Holidays Down Under

Day 15 - Sunday, Jan 4 – Sad and Happy We got up in the morning, ate breakfast, and walked to the nearby Cathedral of St. Patrick and St. Joseph for the Mass of the Epiphany. The really cool and amazing aspect of the Mass was the congregation. The priest went down the main aisle at one point and asked where people were from. The answers: New Caledonia, Borneo, Belgium, Brazil. US, Australia … it took until about the 10 th row/pew until someone answered “New Zealand.” The point was made clear … the Church is welcoming to people from all parts of the world. Barry ably made the final drive to the airport on the wrong side of the road. We did the usual formalities of checking in, security, passport control, … It is a bit time-consuming and tedious, but all went smoothly [Note: No one asked Ruby if she had a criminal record!] Our 1:20PM Sunday American Airlines flight went through Dallas on time. US Customs was shockingly easier than either Australia or New Zealand. Of course, no trip ...

Day 14 - Saturday, Jan 3 – Wet and Wild After our usual buffet breakfast of lots of good foods and juices and coffees, the older boys (Barry, Evan and Carter) were scheduled for a white-water rafting adventure. Monica, Steve, Gordon and Ruby had a trip to the National Kiwi Hatchery dedicated to protecting and replenishing the endangered kiwi population. [Note: Here I mean the kiwi animal – the small wingless bird and not the fruit of the same name. I never got a satisfactory answer to the question of why the fruit and the animal have the same name … which also happens to be the nickname for a person from NZ.]  The boys thoroughly enjoyed the rafting trip down a very exciting river that included going over three waterfalls – the first was 6 feet, the second was 14 feet and the last was 21 feet! They said that when approaching the last waterfall, they could not see over the edge, and it looked like they were going off the end of the earth! They plunged and were completely submerg...

  Day 13 - Friday, Jan 2 – Zorbie, The “Walk” and The Show While our families in the US had yet to celebrate the New Year, we were up and preparing for our very busy day. Rest assured that through the power of technology we’re able to connect to the college football playoffs on NYD. We were quite interested to see the Indiana-Alabama game at 10AM NZ time.   We had a hearty breakfast and got ready for our first adventure – Zorbie! This was another audible. Our planned adventure didn’t start until 11:00AM and when we were driving into Rotorua we passed the Zorbie amusement. Now, we had seen this online and it looked like fun but we couldn’t figure out how to work it into our schedule. Well, Monica found us a time slot first thing at 9AM. Zorbie is a giant plastic ball with a spherical plastic compartment inside. People climb into the inner ball/compartment, they add a little water, and then you get rolled down a hill. See picture below. There are several paths to roll –...

  Day 12 - Thursday, Jan 1 – New Year’s Day When doing all this traveling and adventure, it is a bit difficult to keep track of the days, and this Holiday just seems a bit … ??? The rest of the family is yet to celebrate New Year’s Eve, we are getting on a plane to head to our next destination (Rotorua), we are somewhat disconnected from the usual US college football playoffs that run rampant on NYE and NYD … so in some ways, it is just another day.     We enjoyed our last breakfast on our patio overlooking Lake Wakatipu and the Remarkable Mountains and headed to the airport for a planned flight to Auckland and then transfer to a flight ot Rotorua. Note the word “ planned .” In Rotorua, we we booked to get two mid-size SUVs since there were no vans large enough for our whole family of seven. From the early days of our planning, this was a bit of a disappointment since we would have much preferred traveling together … as well as one less driver on the wrong side of...

  Day 11 - Wednesday, Dec 31 – New Year’s Eve We woke up to a beautiful morning (I know … it looks fake, but it is very real!) and a day planned with some fun activities. We took the short half-mile walk from our apartment to the gondola, which was called The Skyline.  First was a gondola ride several thousand feet up a mountain to our zipline tour through the forested mountainside. It was the first time ziplining for Grandpa, but the Helfrichs had all done some version of this before. There were six lines snaking through the trees (mostly very large Douglas Firs imported from the US), and our group of seven was joined by a group of three. We got all harnessed, helmeted and instructed, and then we were off – one at a time. Carter, Ruby (she wanted to go first), Evan, Gordon, Monica, Barry, and Grandpa. The first zip was relatively short and lower speed. Gordon was predictably tentative, but once he did the first zip he was good to go the rest of the way. On the second ...