Cassowary

After the encounter with the Rainbow Lorikeet, we turned around on the elevated platform and saw this Cassowary watching us with curiosity from below:

Did this guy sneak out of Jurassic Park or something? With the beady eyes, pointed beak and peaked dome on the top of his head, he looks sneaky and dangerous. And they can be if provoked (although they are typically shy birds). If the Cassowary feels threatened they can attack with their huge claws and inflict major damage. Check out these:

The Cassowary is native to the rainforests of Northeast Australia and Papa New Guinea. It is one of the largest birds in the world alongside the Emu and Ostrich. They are known as the ‘rainforest gardeners’ as they are essential to the rainforest ecosystem by spreading plant seeds.

As they are vital to the rainforest, the Australians have signs everywhere warning you to be on the lookout for the Cassowary. Apparently they get hit by cars often while trying to cross the road.

Day 1 - Getting to Know the Locals

First off we ventured out to explore some of the beaches north of Cairns. Visitors have plenty of options as every couple of kilometers off the main road there is another beautiful beach. Palm Cove stood out as the most memorable with palm trees lining the scenic beach. Heading farther north the most exciting stop of the day was The Rainforest Habitat Wildlife Sanctuary outside of Port Douglas. The sanctuary was similar to a zoo, but much more interactive. Best way to describe our experience here is through photos:

The Wallabies were happy to take food out of your hand. The little guys seem as if they could be pets, they show some personality and like human interaction (at least when you have food for them!). And when not looking for food, they would lounge around in the shade. Doesn’t sound too much different than a cat or dog.

There were some huge crocodiles.  We didn’t get interactive with them.

The emu were somewhat persistent and weren’t afraid to come up to you looking for food. We opted not to feed this one, and that was a good decision. We found the emu later on stalking a kid with a bag of food.

Me and a new friend, the Rainbow Lorikeet. This bird was pretty smart. His first target was Dana and he would fly up in the air and see if Dana would offer up a landing spot. After a couple of failed attempts as Dana ducked and dived to avoid him, he refocused his eyes on my shoulder. As this was unexpected, that brought out all sorts of emotions out of me. Surprise, apprehension, excitement to name a few. Dana clicked away and chronicled the event well, so I’ll post a link to those pictures as well as you might get a laugh out of them.

This kangaroo was throwing away syringes when we walked up. Is this the Barry Bonds of kangaroos? His chest and arm muscles were pretty intimidating compared to the other ‘roos.

Sneaky Emu took a treat when the zookeeper wasn’t looking. At least those two pelicans waited until they got fed.

Koala

For additional photos of the animals: https://picasaweb.google.com/114612877246919085926/RainforestWildlifeHabitat#

For additional photos of my close encounter with the Rainbow Lorikeet:  https://picasaweb.google.com/114612877246919085926/RainbowLorikeet#

I am leaving out one other memorable animal from of our visit to the Sanctuary. This animal is native to Australia and is worthy of its own post. Will follow up with that one next.

Reef & Rainforest

If you ever have looked at a satellite view of Australia, you’ve probably noticed that there is very little green that shows up throughout the country, and lots of reds and browns. We opted for the green sliver in the northeast corner for our first trip to Australia. Turns out that Australia and New Zealand are pretty far apart. Our flight into Cairns was a five hours and there was a three hour time difference. Queensland is known for the Great Barrier Reef as well as remote rainforests. Cairns is the commercial hub and isn’t much more than a conglomeration of hotels and resorts among touristy shops placed on a bay with an attractive looking boardwalk.

We couldn’t have asked for better weather. Sun was out each day and the high temperatures were in the mid 80’s without much humidity. We went during the right part of the year, as during their summer it gets very humid with huge rainfall totals. We had four days to explore the area with some fantastic experiences to share. I will break the trip into a few different posts over the next couple of days.

Australia Here We Come

Slow week for the blog. Minimal traveling and picture taking on our parts. However we have an exciting next few days coming up. We're headed to Australia for the first time. Going to go visit the Great Barrier Reef in Cairns (pronounced 'cans' or I've been told it's supposed to rhyme with 'hands'. Either way, just forget the r). It's in Queensland in the northeast corner of Australia, with rainforests, sunny beaches and of course the reef. We are happy to trade in the early spring weather in Auckland (maybe mid 60's for a high) for the suntan lotion (low to mid 80's in Cairns).


