1 year later

365 days ago today, we set off on an amazing adventure.  An adventure that would leave us forever changed.  It's simultaneously gone by in a flash and painstakingly slowly.  Sometimes there are moments I wish I could go back and change and at other times I feel like I wouldn't change one minute.  Either way, it happened and I can look back in awe at what we've done.  I don't necessarily think we've accomplished any great feat in the scope of life (hey, we're not curing cancer over here), but I feel sort of proud of us in a way (we made it through a year of giant bugs, weird food and lots of exercise without dying).  We defied most odds and will make in home in tact, as a unit, which I'm sure some people weren't certain we would (I found out my own family took bets!).

As it's all coming to a close, reflecting back on it all is impossible.  I wish I could remember every second, but it whizzes by in my mind like a jumble of sights, foods and people.  We keep starting thoughts with "Where were we when _____ happened?" I'm really glad I have this blog to look back and relive the whirlwind that has been our lives.  

Initially, that's the reason I started the blog.  Selfishly, I wanted it for myself to be able to look back and remember every detail.  It blossomed into something I could share with friends and family, so we wouldn't have to constantly answer questions like "Where are you now?" or "What have you been doing?"  Now, I'm not quite sure what will become of it.  I've been asked if I'll keep writing in it and I still don't have an answer.  I definitely intend to finish my New Zealand posts because the South Island was incredible, but after that, no idea!

Anywho, one year later and we are not yet home, but we are still standing!

The beginning:

The middle:

The end:

Stuck In New Zealand

So, we were supposed to get home the 28th and we had planned and budgeted everything out until the 28th and we were honestly in really good shape.  Day before yesterday everything changed.  I guess that's what travel is all about: expecting the unexpected.  I'd been feeling a little short of breath lately, but nothing major...until the day before yesterday.  That viral infection I had in Buenos Aires came back with a vengeance and I needed to go to the doctor immediately.  Luckily we were on our way to Queenstown (a big city) and we found one easily.  The doctor gave me some meds and told me not to fly for at least a few days, putting a damper on all our homecoming festivities (sorry guys), as well as our budget (eek!).  

We drove back to Auckland and are holed up in a motel, super bummed until March 5, when we fly home for sure (fingers crossed).  Don't worry peeps, I'm already feeling better, I just need some major rest.  It's weird because it comes in waves: sometimes I feel 100% better and other times I feel like I'm gonna fall over.  I'm listening to the doctor though and staying in bed as much as I can.  Shout out to my honey who is walking to the grocery store in the pouring rain to get me dinner.  Every breath I'm able to take is thanks to him.

People don't tell you how different traveling is from a vacation.  There's nothing relaxing about traveling whatsoever!  We've been camping out of our car for a week!  We eat car sandwiches and deli salads nonstop.  We showered in a creek in a rainstorm and that was the only shower we had in like 5 days!  These are things that I never thought I would do in my life and although we partially did them for budgetary reasons, how can you beat sleeping next to a creek in the middle of a rainstorm surrounded by mountains at the Milford Sound?  Even though I'm definitely a little worse for the wear at the moment, it's been the best experience I could have hoped for and I don't regret a minute.

The internet isn't free anywhere you go in this country (New Zealand needs to get their crap together when it comes to internet.  It's like pulling teeth to get decent internet at a reasonable price!  We're in the 21st century!), so I'll try to blog if it turns out not to cost me too much.  I know it pretty much sucks how behind I am on blogging, but it ends up costing me a lot of money and I'm not making any money from it, so sorry folks, you'll just have to wait.

Geez, can you tell I'm bored already?  It's gonna be a long week.

More South Island

Lake Pukaki:

Powder blue water!

We also went to Aoraki/Mt. Cook, which is the tallest peak in Australasia, but I forgot to take pics on my phone.

Lake Tekapo:

We had dessert from up here at The Astro Cafe at the Mt. John Observatory:

Just beautiful.

We then went to the town of Oamaru, with gorgeous Victorian buildings and a strange steampunk vibe.  

We also saw an extremely rare yellow-eyed penguin waddling along Bushy Beach.  Again, I don't have any pictures on my phone (so shoot me, I've got a lot going on!).

The only other thing I remembered to take a picture of is my feet, which got crazy swollen from some sort of crazy sand flee bites at Abel Tasman National Park:

They're hideous and feel like hives (the more you scratch, the more it itches) and Aaron and I are covered on our lower bodies.  I'm constantly slathering my feet in Anti-Itch cream and we take Benedryl religiously to sleep.  They're the worst bug bites we've ever had.  Grr!!

