Live the Live ™

It’s Christmas Day in the afternoon. I get to catch up on blogging, and I also put together a few movies using my new Flip camcorder that does a great job of making mini-HD videos. Of course, the only thing I can’t do is upload anything, because we have no wi-fi connection! So I will do that ASAP. Obviously, if you’re reading this, I did that already.

So, no trip to Napier today. We chose instead to have a nice little lunch on the backyard picnic table and then we drove to the Tuki Tuki River, just below our cottage, thinking we could swim there. But the current was too strong, and the riverfront a little nasty. So we drove out of there and totally by accident saw a sign that said “Ocean Beach.” We decided to follow it and it led us to the Pacific Ocean and an amazing beach that already had a whole bunch of vacationing families enjoying sun, sand and some Christmas Day barbecuing. There was a small pool of fresh water from a stream that was entering the ocean at that point, and Ava enjoyed swimming there immensely.

Back home now…Ava took a much-needed nap and we are getting our dinner ready. It’s 6PM and the sun is at its fullest…hard to get used to the fact that evening is not far away. But we do want to have our dinner and then drive to Te Mata peak to see the sun set.

Tomorrow it’s off to Wellington and the ferry that will take us to the South Island.

It’s a little after 9 on Christmas morning. I’ve got coffee steeping (they use the French press method here that I’m just getting used to…but I like it…it’s good strong coffee)…it’s a perfectly sunny, cloudless day, the sounds of birds chirping fills the air. Two horses are grazing by that stand of pine trees near our cottage…hummingbirds are fighting over flowers and their nectar. In short…it doesn’t suck!

Kelly and Ava are still asleep. Ava went to bed last night knowing that Santa would find here here in New Zealand, but would be leaving only a few small presents. Not only did Santa visit Ava back home in Rhode Island the day before we left for this trip, but he told her that her “real” presents would be waiting for her under the tree when she returned home.

There was a Santa with his sleigh and reindeer being pulled through town on a parade float yesterday as we were food shopping, and Ava commented that although that could’ve been the real Santa, it was obvious those were fake reindeer. Sharp kid.

So last night we drove a good half-hour to get to our dinner destination: the Old Church restaurant, which was just that. The grounds were beautiful…again, everything here has a vineyard around it…and the interior was nicely redone in a sort of whimsical, Alice in Wonderland style. It was a cool room, but when the maitre’d told us that the owners now live in Hawaii and only visit every few months, we knew the food was not going to be what we had hoped for, and we were right. Ava got a kids’ pizza and ate enough to be happy to play with her toys at the table. I had a shrimp appetizer which was OK and a venison loin as a main course, which wasn’t bad, but just didn’t taste all that great. Kelly had an asparagus-three-ways appetizer that was mediocre at best, and she couldn’t even eat her duck main course. Disappointing…but I suppose we’re bound to get a few of those on any trip.

So Kelly’s awake now, and Ava is still snoring away…obviously the whole idea of waking up early on Christmas hasn’t caught up to her yet. She still loves her sleep.
We might leave the cottage today for a little ride…it’s such a beautiful day. A half hour north of here is a town called Napier, where we almost stayed. Its claim to fame is that they had an earthquake there back in the 30’s and the rebuilt many of the buildings in an art deco style that remains today. They call themselves the world’s art deco capital…not the most thrilling thing in the world, but a fun quick drive-thru.

If we don’t do that, there’s an even closer trip to Te Mata peak, a nearby mountain that would allow us a great view of the area, and maybe even a cool shot of our cottage from high above.

But we’ll also have to get back and cook our Christmas dinner, pack our gear for tomorrow’s journey southward all the way to the bottom of the North Island and the city of Wellington, where we will board a car ferry that will cross the sound and take us to the South Island of New Zealand!

We packed our Christmas Eve with food and drinking adventures, knowing that everything would be closed for Christmas tomorrow.

We headed down into the town of Havelock North and bought a whole chicken and some sausages for our Christmas feast at a local butcher shop. (We found a beautiful and huge rosemary bush growing in the yard, and lemons grow here, too…so we’ll have a rosemary-lemon-garlic chicken for our holiday feast.) There was a terrific gourmet food store nearby that sold mostly Italian food products, but also local and organic vegetables, coffee, cheese, olive oil, etc, to round out our Christmas meal. I talked to the store owner and coincidentally, he’s originally from Huntington, Long Island, where my sister Nida and her family now live. He caught my American accent right away.

