Beautiful New Zealand!

It’s been an amazing couple of weeks here in NZ. As you know, Clement’s parents (JP and Elva) arrived on January 25. We spent a couple of days here in Wellington showing them around before taking off on our road trip. We drove to Napier on our first night, which is a small town in the NZ wine region. It was a cute town with tons of art deco, as the entire place was rebuilt following a devastating earthquake in the 1930’s. We spent the night at a beautiful campground that is part of the “Top 10 Holiday Parks” chain that has locations all over NZ. From Napier, we continued up the east coast to Gisborne. Gisborne is the most eastern point in NZ and therefore sees the New Year and each day before any other place in the world. The town was quite dead, but we had a great time all the same. We left Gisborne to head to Rere Falls and Rere Rockslide which are 50km west of the town. It was one of the most beautiful drives we have ever done. Windy gravel roads through untouched farmland and green hills took us to this small area. Rere Rockslide is essentially a natural waterslide where the rocks have formed a huge hill. The constant flow of water over the rocks has smoothed them to the point where you can slide down on a boogie board or tube. It was raining really hard that day and we didn’t stop to buy a tube because we weren’t exactly sure what to expect, but when we got to the rockslide we quickly realized that we could have spent hours there had we been prepared. After stealing a child’s boogie board, Clem got to try the rockslide. Definitely a great time! After the rockslide we visited Rere Falls just down the road, where Clem and JP took advantage once again. We continued on to Ohope Beach and Whakatane where we spent a night and got to see the famous “Moko” the dolphin. This dolphin has been living in the Gisborne areas since 2006 and is famous for playing with everyone in the water. Everyone wants the chance to swim with Moko, but as he has been getting older his behavior has been getting more and more aggressive. When we were at the Info Site in Whakatane, everyone was informing us that Moko was in town and had been frequenting the ocean and river nearby. On our way out of town we noticed a crowd of cars and people stopped on the side of the road…it was Moko! He showed off by playing with a pylon while a couple of kids jumped in the river to play with him. We were happy we got to see him! After Whakatane, we drove a few hours away to Taupo- the skydiving capital of the world. This only meant one thing- someone had to do it! After a night at the campground enjoying the pool and sun, we got up and headed straight to “Taupo Tandem Skydiving” where Clem and JP took the plunge and jumped out of a plane at 12,000 feet. They had a great time, while Elva and I chose to stay on the ground and take pictures of the crazy fools. I haven’t completely counted it out yet, as there will many more opportunities to do so on the South Island. I’ll keep you posted! The adrenalin was pumping so we spent the rest of the day relaxing and preparing for our big hike the next morning.



Clement and I had been to Taupo and the Tongariro National Park on our way down the North Island from Auckland in November but the hike was cancelled due to poor weather. It has been something we wanted to do since arriving in NZ. Our shuttle picked us up at 0630 hrs to take us to the base of the mountain we were about to climb. The Tongariro Alpine Crossing is a 19.4km trek over a couple of active volcanoes. It was an absolutely spectacular day and definitely our best in NZ so far. We had our packed lunches and lots of TP because there is nothing on the track. We climbed for about 4 hours over various craters and got to see the Emerald Lakes, Red Crater and Blue Lake (once again, Kiwis are very literal!). With only 2 falls and a couple of blisters we arrived to the end point 6 hours and 45 minutes later. It was a great sense of accomplishment when we finished and are so happy that we went back to do it this time! After the hike, we headed back to Wellington and are here for the next few days before heading to the South Island to hike the Abel Tasman National Park!



We have the Rugby Sevens tournament this weekend in Wellington and the city has already started to erupt. Everyone dresses up (they take this very seriously!) and heads to the stadium for 2 days of partying…and maybe watching a match or two. Clement, myself, Terri and Alan are going as dodgeball players. The mullets and short shorts are ready and waiting for us to don them tomorrow morning. Stay tuned for the pictures….