Christmas miracles - part 1

For us this year we had two Christmas 'miracles'. The 2nd one was more impressive but i'll let Blaise tell that one.

I'll handle the 1st one.
We had been to Raglan earlier this year. We arrived at the end of the tourist season and we had left with a less than good impression of the locals. They all seemed cold and putting in the bare minimum of service. We thought it was in part due to being the end of tourist season and they were sick of people coming in but a small part thought that maybe Raglan was just "one of those places".

I would like to set the record straight and say now that Raglan is a wonderful place and i recommend you go there.

What happened to cause this change of opinion. Let me tell you...

It was December 25th. Blaise was on the never-ending quest to find wind. My Christmas plans involved knitting in the truck. It wasn't a glamorous Christmas but it was fine by us. Our initial lunch plans to get fish and chips was thwarted by everything in Raglan being closed. Fair enough it was Christmas day and we did have food so we headed back to the estuary to wait for wind and prepare our Christmas feast. Hard-boiled eggs, lunch meats, cherries, sprite and chips. As we sat looking at the water the British couple next to us (also waiting for wind) got a text saying "come to the town hall, they're feeding travelers". We had 2 hours at least for the outgoing tide so we packed back into the truck and headed into town.

We arrived at the town hall thinking " a plate of turkey would be nicer than hard-boiled eggs" but when we walked in we thought we might be in for something a little more grand. There were long tables laid out and decorated. Each plate had a small ornament or gingerbread cookies on it. As soon as we sat down people came around with juice, red and white wine and bubbly (and according to Blaise "not the cheap stuff"). They had 2 guitarists playing away and finally a gentleman stood up and welcomed us to the 1st annual Raglan Christmas dinner. He announced that for dinner we had a wonderful feast: a full spit lamb, mussels on the 1/2 shell, sushi, a roasted pig, a hangi, a full salmon. Our mouth's were watering and the two young German boys sitting next to me were in throes of rapture. They had been living in their car the last 2 months (a nissan sunny) and the hadn't a lot to spend on decent food. When we got in words could not describe the food laid out. On top of what he had announced there was salads, potatoes, breads, side dishes and an entire dessert table in one side of the room. Loaded with food we hurried back to our table to devour our feast while the servers who weren't serving started singing Christmas carols with the guitarists.

Just when i thought this can't get any better we heard "ho ho ho" and 2 Santas walked into the hall. We were right up by the main stage and on the stage there was a huge tree surrounded by what we thought were stage prezzies. Again we were wrong, the Santas got to work taking all those prezzies and handing one each to each and every person at the tables. I got a violet mist spray, poor Blaise got a pen and notepad. The two German boys got a box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates and a tape measure. A young man across from me got a bone necklace of two dolphins swimming...stunning. A very offended woman younger than me got wrinkle cream (i think she missed the point). The families were really cleaning up, the gifts kept piling up in front of the kiddies.

On our way out we asked the gentleman "what gives" (in more polite phrasing than that) and he said it his idea to get the people who were alone on the holidays a family dinner. Turns out Raglan has a poverty issue and a homeless issue. He wanted those people to have a true Christmas experience; then he grabbed all the seniors from the retirement home and figured he'd invited travelers from backpackers and the like to come as well as we were away from our families. He then got everyone in town to help, he told them he didn't want money, in fact he wouldn't accept money, he wanted donations of food, gifts and time. And boy did Raglan come through. We were blown away.

For the 2nd Christmas miracle you will have to get it from Blaise. It's a really good one!

Dolphins and Sharks

One nice thing about NZ is that we have different types of animals including dolphins. Here in Wellington I've actually had the privilege to see a pod of dolphins swimming in the harbor near Soames Island. We also had Moko who was a pretty famous wild dolphin who enjoyed swimming with people in the water.

Moko passed away earlier this year and when Blaise read that he mentioned that it would be cool to swim with dolphins. Now Blaise is not a swimmer, he can swim, very well in fact but hanging in the water is not his cup of tea. I on the other hand love being in the water and couldn't pass up this opportunity. A quick google search had brought up Tauranga as the place to go for swimming with wild dolphins so on December 23rd we had a date on a boat to go out to look for dolphins.

We arrived, grabbed a set of fins (we had our own masks and wetsuits) and scurried aboard. The boat headed out through the marina heading to the other side of the harbor to pick up the rest of our passengers. It was a large luxurious boat with lots of space and cabin area. The crew was made up of Stewart, the skipper, and 5 marine biologists. The goal was to get out of the harbor, find a pod and dive in. This boat had a high success rate, they found pods 90% of the time and swam with them 75% of the time. We had high hopes.

