Live the Live ™

I think we celebrated it before anyone else…

Hope you all have a safe and amazing new year!

AKA MIlukas

The George is probably the fanciest hotel we will be at this vacation. (It won best awards in NZ as well as being a favorite with Conde Nast Traveler, etc) Though we still have the Canyons Lodge in Queenstown, which has some amazing scenery, the George here in Christchurch is quite luxurious, and our room is huge…certainly compared to the previous two nights’ digs! Ava’s napping now, after having a great time in the very large bath tub here. We’re having New Year’s dinner at 50 on Park, the restaurant here at the hotel, so no more driving! Woo-hoo!

Our lunch at Pegasus Bay winery was really great…fish carpaccio, waygu beef carpaccio, fantastic fresh homemade ricotta cheese, mozarella from Italy (now that’s a trip!) and more…Ava met up with a girl her age and had a nice playtime. Of course, the Mom, an Aussie, was more than happy to dump her kid with us. Their attitude with kids is the same we found in France, which is: enjoy your meal and ditch your kid with anyone around if at all possible–waitresses, strangers, doesn’t matter. They never bring toys or activities for their kids, so Ava’s stash of markers and toys was a huge bonanza to this little kid she played with.

The scenery from Kaikoura to Pegasus Bay was quite nice for the first half hour or so, hugging the rugged coastline. Then it moved to the huge prairie scenes we’ve gotten so used to, that now we’re even bored with those spectacular mountainous backdrops. Ungrateful, aren’t we?

Looking forward to just hangin’ here for a couple of days before we have two days of long drives ahead of us. The bar in the lobby is stocked with Belvedere, so I’m a happy man. And we’ll be doing room service for breakfast tomorrow, you can bet.

There is a family-friendly fireworks and New Years celebration in Christchurch tonight, but it’s all at midnight and I know that I’m not really interested in all that when I’ve got this amazing room full of wine and bubbly right here. What my two girls will want…well, that’s a different story.

Happy New Year!

It’s a beautiful morning and we’re packing our things out of the very tight confines of the Aspen Court Motel in Kaikoura and moving on to Christchurch today, with a stop at Pegasus Bay winery.

I was very bummed to find out yesterday afternoon that the gorgeous weather we were having all day here in town did not translate to calm seas for the whale watch. We arrived to find that our 3PM boat not only had a severe sea-sickness warning, but no longer allowed Ava on board. Each boat captain calls in to the office and makes his report before every trip…and the captain is the one that decides who gets on the boat and who does not, so despite Ava being the right age for the trip, the captain said no kids under 5 this time. They also looked at the 3:30 trip for us, but space was tight and the heavy seas would not be calming down for a while.

So, with my propensity to hurl just looking at a painting of a boat in the water, combined with the Ava age factor, meant no whale-watching. We were all pretty bummed about it, especially me, since I had been talking it up with Ava, and I knew that had it been totally up to Kelly, she would’ve found a way to get on the next boat despite the condition of the seas and would’ve taken that chance.

So we did what Ava loves best…we went to the beach instead…and it was an intense afternoon in the sun. The water was a bit rough, with random stones along the bottom, so it wasn’t the kind of water Ava could swim in, but she had a lot of fun splashing around with the little waves crashing in. The sand here is black…it’s all volcanic…and many beaches have small stones, not sand. But we found a small kid-friendly spot with smooth sand that didn’t hurt Ava’s feet. While Ava splashed, Kelly took more crazy creative photos using all kinds of things she had acquired on our trip: a large piece of dried leather-like seaweed, a nautilus shell, and whatever other items she could find along the shore to make the rental car smell badly.

By the way…even on cloudy days, it’s extremely important to protect yourself from the sun here in NZ. My quick research shows that all the bad stuff that reduces the ozone layer tends gravitate toward the earth’s poles, and so it’s particularly thin here.

