Gannet colonies stink but they are so cool!

Greetings from Raglan - a laid back surfer town on the west coast of the North Island. I am sure you can take a wild guess why we are here - surfing! All surfer folks know that Raglan is a spot featured in the classic surf film, The Endless Summer. Jay wasn't a superstar in this film - but he was a superstar on the waves today! I played in the surf while Jay surfed - so I got my salty fix too! Jay probably will hit the waves again tomorrow before we drive back to Auckland....I think he is quite happy right now.

You may be wondering what we have been up to the past week or so. Well - after diving at Poor Knights we headed north to the Bay of Islands. We had some quality beach time in fleece jackets because it was quite chilly - but we enjoyed the towns of Russell and Paihia. Best of all though - we visited the grounds where the 1840 Waitangi Treaty was signed. This treaty was sort of a peace treaty (although some would argue it didn't really work out that well) between the British and the Maori people. Pretty progressive for that time eh? The grounds were beautiful - the highlights included seeing the largest Maori war canoe in NZ (called Ngatokimatawhaorua) and a beautiful Maori meeting house. These pics are all in Jay's album...

After we left the Bay of Islands we drove to the town of Whangarei to meet up with an American friend of ours from URI - Ralph! Ralph just finished working for the Peace Corps in Samoa and is currently working in NZ before heading to SE Asia (just like us!). We had not seen him in 3 years and we had a LOT of catching up to do. He is a great guy with many interests and a prime example of these interests is that he was volunteering at a glass blowing studio in Whangarei. So we were able to watch him help out this glass blower for an hour or so (very cool). Then we headed to a brewpub for all that "catching up on life" type stuff. We spent a few grand days with Ralph - the boys went spearfishing for dinner one night and another morning we got a tour of the NIWA aquaculture facility Ralph works at. Neat stuff. Check out the entertaining pics in Julie's album.

Julie, Jay, and Ralph are "privileged" to drink beer at a darn good brewpub in Whangarei

Jay catches a wave in Raglan

On our way down south to Raglan we stopped at a neat spot on the west coast to check out a gannet colony. This was a real treat - what amazing birds. A stinky place with lots of little bugs flying around our heads to annoy us....but we would not be driven away! We watched these birds and their chicks for a long time. They were quite funny to watch as they crash landed into the cliff - not as graceful at landing as they are in the air! Some of the chicks were dead and we watched the parents continue to preen them and poke them, this was quite sad but interesting to watch as well. Check out all our photos of the colony in Julie's album.

Gannet coming in for a landing

Finally - we leave on FRIDAY for Sydney! Can you believe it? We are very excited to head to Indonesia too (on Monday) and think we found the company we want to do the liveaboard dive trip with around Komodo Island. But before Indonesia is Australia, even if it is just for 3 days. Guess what? We bought tickets to see a performance at the Sydney Opera House - a must see for any Aussie backpacker. Here is the link to the performance we will be seeing....exciting eh? (OK - I can't get the link to work - but go to this webpage and look for "Symphony Didgeridoo Meets Orchestra" and you will get the pictue)

http://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/whatson/Tead_and_SymphonyDidgeridooMeetsOrchestra.aspx

And while I'm putting in links - here is the link to the ship we will most likely use for the dive cruise in Indonesia - can you believe this is only 1 1/2 weeks away??

http://www.komodo-liveaboard.com/felicia.html

That is all for us now....I hope we have time to write one more blog about New Zealand and our wonderful time here. But it is time for us to leave countries that are sort of similar to the states and experience some really different cultures and landscapes. We are super excited and can't wait to fill you in with our stories!

Poor Knights Islands - yeah!

Captain Cousteau himself was apparently a big fan of Poor Knights Islands diving and today we were lucky enough to discover why. The small group of islands are about 15 miles off the northeastern North Island coast and are bathed by a (relatively) warm current that keeps the water temperatures mild. Hence the climate is subtropical (temp was 20C/68F) and the water is clear (visibility was at least 20m/70ft), and some typically tropical species stray south and decide to hang out for a bit. We definitely wanted to hangout for a bit longer once our last dive was over--there was a lot to see. I think in this case particularly pictures do speak many many words so you must check out the photos we have just uploaded (in Jay's picasa site)!