Once our food shopping was done, it was time to check a few of the better reviewed vineyards in the area. We had lunch at Elephant Hill, the place where I managed to get wi-fi for the previous blog. It’s located close to the Pacific Ocean, which would be the eastern coast here in New Zealand, and the food and wines were spectacular…probably the best Syrah I’ve ever had to accompany my beef carpaccio appetizer. Kelly had a stuffed zucchini blossom appetizer, and we shared a delicious salmon entree. Our plates were each paired with different Elephant Hill wines, and we enjoyed them immensely.

Interesting note: the terminology used in the food world here. For example: an appetizer is an entree here. An entree is a main course. Coffee here is huge…people love it in all forms. Iced coffee, which is our favorite, can be found, but it’s made differently wherever you go. Some take regular coffee and shake it with ice. Others make more of a 1000-calorie frappucino thing out of it, loaded with cream. We try to avoid those, since we save our calories for real food! A common coffee drink here is a “long black.” (I’ll keep my non-PC comments to myself.) But it’s basically an espresso that had some hot water added to it.

After Elephant Hill, we headed back toward our cottage, stopping at two wineries along the way. The first, Black Barn, had some interesting wines in the tasting, but we wound up buying a more expensive Montepulciano on faith…it was not available for sampling.

One the way back from Black Barn was the winery where we had our amazing dinner last night: Craggy Range. We bought about case of wine there, and we’re not sure yet if any of it will make its way home to the US…after all, we have two full weeks of vacation left!

Man can not live by wine alone, and I was very happy to find my old standby, Mount Gay rum, available here. That, some Diet Coke, and a fresh-picked lemon will make me very happy.

So now we’re back at the cottage…just met Van Howard, the owner of the place, who is an older gentleman and seems to be a really cool guy. We talked a bit about how this cottage and the other were old sailors cabins that were moved from the town of Napier to their current locations back in the 90’s, and they restored them to their original state. The structures, and the gardens surrounding them, and the views, are amazing.

Van mentioned that he’s spending the holidays with his children (who are now grown up with families of their own) and his grandchildren. I guess he hasn’t seen many of them in a very long time. That was all I needed to hear to whip out my first bottle of Krupnikas, which I presented to him. I hope they enjoy it gathered around the family table.

As you may know, Krupnikas is a Lithuanian honey liqueur that I’ve been making for over 30 years now, based on my Uncle Kazys’ recipe. That recipe has changed a lot over the years and I now have what is totally my own creation, and I bring three 375ml bottles with me on every vacation Kelly and I take, with the intention of giving them away to the three people we meet that we feel most deserve, and would most appreciate, the drink and the work put into making it. (This vacation was the exception since we actually brought four bottles, knowing that one would go to our friends Angela and Richard right away.) But Van was the first person on this trip to receive it in the tradition we established many years ago. I’m sure we’ll meet two more people along the way that will fit the bill as well.

Sitting here at the Elephant Hill Winery, very lucky to have wi-fi. Won’t have it for the next couple of days, so this post below may be it for a while. NZ is not as “connected” as we thought it would be and getting a signal can be a challenge.
I wrote this earlier today…happy holidays and we’ll blog soon!

It’s the morning of Christmas Eve and and I’m looking at one of the most spectacular views I’ve ever seen outside my window: an incredible garden full of wildflowers and plants, bordered on one side by a field of tall grass, the other a huge stand of pines. In between is our cottage, the larger of two cottages known as Tom’s Cottages (we’re in Big Tom’s Cottage). The smaller cottage was voted “best remote wilderness hideaway in the world” by the NY Times, so I suppose ours could be the second best? I’ll take that!

We’re in a town called Havelock North, in Hawkes Bay, and the area is full of beautiful wineries with a backdrop of steep mountains, covered in the green of late spring and early summer, with thousands of cows and sheep grazing around every corner. No corn fed beef here…it’s all grass fed and pasture-raised, something that we pay a hefty price for back in states.

Our drive from Taupo to this side of the north island took a little over two hours…longer than we expected, and we’ve been told that by everyone here: distances are deceiving. The road from Taupo was some of the scariest and most exhilarating I’ve ever driven, winding around, and cutting through the steepest of mountains covered in lush greenery or huge stands of tall trees. The fact that I was driving a rented family van and not some cool sportscar certainly added to the white-knuckle experience, especially when I tried passing huge tractor-trailers going uphill.

