The Purple Penguin

Well, today we are in Paihia getting ready to dive the Rainbow Warrior tomorrow. Hopefully go better than our Poor Knights dives.

To answer some questions:
Was Joe surprised? No, not really. With what we had to get for the trip he guessed New Zealand.

Does he like it? Is it good? Etc. Yep.

Any surprises left? Yep, he has no idea where we’ll be spending Christmas, his birthday, or new year’s eve. 🙂

Did we get photos of the baby penguins? Yep. Not very good, but we got a photo.

Have we seen penguins other than in aquariums? Yes. Little blue penguins on every boat trip. Cute.

Today we have seen loads – Drove from Tutukaka to Paihia today in the rain. It has rained off and on from drizzle to downpours all day. Bleugh. But we’ve had such lovely weather I guess we can’t complain too much.

On the way we stopped at a little place called Kawiti Glow-worm Caves. Family run and you get to walk through the cave then out through the forest. Pretty nifty and glow worms look good – like green stars. We also saw eels in the creek that runs through the cave. The guide tells you about her family, the cave, the history, it’s pretty nifty.

Reached Paihia and couldn’t quite check in so we walked around the town, sorted out the diving for tomorrow, got lunch, that sort of thing. Then sorted out our room. Another nice place. Then we headed out to drive to the Rainbow Warrior memorial. What you don’t get told is that the memorial is down a gravel road with no signposts and then you have to climb to get to it. It’s way up on the hill which is great for the views. And the rain held off until we were back in the car! So we climbed to that and had a look at where we’ll be diving tomorrow.

On the way back to Paihia we stopped at the Haruru falls which are quite pretty. It’s a kiwi reserve as well, but we weren’t lucky enough to see a kiwi.

I have uploaded some photos (only about 5) to flickr with the tag ‘Joe Kathleen trip NZ’. Or you can try this link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/12819735@N00/sets/1514111/
Not sure that will work but give it a go!

Right off to dinner and various stuff before up far too early to dive the Rainbow Warrior!

I can now highly recommend Dolphin and Whale Safari out of Auckland – right next to the NZ Americas Cup sailing experience. They were great. Of course, we also ended up with a great day out so I may well be biased. We did however have a group of students on board and they weren’t too interested so that was a bit of a downer. But overall the trip went really well.

Just out of Auckland and we came across a pod of common dolphins that played around the boat. Wonderful. It helped that I grabbed a spot right on the bow. Greedy thing that I am. So watched them for a while then headed out looking for whales. And boy did we ever find them. Definitely saw Brydes and more common dolphins, but also saw plumes along the horizon that were possibly Fin whales. Not blue as we didn’t see any fluke. But the best thing ever was the feeding – dolphins, whales, gannets diving, the whole Blue Planet experience. And of course I couldn’t figure out the video on the digital camera and even forgot I was holding the stupid thing for a while. Oh well. It was wonderful.

So Joe and I are well sunburnt and very happy! Last night in Auckland and we went to the pub round the corner from our hotel and had a very nice meal and excellent drinks. All local booze so far and it has been very nice indeed.

Picked up the rental car this morning and off out of Auckland – once we finally found the highway. They don’t really believe in road signs. It was a beautiful drive up north and we are now in Tutukaka in a really great place called Malibu Mal’s. We have a whole suite to ourselves with kitchen and washer and everything. I’m wishing we were staying longer!

Tomorrow we are off diving. We’ve been to the dive centre to do all the paperwork so up early tomorrow and onto the boat. Poor Knights – which I keep being told is wonderful so we are looking forward to it.

Will update as we can and sometime will get some photos onto flickr. We’ve taken enough! We are checking e-mail, but may not be replying – any questions may get answered here!

Waiting for Joe to swallow a tablet – we’re off whale and dolphin spotting. So long boat trip.

