111 Meals in New Zealand and Australia

Here's the next installment of "The Bumps Travel On Their Stomachs."  The first installment, 180 meals in South America, is here.  For reference, we flew to Australia on January 9th--there is no specific cue in the pictures to that change.

Food was very expensive, especially in Australia.  And, kitchen facilities were much more common, so you will see a lot more meals that we made; especially breakfasts and lunches.  We're still struggling with consistently taking pictures of our meals, but we were really bad at remembering to take pictures of lunches we made.  So when you see just two meals for a day, the third was almost certainly a lunch of PB & J, eaten on the road somewhere.

Bon appetit!

If you prefer, this is a direct link to the album of pictures:

Meals in NZ and Oz

Postcard: Abel Tasman

Abel Tasman, New Zealand

Abel Tasman National Park, New Zealand

The first thing we wanted to do, when we arrived on the South Island of New Zealand, was to hike or kayak in Abel Tasman National Park.  In fact, we did both.  But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. 

Movie stars

We met some celebrities at the Te Papa museum. Incidentally, if you ever find yourself in Wellington, make sure you see the Te Papa. These guys were in town for the premier of their latest movie.

Cats and chickens

Have you ever seen a three-legged cat before? Us either. We’ve seen plenty of dogs, but this is a first. This guy found us at a holiday park in Baylys Beach (their version of a KOA campground, but with cabins and ensuite rooms). Interestingly, he still felt his phantom limb—we saw him trying to scratch himself with his non-existent leg.  He was a lover, though. We gave him a scritch since he couldn’t reach that spot on the side of his neck.

We also came across some spectacular chickens at a roadside rest area on our way up the Kauri coast from Auckland. Just hanging out, hoping for a handout.

Kiwi Prefab

We decided to rent a car and drive wherever we felt like for our two weeks in New Zealand. Doing this gave us the freedom to change our minds and follow a whim if we wanted. We decided to detour along the west coast on our way down to Wellington, and stayed in New Plymouth over the New Year’s holiday (which spans both the 1st and 2nd in New Zealand, for some reason).  While staying there, we visited the Puke Ariki museum, which had a fantastic exhibit on prefabricated architecture: Kiwi Prefab.  While the portion of the exhibit inside the museum was great, with history of prefab construction, design examples, and practical details from quick-assembly shelters for disaster relief to designer, eco-friendly cottages, the best part of the exhibit was outside, where four prefabricated buildings were open to visitors.

Meals in New Zealand

This is a typical lunch in New Zealand (or anywhere that sells peanut butter, for that matter).  The view wasn’t always a beach, but it was almost always gorgeous.  Generally there would also be an apple or yogurt, and some kind of cold drink, which are not completely visible here.  Simple, cheap, and reasonably healthy.  Also, very flexible—we didn’t have to plan our day around being somewhere we could buy lunch.  When we started to get hungry, we’d keep our eye out for a pretty spot.  When we found one we liked, we’d pull off, make our peanut butter (and Jelly too, for David) sandwiches, munching away while watching the scenery and reading.  

Boats

One of our favorite things to do (and why our trip to New Zealand was so much fun) is just to find a medium-sized town that may not, on the face of it, be much of a tourist attraction, and simply explore it for what it is. In Whangarei, on the eastern coast of New Zealand, just below the Bay of Islands, we spent a couple of days driving around the peninsula, eating some pretty great pizza, and walking along their riverfront.  These dinghys were all parked, waiting to ferry their owners back from town.  The one on the left is going to need a bail out, though.

The view from New Zealand

In case you were wondering why we wanted to come back, here’s an answer. 

New Zealand Flowers

One great thing about being in New Zealand in late spring/early summer, is that everything is in bloom.  We saw hydrangeas growing everywhere—out in the middle of fields, in home gardens, in parks, and in botanical gardens.

Sign post

What exactly is this sign warning us about?  Bad dance moves ahead?  Tip-toe ahead?  Lana loves a good sign, and we’ve been collecting pictures of them as we see them.

Waitomo Glowworm Caves

When we came to New Zealand in 2005, we stayed for three weeks and took in the majority of the tourist sites, stretching from the Bay of Islands in the North Island, all the way down to Invercargill in the South Island. But the one thing we didn’t do, and regretted missing, was the glowworms in Waitomo.  You can see them by walking through one of the caves on a walkway, or in a rowboat, or by abseiling down into them. But the way we wanted to do it was with The Legendary Black Water Rafting Company. With them you don a lovely two piece wetsuit, grab some gum boots, a caving helmet with a light on it, and a big ol’ innertube.  You’ll be walking through the cave, floating through the cave, and oh yeah, jumping backwards off two waterfalls about 2-3 meters high, with that inner tube (hopefully) on your butt.

Northland, New Zealand

On Christmas night, we left Los Angeles bound for New Zealand. In 2005, we traveled here with David’s mother and his brother for three weeks. We spent one week on the North Island and two on the South Island.

We fell in love with New Zealand then, and Googled how to apply for citizenship and everything.  But we came home and resumed our lives, and the memories of it faded.  It was striking enough, however, that it was the only thing on our Round the World trip that was a repeat of somewhere we’d already been.  But we knew we liked it there; we remembered that much. We had an adventurous flight, with a long layover in Fiji and a missing bag that we were reunited with in Auckland. It was a shaky beginning, but even before the plane touched down on the tarmac we remembered.

As we got below the cloud cover on our approach in Auckland, and saw how green and unspoiled the land was, it all came flooding back to us. We remembered how beautiful it is here, and how much we didn’t want to leave when we were here the  last time.  The air smells sweet, the people are lovely and friendly, and despite being halfway around the world it feels like home.  Some beautiful, idyllic version of where you want to put down roots and grow.  We’d remembered that we loved New Zealand, but that memory had become an echo of the memory. We knew we loved it, but had stopped remembering exactly why.  We regret only planning on spending two weeks here. We hope it will be enough to carry us through until our return.