Shout out to our first visitor to have booked travel to New Zealand. Matt Reinaker (college friend of mine if you don't know him) and his girlfriend Lauren are going to be visiting in late February. Dana and I will be hiking the Milford Track with them during their visit. Pretty excited already as it's known as one of most beautiful hiking tracks in the world.


Here's a link to a video on the track. http://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/tracks-and-walks/fiordland/fiordland/milford-track/features/video-of-the-milford-track/


Check back next week for some pictures of Cairns.

Muriwai Beach

Muriwai is another beautiful black sand beach in western Auckland. What makes this one unique is the Gannet colony, one of only three in New Zealand. These birds are graceful flyers and are mesmerizing to watch glide around. Muriwai is home to the adult birds, who return every Spring to mate with their "life partner". In November / December they hatch a lone egg per pair. In Feb-March the chicks start a journey to Australia, traveling over 2,000 KM! After 2-6 years, the Gannets in Australia will travel back across the Tasman Sea to NZ, never making the journey to Oz again. 

More photographs at: https://picasaweb.google.com/114612877246919085926/MurawaiBeach#

U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A

The USA Eagles won a hard fought battle against Russia to improve to 1-1 on the tournament. The performance was pretty solid all around and USA appeared to be in control for most of the match. This win isn’t exactly going to boost USA to the top of the world rankings. Russia is playing in their first world cup and is ranked last. The big win boosts USA’s all time record to 3-17. But a win is a win, and hopefully they can grab another before the end of the tournament. Their next game is against Australia on Friday, then Italy September 27th. The Aussies are one of the top teams in the world and will be a huge favorite against USA. Italy is ranked in the middle of the pack for the world cup, and is likely USA’s best chance to pull off an upset.

 There was no upset in Hamilton last night as New Zealand took on Japan. We got to attend the sold out match of 30,000, and caught plenty of scoring activity. Pretty much all of the scoring came from New Zealand with the game in little doubt from the start. Final score 83-7. New Zealand didn’t even have their top players on the field, as they claimed there were a few injuries from the first game. Dana spotted a handful of All Blacks sitting 5 rows behind us at halftime. She snapped a photo of Richie McCaw. He’s the captain and is coming up on his 100th match for New Zealand. That could be Sir Richie McCaw in not too long, the speculation is that he’ll get knighted if the All Blacks in the tournament. Yes…..rugby is big here.

The highlight of the game was Japan’s lone score that came in the second half with the outcome clearly decided. The All Blacks were passing the ball around confidently and moving steadily down the field, when a Japanese player cleanly picked off one of their passes and took it all the way back for a try (try is the name for a score). It looked like the equivalent of an interception turned into touchdown in football. The stadium erupted in the loudest cheers of the night. Not only were the Japan fans going bonkers celebrating that they scored on the mighty All Blacks, but the New Zealand fans were going equally as crazy. The only people in the entire stadium not cheering were the All Black stars sitting behind us.

This picture from Sports Illustrated pretty much sums up the passion New Zealand has for the Rugby World Cup. Even the sheeps have their favorites....

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/multimedia/photo_gallery/1109/did-you-see-that-0916/content.3.html

The World Is Watching

Rugby World Cup. That’s all you hear about in New Zealand at the moment. It has been an eventful first few days for the country. Rugby is virtually unheard of in the US, but throughout the rest of the world, it’s a big deal. Apparently the Rugby World Cup is the fourth largest sporting event in the world behind the Soccer World Cup, Olympics, and the Tour de France. The sport dates back the 19^th century in England and not surprisingly many of the nations competing are associated with the British Commonwealth or have roots as a British colony.

We attended the opening day festivities on the Auckland waterfront that drew 100,000 people from all over the world. Most of the crowd was wearing black in support of their New Zealand team, however there were plenty of supporters of Australia, South Africa, England, Tonga, Samoa and even a few rooting for USA. On the waterfront there were bands playing, Maori warriors navigating their waka (large canoe type boat) through the harbor, and fireworks. We took in some of the action on the waterfront and retreated back to the apartment to watch the opening ceremonies and game. Neither disappointed, the opening ceremonies were in the league of what is put on at the Olympics and the New Zealand All Blacks beat up on Tonga in the opening match.

We then headed to New Plymouth to take in USA’s first match against Ireland. New Plymouth didn’t have many attractions outside of Mt. Taranaki and some black sand beaches that pop up all over the west coast.

