New Zealand - North Island

Kia Ora!!!

We've survived yet another horrible flight hour and made it to Auckland.  The whole process was fairly quick and we picked up our awesome rental van after Luke completed a brief safety video. Apparently they're concerned with renting vehicles to people who will be driving on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road. I can't imagine why....

Luke did a great job of getting us where we needed to be safely. Just before leaving Rarotonga, we finally clued into the fact that we still hadn't crossed the date line. This meant two things...

1) All of our reservations were made a day early and we had one less day in Auckland

2) Our half marathon was scheduled for 7am the morning of  our arrival in Auckland.

We didn't make the half marathon. We went to bed instead. We did however find a back up race in Christchurch in a few weeks, so at least our training won't go to waste.

Our Airbnb is in Ponsonby, a super cute suburb of Auckland with old charm homes that remind me of Sacramento.  We were all feeling pretty rundown thanks to the flight time and napped or vegged. We rallied for a Sunday roast dinner at a pub a quick drive away.

The next day after our runs and naptime we took the boys to get some snazzy new haircuts and then to the Auckland zoo. They loved seeing all of the animals. Grace had done a tour of the city that morning, but we really weren't feeling up to much.

  The next day we stocked up on supplies and headed down to Turangi. Everyone made NZ sound ridiculously expensive, but it's no worse than home and we found groceries to be more affordable here actually. Turangi is located on the south side of lake Taupo, which is a massive crater lake in the center of the North Island. We are staying in "The Trout House", named for the renowned fishing in the area. The house is massive and features an espresso machine and wood burning pizza oven off of the deck.

We were quite lazy our first couple of days here. We stocked up on groceries and set out a cooking schedule with a nightly movie. We walked into the small town to explore things and got some runs in. I think we were just happy to get settled into a new place. The weather here is perfect. It's nice and hot in the midday, but cools down quickly at night. We've had to put the kids in full pjs again.

We also bought a house after we arrived in Turangi, at home, in Brighton. Then we didn't....
It was a house we had looked at while we were home briefly. An old one, built in 1867 (same age as Canada) that needed some TLC. After having put an offer on it and having the seller refuse to meet us in price, we sat on it for a few weeks and re-offered. They accepted and we were super excited to have a place to live when we come back. We've also been toying around with where and when we want to end our trip as well as what happens between Asia and the end. Having the house with a closing date in the bag definitely provided some guidance on that. Unfortunately a couple days after our accepted offer, we woke up to our phones exploding with texts from our realtor. Apparently the home inspection had gone very poorly and the home had a TON of major issues and structural issues. In the end we rescinded our offer. I guess we'll pick up where we left off in our search when we get home. The one good thing that came from the house fiasco is that we now have a plan for the rest of our journey! After Vietnam we will head to Cambodia for a couple of weeks, then we will take one last long haul flight with our "lap children" aka free for the boys to Mauritius and spend a solid month there. From there we will fly out to London, England for a 2 night in transit before settling into the south of Spain (because we know we love it there) for 3 weeks and our final week in Lisbon, Portugal. We will be home June 20th and may take a week or two to travel in Canada or the US. It definitely feels good to have all of that squared away and we are super excited for what lies ahead. For now, we will get back to enjoying our time here in NZ.

Our first day trip was out to the Tongariro National Park to tackle Taranaki falls. It was loop track about 6km that took you down to the falls, up and back out. We brought the boys with us. They walked most of the route to the falls, but had to be carried out half asleep. They did very well. The falls are interesting because the falls are formed by an ancient lava field.

The following day we decided to drive to Taupo for breakfast and to check out the local market. Breakfast was delicious, but expensive! Actually eating out here in general is expensive, but groceries are affordable. Maybe that's why everyone finds NZ so pricy, Two eggs benny, no potatoes, no fruit, no sides of any kind sets you back 20$! Unfortunately the market was a bust. There were quite a few food stands, but we had already eaten and a few crafs stands. We were hoping for produce and other pre-made market delicacies to take home. All of this cut into nap time, so the boys started to lose it and we drove back to Turangi. The drive along the lake is beautiful and there was a relay race going on that day from Turangi to Taupo....crazy people! haha

We finally tested out our pizza oven on Mack's night to cook. He made 5 different pizzas and they all turned out delicious. Luke is now resolved to the fact that we will be purchasing an outdoor wood fire pizza oven for our next house.

Sunday evening we finally managed to head 5 minutes up the road and try out the Tonaaku hot springs. The springs are fed into actual pools instead of sitting in a natural spring. The facility had private pools, but we opted for the public one which also had a kiddy pool. The boys absolutely loved being able to wade through the springs solo and Archie loved the fact that the water was warm.

The following week was a busy one. Monday we decided to head back up Taupo way and check out the Huka falls. There wasn't much of a hike involved, but we were ok with that. The falls were nothing spectacular, but there was a kayaker who descended them while we were there. That spiced things up a bit for us. Before heading back to Turangi, the boys convinced grandma we needed ice cream (their new favorite word).

Tuesday was the main event, the Tongariro Crossing. This was my primary interest when booking our stay around Taupo and it did not disappoint! The crossing is a dramatic and volcanic landscape that was used as Mordor in Lord of the Rings. It's a 19.4km trek from one end to the other and took us about 8 hours to complete. It is definitely not for the faint of heart and as Mack learned, requires mucho water. In spite of the challenge, no one complained and everyone managed to survive. The views were spectacular!!!

We were happy to come home to grandma's homemade macaroni and cheese. It made the entire day! We will be sore tomorrow!

Wednesday I had booked all of us but Isa, who was going to watch the boys, in to go for a morning sailing tour of Lake Taupo. I had really been looking forward to getting out onto the water, but tragedy struck in the middle of the night when Vander woke up and threw up all over our bed. In the end we figured it was best if Archie took my place on the boat, so I stayed home with Isa and V. Poor kiddo was dead to the world. I just kept him hydrated and Isa and I binge watched a Project Runway season. Luke and the crew had a great time on the boat. They sailed out to a Maori carving in the lake and enjoyed lunch in Taupo before coming home. V was recovered by the next day and thankfully there were no more vomiting episodes from anyone.

Our last day in Turangi we drove up to the famed Hobbiton movie set. Mack was super excited about this one. We got there a little late and missed our scheduled tour because Google maps is a liar. It wasn't insane busy, so we were booked into another departure easily. The tour was good. I like the movies, but am not an avid fan. It was still really cool to see the shire all set up. They gave us information about the filming process and the creation of the site. Peter Jackson is definitely a princess. He had an entire frog habitat moved because the croaking interrupted his creative process. My favorite part was when we got to have a free pint at the Green Dragon and dress in hobbit gear.

On the way home we stopped off in Rotorua for dinner at an over priced pedestrian street area. Dining out in NZ has not been a great experience I'm afraid.

Tomorrow we all start our journey to the south island. It's amazing how fast time is going.