On Monday, February 19, 2018, we finally got to spend some time on the lake by our rental home.
Linette and I dragged the kayaks down to the dock, and then we discovered that there was an ant colony in one of the kayaks. So Linette was kind enough to clear out the ants while I fetched the rest of the gear.
Soon we were out on the lake, and it was so peaceful and pleasant that I could have done that all day.
Here is some video that Shauna caught of us kayaking around.
Across the bay from our house was a cemetery on the hill. There were also black swans swimming about.
Around the other side of the peninsula that held the cemetery was a large gathering of black swans and other water fowl.
Here's a 90 second video of what it was like to chill with the birds on that side of the hill.
After we returned, Jon and Shauna took a turn on the lake.
Meanwhile, Linette and I joined the Lyms on a jog around the bay to the cemetery.
There were beautiful views along the way.
Once at the cemetery, we enjoyed the view from there. While there, I pulled up the Billion Graves app on my phone and took a picture of every headstone in the cemetery in order to preserve them and make them available at both billiongraves.com and on FamilySearch. So that was our little service project during our run, and we had a nice moment up there.
Here's a picture of me jogging, just to prove that it can happen.
And here's a picture of what Linette usually looks like to me when I'm jogging, cuz it's hard to keep up with that woman.
The houses around there were beautiful and well kept.
After jogging, we decided to go swimming. Linette used our inflatable boogie board. She carefully climbed onto it, and then it unceremoniously dumped her face first into the water.
Rob and Melissa were out on the kayaks at this point, so I launched one of the standing paddle boards that were stored by the kayaks.
Unfortunately, there were no more paddles. However, where the paddles were stored, I noticed a rectangle sponge mop, and thought it would do nicely as a redneck substitute paddle. It worked splendidly.
Linette said, "You're going to be really proud of that, aren't you?" I really was. Sometimes I would pull the handle to squeeze out the mop just for effect.
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| Randy's "Standing Mop Board" invention |
Rob and Melissa returned from their outing and we all goofed around in the water together for a while.
Jon and Shauna finally figured out how to make the drone video work that day.
Here's a little drone video of us paddling around. (There's no sound, of course, since the drone has propellors going). (You probably need to click full screen to see what's going on).
Eventually, Melissa handed Linette a rope and towed her around. (Linette is well taken care of).
And finally, here is a 90-second silent drone video of everyone pulling into shore.
The other thing we had wanted to do when we had time at the house was to visit nearby Okare Falls. So we drove just up the road and went on a little hike to the first falls. It was short enough that we went up to the next falls as well.
By the time we reached the falls, it had started to pour rain on us. Our ponchos were in the car (oops), so we just embraced the rain.
These falls were intense, especially when you consider that this is where our rafting trip was originally scheduled to go: yes, over those falls.
Incidentally, we thought it was hilarious that the English pamphlet for that rafting trip shows a bunch of smiling people wearing helmets and life preservers. But the Japanese pamphlet for the same trip shows everyone being launched out of the boat in all directions.
Apparently different ads have different cultural appeal.
There was a passageway with stairs carved into the rock leading down near the water, and a cave down there that was blocked off. This gave us a brief respite from the rain.
Someone had recommended that we go see the "Blue Lake" (Lake Tikitapu) and "Green Lake" (Lake Rotokakahi), and they weren't too far away, so we drove down there.
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| Blue Lake (Lake Tikitapu) |
We stopped for a moment at Blue Lake (above), and just sort of looked at Green Lake out the window.
Then we stopped at a place dedicated to the "Buried Village of Te Wairoa", where we learned a bit about the volcanic eruption that destroyed and buried a village there in 1886, killing 150 people and wiping out a village and destroying the famed "Pink and White Terraces" of New Zealand.
We decided not to do the long tour that they offered there, but had a nice chat with the lady at the register, who was wearing a period costume. We also had fun looking at stuff like blue kiwis at the gift shop.
Then we drove out to Lake Tarawera, where the eruption had occurred.
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| Lake Tarawera |
Sure, it looks beautiful and peaceful now...
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| Lake Tarawera, 2018. |
But that day it was basically Mount Doom!!
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| Lake Tarawera, 1886 |
And with that, we took one more group shot and headed back into town.
It was raining when we got back to Rotorua, which is not surprising, since there was a cyclone in the forecast for the next day!
We ate at a Japanese restaurant that evening, since we that country wasn't yet represented in our lineup, and the soup reminded me a bit of attractions in Rotorua, as this 8-second video points out:
And we didn't let the rain or the impending doom of a cyclone get in the way of one last ice cream run at Lady Jane's Ice Cream, which was outstanding.
After visiting the town of Rotorua almost every day, we decided to walk the additional 50 feet to the shore to finally see the huge lake there. People were feeding the black swans, and it was fun to see a pontoon plane out in the lake.
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| Lake Rotorua |
After getting rained on a couple of times that day, it felt good to soak in the hot tub again that night.
Linette was bummed that nobody would play games with her that night (everyone was tired and had to pack), so she used the Bananagrams letters to create an impressive crossword of all the things we did on our trip.