The game ended up being the highlight of our trip to New Plymouth, although the only objection I have is that USA fell a little short on the scoreboard.  Ireland is ranked in the top 5 in the world for rugby and had the fan base to back it up. The stadium and the town were overrun by those leprechauns as they must have outnumbered USA supporters by at least 9 to 1. The stadium wasn’t all that large, it probably fit around 20,000 fans, however the atmosphere was amazing. Even in limited numbers, the USA fans made their presence felt, and of course the Irish that had packed the town’s three bars before the game made plenty of noise.

Even though I still have trouble understanding how the game works, it was apparent that the USA doesn't have the same skill level as the Irish. Our guys didn’t appear to be very good at the scrum or at gaining yardage by throwing the ball. However we did have a pretty impressive defense as our guys laid a couple of NFL style hits that left the Irish dazed. We kept it close in the first half, and trailed only 3-0 with 30 seconds left in the half. The second half belonged to the Irish, and the game ended up 22-10.

The cold war game is up next on Thursday. Russia is one of the lowest ranked teams in the tournament, so this is USA’s best chance to record a W. We’re heading to the New Zealand vs Japan game on Friday. We are pumped up to catch more All Blacks action live and soak in the local excitement.

Bay of Plenty

The Bay of Plenty off the Pacific Ocean was named by Captain James Cook for the Maori’s wildly successful farming in the area. Cook was also famous for leading the first European contact with Hawaii and Australia. We made a stop in Tauranga and Mount Maunganui along the Bay of Plenty on our way back to Auckland from Rotorua. Tauranga is one of the fastest growing cities in New Zealand and Mount Maunganui is an adjacent beach town with a volcanic cone providing a great view of the white sand beach. We spent a half day hiking up Mount Maunganui and enjoying the beach town atmosphere. We both agree that we’ll need a return trip to take in more of the beautiful surroundings when the weather warms up.

Additional photos here:

https://picasaweb.google.com/114612877246919085926/BayOfPlenty#

1,000 Page Views - Thank You Readers

We recently passed 1,000 page views. Didn't anticipate all of you checking in, so thanks for reading. We promise to keep on posting as long as you keep on reading.

Big day today in New Zealand. It's the opening of the Rugby World Cup and Auckland is the center of all the festivities. There will be musical performances, fireworks, hakas and much more going on at the city's waterfront district. Tonight will also be the opening ceremonies and the first game between New Zealand and Tonga. The kiwis are fired up for this, with everything from choirs singing about the All Blacks (NZ's team) to flash mob hakas (Maori warrior dance that the All Blacks do before each game). Check out the link to a recent flash mob haka:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puXad30DSfg

We are heading to New Plymouth this weekend and will catch the USA vs Ireland game on Sunday. Ireland is one of the top ranked teams in the tournament and USA isn't very strong. The US will also be playing Australia (ranked 2nd in world), Italy (decent), and Russia (not very good). Sounds like the best chance for a USA will be in the rematch of the cold war.

Rotorua II

We visited two thermal areas on our trip to Rotorua. First was part of the Te Puia village that we covered in the last post. The highlight here was the Prince of Wales Feather Geyser (apparently it looks like the feather on the Prince of Wales coat of arms. Couple of photos (take note of the picture of Dana, she has a huge smile on her face because she's sitting on a 'natural' seat warmer):

Wai-o-Tapu Thermal Wonderland bills itself as the New Zealand’s most colorful thermal park. True to its word, there are plenty of bright reds, neon green, yellows to see in the park. Walking around the park there is ominous steam coming from the earth all over the place and plenty of craters with boiling water. No thermal wonderland would be complete without a geyser and mud pool, and Wai-o-Tapu had these as well. The pictures are worth a thousand words, so I’ll let them tell the story.

Check out additional photos for Wai-o-Tapu and Te Puia:

https://picasaweb.google.com/114612877246919085926/WaiOTapuThermal#

https://picasaweb.google.com/114612877246919085926/TePuiaThermal#

RotoVegas

Rotorua has somehow acquired the nickname Rotovegas (self given maybe?). However Rotorua is nothing like Las Vegas. There are no huge casinos, no flashy neon lights, and there is a lingering smell of sulphur. While that last sentence may not exactly be a draw for you to visit Rotorua, don’t let that fool you…..this place is awesome. It’s the center of Maori culture, has some amazing thermal sites, a beautiful lake, geothermal spas and it’s all located within the crater of a volcano. To be clear, that volcano erupted 140,000 years and was a monster: 300 times the size of the most recent Mount St Helens eruption. So given that it was such a huge volcano and was formed quite a while ago, you can fit a pretty decent sized city in the crater. From a view of a few stories up, you can see the defined ridge line of volcano as well.

