Back to Honolulu

We caught a glimpse of sunrise as we were landing in Honolulu and we were admitted into the US with no hassle. The customs agent were cheery, and tried to make us feel better about handing over our Sweet Tango apple (we forgot to eat it on the plane 😢) by reminding us that we were now in the land of delicious pineapples!

It is currently 9am Hawaii time, on March 14th, the second time around. Hawaii doesn't do daylight savings, and New Zealand hasn't changed their clocks yet, so the time change is still 23 hours, but now we are 6 hours behind EDT.

We are now in the land of gigantic, dilute espresso drinks (a "regular" size latte is 16 oz, compared to the 6oz flat white I drank en route to the Auckland airport, today, the first time around). At least it's warm and sunny here; we are in complete denial about the presence of snow at home. It has 6 days to finish falling and then promptly melt away...

Farewell, New Zealand!

It's hard to believe two months have passed so quickly. New Zealand is even more magnificent than we could have imagined; when we first arrived, we figured we should hit all of the major attractions since we are unlikely to return. But as our trip progressed, that attitude quickly changed to sampling everything so we knew where to spend more time when we returned! Not sure when yet, we will definitely be back!!

Yesterday we were able to squeeze in a bonus ride along a new trail that traverses the width of the top of the North Island. It's 84km long and with our hotel in the middle, we took a shuttle to the eastern end of the trail and made our way back. Our motel neighbours also rode the trail and are biking enthusiasts from south Auckland - turns out our motel was the recommended lodging in our cycle tour book!

We spent yesterday evening doing laundry and packing, with our new friends looking on in astonishment.

Today we drove back to Auckland along the west coast of the North Island, stopping at the magnificent Kauri forest to see Tane Mahuta, New Zealand's largest Kauri tree.

This photo was taken while Neil returned our rental car, but now we are through security and waiting to board. Our flight takes off in an hour or so, and when we arrive in Honolulu we will get to live March 14 a second time! Happy double pi day :)

Coffee! Coffee! Coffee!

New Zealand's cafe culture is definitely something I will miss when we leave, especially since the flat white doesn't exist at home. While we were in Rotorua, we looked online for some espresso machines and quickly realised we had no idea what to look for, or what to do with one if we were to own one. So, Neil had the excellent idea of taking a class! Surprisingly (or not surprisingly, given the abundance of cafes here) there are many full-day or multi-day classes offered to become a professional barista. These classes actually require a student visa. New Zealand takes this very seriously! After a bit of effort, Neil stumbled upon a 3 hour "home barista" class offered in Auckland, and we were able to book it. So, we spent our morning practicing making espresso shots and attempting to achieve our perfect 25 second extraction (using 20g of grounds). We then tried texturing milk, both cow and soy, to make our own flat white.

For some background, a flat white is like a stronger, smaller, more velvety cousin of the latte. It consists of a double shot of espresso (40-60ml) plus only about 130ml milk and a thin layer of silky foam. The milk is steamed and then swirled to make a light and velvety consistency. In contrast, a latte contains the same amount of espresso but more milk, typically served in an 8 or 12 oz glass or cup (or even larger). The steamed milk is denser and the latte is topped with more foam than a flat white.

The class was really interesting. It was very enlightening to taste good and bad espresso, and then add milk to taste a regular (180ml) and large (220ml) flat whites side by side (note: a "large" flat white isn't actually supposed to exist, since the flat white should be small, but the desire for "more" impacts coffee sizing, even though a large size just means more diluted! The milk suppresses a lot of the espresso flavour, though it also hides some of the acidity or bitterness of a poorly extracted double shot. We may yet turn into espresso purists and drink the stuff black...though first we'll need some equipment, and a ton of practice :)

After our class we strolled around downtown Auckland a little, and then decided to head north. We weren't originally planning to head north of Auckland, so we looked at a map, picked a well-located town at random, found a well-reviewed motel online, and went for it! So here we are in Kaihohe, a relatively unremarkable town that's about 30 mins from the Kauri forest to the west, the bay of islands to the east, and sits in the middle of a new cycle trail. This is another hotel from the 50's era, with some awesome vintage furniture and a super sweet owner. We have found the perfect small-town North Island location for our final 2 days here!

Busy day ("a tale of two cheese shops")

Photos:
1. Last night's lodging, the formerly glorious and now somewhat less wonderful but slowly being restored Putaruru Hotel
2. Delicious cheese shop in Putaruru
3. Hilarious store that we drove by in the next town over, Tirau, that piqued our curiosity enough for us to turn around and check it out. They sold, unsurprisingly, merino wool products.

Then we drove up to Hamilton to spend the rainy day at New Zealand's largest mall, only to discover that the dire weather forecasts were incorrect, so we drove back through Tirau to Matamata for...

4&5. The Hobbiton tour!!! Hobbit cheesemonger and us with part of the movie set in the background.

And now we are in Auckland.

The Timber Trail

The original plan for today was to see Hobbiton. But after Wednesday's ridiculous rainfall that flooded areas to the north and the forecast for more rain all weekend, we decided to wait for better weather for Hobbiton and go biking instead. It actually worked quite well; by heading south to the trailhead, we avoided getting wet and didn't meet rain until after we finished biking and started driving north again. Rain became heavy rain, so we stopped at the nearest motel which happened to be in the town of Putaruru, population 3700. This town is not mentioned in our lonely planet guide. According to wikipedia the economy of this town is centred around timber. Our hotel is a magnificent former 5-star beauty built in the 1950s, which fell into disrepair and is now being restored slowly. It's become a little more like a backpacker's lodging, but provides everything we need in a surprisingly beautiful setting.

