Pizza and Parking Adventure

Tuesday night after a somewhat hectic day with the kids we went out for a night on the town. It was beautiful and sunny so we had a nice walk down the coastal walkway. One of our new friends suggested a restaurant called Arborio for dinner. It has great big windows that look out to the water where we enjoyed our pizza and beer. This was not ordinary pizza....

Pizza #1 seared beef, red onion, roast pumpkin, zucchini, marinated feta, and pesto. Even though the picture doesn't look like it, this pizza was very tasty!

Pizza #2 moroccan spiced lamb, tomato, eggplant, spinach, citrus creme fraiche. This pizza was a little weird with the citrus creme fraiche. It was like a sweet orange/lemon sauce on the top. We think it would have gone better on a cake.

After our delicious pizza we went back to retrieve Black Betty from the city parking garage. Those of you who know the downtown Denver parking garage story, you know where this is going. Evidently the only parking garage in downtown New Plymouth closes at 6pm! Boy were we in a pickle now! Both gates were chained and pad locked. After spending 30 minutes brainstorming on what to do (call the security to make sure we weren't going to get towed, leave Black Betty here for the night, try to break the chain, have Jilling come pick us up, walk home, etc), we found the one other person who's car was still there too. He said, "Have you tried the exit at the top of the garage?" What! There is an exit at the top! Needless to say Black Betty made it home safe and sound and she got to park for free that night. :)

After the parking garage adventure we had to make a stop at Tip Top (our new favorite ice cream) for an ice cream bar. We got Memphis Meltdown BIG NUTS! Just to make your mouth water a little bit here is what it has, a whopping serve of the smoothest caramel, rippled vanilla ice cream, covered in nuts and plunged deep into delicious thick milk chocolate. On the package it says "WARNING: This is an ice cream product, it is not to be used for directing aircrafts, or increasing fertility."

For those of you who need another laugh. This was Tuesday's headline for the local paper. The cat (pussy) was stuck in a palm tree for 4 days before they figured out how to get her out!

Rain then sun...

We used our day off on Saturday to venture down the beautiful coast. A storm was pounding the West side of New Zealand so we got to experience a NZ downpour! The clouds and rain gave the landscape a mystical appearance. Along the way we visited Cape Egmont. There we saw a lighthouse and made a video of the waves crashing on the shore.

Here is a 54 second video of the rough ocean waves.

After our rainy drive to the cape we had a chai tea and a tasty chicken pie from Sugar Juice Cafe in Opunake.

On Sunday the clouds cleared and the rain stopped. We went tramping (hiking) at Lucy's Gulch in Egmont National Park. All the National Parks in NZ are free (maybe the high taxes pay for them?). The trees were very dense and some of them were 100s of years old! We climbed up high enough to get a great view of the ocean.

In this picture New Plymouth is to the far right.

Mexican food in NZ

We decided to make our wonderful hosts some delicious Mexican food for dinner. So we ventured out to the grocery store and lo and behold New Zealand does not know what Mexican food is! We found "the Mexican food aisle", which consisted of an assortment of Mexican meals in a box, mild salsa, two kinds of tortillas, and refried beans. Plan A: Enchiladas. We couldn't find any enchilada sauce or anything remotely close. Plan B: My yummy green chili. No canned or fresh green chilies. Plan C: Fajitas. Beef fajitas are clearly more tasty, but we had to settle for chicken. Unfortunately chicken is "out of season" so says Jilling, so that was quite pricey. Luckily they have cheese and sour cream to add to the top. It will be a tasty meal anyway. Here is a funny thing.... When we were leaving the grocery store we saw a sign that said: Please do not take the trolleys from the car park. :)

New Plymouth

On Sunday (9-6) we went to Pukekura Park with Jilling, Jack, and Jill. This is one of the top parks in New Zealand. Inside of the park they have a small zoo with a handful of animals. The kids got to play at the park and look at the animals. In the afternoon Janine took us to the Mt. Egmont (also known as Mt. Taranaki) visitors center. Mount Egmont is a very large volcano that can be seen from their house. Scientists find this volcano especially interesting because it is due for a major eruption. In the visitors center they were saying an eruption would be bigger than Mt. St. Helens.

Yesterday (9-8) we climbed Partutu. This is a very old volcanic mountain a few hundred feet high. It was a very steep climb, but well worth the ocean and Mt. Egmont views.

After our hike we ventured down to the shore to walk along the beach. All of the sand is black because of the volcanic activity. We watched the sun start to set out over the water.