We spent Friday and Saturday in Rotorua, but there were enough interesting activities that we could have been entertained for a longer stay. First stop was Te Puia (thank you Jerry McGaghey for the recommendation), a Maori village showcasing their cultural performances/concert, wood crafting, weaving, and general history. The name of this individual village is te whakarewarewatangaoteopetauaawahiao. Anyone want to give a shot at pronouncing that? Me neither, here is a little instruction from a local: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLdtEq5UERw. The village is surrounded by thermal activity which we will tackle in the next post. The cultural performance was a highlight with an authentic welcoming ceremony inside a Maori meeting house (wharenui). Their performance ranged from the haka (warrior dance performed before battles to intimidate the opponent) to an old Maori love song that chronicled the love between a chief’s daughter and an illegitimate warrior. Te Puia also has a kiwi (the bird) viewing area. First time we’ve had the opportunity to see a live kiwi. They are an odd bird, kind of round with thickly set feathers that look more like fur and a protruding beak. Plus they cant fly and only come out at night.

The Rotorua museum also didn’t disappoint. Located in a beautiful reconstructed bath house, they were celebrating the opening of an entire new wing this weekend. Of course they had a large section dedicated to the Maori, history on Rotorua as a spa destination, and the impact of the 1886 volcanic eruption in the area. The Rotovegas nickname was explained here as it’s from Rotorua’s many concerts and festivals that are held in the city and the handful of entertainers that grew up there. Still not buying into the comparison, but as we’ve found out, New Zealand towns love to play up whatever significance they have. For example….

We drove through Matamata, which is effectionally knows as Hobbiton. As in the Lord of the Rings Hobbits, or if you’ve seen the movie, the home of the Shire. We stopped and lingered around the small town. Enjoyed the Gollum statue in the middle of town, and decided the $58 two hour tour of the Shire was a little rich for us. Moving on….

We also stopped in the Kiwifruit capital of the WORLD! Yes, we were there, and have the pictures to prove it. Te Puke (rhymes with cookie) is where you go to get your kiwifruit. The rich volcanic soil and heavy rainfall have made this little town the perfect place to grow my favorite superfruit. More vitamin c than an orange, loads of fiber, potassium and antioxidants. This is truly a superfruit, and they taste really good.

Check back tomorrow for a post about the Wai-o-Tapu, The Thermal Wonderland and the thermal activity at Te Puia.

Check out additional photographs here: https://picasaweb.google.com/114612877246919085926/TePuiaCultural#

Not much posting recently. Dana has been working a bit more so we haven’t had a ton of opportunity to travel. That’s going to change this weekend as we’re heading to Rotorua tomorrow for a three day weekend. Rotorua is known for their thermal hot springs and is the center of Maori culture. So check in a few days and we’ll have another adventure documented.


 To celebrate my birthday this week we ventured out to a Mexican restaurant to see if we could satisfy my craving for Chipotle. We got some recommendations and did our Trip Advisor research. The best burrito in New Zealand would pass as acceptable in the States, but nothing to get excited about. That and it was ridiculously expensive. ($40 NZ for two takeout burritos, chips and drinks!) Those of you thinking about visiting, get ready for some sushi and Asian style foods (Japanese, Thai, Korean) as we’ve found that these are typically very good and affordable.

In other news, apparently we have a famous Kiwi in our apartment complex. Turns out that the two cars that are parked next to ours in the garage are owned by one of the news/sports reporters, Eric Young. So now the Porsche Boxter and Audi make a little more sense. Of course our 2000 Honda Torneo fits right in next to them. Yeah, no obvious difference there! He also apparently owns two black cats that roam the stairwells and corridors of the apartment complex. So this is our brush with Kiwi celebrity.

Check out this picture of the Sky Tower. Each night it’s being lit up with the colors of a different team in the Rugby World Cup. Tonight’s celebrated team is Scotland. Scotland is also the team that will be supported by our neighborhood, Ponsonby, as each neighborhood around the city is supporting a different team.

Check back in a few days and we’ll have some pictures and a good story or two from Rotorua. Thanks for all the birthday wishes!