It was the first nice day in almost a week and the whole crew was looking forward to getting back out on the water. We left the harbor and almost as soon as we got out of the entrance we encountered a maternity pod off common dolphins (they are smaller dolphins, maybe 2/3 the size of a bottlenose dolphin). It was quite large almost 30 animals and lots of newborns and babies. They were freaking adorable. Skipper Stewart explained that the babies keep up with the pod in a clever way. They hang out just behind their mother's fin and the slipstream coming off of it pulls the baby along. Stewart encouraged us to whoot and cheer and clap as it tends to make them come along and stay close to the ship. He was right, they played in and around us for over 30 minutes.



Department of Conservation (DOC) forbids swimming with pods with babies so we would have to go out to find another pod. Finally the boat headed out to sea and we all felt really lucky to have seen dolphins so early. The crew was great, they gave us a nice continental breakfast and spent the morning bringing us hot drinks. All very knowledgeable and talkative including Shannon, a young Canadian marine biologist.

The hours passed and there was no dolphins. We saw a fish work up which was pretty neat. Imagine an inverted pyramid with the huge base on the surface and the tip down in the ocean. It is full of swim swimming frantically on the surface, it looks like the water is boiling. And of course there is a tonne of birds there feeding off the little fish. Skipper Stewart and crew kept heading towards them because they are a sign of something feeding off the fish school and often are dolphin pods. Sadly there was no dolphins. We continued to circle the waters but nothing :(
Blaise saw a hammerhead shark come to the surface and much to his delight it was confirmed by a couple of the marine biologists so he felt pretty stoked about that.

Finally after about 4 hours the crew apologized and headed for home. They wondered if the storm of the last 3 days had forced the pods farther out to sea and they hadn't worked back in yet. We were all pretty disappointed, especially after that awesome morning start. Well you can't force nature. We headed back into the harbor, were offered another go out at half price (which we might take up in the future) and headed off to find wind for Blaise.

postscript: later that afternoon we found out that a shark (not a hammerhead) had attacked a snorkeller in the water at one of the beaches in town. he fended it off with his knife and minimal injuries but they shut all the beaches down in the Tauranga area. I'm kind of wondering if the dolphins knew something we didn't.

Napier: Sun, Cherries, Sharks

Carly here, as its my part of the story seems necessary that I write it.

We came out of the Rumatakas and pulled into the beach next to the Bach that we had rented last year with my parents. Like many kiwi spots the "no camping" sign is often not strictly enforced. Better yet i had remembered that site having a public toilet so we pulled in in the dark, did a drive round and no loo. We drove up to another public toilet, used it and came back and set up the bed. Did we mention how much gear we had? we ended up chucking a lot of it into the front seat.

After a somewhat sleepless night (we were both jumpy from every sound) we awoke to a beautiful sunny day in Napier. we found the loo a few feet from the truck. ah night time. We were here so i could dive in the Napier Aquarium. Last year we had seen that you could go in during feed time but sickness and a lack of a log book/NAUI card had kayboshed it that time. This time i was ready, all my gear, my NAUI card and my logbook.

We showed up at the Aquarium waaaaay to early but i was told 12:30 on the phone. I was told we would suit up and enter the pool at 1:50 to check for buoyancy and then go in and feed at 2pm. Matt, the staff person, was a nice fellow. So nice that he lent me a weight belt and weights when i realized i had left my integrated weight system at home. I paced around the back in the staff only area. Backs of aquarium smell like zoos if they smelled of fish and seaweed.

Finally the time arrived, i had had my briefing earlier.
1)what to do if the manta ray gets a hold of your glove while eating from you (you let him pull it off, hide your naked hand and swim over and get it when he spits it out).
2)how to feed the shark (take the whole fish tail first and stab it into his mouth, you may have to do this a couple of times)
3)stay off the tunnel!!!! (it scratches easily from anything)

I popped in and followed Matt and the bucket across to the feeding area. There was quite a crowd including my favourite camera man.
We fed those fish. I was not keen to try feeding the 'pet ray' though it was impressive, take a deep breath, remove regulator, put a chunk of raw fish in your mouth, give the "up" signal and stay still while he swims in your face and takes it out of your mouth. The sharks also were full and wouldn't come over to me for the 'stab fish in your mouth'. I was undeterred, i threw chunks of fish everywhere and the bigger fish came and put on a show.

i'm the one with the red stripe.


please note the fish in Matt's mouth (he's the one on the right) and thats the pet ray about to come up and grab it.