Camping out at the beach again..only a few more days left!

Franz Josef Glacier

We spent a few days in the city of Christchurch, and happened to be there on the 5 year anniversary of their town's tragedy (a massive earthquake that just ripped the place apart).  It's one of the more interesting cities we've visited, but all the pictures are on my camera, so you'll have to wait for that one.  

Today we drove to Franz Josef Glacier and the drive was gorgeous:

The glacier was pretty spectacular too:

It was hard to get good pictures because it was so bright, but we tried our best.  On our way to check out Fox Glacier then drive to our campsite for the night.  Stay tuned...

Bits of South Island

I I haven't taken too many pictures with my phone, but the South Island is gorgeous!  We have really crappy internet in some spots because we're going to some remote locations.  So far we've visited Wellington (last stop on the North Island), took the ferry to the South Island and have stopped in Picton, camped at the Pelorus River (barrel scene from The Hobbit), stopped in Nelson, camped at Abel Tasman National Park and are on our way to the beautiful whale watching town of Kaikoura and then onto Christchurch, where we'll stay 2 nights.  I'll try to keep updating you from my phone, but won't really be able to go through everything until we get home.  Only a week left and we're soaking up every minute!

Last night in Auckland

We're leaving Auckland tomorrow and realized we never even posted pictures of our apartment!  Feast your eyes:
Entrance:

Bathroom:

Washer/dryer:

Kitchen:

Living room:

Bedroom:

Tiny, isn't it?  Excuse the mess, we're in the process of packing.  Let's look at the rest of the building:
Gym:

Sauna:

Pool:

Tennis courts:

Although our apartment is small, we've really enjoyed the amenities that came along with it.

We have really loved our time in Auckland.  This city has been good to us and we are bummed to leave.  We still have a few more days in the North Island though, which will be spent in Wellington.  We drive down tomorrow (it'll take about 8 hours) and on Thursday we are doing a full day movie tour before leaving for the South Island on Friday afternoon.  From there we will pick up our new car (no more Tui!!) and basically live out of it for a week, while we traipse around the island.  On February 27th, we take a flight from Queenstown back to Auckland, where early on the 28th we will take a flight home.  I thought this was funny: since we're a day ahead of California, we leave Auckland at 8am the 28th and arrive home 9am the 28th.  Weird, huh?  At first I thought it was a mistake, but nope, we gain a whole day!  It's like time travel.  Whoa.  Pretty trippy.

While we've been here, I meant to take pictures of foods that are different, but there haven't been many.  The thing I forgot to take a picture of is kumara, which is in the sweet potato family and is very popular in New Zealand.  I bought one and boiled it and it was delish!  I got a picture online, so you could see:

You can find kumara almost anywhere, at all the grocery stores and restaurants.  They make fries, chips, mashes and basically anything you can make with potatoes can be made with kumara.  Yummy.

For the rest of our time here, we'll be road-tripping and most of the time will be in campsites without power or internet, so I'm not sure how much posting I'll be able to do.  I'll try to catch up at some point, but it might not even be until we get home.  Don't worry, I'll make sure to do it, no matter what!
Alrighty folks, until we meet again!

Valentine's Day in New Zealand

We didn't have major plans for Valentine's Day, but we knew we wanted to do something, so we did a little day trip around the Auckland area and then went out to a nice dinner.  It was perfect.

We got a pretty late start, but we still had plenty of time to see everything we wanted.  Here's a map of our excursion (I've gotten really into Google Maps and Paint lately):

I don't know if you can see, but I numbered all our stops.  All the stops, except Karekare, are volcanoes.  Auckland sits on about 50 volcanoes (none active) and we wanted to check some of them out.  We've been to a couple inactive volcanoes in our travels (Volcan Poas in Costa Rica and Mt. Vesuvius in Italy) and they're never very exciting, but always have a great view.

Stop #1: Lake Pupuke:

Nothing really special (besides the name lol (yes, I'm a child)), but the black swans were cool.  No volcano in sight.

Stop #2: Mt. Hobson

We drove to the Hobson area, but couldn't find the volcano.  Surprisingly, volcanoes don't have addresses and we had more to see, so we gave up after awhile and drove to stop #3: Mt. Eden.

Nice views of the city center on the way:

and the Mt. Eden prison:

It looked very old-timey, like I could peek over the fence and see Andy Dufresne dumping chunks of his cell in the yard.

