tongariro national park

photo dump take two

wine country in hawkes bay


farm land near river valley


more farm land near river valley


more more farm land near river valley


blossoms near river valley



trees by huka falls, taupo



flowers by huka falls, taupo


huka falls


fowl


more fowl


napier


art deco in napier


tolaga bay wharf


tolaga bay wharf

tolaga bay wharf

photo dump take one

600 year old pohutukawa, east coast, nz

drive thru liquor stores exist here too


east coast farmland


sunset at te kaha


geothermal activity in rotorua

lone star cafe, rototura

remains of yesteryear

from the walk to cathedral cove

cathedral cove, coromandel peninsula

cathedral cove, coromandel peninsula


a flower or two in rotorua

for your aesthetic enjoyment

new photos posted on my flickr site.

brendan's computer has a new hard drive. hooray. once i get my images edited for a reduced file size, i'll start posting them here.

a note on toilets

there's often not much to be said about public toilets other than "gross." new zealand is an exception. this is a country where there is a national competition for the best public toilet, a country that actually has a toilet that is a tourist attraction. here it seems that one can never be more than a few hundred meters away from a local loo, some of which are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. yes, a portion of these potties require some sort of cash payment in exchange for relief, but it is a small price (literally, at 40 cents). i will never understand how the incontinent survived in the toilet-starved new york cityscape, where if one wants to use a toilet that is not his own he must buy a soft drink or fries to go. new zealand by comparison is a toilet utopia. not only are facilities ubiquitous, but they are clean, or are at least cleaned frequently. they are always stocked with toilet paper and the soap dispensers are filled as often as they aren't. it's a comforting feeling as a traveller knowing that, when you need it, salvation is always just around the corner.

there's a glitch.

so we arrived back in akl on saturday after a couple extra days in taupo. friday we powered through the tongariro crossing, a pretty sweet day hike up a volcanic mountain located just by mt. ngauruhoe aka mt. doom. photos are still tk. unforunately brendan's powerbook is on the fritz. the hard drive was making fairly loud clicking sounds and eventually it just started locking up. now it won't boot. we haven't tried booting from a system disk yet, though. the good news is that we know we can boot it as an external hard drive. so hopefully we can hook it up to one of the bruell's computers along with brendan's actual external drive,back everything up on the external, and then operate on its fragile innards.

today was spent at the armageddon expo, a kind of miniature san diego comic con. i found a pretty decent run of grant morrison penned new x-men comics, some other pulpy stuff, and an issue of negative burn. a $1 a piece, which is like US$0.67. a bargain! there was also a q&a panel with everyone's favorite bat-actor kevin conroy (the voice of batman from the animated series). 3 cans of a&w root beer were also found there that will later be turned into sugary oceans for ice cream to sail across and then consumed... or something.

looks like the cheapest way to the south island is to fly. we'll be doing that sometime in the next week or so.

more photos are tk.

sadly, excruciatingly slow upload speeds have hampered further photo postings for the time being. in their stead here's some text.



a depiction of a waterfall found in tongariro national park. it is not on the famed tongariro crossing, but is nestled somewhere between mt. ruapehu and the mountain used as mt. doom in the lord of the rings films (its real name escapes me). we stopped there with the kiwi expierence bus on the way from taupo to river valley.



a zombie from the "march against the living." some info here and here. they're protest cry was a nice call and response piece:

what do we want?
braaaaaaaaaiiinnns!
when do we want them?
braaaaaaaaaiiinnnns!

hopefully i'll be able to post some more pics soon.

wellywood

wellington is the shit. it's a bit of a cross between san francisco and portland. windy, hilly, a bit on the cooler side, but tons of cafes, galleries, music. a couple nights ago we saw a free screening of a documentary about mardi gras beads. they're made in china in sweat shops. not something people really think about while flashing their boobs.

we've made ourselves regulars at a chocolate store and cafe called schoc chocolates. the owners recognize us. there are some perks to being a regular. like, today, i got a free bar as the packaging was a bit scuffed. they do some fancy stuff, like lime-chili chocolate and coffee-walnut chocolate. it's not cheap, but it's well worth the cost of entry. right up there with jacques torres... though the hot chocolate doesn't rank quite as well.

today i threw the ol' vinyl pigskin around with a couple yanks who're studying at victoria university. we talked about the saddness that is the 'skins inconsistency and the marvelous job that mike holmgren is finally doing up in seattle.

... generally though, it's been a lot of touristy stuff. there's a great exhibit of photos at the city gallery, and te papa is just a well put together museum. it's kind of like the metropolitan of new zealand. photos are forthcoming. the hostel has a couple card readers, but of course those machines are in use.

yesterday evening was a night out at the theatre. we saw "yours truly" which basically was a retelling of "from hell," everyone's favorite 500 page graphic novel about the jack the ripper murders. best show i've seen in a long time. all the pieces of the production worked really well. it was a fucking scary show: eerie london fog, dark shadows, earsplitting screams, masonic rituals. not what i normally go for, but definitely glad i went.

taupo

ate too much chocolate yesterday. large brownie dessert at a cheese factory and then a large piece of chocolate cake and a hot chocolate immediately following that at a chocolate factory. didn't take long to recover.

made it to taupo. skydiving central for those thrillseekers. went for a walk by the lake this morning. that would be lake taupo. it was created by a supervolcano a few thousand years ago. hopefully there won't be another eruption while we're here.

east as, bro.

we've spent the past week or two traveling south of auckland on the north island. somewhere in there i managed to catch a cold, which i'm now finally getting over, though the mucus lingers. food seems to be the main event no matter where we go. we found an excellent noodle house and a chocolatier in rototura (aka rottenrua aka rotovegas, the geothermal hotspot of new zealand. it's basically a city built in a volcano). we had an excellent hangi meal there as well. from rotorua we headed out to the east coast guided by a Koro, a native of the east side who has an extraordinary amount of knowledge about the local maori history and legends, from the origins of the ngati porou tribe to the initial conflicts between maoris and captain cook. out on the east cape we did a farmstay where we had a boil-up with pork shoulder, lamb neck, kumara (new zealand sweet potato), and puha (a kind of thistle). this evening was spent at a bennigan's-type place with a surfing theme in napier. i bit of a letdown after the previous few feasts. we later trotted down the street to an irish pub to watch the rugby league final between the melbourne storm and the brisbane broncos. a man bled from his earlobe.

napier is a town that was flattened by an earthquake in the 1930s and then rebuilt with an art deco theme. it's a pretty cool little city of about 60,000 people and acts as one of the main port towns for new zealand, importing goods from all over the world and exporting lots of fruit and wine from the hawkes bay area (where napier is located) as well as other goods. brendan and i have decided to spend a couple extra days here and then it's off to taupo.