Finally when the food was gone i headed around for a bit of a swim. Had to show off a little bit, the kids were fascinated by a diver in there so i proved how strong i was with a one-finger handstand.



i continued my swim about stopping to give a fan a treat.


the only downside to the swim was that at one point i had issues with bobbing up and down, the weight belt had shimmied around to the front, when i finally got it back on right i figured out why it had slipped. remember that handstand...not my weightbelt...one weight had slipped out. on the plus side it hit the floor not the expensive tunnel.

we ended the day by driving back down the road to find the girls who sold cherries last year. they were cheap and delicous and much to our delight they were there still so we bought another kilo and headed out to Tauranga where we had a date with a man and a boat...

Head North You Say? Part 2: Getting to Napier.

As it was raining quite heavily in Wellington, we decided to drive over the Rumatakas to the Wairapa (via the mountain pass from hell) in a vehicle that we didn't know, in winds upwards of 70kph. It all worked without a hitch and we found ourselves in the sun as the rain hadn't crossed the mountains yet.

We decided to hit up Castlepoint, a famous surfing spot that I'd been meaning to check out for a while now. Getting there was longer than expected (there's a misconception we have that 100km = 1 hour of traveling because in Canada that's very often the case. You're driving down 400 series highways upwards of 110kph which covers any traffic you might hit) Here, it's more likely that if you budget an hour for each 60 km you'll be closer to being right. Especially when you're in a 15 year old diesel that can only go up most hills at 70-80 kph.

The trip was worth it though.

(yes, this was for you Denyse)

It's a really beautiful spot. The small village around it has just enough of everything to be a nice destination for a summer weekend; The beach is long and mostly abandoned and there's a tidal flat that gets completely drained during low tide. There's actually a fairly strong trade in fishing charters, which has lead to another example of Kiwi ingenuity:

That boat's about 40 feet long, maybe bigger. The trailers are pulled by tractors with double and triple back wheels into the ocean so they can launch. Much like a system we saw for tour boats in Abel Tasman, but much, much bigger.

It was a great place to start our trip, and, luckily, didn't put us too much off course for our first major stop. Napier.

Head North You Say? Part 1: Transportation / Lodging

Wow. Time to dust off some cobwebs.

As many of you know, roadtrips are one thing that Carly and I both really enjoy. In the past, we've gone to Raglan, Hamilton, Foxton, Taupo and other exciting places. Heck, our honeymoon was one giant roadtrip! Each time, we became more autonomous, first staying at hotels, then camp sites, then, during our last trip, sleeping in our Legacy.

The legacy was a terrible experience, but the idea of being completely self-contained stuck. Combine this with an unhealthy obsession with the concept of an off-road capable mini van that I've had since we first came to New Zealand on our honeymoon and you get this:

It's a 1996 Mitsubishi Delica. Essentially, Mitsubishi has taken their off-road offering, the Pajero and slapped an L300 body on top of it. I've been looking for one basically since we got here, and, two weeks before we were scheduled to go, this showed up on trademe. I bought it pretty much outright, and, after an inspection, knew well the issues it had.

After picking it up, I drove it over to O's to get some basic work done on it to make it worthy of our trip. New CV boots and new front shock absorbers went on. The next day, (the day before we were scheduled to leave) back at home I did the oil, filter and air filter. I went to start the engine to drive the truck off the ramps. No go. Nothing. The dash lights would light up but no turnover of the engine. Long story short, two days, a car alarm specialist and an auto-electrician (both mobile btw, as it would have been impossible to tow the truck out of our driveway) we were ready to go.

We decided to keep the middle seat and build a wooden platform for the back. The plan was to use the middle seat, spun backwards (it does that :) ) and the platform for the inflatable mattress, storing everything underneath. It mostly worked.

The problem is that Carly and I are both planning on making the most of this vacation by going diving and kiting respectively. This means we have a LOT of gear. Add camping gear, clothing, chilly-bin and cooking supplies and we very quickly realized we'd overpacked. We've since trimmed down and stowed most of the cruft we are never going to use on the trip, but we still have it in the car, which makes life a bit challenging when setting up for the night. The good news is we're taking copious notes of what's used, what's not, what worked and improvements we can make for next time.

But, at least we were on the road!

Next up, Napier.