Yesterday: Walked around the harbour area and looked at the cruises in the harbour/bays. Saw the dolphin and whale tour heading out and went and asked for info. We were thinking a short trip out but nope, they go out for most of the day and we’d just missed the boat. So we booked for today.

Then headed for the bus station and Kelly Tarlton’s Antarctic Experience. That was nifty – lots of penguins and even baby penguins (everyone say ‘awwwww’). We then walked back to Auckland stopping by a little restuarant/bar for a small lunch. Sat eating and looking over the bay – lovely. Walked along the waterfront and stopped to pick up some odds and ends then back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. First day in NZ and we’re sunburnt. 🙂 Weather is lovely – bright sunshine and about 22 degrees C. Lovely.

Orbit is nifty – we got there as the sun was going down. So lovely to sit and eat and watch Auckland light up below us. The food was indifferent, service excellent, and view fantastic.

The internet cafe is interesting. Rows of machine with people playing networked games. I think we’re the only ones on the internet – everyone else is playing World of Warcraft!

Don’t know when we’ll update again. Off tomorrow morning for other parts of NZ and I’m still keeping poor Joe guessing.

Hi all! We are here. Arrived yesterday afternoon – over an hour late but we arrived.

The flight was long – very long. During most of the flight had no idea what time it was or even what day it was. Knew where we were, could see that on the flight information, but time? So we sat and ate and watched films and ate and dozed and played games and sat and sat and sat.

I have now officially been to Australia! Hooray. OK, two hours (more or less) in Melbourne airport. Still that’s Australia.

We went out for our first meal in NZ and had . . . Japanese. Yep. Little place near the hotel which was wonderful.

Joe’s bit: After a long flight changing in Dubai and Melbourne; yes Kathleen can now not complain that she’s never been to Australia. We arrived in Auckland. Got a shuttle bus from the airport to the hotel. Pretty days and we’re not feeling too bad. Checked in, quick shower and change after over 24 hours in the same clothes. We then wandered around the block and had some nice food and then back to the hotel and crashed out about 7:00!

This morning’s report: Got up and did the boring getting ready for the day (and Joe will insist on breakfast). Then off to the Sky Tower which is nifty. There’s a glass floor in the lift so you can watch the floor disappear way way way below you. We went right up to the Sky deck and took loads of photos. We are lucky – the weather is sunny and blue sky, barely a cloud to be seen, and even sort of warm. Then made reservations for the restaurant tonight – we’ll go up and watch the sun set then have a nice meal while watching Auckland spin slowly below us. Now we’re off to the harbour area.

We are packed and ready – off tomorrow evening. Joe still claims not to know where we are going so hopefully still a surprise. Of course he’s pacing about driving me crazy. So it goes.

We managed to fit everything into our bags. With minimal sitting on the bag to close it! So clothes for the trip, including warm weather things, and all our dive kit including dry suits.

Will post when we arrive (if we can)! We now have a flickr account for photos so hopefully can just post links to photos. I’ll put the tag ‘joekath trip’ on each of our trip photos – hopefully this will make them easy to find.

Well, starting up a new blog for the next trip. As it’s a surprise for Joe can’t say where we’re going. But we are going somewhere nifty. Promise. At the end of November. So why have I set this up this early? Well, I think Joe was getting nervous about how it would all work. So here I am, at half past 11 on Saturday (the clocks have yet to go back) trying to think of something to type.

Ha! Blogging from the airport. They have internet terminals at the airport! We are ready to fly out – well, physically ready. Mentally I think we could stay another week or so. But the flight leaves in a bit so we’ll see you soon!

Oh dear, last day of holiday. This is a relaxing day, just walking about and checking e-mail and generally doing not much. Going to have to repack the bags tonight and make sure we’re ready for the flight tomorrow morning. Rich, you may just be surprised at how much can be stuffed into your rucksack! We are flying out tomorrow morning, details for those of you who may be interested: Virgin Flight number VS901 leaving Narita Airport at 11:00 and arriving at London Heathrow at, err, around 16:00 – there isn’t a time on the ticket!