Okay, let's climb this bad boy:

Made it to lookout 1:

Fun fact: this is our next stop, One Tree Hill:

Crater:

Keep going to lookout 2:

One Tree Hill again:

Stop #4: One Tree Hill:

This is the grave of John Logan Campbell:

He gifted this land to the city in 1901 and requested that a memorial be built to the Maori people on the summit.

This is One Tree Hill:

Exciting, huh?  There used to be a lone sacred totara tree here until 1852, when it was chopped by The British (it's like Avatar!  Okay, I just watched Avatar for the first time the other day and it was pretty good.  I had tried watching it over and over for years and could never get into it, but Aaron pried my eyelids open and I finally saw it and now I can't stop thinking about it).  A Monterey pine replaced the sacred totara, but the Maori weren't having it.  They protested left and right and finally got the tree taken down in the year 2000.  The hill has remained treeless ever since.

Fun fact: the U2 song "One Tree Hill" on their Joshua Tree album was written after this place.

That picture is really misleading.  That tree isn't on the hill, just FYI.  The hill is basically a barren wasteland, it's only current use is for tourists to take selfies.  Insensitive bastards.

Stop #5: Karekare

This was the highlight of our day (you knew something better had to be coming, right?).  Karekare is a black sand beach and it was BEAUTIFUL!

We parked and had to walk by (and through!) a small stream to get to the beach:

This is the stream:

More spider sacs!

Grr!  Those people are killing me!!

This butterfly flew up my dress!

Cliffs:

More cliffs.

Can you see Aaron??

We had to walk through the stream to get to the piece de resistance: the black sand beach:

The wet parts look like mud:

The dry parts are a gorgeous dark gray with sparkles mixed in!

I tried really hard to get a good picture, but you can't see all the sparkle.  Stunning!

White seashells:

Aaron didn't want to get his feet wet (I know we're at the beach, but we really weren't planning on swimming because we'd heard this is a super dangerous place to swim.  Fun fact: Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam almost drowned here), so he stayed behind the stream and waited for me.  Can you spot him?

He's the tiny, white dot climbing up the grassy hill.  

Eventually, he gave in and got his feet wet.  Here he comes:

Yay!  Black sand beach party!

We took a lot of pictures.  It was just so pretty!

Black sand water (that made no sense):

I'm just full of fun facts today: Karekare Beach was in the movie The Piano (I know it's an old one, but I remember it being really good) and the show Xena: Warrior Princess.

Total dork alert: I didn't think you could see my eyes behind my sunglasses and the sun was so strong that I closed my eyes in all the pictures.  Turns out, you can totally tell!  What an idiot!

Yea, that's embarrassing.

Check out the wind on the sand.

I forgot to bring a baggie for sand, so huge shout out to my honey for letting me use his sock:

It was so sweet, like when a guy lays his coat on top of a puddle for you to walk on (honestly, I've never seen a guy do that and if I did I would probably think he was a total creepo).

Here's my black sand treasure once we got it home:

I absolutely love it!

Walk back to the car:

This time I was the gentleman: Aaron has sensitive feet and couldn't walk on the sharp gravel back to the car barefoot, so I gave him my sandals, since my feet were made for being barefoot in any scenario.  I swear my feet were switched at birth because I'm not really an outdoorsy or tough person, but my feet can walk on anything (no, I haven't tried fire...yet).  I feel more comfortable barefoot than in anything else.

Aaron drove us home, where we got ready for dinner.  I wore the same thing because I have no clothes anyway, so who cares.  We caught a cab to Ponsonby, a neighborhood chock full of bars, restaurants and shops.  It was already 9pm on Sunday night though, so most stuff was closed.  Aaron had a restaurant in mind, but it was also closed, so I crept down this alley and found the perfect place:

It was a totally adorable, hidden gem!  It was a small courtyard with a restaurant and a couple food trucks.  One was this guy making fresh pasta:

Yum!

We opted for the actual restaurant, a BBQ joint called Miss Moonshine's:

This was us trying to get a picture of the inside:

Here's the smoker:

We ordered drinks:

Aaron got the Behemoth pilsner and I got the Zeffer green apple cider:

Both were gross.

Let's hope the food is better:

We got the pulled pork and the beef short ribs with a side of smoked potato salad:

Man, oh man, was it good!  The flavors were on point and the meat was so tender.  We were in love!  It was a bit pricey, but it was worth it!

We walked around the neighborhood for a bit, but it was chilly and everything was closed, so we caught a cab home.

One last view:

I hope everyone has as lovely a Valentine's Day as we did!