This is a photo of Partutu from the beach. (the tall pointy one)

Angela has been practicing her driving on the left side of the road with our manual van (Black Betty). You have to shift with your left hand and keep it on the left side of the road! It's a bit weird but we are managing just fine. She stalled the van and flooded the engine only once:)

New Plymouth is a very beautiful little town along the Western coast of New Zealand. It attracts surfers and skiers alike. It is quite hilly because it was formed from the volcano's past eruptions.

Black Betty got her name from the German couple that we bought her from. She has Betty Boop stickers all over her. Jack thinks it's fun to pick them off:)

This is a 10 day old lamb at a friends house. He feels like carpet!

362 KM from Auckland to New Plymouth in "Black Betty"

On Friday we spent the morning hiking around Auckland. We found a really pretty park that overlooked the city. After checking out of our luxury we met with Henrik and Sabrina "the German couple". They bought Black Betty for their travels and fixed her up really nice. She has 3 seats up front and a double bed in the back. We picked her up for only $3,250 NZD! We decided it was time to get out of the busy city of Auckland, so we headed South. As we began our adventure out of New Zealand's biggest city we realized that it was rush hour. It's tricky business navigating and driving out of a packed city on the left side of the road with a manual drive car. We managed to make it to one of the southern suburbs and found a Holiday RV park just as the sun was setting. We camped our first night in Black Betty.

Saturday we started our 362km trek in our new (to us) Mitsubishi L300 van to New Plymouth. For those of you who are not familiar with the metric system, 362 Kilometers is about 225 miles. We are staying with the Zwart family here for the next 4-5 weeks. The drive down the coast was amazingly beautiful. There were rolling hills with cows and sheep, lots of farms, steep mountains with many different types of trees (palm trees included), and little communities along the way. We got a great view of Mount Egmont (also referred to as Mount Taranaki) just outside of New Plymouth and it is still an active volcano.

Five reasons we know we are in a foreign country:

1. Everything is in the metric system.

2. We are driving on the left side of the road.

3. When we were paying for a coke at a gas station John asked me for a "dime" meaning a 10 cent piece and the lady behind the counter looked very confused.

4. We decided to figure out our gas mileage, it came to 9 kilometers/Liter. Hum.......is that good?

5. It's winter, we are wearing winter clothes, but everything is green and people are mowing their lawns.

We made it!

We left DIA at 5:47pm (MST) on Aug. 31, 2009. After two tasty airplane meals, free drinks, a few hours of choppy sleep, crossing the Equator, over 200 pages of vampire reading, 2 movies, crossing the International Date Line, watching the moon turn into an almost full moon, a few more hours of choppy sleep, and almost 16 hours of total air time we arrived in Auckland, New Zealand at 4:55am (New Zealand Standard Time) on Wednesday September 3, 2009. New Zealand is 18 hours ahead of MST. So the easiest way to figure out what time it is for us (if you live in MST) is to add a day then subtract 6 hours. For example, if it's 4pm (MST) on Tuesday, you add a day, so it's 4pm on Wednesday then subtract 6 hours. So it would be 10am NST on Wednesday. :)

We took a shuttle, the scenic way, from the airport to our hotel. Luckily they had a room available at 8am. THANKS DAD!!! Since we arrived so early in the morning we decided to stick it out and stay up all day so we can start adjusting to the time difference. Sitting down sounds like a recipe for sleepiness, so we tried to stay very busy in our zombie form. We had a very tasty lunch at an authentic New Zealand Wendy's, set up a bank account, found the library, visited The Sky Tower (the tallest tower on the Southern Hemisphere), went swimming on the roof (it was a little chilly), and ate at Mexicali (the best mexican restaurant in Auckland). Then we watched our first sunset

in the Southern Hemisphere.

Things we have learned so far:

1. Bathrooms are called Toilets.

2. Elevators are called Lifts.

3. When ordering coffee with cream you need to specify pouring cream not whipping cream and that it should be a little bit added not half of your drink!

4. Looking both ways before crossing the street is as important as ever.

5. Ordering lunch meat from the deli in grams is very tricky!

6. It is difficult trying to figure out how much fruit costs when it says NZ$ per kg.

Stay tuned for our upcoming adventures....buying a van, driving on the left side of the road, and navigating through New Zealand's biggest city :)

We booked our tickets!

One hot summer night we purchased our tickets for New Zealand. We depart August 31, 2009 at 5:47pm for our adventure. :)