getting to Cairns, Australia (and a little of Auckland)

Until this point most of our travels have been on long weekends and public holidays.  We recently took  a couple of weeks off and did some vacation time.   You have been warned.  Multiple pix coming up and lots of vacay bragging.

Our 1st trip to was to Oz.  Visiting Australia is kinda like visiting Canada.  You either need a vast amount of time and money to see all of it or just pick one spot and enjoy that.   We did the latter.  We went to Cairns which is a tourist town on the east coast and is a short boat ride to the Great Barrier Reef.  It also has easy access to the Daintree rainforest and coast.

But...  I could not get any good cheap flights to Cairns (and where there are 6 of us cheap is a necessity).  We ended up leaving Christchurch at O'dark thirty to fly to Auckland and our flight that night did not leave until 8pm.  So we put our luggage in storage at the airport (could not check it straight through... international vs domestic etc etc arghhh) and took the airport bus into the city centre and toured around Auckland a bit.

 One thing I have found funny here is that (as at home) most of the family prices, such as for the bus, are for families with 2-3 kids and Adrian is considered an adult at 15.  But whenever we try to hash out how to pay for everyone I hear this...  "oh well we will just give you the family rate anyway, have a good day"  Not so much when we were in Oz but it has happened quite a few times in NZ.

Where I was going with this, is that the lady who sold us the bus tickets gave us a family pass and did not charge us extra for the spare kids. 

The end of the line for the bus is the harbour downtown.  When we got there, there was a Maori festival and Haka demonstrations.  We toured that a bit, I got Matt a fish hook piece of pounami which the Maori carver told me was a good choice, as we had 4 kids, he must be a good provider and that is important for a man. (Remember that Matt, keep me in the lifestyle to which I have become accustomed!  There were also lots of food venders and we were all pretty hungry at that time, so that was good (it was only 10am but we got up at 4).

We then wandered around downtown taking in the sites and Luke kept getting progressively more anxious about us missing the bus and our plane. He REALLY wanted to go to Australia.

A Segway!   I had to take his pix, he works for tourism and did not mind at all. 

We went for ice cream and the Sky Tower started to grow out of Adrian's head, Weird. 

Flat Malachi came along for the ride but did spend most of the trip in the bottom of the beach bag.  

Mea Culpa.  The structure behind is where the festival was.  It is called "The Cloud" and was built when New Zealand hosted the World Cup. 

Farther down is a pix of the boat that won. 

It was a bit of a nasty day, threatening to rain (but never did, whew) but we had fun wandering around and seeing some sights.   Finally (to Luke's great relief) we headed back to the airport and checked our bags and had some supper.

Then...  a bit of a glitch occured (all my fault).  When I booked our flights we were told we did not need visas, BUT Canadians (not New Zealanders) need visas to visit Australia.  I really should have checked this but it just did not occur to my little mind.  Thank goodness all I had to do was whip over to the Quantas desk and pay $30 per person to take care of this.  I just about lost it in the airport.  Matt thought I was ready to snap.
But sometimes good things follow bad.  The "big" family thing happened again (they like big families here, can you tell) and the agent thought it was terrible that we would have to pay so much,  and only charged me for mine and Matt's visas.  Did the 4 kids for free!!  Wow.

One thing about the Auckland airport, once you get through security, they have one of the nicest duty free areas I have ever seen.  We did a little shopping (I got an adapter to let me download my pix directly to my ipad, turned out to be a very good purchase, more on this later) had a coffee and a beer and all was good.

After popping a few valium (kidding people) we finally did get on our late night plane.  The flight was uneventful.  We take up an entire row so Jamie got to stretch out over Adrian and I and kick or head butt the two of us the entire way.

Once we landed, the air temp in Cairns at 11pm was 24C.  Nice,  Adrian was melting.   We managed (finally) to get a maxicab,  there was a big footie (rugby) game in town and the taxi service was pretty busy.   Once we got to our hotel we put the kids to bed and had a bit of duty free booze and went nighty nite ourselves.

Auckland Weekend

While Natasha was here, she and I left town (and Matt and the kids) and flew to Auckland for the weekend.
I let her do the planning because there were several things she really wanted to do which could only be done on the North Island.

So, we booked a couple of cheap flights and headed out.  I had a Friday off so that worked out well we got a 6:50am flight out of Christchurch.  We got reprimanded by a check in agent at Jetstar because we showed up about 30 minutes before the flight left.  Isn't that perfect timing? We just had carry on bags and walked into the gate just as the flight started to board. Works for me.  (Actually that makes me anxious as hell, Natasha thought it was great.)  The flight was good and Natasha had a window seat and got some great views of the mountains as we flew north.

We then landed in sunny and warm Auckland and picked up our rental car.  A little Nissan Sunny.  Small, easy to park and no guts.  There was not much passing going on with this vehicle.  When one pushed the gas on a mountain road it got louder but not much else happened.

Our first stop was Sylvia Park  a large partially open air mall.  Getting there was a bit interesting.  I had done some google maps and printed them off but Auckland and Google Maps are not quite cognizant of each other.  More on this later.  Thankfully, my trusty crackberry has a satellite gps and maps function.  This proved to be very useful through our trip.

Once we made it to the mall the 1st priority was coffee and a snack.  Yes, I did have coffee already but more was required.  Then we shopped a bit had an early lunch (we were up at 4:30am)  and shopped some more.