The Timber Trail was absolutely stunning. We would have liked to do the whole thing but our guidebook made it sound like our bikes wouldn't be able to handle the terrain. Surprisingly, the terrain was very smooth, compact dirt/clay, a nice reprieve from the gravel we've primarily encountered. Some sections are steep, which would be difficult riding loaded, but still doable. The trail runs through original bush as well as new/regenerating forest. The old trees are massive! And the with the dense forest comes many native bird species - we saw kereru (wood pigeons that make the coolest cooing sound when flying), fantails, a tui, New Zealand robins, and heard the call of the kaka (wood parrot). None of these birds exist at home. We caught some video of the wood pigeon and the tui calls (you can't see it but listen for the clicks, squeaks and whistles, and enjoy the fantail fly-by). Turn your sound on!

Waitomo Caves

Yesterday was a rainy day - so much so that parts of the North Island were completely flooded (we weren't affected). We left Rotorua and made our way to Otorohanga, which is 20km from Waitomo village. Since it was rainy we didn't have any specific plans for the day, so we made a small detour to Tokoroa to satisfy our curiosities about a well known news article from last year (don't worry, it's not under serious consideration).  Once we arrived in Otorohanga we found ourselves a motel (we're not interested in pitching a tent in the pouring rain!) and signed up for two different tours for today - a glowworm cave raft tour in the morning, in the caves used for the Planet Earth filming, and a cave adventure in the afternoon. The adventure included a 27m abseil (rappel), tubing, caving, and rock climbing. It was totally amazing!!!

Rotorua

Oooh, ahhh, ouch...everything is sore from our hike! We arrived yesterday in Rotorua, the geothermal capital of New Zealand. We also chose our accommodation based on the availability of a thermal pool on site which we thoroughly enjoyed this morning. Today we spent the whole day wandering (slowly) through the grounds of Te Puia thermal reserve, which contains the country's largest geyser and used to be a Maori settlement. The reserve also had a 45-min cultural performance, to share Maori games, songs and a demonstration of haka, the traditional war dance. Rotorua is the largest Maori city in New Zealand. There are only ~700,000 Maori descendants, of which 95% are mixed blood. Our Maori tour guide's name was Paul Mc-something. The reserve is also home to the NZ Maori Arts and Crafts institute, which has a 3-year wood carving program taught by Maori master carvers. One condition of admission is that you must be at least 1/64 Maori.

Tongariro Alpine Crossing

Today we hiked the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, a 19.4km hike across volcano craters and Mt Ngauruhoe (aka Mt Doom from the Lord of the Rings). We were up at 4:30am, with a shuttle pickup from our holiday park at 5:15 to take us to the start of the track. We started hiking around 7:30 and finished around 3:30, with many stops for snacks and photos. We would definitely do it again!

Taupo

We are now in Taupo. It was a busy day:
- woke up early early early to drive up Te Mata peak to watch the sun rise - photo taken at 7:07am!
- headed back to the aquarium at 9am for our insider's tour of the little blue penguins and their 9:30am feeding (fun fact: the fish they feed their penguins, which are injured/rescue penguins, are so small that they don't meet the size requirement for fishing in New Zealand...so they are purchased from the Netherlands instead and supplemented with US vitamins m)
- bought a bunch of fruit and veggies from roadside fruit stalls (including a fig farm that sells 5 types of figs that were picked this morning
- drive 2 hrs to Taupo and explored the city centre, which is hosting the Ironman New Zealand race tomorrow (we have a knack for catching the big multisport events, and just missing the sheep shearing events!!)
- bought wine at the grocery store, where we were not only carded but also had to run out to the car to fetch our passports since foreign drivers licenses are insufficient (note: the drinking age in New Zealand is 18)
- fun fact about our wine - it is from Marlborough but Vidal has a vineyard down the street from our Hawke's Bay campsite. We didn't bother with a tasting since we needed to drive to Taupo - so we will do our own tasting, one at a time, grocery store style :) this one is a 2015 Pinot Noir. It was quite nice after it has some time to breathe but red wines require more effort to appreciate...we are still working on developing this skill!
- cooked a lovely lamb stew (the fanciest camping cooking we've done so far!) to accompany our wine
- went for an evening swim in the heated pool - pool temp: 34-38'; current air temp: 16'...brrr! Getting out of the pool was much less fun than jumping in! This campsite also has a swim-up bar - it is the most resort-like campground we've ever been to!

Tomorrow morning we will check the forecasted weather conditions for Sunday and see if we will be able to hike to...Mordor! Yup, seriously.

Aquarium

We went to the national aquarium today. It was cool. We are going back tomorrow :)

Hawke's Bay

Hawke's Bay is known as the "food bowl" of New Zealand, according to the local food and wine brochure. This region accounts for a significant percentage of New Zealand's apple exports. There are also over 70 wineries here, which accounts for over 80% of New Zealand's plantings of merlot, cabernet sauvignon and syrah. That being said, we found the 2015 riesling from the Forrest winery that we visited in Marlborough and purchased it to go with dinner instead of a random local wine. We even picked ourselves up a plastic wine glass, which is a worthwhile upgrade from our plastic mug! We will sample a local winery tomorrow or Friday :)