Springtime

Spring has arrived in Auckland, with one noticeable feature being the blooming of flowers in Albert Park, which we walk through each day on our way to work. In addition, the fig tree outside our house is starting to get leaves, and the peach tree is starting to get flowers. Why it wants flowers before leaves I don't fully understand, but then I'm not a botanist.





This fern wasn't in Albert Park, but on a hike we did at Muriwai last weekend. Very New Zealand...

Skiing

One of the best things about living in Auckland is that there's skiing four and a half hours away.

And one of the most annoying things about living in Auckland is that it's four and a half hours to skiing... it tempts you into thinking that you can ski for two days over a weekend, and somehow make it back to work on Monday without being completely exhausted. Which is not to say it's not worth it, as we've done it before, and no doubt we'll do it again...

We last went down to Ruapehu at the end of last season we skied at Turoa, on the south side of the mountain. This time we also spent a day at Whakapapa, on the north side, which has a more Alpine character, and a view of Mount "Doom" Ngauruhoe.

The weather was fantastic, although the snow was pretty icy. We tried a couple of the blacks, but many of them were just ice sheets under a small covering of powder. We ignored the "extreme terrain" signs only the once... and the double-blacks were entirely cordoned off.

The Routeburn

More visitors means more excuses to visit other parts of New Zealand. Oliver and Marie rented a camper van and spent two weeks driving from here to the South Island; we flew down to Queenstown to meet them and do the Routeburn hike with them.


The Routeburn track is one of nine Great Walks in New Zealand which are well-marked and serviced with huts, meaning one doesn't have to carry a tent, which is nice.

The walk takes three days, and we had great weather for days one and three. Day two, which was entirely above the tree line, was rainy and cloudy. Luckily there were enough breaks in the trees on day three that we were able to glimpse similar views to those we had missed the day before.


After we finished we took a bus to Milford Sound (which by the way, is not a sound, it's a fjord) and we were just in time to catch the last boat trip of the day.

Mount Taranaki

Looking back on it, I can't quite remember why we decided it would be a good idea to try and climb Mount Taranaki, but for some reason it seemed like a fun weekend plan, and so last Friday night we set off on the five hour drive south of Auckland to the Taranaki region.

My first thought on seeing the volcano from the distance was `That is a gigantic mountain, there's no way we can climb to the top of that in a day'.

Various sources had told us it could take anywhere between five (very optimistic, and probably involving mountain running) and ten hours to get up and down, so having checked with the visitor centre that the weather was predicted to be fine, we set off at 9am on Saturday morning.

Everything started well, although after a couple of hours the top didn't really seem to be getting any closer, and the route up the mountain had stopped being nicely worn paths and turned into a huge slope of scree. As we slowly gained altitude the level of snow cover increased to rather more than we'd been expecting. Whilst we didn't suffer from the cold at all, it turns out that hiking up 20% inclines covered in several feet of snow is no easy task.

We'd been warned that the crater rim would be dangerously icy, which it was in parts, but in many places, the ice formations reminded me somewhat of Superman's palace. Here's a photo of the view over the crater rim to Mount Ruapehu on the right and Mount "Doom" Ngauruhoe on the left.

And then finally, after four and a half hours hard slog, we made it to the top:

Map my run

Until now, I've been using a combination of gmap pedometer and the ipod Nike plus adapter to keep track of my running training (which has tailed off somewhat recently). However, I've just stumbled across the Map my Run website, and it looks at first glance to be quite neat, and possibly rather addictive. You can plot routes just as in gmap pedometer, with an added bonus that you can go back and edit routes if you realise you've made a mistake. There's also a training calendar to log runs, and you don't just have to run, you can bike or hike instead.

But my most favourite feature so far is that for each route, it will show you the elevation as you go along. Very cool.

The good ship

The Bay of Islands is a very nice area of New Zealand a few hours drive north of here. It's very good for sailing, and we're vaguely planning a trip to charter a boat for a week next summer. On our first trip up there a couple of weeks ago we spent a day sailing on the good ship R. Tucker Thompson.