For any of you who know Natasha...  if you go shopping with her take a good book.  You will need it while she is trying myriads of items on.  And comfortable shoes.  Perhaps a chair...
But I digress.  I did a little shopping myself *gasp* including a new wallet (no purse) and a Haka rugby shirt for Luke (which he is wearing now actually)  Sideline... the Haka is the traditional Maori dance that the All Blacks - New Zealand's rugby team - does before it plays every game.  Luke's shirt has all the motions and words on the back.  Just his style.

After the mall we headed to the Auckland Bridge.  To jump off.  Not me.  Just Natasha.  I watched.  That. Was. Enough.  Plus I did have to climb on the bloody bridge just to watch.  Ick.  For those of you who don't know me well,  I don't do heights.  I ski, going up on the lift or gondola scares the daylights out of me.  I climbed a climbing wall once on a cruise ship, I just about peed myself.  Climbing the underside of the Auckland bridge on those little metal stairs you can see through (to water 40m below) is NOT GOOD.

But, before we got there Google Maps failed us.  Completely.  Told us to exit on Franklin St.  Franklin St does not have and exit from the highway.  It does not even cross under the highway.  It dead ends about 20 m before the highway.   So we drove over the bridge (because at that point it is the only way you can go) consulted the crackberry (which uses Google maps too?? go figure) discovered where we went wrong and went back - over the bridge again.  At this point Natasha was getting a little too good of an idea of what she was getting into.   In Auckland (as everywhere in NZ)  there are lots of streets that have multiple names and are the same street.  Street signs reflect this but maps don't.  It gets really confusing at times.  After 15 minutes of driving in circles we found the place. Whew.

The jump she did was 40 metres and she did the greatest scream.

I hope the video clip works.   She actually has the professional video and pictures taken by the bungee company and they are great!

After the big jump we drove over the Auckland Bridge (again) in search of shopping malls, but the "great outlet mall" in the brochure was a big disappointment. Under renovations and not much there. Sigh...

We hit the road again and promptly got caught in rush hour traffic leaving the city.  No biggie by Ottawa standards, moving about 30-40k with a bit of stop and go.  But after living in a little town where we have a rush 15 minutes between 5:05 and 5:20 it was a bit of a shock.  (Sidebar:  it was funny how many local people in Ashburton warned me about driving in the big city of Auckland and how horrible the traffic is.  It was not that bad and unlike in Ottawa everyone drives the speed limit, just that left hand side of the road thing) .

We were on our way to Whangarei.  Now, as I said before Natasha planned most of this trip.  And in her defence it does not look that far on the map and we were on the the #1 (main) highway.  BUT... this is New Zealand and once you get out of town it turns into a twisty turny road that does have an official speed limit of 100km/h but 60km/h is more like your average.  Plus there are lots of signs well lit up stating that people die on a regular basis on this road (nice...)

So well after dark we rolled into Whangarei and found our hotel.  By this point we were pooped.  After a visit from the hotel cat and shooing him out of our room we quizzed the hotel lady about where to eat.  Getting back into the car (argh) we headed into town to Reva's for a most excellent seafood dinner.  I'm not sure if I mentioned this before but there is no tipping for meals etc in New Zealand.  If you do you get some pretty astonished looks.

1st night we were all tucked into bed by 9:45pm.  Good thing too because the next day was heading to Tutukaka for surfing lessons!

I peeled Natasha out of bed (teenagers) and we hit MacDonalds for a greasy breakfast and use of their free wifi.  Then it was off to the coast.

Tutukaka was about a 30 minute drive from our hotel and we met up with Mat at the Tutukaka Surf Experience which is his business he runs with his son.  We then drove to Sandy Beach to where the water was warmer than the air to learn how to surf.  There was only one other person in the lesson, Thomas who was from France and was very happy to learn Natasha was fluent in french so they did some chatting. 

Surf lessons are a blast!  We had 8-9 foot foam covered boards.  Apparently longer boards are easier to surf on and the foam covered ones protect you from nasty bruises when the waves whip them into you side on.  We spent the entire morning at the beach.  Natasha caught on very quickly and was a pro by the end.  I actually got up to standing once and rode a wave in and stopped after that because I was exhausted and did not want to hurt myself (been known to happen).

Mal caught a pix of me just as I had jumped off the board...  But I was standing up! I have witnesses.

Natasha the PRO!

Big boards eh?

After that we went for lunch and more shopping.  Actually I was the shopper this time and got a couple of new bathing suits and a dress.  I think the difference between Natasha and I is that she shops and I buy.  Go figure. 

We then underestimated driving times (again) and head north (it does seem strange that the farther north you go the warmer it gets) to the Glowworm Caves. 

There are caves and places all over New Zealand to see the glow-worms but the caves here are totally pitch black in the daytime so you can see the worms at any time of the day.  These pix are not mine, you are not allowed to take photos in the caves plus there is no way my camera is capable of this. 

We did our tour with 5 Japanese girls who were very disappointed they could not take photos once we were in the glow worm area. But they took pictures of everything else. 

The cave entrance. A little bit eerie. 

After the caves we stocked up on gas and junk food and hit the road back to Auckland which took us about 3-4 hours.  Thanks to the trusty crackberry we found our way to our hotel.  Which was good as the battery was just about toast.  Those satellite map linkups suck it dry.   I had booked this one via Travelbug which is a NZ website kind of like HotWire.  So we landed a 4 star hotel with a restaurant (no more driving tonight) for about $100.  Sweet as!  

I'm not sure which we appreciated more the super hot shower or dinner.  Might have been the wine too? I had wine, Natasha had a Mojito, the drinking age in NZ is 18 so all was legal. 

The next am was very dull as we just had to return the car and board out plane.  We were early this time and had breakfast and an excellent coffee at the airport before heading back to Christchurch.