump/recharge. The place was deluxe. We used our tutorial from the RV company to take care of business, which meant filling up the water tank, dumping our grey water (shower/sink stuff) and the toilet tank. We were a bit clunky at first but it was pretty intuitive and not nearly as disgusting a process as I had imagined. It is also a good exercise in teamwork as you have to work together to get it all done. Top 10 is a chain and we stayed at another one a couple days later. They had a pool, kitchen, laundry, showers and anything one might need. Also should mention that stuff was clean and not only here, but all the public bathrooms and facilities we encountered were all well maintained. Not a huge fan of communal life, but this was as pleasant as I could have hoped for. The campground this night was big and full, but people are respectful and respect the quiet hours. Thought there would be some yahoos getting wasted till 2am but did not experience that at all. Also, this Blue Lake one sat astride Blue Lake (duh) which is a spot that had a beach and all sorts of water activities, which we didn't do but nice to know. We had loaded up on groceries that AM that we pulled out for several dinners and snacks. Long story short, while this was not my ideal way to travel and am not in the market to buy one for us, but I know I enjoyed it and think the girls did too and would not hesitate to do it again if the situation was right.
We booked a full day tour tour to explore the thermal sites. Met our guide Linda and hopped in her van. The tour said it was a small group, but we were the only ones on this day so had her and the van to ourselves. We felt lucky cause she said sometimes she can have 20 or so and especially as this was a Saturday, could not understand our good fortune. Seems that all the kids just started school the past week after their summer holidays and all the locals had their vacations done by this point.
We hopped to a few spots in the morning to see the geo-thermal activities. The highlight of the day for me was the first top in the Wai-O-Tapu thermal area at the boiling mud pools, which is a giant pool of boiling mud. Why this struck me as so amazing I cannot say, but watching huge bubbles of boiling mud pop constantly made some connection. Impossible to get a good shot.
We had to move along to see the geyser eruption at 10:45. 'How does the geyser know to go off at an exact time?' I asked Linda and she said all would be explained. A decent sized crowd had assembled and then a lady comes out to explain the Lady Knox geyser. Seems some prisoners in the area used it to wash their clothes and discovered that when they added soap to it, it would shoot off, so they have this show and the lady adds soap (now one that is eco-friendly of course) to make it go boom.
Was a bit corny but having never seen a geyser before, thought it cool.
On the way to our next stop, Linda tells us of the place where some cows had gotten out a week before and she stopped to help them get them back into their shed. We got to talking about cows.
The rest of the morning was spent walking down the Waimangu Volcanic Valley. Another place ripped from the earth many times over, the biggest being in 186AD but a large scale eruption just 150 years ago.
I have been a meat pie/sausage roll aficionado since I discovered them in Australia in '83 but didn't know they were the Kiwi's national dish. It became an obsession on this trip to find them often, preferably for breakfast and forgive me if I mention eating a particularly good one later in this space. I recall spending too much time a while ago thinking about and rating portable snacks and while I know that the burrito came in at number 1, hoped I had rated the meat pie highly. Took me a while to find it, but here is the post from November 11th, 2017 that shows the beloved pie coming it at a solid number 2. I love those things so much and it's a crime they have not escaped the South Pacific.
After lunch, was chatting with a couple of younger locals and asked about NZ music...what they liked what is hot, etc.. They were quite dismissive of the local music scene saying there wasn't much to choose from and what people like a lot was dub, reggae and dub reggae. I did hear a lot of that crap everywhere. Had this same conversation a few more times with the same results. One of my all time favorite bands from anywhere is The Clean, who are from NZ, and when I would ask about them, not a single soul had ever heard of them. WTF people? The dismissiveness of their own culture, not just music but their existence in general, as not being...this is not the right term...world class, was equal parts endearing and sad. They have a great place and the people are very positive and pleasant, but they have that characteristic of self depreciation that I feel they think is humility, but can be limiting.
In the afternoon, Linda took us to the Maori village of Whakarewarewa, which cannot be pronounced without breaking into a local version of the Macarena song using that word in place of the title. I was the only one that thought it hilarious. Think I'll save my general Maori thoughts till next time, but the place was cool. This tribe moved to this site when their village was wiped out in the 1886 eruption. When you walk in, the local kids ask foreigners to throw some gold (color of the $1 NZ coin) into the pool and they dive for them. Looked like they made some bucks and were very polite in saying please and thank you.
There was another stop at a European village that was buried in mud during the aforementioned 1886 eruption and maybe it was because we were tired, but have no thoughts or pix from that and could have passed. We zoomed an hour or so up the road to Matamata for the night and freedom camped in the parking lot of the Firth Tower Museum. So peaceful and the stars were out...great view of the Milky Way.
Think part II will be shorter. Talk soon.
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