Taking a break from anything triathlon related for a very
delayed post on my New Zealand vacation. This is mostly for myself because I
tend to have a horrible time remembering vacations and I want to remember this
one. This is probably a good post to skip the text and enjoy the photo dump.
New Zealand was probably the best place I’ve ever visited. If you love water,
mountains and adventure, as I do, put New Zealand on your list of places you
must visit. Hopefully someone will decide to make the trip and use this as a
good starting point to plan their trip.
Bill and I both prefer sightseeing natural things versus
cities. As soon as we landed in Auckland Monday morning we headed straight for
Whitianga. Took some time to adjust to driving on the left side of the road.
Although even after two weeks there was still the occasional turning on the
whipper blades instead of turn signal. Lucky for me, Bill did 100% of the
driving.
We arrived at a B&B right on the ocean with a great
view. I enjoyed the water with a quick swim and then got to run along the coast
to shake my legs out from the long 32 hours of traveling. We had scheduled a
sunset sail but the boat had mechanical issues and they had to cancel.
Honestly, we weren’t upset though given how tired we were. Had an early dinner
and went to bed early.
The next morning, we woke up early and had a delicious
breakfast cooked fresh by the house owner and watched the sunset rise as we
ate. As soon as it was light enough I headed out for me ride and we know how
that went so won’t retell that. After leaving the doctor’s office covered in
bandages, we headed back out to my original destination of Cathedral Cove.
Unfortunately, this meant it was more crowded than I was hoping given the later
time. I was also in a bunch of pain but was determined to hike down anyway.
Round trip it was a few miles and I tried to take it easy. I was bummed I
couldn’t go in the water because of all the bandages so we didn’t spend a ton
of time there before hiking back to drive to the next stop. I did make sure to spread some of my mom's ashes there, the first of a few locations.
After a few reschedules, we headed to Hobbiton to tour
the Shire from Lord of the Rings. Bill didn’t like the movies (I know, I don’t
get it either) and didn’t remember them so he was dragged along for this stop.
The whole village was built for the original trilogy, torn down, rebuild for
The Hobbit trilogy and then remained for tours. There was so much detail and it
was interesting learning various facts because I’m a nerd for how movies are
created. At the end of the tour, we got to spend time at the Dragon’s Inn
enjoying a free cider and they took pity on me given my bad day and gave me an
extra free beer. Then it was off to Taupo. It was definitely a long and
exhausting day.
The next day we drove to Waitomo for a cave adventure!
Unfortunately, no cameras were allowed so they could try to sell us their
photos. We got to abseil (repel) 115 feet into a cave. At the “throat” of the
descent it was narrow enough a fat person would not fit. As you got low enough
it was completely dark. 100%. Like could not see the hand in front of your face
when your head lamps were turned off. It was awesome. Once everyone was down, we did a zip line
further into the cave in the dark. That sort of scares the shit out of you as
you cannot see where you are flying to or when you will stop and you pray you
don’t hit anything. Then we jumped into the freezing water (wearing a wetsuit)
on an inner tube. We used a rope to pull ourselves upstream and then coasted
back down while laying out our backs looking at the glow worms. I pulled some photos from their website so I
don’t have to explain what they look like. Then we got to do some walking down
the “Drunken Stumble” and wiggle through the “Re-Birth Canal”. Then we had an
option of the easy way out of the cave or rocking climbing up two small water
falls. And this excursion in general falls under the list of things I should
not have done and I should have walked out easy but I stupidly accepted the
pain because I wanted to rock climb in a water fall in a cave in New Zealand. How
often do you get that opportunity? This was my favorite activity in the North
Island. Then we headed back to Taupo for rebandaging and a relaxing dinner with
Katie.
The next morning, we took a quick drive north to Rotorua.
We went to Wai-o-tau park exploring the geothermal activity. I’ll let the
pictures do the talking. It smelled like rotten eggs.
Afterwards we hopped over to the Polynesian Spa which has
geothermal hot mineral water fed from the natural springs. We got a private
pool overlooking Lake Rotorua. Had to keep my arms out but it was still very
relaxing.
Friday was always meant to be a very low key day so I
wouldn’t be overwhelmed the day before the Ironman. I still went through the IM
preparations. Picked up my bike from the shop. Did a very short swim, bike, run
before checking in my bike for the final decision I was going to do the race. We drove to Huka Falls and that was about all
the excitement for the day.
Saturday was the race and I don’t need to tell that story
for the one hundredth time. The one plus side of not completing the race is it
gave us time to pack up everything, eat dinner at a normal hour and go to bed at
a decent time. I truly did enjoy spectating the race though.
So, that was the end of the North Island. The next day we
traveled to the South Island which I will pick up from in a different post.
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