Our cruise on Lake Taupo was fun. The lake is the size of any of our great lakes, so it feels and rocks more like a bay, but we cruised through it in a catamaran, so the rocking was kept to a minimum. Our captain was a nice enough guy, but boy did he like to talk…very informative, but I could’ve used some more silent moments to enjoy the scenery! The Maori carvings, the focus of the cruise, were quite fantastic, and I will post a photo of them as soon as I can.

After the cruise, we took a short drive to Huka Falls, where the water leaves Lake Taupo and heads north along the River, the longest river in New Zealand. Imagine an Olympic-sized swimming pool of water going over the falls every second, and you have some idea of the volume of water flowing through here every day. The falls were a short detour out of town, and worth every bit.

We returned to our Taupo hotel to pick up our luggage we left behind (didn’t want to leave a car full of goods parked while we were on the cruise) and then we started our long and winding trek to Hawkes Bay.

We had our best dinner of our trip so far last night at Craggy Range Winery and their restaurant called Terroir, just a short drive from our cottage. I think I’ll be saying this a lot this trip: it’s hard to describe the beauty of this place…you just have to see the photo. Not only is it a winery with excellent wines, but the restaurant is top-notch, using the best local ingredients available. And they even had 42 Below vodka, so that I could enjoy martinis with their own grown olives which were nothing short of fantastic. My first martini only had two olives. My server gave me six with the next one…almost no room for the vodka!
Kelly ordered a steamed dish of local clams that were really intensely flavored but matched beautifully with the wines they paired them with. I had a fabulous roasted quail (speaking of which, I just saw one run across my yard just now…wondering if I can repeat that dining experience?) For her main course, Kelly had roasted lamb and I had the best fish of my life: a wood fire roasted whole flounder that was absolutely perfection. The only disappointment of the meal was a plate of local mushroom that were smothered with garlic so heavy and raw that they were not enjoyable.

But the meal was amazing in a huge dining room that took it’s architectural inspiration from the inside of a wine barrel…a huge, soaring ceiling, round walls, wood all around, massive marble fireplace…just beautiful. Nothing we’ve ever seen in the US has matched it.

Today is our only full day of exploration here in the sense that most places will be open, though they might close early for Christmas Eve. But tomorrow, we plan to stay here in the cabin for the most part, though we might stray out of the property to tour the countryside a bit. Few things will be open, but that’s OK…rarely do we stay in a place where we’d rather be in the cottage vs out and about. It’s our chance to chill before a long trip on Dec 26th, when we drive about five hours to the bottom of the north island, catch a car ferry that takes us to the south island (about a three-hour trip) and then finally plant ourselves in Blenheim, a town in the famous Marlborough wine region of New Zealand.

Kelly and I both got up around 6, but it gave us a chance to get some work done while Ava slept. The Baycrest Lodge we’re staying at here in Taupo is really simple, but it’s clean, has a separate room for Ava, a bit of a view of Lake Taupo, and small kitchen area. The bed (very soft) and the lack of AC (very humid) would be the only complaints. The host is great, and he’s letting us store our luggage with him while we cruise Lake Taupo today so that we don’t have to leave a car full of crap in a public parking lot.
Our Verizon international modem is a joke. Not only is it expensive, but Kelly got fed up with the dudes on the phone that were clueless and could not get the thing running. And it was expensive, as you might imagine. But we found a national NZ wi-fi service that offers wi-fi anywhere in the country and you pay as you go. It works and it’s CHEAP! So now we have to tell Verizon to go pound sand and we’re having a challenge DISconnecting. Oy.
The list of connected people we have is getting longer. My cousin, Joe in CT, just got me in touch with a friend of his boss in Christchurch who gave us some good travel advice. We might even have a drink with him if time allows.
I apologize that ther aren’t as many pictures and videos here as I’d like. I think when we finally have a few days in 1 spot, I’ll have the time to dowload (or is that upload?) a few things.
After our cruise on Lake Taupo with Chris Jolly Outdoors today, we head south for about an hour to the Hawkes Bay area where we’ll stay at Tom’s Cottages for three nights. Tons of wineries, farms, and foodie destinations will be ours for the taking. http://www.tomscottages.co.nz