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| Linette's Banagrams summary of the trip. Horse - In the middle of the road in Fiji. Temple, Sealing - In Hamilton, New Zealand, on Valentine's Day Glow worm - At the Mitai Maori village Boot - What they call the trunk in New Zealand Rotorua - Where we stayed Drip - What the rain did on us Rafting, Dolphins, Kayaks - Water activities in New Zealand Muds - What was bubbling at the thermal pots in Rotorua Noah - The model of Toyota van we had in Fiji Deet, Bite - What didn't quite work to avoid mosquito bites in Fiji Bula, Vinaka - What they said for "Hello" and "Thank you" all the time in Fiji. Cave - Where the Fijian family took us on their farm. Internation[al] - The kind of food we ate, and the traveling we did. Green - The color of all of Fiji and New Zealand. Sulu - The man skirts we wore in Fiji. Okere Falls - The waterfalls near our rental place in New Zealand Ice Cream - New Zealand didn't disappoint. Fiji, New Zealand - Where we traveled |
That night we got a message from our hosts reiterating that a cyclone was due to hit New Zealand the next morning, and telling us that if we needed to stay longer at the house, it was available. I thought that was nice of them.
But the cyclone was supposed to hit further south, so we decided to make the attempt to get out while we still could. We hit heavy rain leaving Rotorua, but eventually things cleared out.
We enjoyed the views of the farmland along our way back to Auckland.
Our Toyota Estima served us perfectly on the trip.
Gas ("Petrol") was $2.03 NZ/litre, or about $5.67 US per gallon.
One of our favorite snacks in New Zealand was the "Crunchies", which are incredibly delicious.
It was fun spending play money on the trip.
At the airport, we were amazed by the faucet that had water in the middle, soap over on the right, and then both "handles" shot out air to dry your hands off. Fancy.
We also loved calling the garbage "rubbish".
The weather held nicely for us as we flew out with no problems. From the airport, we got one last look at the amazing green landscape of New Zealand.
Meanwhile, Cyclone Gita was making landfall further south, near Wellington. There, the entire airport closed at about noon, cancelling all flights there.
It wasn't until I got home that I realized how ridiculously lucky (or blessed) we were.
- Cyclone Gita brushed by Fiji on 2/8 as it picked up steam, bringing with it a week of rain.
- We arrived 2/10 and enjoyed 2 beautiful days while it hit Samoa and pounded Tonga.
- We flew out the morning of 2/12, just hours before it came back around and hit Fiji's outer islands.
- Then we spent a nice week in New Zealand, with some rain only on the first and last days.
- That same cyclone hit New Zealand again, just after we flew out with no problem.
- 3 near misses! Wow.
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| Missed Cyclone Gita 3 times in a row! |
We were so glad to again be off with no delays. (Shauna and Jon are photobombing back there).
In Fiji, they had enormous Mentos.
We had about 5 hours to hang out in the airport in Fiji. We had toyed with the idea of going out and doing something, but we had already done plenty, and passport control/luggage/blah-blah made it sound painful anyway.
As we went through the airport, we were again greeted by the musical welcoming committee.
We played a card game to pass the time.
We also enjoyed looking at a sunset that looked like a mushroom cloud.
And there was some tasty Middle Eastern food for dinner.
We had a wonderful conversation with a guy from the U.K. who had been in New Zealand for his brother's wedding. (Apparently it was one you had get to via boat, mountain bike or helicopter.)
The guy lives in Guatemala, running a restaurant at Lake Atitlán. So Linette and I had a great time talking with him about Lake Atitlán and our visit there in 2011, and asking what life was like for him. He apparently visited Guatemala for fun and married a gal there, and has been there ever since. We had so much fun talking with him.
Finally, we were off on our flight home.
For once I got 7 hours of sleep on a flight. (And then my legs felt like lead). They also had movies to keep us entertained.
After a Southwest flight from L.A. to SLC, we showed our (Erika's) broken hard-shell luggage to the Southwest baggage people, and they gave us a free upgrade to this handsome bag.
We were so pleased with how the whole trip turned out: dodging cyclones, flights all on time, nice weather, Fiji sunsets, tromping through the jungle with a Fijian family, sailing, snorkeling, One Tree Hill, driving on the left side of the road without dying, sealings at the temple on Valentine's day, ethnic foods, ice cream, dolphins, hobbits, rafting, redwoods, hiking, boogie boarding (ish), a beach wedding, Maori culture, kiwi birds, kiwi fruit, Kiwi members (with ice cream), jogging, kayaking, waterfalls, nice people everywhere and a weta. Wow!
(No wonder it took me two months to write it all up).
When we stepped out of the airport, it was freezing. "Let's go back!" someone suggested.
It was in the mid-20s for the next week. "It's the same temperature in New Zealand as here," I told people. "It's just that they use Celsius."
I appreciate Jon and Shauna for having the idea for the trip and inviting us along, and Rob and Melissa for joining in. And thank you all for reading along! Vinaka!
To end with, I'll share the movie trailer that Kelsi and her minions created for us while we were gone. (This is sort of a tradition for Kelsi, and it's always great).