Due to the water clarity, light penetrates very well and kelp grows to at least 20m. The stands of Ecklonia kelp reminded us of the Laminaria forests we saw in Ireland--kelp on short but stiff stalks that allows for a nice understory of encrusting invertebrates (i.e., small, inanimate, low-profile creatures living on the rocks) like sponges, anemones, cup corals, hydroids, bryozoans, and ascidians. What struck us here in particular though was the diversity of encrusting life and their astounding colors. On a coral reef much of this life is relegated to the dark recesses of underhangs and crevices, but in the Poor Knights it is often right out in the open. The colors were so varied and so concentrated that I had trouble focusing on one thing--there was just too much to look at. Meanwhile, we were trying to keep one eye on the open water in case a big pelagic fish or manta ray decided to drop in for a visit. There are a few different species of ray that are common, and we saw a least two different kinds of stingray and a ray that looked to us like a cow-nose ray but they call an eagle ray. Often there were some big schools of fish near the surface. We had heard that since the Poor Knights are a marine reserve the fish densities tend to be very high, and I think we expected to see more big fish than we did. But we were more than content to marvel at the small stuff.

The highlight of our surface interval was going into the biggest sea cave in the world. As we were steaming to the next dive site, the captain started to veer toward what looked to us like a small cave. He wasn't slowing down much, and I was wondering if we could really fit inside this cave, but as we got closer it was evident that this was no small cave and once we were inside we were told that it was 30m/100ft to the ceiling and about 2-3 times as wide.

Little Cat owns Heather, David, Julie and Jay

Yup - that's right folks. We are all owned by the animals we love. Little Cat is darn cute - don't you think? We are sadly leaving David, Heather and Little Cat today - but we are headed north to go diving around the Poor Knights Islands. We have had SO much fun here though. I dare say, Auckland, or the City of Sails, grew on us. We just needed to be forced to sit in the city for an extended period of time - and so we got to know it a bit better.

Let's see - we have done a bunch of fun little things this past week. David and Heather had a nice, long weekend because of the Easter holiday and we were able to play around the town together. Each day we all headed down to a wonderful 60m (odd length!?) pool and swam laps. I was in a state of pure bliss to be swimming again....we were all so happy after that little bit of exercise. Another day they took us to the west coast - to a spot called Anawhata. This was a beautiful bay with dramatic cliffs and mountains and big waves (see Julie's pics for a demo). We stopped for wine and snacks on the way back to their house - and took in a great view of the city skyline from the "Elevation Cafe." We have done other fun things together - like swimming at night under the full moon in the harbor, drinking brews at an excellent brewpub in Auckland, sipping wonderful frothy coffee brews at the cafes in Ponsonby, and watching old classic movies like Easter Parade and Casablanca. To put it straight we have made wonderful friends here and we are sad to leave them. Lucky for us - we are crashing with them again right before we leave New Zealand, so we will have a few more good dinners and grand conversations to remember!

Bye Bye Tink

Well folks - it's official! Tinkerbell has been bought by a wonderful Malaysian couple backpacking around New Zealand. I might be a bit sad about this, as I have been known to get attached to things like my car (Maggie), my bike (Bluebell), the boat I used at work (the Privateer - how could I not love it?), etc... So when I saw the couple drive away with Tink I felt like they were taking OUR van away from us. They better take good care of Tinkerbell.
Aside from being a bit sad though - we are VERY happy to have some cash back in our NZ bank account. We have 2 weeks left in New Zealand - isn't that UNREAL?! We actually tried to change our flight to Oz to head over there earlier, but most of the seats were taken. We may decide to "upgrade" our fare and go earlier - but we don't really know what we are doing yet. You will have to keep tuning into the blog to find out!
In the meantime, we love staying with David and Heather and Little Cat - and probably will over the weekend. Then we will rent a cheapo car and head up to the Northland to dive the Poor Knights Islands. We know that much!
And we miss you all - our dear friends and family. Hope you had a great St. Patty's Day and that you all send us pics of whatever you want to share soon (doesn't matter what- we thrive off of seeing our friends and family)!

Tinkerbell never really liked cities

Ahhhh...we are really in Auckland now. Each time Jay and I are in cities we are reminded of why we are really not city folk. Auckland is really not a bad city - it has a beautiful waterfront, lots of parks, cool buildings (the Skytower), and even the America's Cup sailboats tied up front and center for viewing (I thought of my friend Tracy P. who would drool at the sight). But - parking is insane, driving is stressful, crossing the street is dangerous, and there are so many people!