That’s the name Ava gave to the town of Rotorua, about two hours south of Auckland. Rotorua is a huge tourist trap, but it offers a few things that you won’t find in other New Zealand towns: Maori tribe experiences and the shows that go along with them…and a huge assortment of geothermal attractions like geysers, boiling mud pools and more. We made a stop to one of those places, Te Puia, and viewed these crazy churning pools from just a few feet away. We were in time to see the main geyser go off as well…and Kelly got some great shots that I’ll publish as soon as I can. 
It was another hour of driving from Rotorua to Taupo, where we are spending the night tonight, hoping to do a catamaran cruise of Lake Taupo in the morning, weather depending. Looks good right now.
Speaking of driving, I seem to be doing OK with the whole driving-on-the-left thing. It was really crazy in Auckland, where the city streets were five lanes wide, and I had to make turns to get onto the highway. The high-speed lane on the highway is on the right…opposite of everything we know to be the “right way!” Even the controls in the car work totally the opposite…like holding a mirror up to your car as you drive. Speeds are in kilometers and max speed in most places is 100 km per hour, or about 60 mph.
We had dinner at a local Millenium Resort which is an extremely family-friendly environment, so we assumed dinner would suck…but it actually wasn’t bad at all. Kelly had a seafood shishkebob and I has a surf and turf with beef and shrimp. Ava downed two hotdogs without hesitation.

Last night, the dinner at the French Cafe was…interesting. The food was very good and extremely creative. The winner of the evening for both Kelly and me was a chicken liver parfait that was out of this world. Some of the other dishes were inspired but not mindblowing in the taste department. And they had nothing to offer Ava, so she wound up getting an order of Waygu beef (that’s Kobe to you and me) that she didn’t eat. Instead, she passed out on us because she had refused to nap in the afternoon, and just slept quietly through our whole meal, with the exception of the one time she rolled off the cushion she was on and landed with a thud on the floor under the table…did not wake up! We picked her up, put her back on the cushion, and finished our meal. It was kind of a bizarre evening, a little disappointing in the food, and heavily influenced by our lack of sleep…still not having caught up with the jet lag. The one highlight of the evening was our server, Paula, who gave us great info on where to go on our trip. She even has a friend that works at the George Hotel in Christchurch, where we will be staying on New Year’s Eve.

>>>Al

We had Ava’s 4th birthday dinner last night with Angela and Richard, a couple we met a few years ago in Santorini, Greece. Back then we did the usual “hey, it was great to meet you…let’s stay in touch” e-mail swap, knowing full well that we’d probably never bump into each other again. But strange things do happen, and here we are in New Zealand after all.

Richard, Kelly, Ava, Angela and Al

Kelly, Ava and I have not fully adjusted to the new time zone. After all, we crossed the equator and the International Date Line to get here. It’s 18 hours earlier here than on the east coast of the US. But little by little, we’ll catch up and be fine, even with the colds we’re fighting, thanks to the aassistance of some fine New Zealand Pinot Noir, and their own brand of very tasty wheat vodka called 42 Below.

We spent the morning of our only full day in Auckland fighting Verizon over an international modem that is not working–what a surprise. But we did get out to see the Auckland fish market (the one where all the restaurants come for their catch of the day) and Kelly took tons of fish pictures for future artistic inspiration. We then went to see some live fish, as well as penguins, at Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater World and Antarctic Encounter. Sharks, fish of all kinds, sting rays, penguins, even a robotic orca that scared the crap out of Ava…it was all there and a fun experience. We had a quick bite in Parnell, a neighborhood in Auckland that has quite a few restaurants and art galleries. Not too impressed with any of that, but we did get a card reader which will allow us to download photos onto the web.

Tonight: dinner at the French Cafe, what many consider to be the best restaurant in Auckland and maybe New Zealand. Tomorrow: we hit the road and head south to Taupo, which is next to Lake Taupo, a giant lake formed when the crater of a volcano blew off many years ago. Our original plan was to go on a catamaran cruise of the lake, but we won’t make it in time. So we may take a detour instead and check out Rotorua, a town we were going to go to at first and then removed from our itinerary. It’s full of geisers, mud pits, and all kinds of wonderful smelly bubbling geologic features remeniscent of Iceland and Yellowstone National Park. We’ll try the morning cruise on Lake Taupo the next day.

>>>Al

Our trip, though long, was surpringly smooth and without incident. I’m very proud of Ava, who was a trooper thoughout the trip and really pushed on with Mom and Dad, despite a few points where we were really in need of sleep and had to deal with the monotony of airport lines. And I’m kinda proud of myself for being able to talk myself through several long periods of turbulence that would have had me running for the emergency exit on other flights. Kelly fought through the trip with a bad cold, and we’re hoping that now that we’re in warmer climates (it’s close to 80 and humid here, though cloudy), maybe the cold she’s got and the one I seem to be getting will go away quickly.

