Taupo

The following day we got up fairly early and took Lily and Lucas to the swimming (hot) pool.  

They also had a rock climbing wall.

Notice the box in the top middle of the picture?  Let me zoom in on that for you.

After that, Viv, Roberto, Annita and I played a round of golf, which I played even worse than usual.  Worse than my golf game was the fact that I didn't wear a hat or sunscreen.  You might notice that I have a bit more "color" than usual in these later pictures, but that's only because I was successfully working on my sunburn.

We made an early night of it and were up early the next morning.  My plan was to bow out of the second day of golf to tour downtown Taupo to look for Evolve charms for the bracelet Amy and I purchased for Annita for Christmas.  I had offered to not play and allow Annita to go play with Ian and Roberto.  Unfortunately, (or, perhaps, fortunately) Annita decided that it was a family vacation and if I wasn't going to play, neither was she.  In the back of my mind, I was a bit relieved.  I would hate to pick out some charms that she hated!!  On the other hand, if she helped me pick it out, that kind of blows the whole "surprise" thing.

She did love the charms, but they didn't fit on the Pandora bracelet we bought.  That meant we had to buy a new bracelet....LOL

The lady at the jewelry store was absolutely lovely and we will continue to order our charms from that store.  Annita has a catalog and will circle the charms she likes so that I can purchase them as needed for special occasions; Valentines, birthdays, the start of National Potato Week, or "James Has Screwed Up and Needs to Buy His Wife a Gift Day" (which could happen 7 days a week).

We went back to Robert and Viv's for the small birthday party for Annita's father.  The big surprise about that was the fact that I drove home from downtown Taupo.  Annita and Kerrie suggested that I walk the four or so blocks back to get the car while they waited at the pie shop.  That was an interesting drive back to them by myself.  Then, they didn't let me park the car, they just piled in when I arrived and gave me directions.  I did make it back without hitting any vehicles, or pedestrians!!  There were a couple of Robert and Viv's friends that came by that night, but most were coming by on Saturday for the lake cruise.  We ate supper and had drinks until LATE into the night.  

We spent a couple of days in Wellington, including a great supper with family and friends on Wednesday night.  Unfortunately, we didn't take the camera so the night can't be displayed here!!!

The next post will show some of the sights of the drive back to Taupo.

The Favorite Son in Law!!!

For those unaware, Ian and I have a bit of a competition about who the "favorite son in law" is.  I had a brilliant idea on the way to the airport and picked up a couple of shirts and some highlighter pens.  Amy colored the shirts and I stuffed them into my carry on bag.  It was extremely difficult to not say anything the first two days here, but we arrived in Taupo and Ian was saying how he was #1.

I went down and grabbed the two small Christmas gift bags and Annita and I herded everyone into the living room.  I made a bit of a presentation out of it, of course.  I said, "Viv, you had left these presents with us in Kansas and I brought them over here for you.  I haven't even looked in the presents so I have no idea what's in them.". I'm pretty sure no one believed me.

We had Ian open his first.  Oddly enough, his was in pink.

Mine looked much better in blue!!

We retired to the deck and drinks, followed later by a round of Texas Hold 'Em, which I dominated!!!

Next post, Taupo!

It Was Close.....

I'm blamimg my coworkers for the horrible start to our vacation.  They kept telling me it was going to storm the day we leave and we'd end up snowed in.  It did start snowing before we left and it delayed us leaving Garden City by an hour.  That shortened our hour and a half layover in Dallas by an hour.  We almost had our tickets sold to standby passengers while we were trying to get to the right concourse!!!

We did finally make it, but it was close.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful.  We arrived in Auckland and took the bus down to the wharf so we could take the ferry to Waiheke island.

This is the ferry that took us over.  Not the big cruise ship looking thing, the one I took the picture from.

Waiheke is a lot like the rest of New Zealand.  Desolate and extremely un-scenic.  For example, take a look at this hideous view Lee and Ian have to look at EVERY SINGLE DAY!!!

Can you believe that?  You can't even see a SINGLE tumbleweed in that view!!!  How boring is that?

This was taken halfway down to the beach.  Notice the Crawford Cove sign in the background?  Pretty cool, huh?

Next post, The Favorite Son-In-Law

Catching Up 3

Part 3 of the Catching Up series......

I thought that my wife was very open minded when we started going to New Zealand.  She would allow me to do pretty much anything I wanted.  I thought that was pretty awesome until she started commenting to her family that "the life insurance is paid up."  I'm beginning to think she has a death wish.....FOR ME!!!!

On our honeymoon, I did my first bungy.  This was at Gravity Canyon and is a 280 foot bungy.

At this point, I had the "adrenaline bug."