Had a great day yesterday. Went to Disney Sea rather than Disneyland – a bit smaller and not as many rides, but it was different and we had a good day. Managed to keep ourselves busy there all day. It was a very easy day and very few people. The longest we had to wait for a ride was about half an hour and by the afternoon we were just walking onto anything we wanted to ride. However, it becomes very clear how much Disney rides rely on narrative when you can’t understand the narrative! Still we enjoyed the sheer fun of the place even if we didn’t always know exactly what was going on. We also had one of the best meals we’ve had this trip. We ate at the only Japanese resturant on the site and went all out – starter, main course and pudding. Joe had mackeral starter, sushi main course, and pink blossom cheesecake. I got the sushi starter, pork cutlets, and a mixed desert plate which had a cake (similar to a pound cake), rice balls in red bean sauce, some chewy squares of something that we never quite figured out, and fruit. Lovely. A really nice way to end the holiday.

We’ll probably update this one last time once we’re home, but we’ll see some of you soon!

Hello from Tokyo! Well, we’re nearly at the end of the holiday. Too short. We want to stay here for a while!

The north was nice. The sleeper train was the worst we’ve been on for sleeping. No compartments, just four bunks with curtains; annoucements were made until 10pm; we stopped in loads of stations with bright lights, loud announcements, and music; at 6.30am a loud announcement was made and about half an hour later they came around and moved our bedding so sleeping in! Gosh. But getting up that early meant we saw a bit of the coast from the train window which was nice. Straight through Akita with no time to look around and off to Kakunodate. Kaunodate was a nice little town with streets of saumari houses still as they were about 250 years ago – except most of them are now tacky tourist shops. We spent half a day there, saw one saumari house which was very nice. The family still live in it and we were shown around by a 12th generation decendant of the family. He apologised for his English then gave us a tour in excellent English! After that we decided we didn’t need to see any of the other places so we walked down to the river and walked along the cherry avenue which was lovely even if there were no blossoms. Very nice half day. Then we were off to Lake Tazawako. We stayed in an onsen (cheap onsen) and the baths there are sulpher so everything smelled of sulpher. Tazawako is very spread out so we had to use the bus to get anywhere – it’s sort of two resorts: the lake for summer and the mountain for skiing and baths in the winter. We were in the mountains so had to travel down to the lake. Spent a day at the lake doing a bit of walking and took the sightseeing boat round the lake. It’s a beautiful blue, quite striking agains the green and with mountains all around. Joe says ‘it was interesting’. We did a 1.5 km walk to see ‘Frog Stone’ and not a froggie anywhere around it! But it was a nice walk.

Then off to Kawaguchi-ko to see Fuji-san. We came up and actually saw Fuji – no cloud! We got an excellent place right on the lake with a view of the lake and Fuji – wonderful. We also found a wonderful little place to eat where we could see Fuji and the lake and drink loads of saki. Watched the clouds move in to cover Fuji and by the next morning we couldn’t see it at all. Took the bus up to 5th station where we got to see all the tourist shops. Met a Swiss bloke on the bus who was going up the mountain a bit, said he didn’t know how far. We headed down Yoshida trail. And down. And down. It was a bit longer than the woman at tourist info had said. We finally lost the trail at a road, found the main road down and a bus stop with a bus due in 10 minutes – the last bus down off the mountain. So we caught it and who should be on it but the Swiss bloke we met that morning. Turns out he climbed to the summit – it should take 4 to 4 and half hours but he did it in 2 and a half hours! Gosh. Must have run up and back down again to catch that bus. It was a beautiful walk and we got to see the snow on Fuji – up close like.

We are now in Makuhari just outside Tokyo. Disneyland tomorrow. But today we’re heading back into Tokyo to see the Greenpeace office, maybe.

Back home on Sunday. May be an update on Saturday but definitely one when we get back.