We checked out an incredible lavender farm yesterday morning, and got some amazing shots. We also returned to the farm later in the day, to get the perfect light for a few more. There were many farms along the way, so we got our mandatory amount of cow shots as well. It was a relaxing kind of day that ended with dinner at the White Morph restaurant, where we had a surprisngly good meal. I say surprisingly because it was another typical Kiwi menu, featuring fish, lamb, beef, chicken and little else. We wanted to go to the local Thai restaurant because we had heard that the food was amazing, but they were booked solid.

So we travel today and celebrate New Years in Christchurch. Supposedly, they have a family-friendly celebration in town that includes fireworks. One thing I do know: our hotel room will be BIGGER!

By our calculations, half of our adventure in New Zealand is over. Yikes. But there’s a lot more to do and see: more wineries, whitewater rafting, driving through incredible scenery, perhaps even climbing (or at least stepping onto) a glacier. As you know, the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy was filmed here, and I’m not too familiar with all the details, but just about everywhere we go, there’s some amazing mountain range or beach that was used in the films. We even have a road map that lists all the spots. We’ve probably pased about five movie shot locations already…more to come. I’ll post a photo of one if it’s really obvious and easy to get to.

It is a gorgeous day in Kaikoura and much calmer than yesterday. I’m hoping that means calmer waters for today’s whale watch at 3PM. We had an easy-going morning…something very rare on this trip. Ava actually slept until she woke up on her own! We had breakfast in bed. All good.

Kelly had some last-minute end-of-the-year hassles to take care of with her art business, so she was on the phone long-distance. But it got done, and now we’re washing up and heading out to explore town for a few hours before whale watch time. I have my Bonine, so I’m as ready as I’ll ever be!

Tomorrow, we’re off again…to Christchurch for two nights. Our hotel, the George, has assured us that everything is fine after the quakes. What can I say? It’ll be an adventure! It’s only a few hours away, but with a stop halfway for lunch at Pegasus Bay winery (highly acclaimed) it may take longer than that!

I guess I don’t know the lingo here in New Zealand, at least when it comes to hotel rooms. I got us a triple studio, thinking it would be something spacious. Well, here at the fabulous Aspen Court Hotel, it means that our daughter is sleeping three inches away from us. This room is so small it’s a closet. It’s so small, I have to step out to change my mind. It’s so small that when I asked for free broadband, they said it was too big. But seriously… Thanks for coming. Try the veal. Anyway…

The room is very nice and clean. It’s just VERY small. Did I say how tight it is in here with all this freakin’ luggage? Kelly said it’ll be OK, since all we do is sleep, then we’re off doing stuff. True to some extent. But the fact that she and Ava are sawing wood right now and I’m up typing despite taking an Ambien and finding a fantastic bottle of Mt Gay Extra Old at a nearby liquor store, means all things are not the same to all people.

Our dinner at the Green Dolphin was OK, not great, despite rave reviews. They do a lot of their own in-house smoking of fish, and their fish soup was very good. But it seems that all the fishy plates go into the same dishwasher as all the bar glasses…and when I had my vodka, I tasted the fishiness very clearly in every sip. It was not pleasant. But we needed a meal and it served its purpose. Supposedly there’s a great Thai restaurant here. Might be the way to go tomorrow…a  nice change of pace. That would be after the whale-watch. I plan on having an empty stomach when I step on board the boat tomorrow. I don’t do well on water and if today’s wind and swells were any indication of what’s in store for me tomorrow…I’m screwed. I just hope everyone on board will be wearing their raincoats…not from the spray of the water, but from my own personal spray.

I know you’re asking the same question I am: why do this? Two reasons: one…Ava will love it. And two: a whalewatch is one of those things you should do in your life. I did it a long time ago off the coast of Cape Cod and it was unsuccessful…no whales. Now, the technology is so much better that they will refund up to 80% of your money if you don’t see a whale. Supposedly, we’re on a catamaran which will make the ride smoother. And this body of water has a constant year-round warm temperature that keeps the plankton thriving and therefore keeps a sperm whale population in the area all the time. We’re hoping to see them along with the rare Hector dolphin, one of the smallest in the world, and highly endangered.