We went to Taupo where her dad and step-mother live and we rode on the Huka Falls Jet Boat.  This video isn't us, but it gives you an idea of what it's like.

We went back several years later and I did the bungy there in Taupo.  This one was only about 150 feet.  You can hear the guys talking to me at the beginning of the video.  They asked me if it's OK if I "touch" the water.  I tell them that's fine and then they reassure me by saying that it's a new rope and it might "stretch a bit."

As you might have noticed, I went in to the water up to my nipples.

Annita, Roberto (her brother) and I made a trip to Rotorua and raced down the three luge tracks.  We didn't video tape our exploits, but I did find some people that did, so you can see what it was like.  This is the Advanced track, the hardest of the three, but you can see where you actually "get air" on the way down.  It's a blast!!!

Here's the *big* bungy that I want to do.  It's called the "Nevi Bungy" and it's a 450 foot bungy.  That's 8.5 seconds of screaming your lungs out free-fall.  What sucks about that is that Amy will get to do this before me!!!!  LOL

Here's what it looks like.

Catching Up 2

This is another "catch up" post from our trip to New Zealand in April of 2004.  I did a quick post back then with some pictures and I thought I'd re-work for the blog.

On our way to Denver we ran into a blizzard.

When we arrived in LA we took the subway to Universal Studios! 

While there we did the studio tour, which I videotaped. 

We also went to the Waterworld Stunt Show.

Oddly enough, I videotaped that also......

We did the Back to the Future ride and also did the Jurassic Park ride. The Jurassic park ride had a bunch of mechanical dinosaurs that was just awesome! There were brontosauruses (brontosauri?) and even a couple of baby raptors fighting over a popcorn box.

We flew out to New Zealand for the wedding that night. We arrived in Auckland at 6 or so in the morning and hit the town. We went down by the sparkplug which you can now jump from. It costs $50 to go to the top (630 feet) and for $195 you can jump off the top. You're hooked to a cable so it's a controlled drop and there are two guide cables that keep you from bouncing off the side of the building but I thought $195 for 16 seconds was a bit much.

The wedding was the following day. The groom and some buddies and I went out on the harbor and went fishing again.

The next day Annita and I went to Rotorua, the geothermal area of the north island. On the way we stopped in Matamata which is where The Shire was filmed for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The contracts for the film sites stated that six months after filming was complete the sets were to be destroyed. When the time came it was pouring down rain and they couldn't get into the sheep paddock to get them destroyed. The owners of the fields asked New Line Cinema if they could keep them and give guided tours. New Line agreed but there were many stipulations. They couldn't be restored, the guides and workers could not dress like hobbits (visitors could), and lots of other things. They're working on seeing if they can restore the hobbit holes and actually expand them. You'll notice in the films that they show hobbits opening the doors and starting to step in but then the scene cuts to somewhere else. That's because the holes were only 2 or 3 feet deep on the inside. They built the houses out of the cheapest materials and expected them to last 6 months. It's now 7 year later and they're still standing. The roof caved in on Bilbo's house and they were given the OK to fix it and actually expand it. You can step inside of it (I have a picture of that later). It's pretty interesting history. The site is a 30 minute drive from town where you buy the tickets and have a chance to buy merchandise.

 I had to make a purchase there.

The guide took us up on a hill overlooking the site. The lake is visible from there. 

One of the first things you do walking up to the Shire is to walk under a branch. When Gandalf rides into town and Frodo jumps on with him, fireworks are mentioned and they shoot out of the wagon at that point. That branch is visible in the shot. 

The guide took us around and showed us various places where things were located in the movie. He stood under the party tree and announced that this was the spot that Bilbo was standing on when he put on the ring and disappeared.

On the climb up the hill you can see Sam's house.

We then made our way up to Bilbo's house.

I'm sitting in the window that Gandalf drug Sam through.

We walked back down the hill and I took a couple more pictures of the Shire.

 In all we spent about 2-1/2 hours out in this pasture. I loved it, but Nita wasn't all that impressed with it.

The site has been completely rebuilt for the Hobbit trilogy.  It has an Inn and a bar!!!

We made our way onto Rotorua and went to the geothermal area. We stopped here (good luck pronouncing that!!!).

There was a lot of steaming ponds there, as well as some geysers and hot pools.

The sulfur smell was in the air and left it's mark on the landscape.

We then drove back to Auckland and flew to Fiji.

Our room was right on the beach.

We played golf at a REALLY nice course.

The sunsets there are unbelievable.

The hot little chick on the beach wasn't bad either!!!!

We went snorkeling on the reef and took some pictures with an underwater camera.

After snorkeling, we went for a walk and I was able to get a picture of a crab (notice the size of the footprints beside the crab).

On the way back into town we drove by an Indian temple that is garishly painted.