Anyway - we are in it for the long haul until we sell our dear Tinkerbell. Last Tuesday we dropped off my parents at the airport (we still miss them so much) and we have been on the "sell, sell, sell" mission since. We have only had a few bites, so we are a bit frustrated. We knew this would be a bad time to try and sell a campervan - most backpackers are leaving NZ now that autumn has arrived. But, this fact was really driven in today. We took Tinkerbell to a car market - basically we paid $30NZ to park in a huge lot and sit with all the other vans and HOPE that someone would walk by who was interested. We sat for 5 hours - and only had 3 couples briefly look at the van. We didn't even see other backpacker types around! Ugh. The good news is that we saw the guy we bought Tink from - Mike. He seems to buy vans cheap, fix em' up, and them sell them for more money. He is our last resort - because he will probably pay us a small percentage of what we paid him for the van, and then he would sell it again in the spring - when there are lots of "rich" backpackers looking for campervans. Before we stoop that low, we will give it another good week to try and sell it on our own. Mike also told us that he thought we were asking a good, reasonable price for the van - which made us feel better too.

On a nicer note - we have been staying with a Kiwi couple that we met at the hostel we parked at in Renwick (when we worked on the vineyards). David and Heather are simply wonderful! They are both faculty members at Auckland University of Technology where they teach media ethics. Wish some of our American media folk would take their class! They invited us to come and stay with them (they live right near downtown Auckland in a wonderful old house) while we attempt to sell the van - so we are doing just that. It is fun to be in their household - David thinks out loud when he is working on putting another lecture together; we find his topics and ideas very interesting to listen to. Heather has talked to us a lot about what it is like to be a faculty member, including all the positives and the negatives. This has been good for us because we both think about doing PhD's now and then - and this gives gives us more food for thought. And they have the cutest darn cat ever, named "Little Cat." And she is so little! I used to think that Allison (Jay's mom) had the smallest cat of them all - but Little Cat may be smaller than Phoebe! She is very sweet, very orange, and likes lots of love. We are very pet-deprived and willing to provide all this loving. Bliss!

What now?

The last few days of our time with Tom and Diane were really sublime. We had a sweet little villa right on Hahei beach on the Coromandel Peninsula. The weather was perfect and we were basically beach bums for a solid two full days. The water was just right for swimming (after a few moans and yelps) and we even did a bit of snorkelling. We did motivate ourselves to check out two interesting neighboring beaches--Hot Water Beach, where you can dig your own geothermally heated hot tub in the sand, and Cathedral Cove, which has some really neat limestone arches and pillars. We also found the locals very friendly. But since Julie neglected to put up a few photos of our Rotorua and Lake Taupo adventures I have added some below. Ross Kessler demanded some more trout photos, and we thought some might want to see the last photo of Tom taken before he was sacrificied to some Maori warriors....
What now? We sadly had to leave T&D in Auckland yesterday and now we have about 3 weeks left in NZ. Top on our list is selling the van, which we hope will be quick and painless, but we also are planning to go diving in the Poor Knights Islands sometime in the next few days. Pictures from the entire Barber family visit are finally posted in both our albums...enjoy!

An evening hangi and morning trout

Greetings! This will have to be a super short blog because I only have 6 minutes left! Yikes! We are in Rotorua right now on the North Island. We had a few soggy days on the South Island and now we seem to be back in the sun. After the ferry landed us in Wellington we HAD to go up the cable car for my mom. This evening ended at the best place to eat EVER - called "Chow." I had Thai sticky coconut rice with mango chunks for dessert. Yum.
We went up to Taupo the next day and my family went trout fishing on the big lake. They caught 10 rainbow trout between the 3 of them (jay, diane, and tom). I was the photographer! These fish were more silver (like a steelhead I guess?) than the river trout....very pretty.
And now we are in Rotorua - a stinky place. Smells like sulphur because of all the geothermal activity. We are off to go geyser spotting this afternoon and then will spend the evening learning about Maori culture at a hangi (they feed us) and then we will get to watch a haka (a ceremonial chant) performance. We are excited!
Time to go - photos will be up sometime in this life. We are too busy to upload with parents here!