Once again, we’ve taken the idea of “light packing” and literally have thrown it out the window: three large suitcases along with two smaller ones for check-in (our now famous “wine suitcases” which will be filled with 2 cases of wine on the trip home) and five or six carry-ons, not including Ava’s stroller which gets checked at the gate. Gotta say the stroller is one of the smarter things we’ve brought–not for Ava–but because we can load it up with all of our carry-ons and not have to drag them through the airport!

They say that New Zealand is really tough when it comes to bringing in food, plants, or other foreign materials…and we had our own proof of that when we were picking up our suitcases at baggage claim. We spotted a woman with a dog that was sniffing all the luggage, and it was only a matter of time before he made a bee-line to my backpack! She asked me if I was bringing in any fresh fruit and I said no…then it dawned on me that I had 2 precious zip-locs filled with my home-made beef jerky! Damn that dog! He stuck his friggin’ nose right in there and wouldn’t leave. My jerky was confiscated. I was so bummed…I had planned on eating it during our flight…forgot all about it…and now it’s either trash or dog snacks.

We got out luggage, got picked up by the Apex car rental company van, and picked up our very stylish Toyota Previa family van for our 19 days of driving through the New Zealand countryside. It’ll be fine…nuthin’ fancy, but lots of visibility and tons of room for all the crap we’ve brought down here.

Our first attempt at driving on the left side (though I’ve done that many times before in the Caribbean, never with the steering wheel on the right!) was a success and we got the the Westin hotel on the waterfront in Auckland with no problems.

We’ve enjoyed a small meal via room service, including a little birthday cake they brought up for Ava’s 4th birthday which is today. And now it’s shower time and nap time before we go out to dinner tonight with out friends Angela and Robert, whom Kelly and I met a few years ago in Santorini Greece. There was one night in particular where we had enjoyed some amazing Greek food and many beverages, and then stuffed ourselves into our Smart Car rental for a road trip. Not smart, but we lived to tell the tale.

So we’re here. Look out, New Zealand!

It’s one thing to go away for a week to a Caribbean island and just hit the beach every day. It’s another to go half-way around the world for several weeks and explore a country you know nothing about. Four travel books, two maps, and countless websites later, I think I’ve done a pretty good job of researching where we will travel, eat, drink and sleep in New Zealand.
One of the most interesting things I’ve found in my quest for the lowdown on the land of the Kiwi was the fact that I had no idea just how many people my wife and/or I know that have been there: a former New Zealander promoter now living in New York…my CrabApple Whitewater rafting friends Jen and Frank, who went there on their honeymoon…my cousin’s Kiwi friends who now live in Abu Dahbi…and Angela and Richard, two wonderful people my wife and I met a couple of years ago in Santorini, Greece, who live in Auckland and will actually be having dinner with us our first night there!
Besides the perhaps obvious facts that I will be looking up at a totally different star-filled sky (a little CSN “Southern Cross” would be good right about now), the fact that my toilet should be flushing counter-clockwise (don’t worry…I will take video of that), and that this was where the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy was filmed, what I didn’t know is that New Zealand was the very last country on earth that man set foot upon. The entire country is geologically active, as witnessed recently by the 7.2 earthquake that hit the city of Christchurch, where we will be New Year’s Eve. Miraculously, no one died in that earthquake, and the standards for earthquake-resistant buildings in New Zealand are a testament to that.
The country is all about adrenaline: whitewater rafting, which I will do on the Shotover River near Queenstown, is just the tip of the glacier (which we will also explore in Franz Joseph.) New Zealand is where bungy jumping originated. There are opportunities for spelunking, flying upriver in jetboats, scuba diving, snorkeling, skiing, helicopter and small plane rides, hurling down mountainsides inside one-man spheres (they call it Zorbing: www.zorb.com ) and the list goes on and on.
My excuse to skip some of the crazier adrenaline-pumping activities will be my 4-year-old daughter, Ava: after all, what kind of responsible parent would I be if I did this? But I know we will have fun. Besides, I think the sheer exhilaration of sipping one of the many fine New Zealand wines and enjoying a meal prepared by a talented chef is much closer to my idea of “living on the edge.”
Those who know me know that I love to travel–once I’m there. I’m not good with airplanes. And considering it’s 6 hours non-stop from Boston to L.A., then another 13 hours from L.A. to Auckland, I’ve got quite a challenge ahead of me. I did buy a fear-of-flying DVD set that has helped a little. But I also have a supply of prescription drugs, so I’m hoping for some help from Mr Alcohol, Mr Ambien and Mrs Valium! Wish me luck! (Actually, wish Kelly luck!)

>>>Al