After sailing out to deserted island in the bay, we swam to shore and hiked up the hill with tremendous views. After a BBQ lunch back on the ship, we had the chance to climb the rigging... scarier than it looked when the crew did it, I have to say.

Yacht Racing

There are a few things that kiwis seem to take very seriously, as a nation, to the point that they field truly world-class efforts despite a population only a shade over 4m. Rugby, to be sure -- but also yacht racing.

Over the past few weeks, the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series has been staged here in Auckland. The LVPS is a bit like the America's Cup, but with fewer lawyers and more actual sailing, or so I've been led to believe. The litigation level involved with the America's cup now seems to preclude the involvement of any actual water, or sailing, or boats. So the LVPS is "America's Cup-class".

It turns out that as a spectator sport, yacht racing leaves something to be desired. I attempted to watch on 3 days of the regatta -- on the first, there was no racing as the wind was too light; on the second, there was only one race, of which I only managed to see the last 10 seconds, before the remainder of the day was canceled because the wind was too strong; and the third day was by far the worst day, weather-wise, of the entire summer, so I sat inside and watched it on tv. That turned out to be a good choice, because even when they do actually race, the delays between races are almost unbearable. But, in between all the delays, there was some pretty decent racing, the result of which was a 3-1 win for NZ. So my future plan, and advice for spectators: hope for good weather, and bring beer.

Seattle-London RT in October $566

Seems that the falling price of oil is finally starting to bite into flight prices -- Seattle-London round-trip through much of October is now down to $566 on US Airways, connecting in Philly or Charlotte. Once upon a time (2003), it was possible to get SEA-LHR offseason for just north of $300, but I think those days have probably passed now.

Sailing away

After a bit of a struggle trying to find a place to rent and sail small boats, I'm pleased to have found a fun and friendly sailing club at the Panmure lagoon.

The lagoon is tidal, so sailing is only possible a couple of hours before and after high tide, but they run training days or races almost every week, and so I'm hoping that my sailing skills will improve, as currently they leave something to be desired:

Silly things

There are a variety of crazy things to do available for tourists in Rotorua. Not being so keen to jump off or out of something high, we opted for zorbing. This entails being thrown inside a large inflatable sphere, with some water, and rolling down a hill. Actually, a lot more fun than it sounds:

Walking in a thermal wonderland

A summertime Christmas has been slightly strange, but we've been making the most of our time off, and our visitors, to travel around and see some more bits of the North Island. One of the favourites so far was the thermal wonderland that is Rotorua, complete with it's own authentic odour. There are many different places around Rotorua in which one can explore the thermal landscape, but the one we found most rewarding was the Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland.

Here we found geysers:



Multicoloured pools:





and lots and lots of bubbling mud:

Glaciers & parrots, of course

Last week we did the avalanche peak hike at Arthur's Pass, in the Southern Alps on the south island. The "town" of Arthur's pass (40 permanent residents) is about a 90 minute drive from Christchurch, and it's definitely worth it if you get some nice weather. We got quite lucky and got a beautiful day for the hike, made all the more important by the dire warnings against attempting the hike in poor weather. The ridge lines certainly could be dangerous in poor visibility or high winds.

After you climb the 3600 vertical feet up avalanche peak, you're greeted by two spectacles: Crow Glacier



and perhaps 30 highly-entertaining kea. The kea is an intelligent and curious mountain parrot, and they've definitely figured out that it's in their interest to visit the top of the mountain at lunch time, when all the hikers stop to eat. They will definitely take any food (or perhaps rubber) that you leave unattended, using a very loose definition of "unattended". As long as they only try to nibble your boots, though, they're very entertaining.

(in)flexible flight search

I've come to rely heavily on websites which advertise various flexible flight search options, like nearby alternate airports and flexible date options. For just these reasons, plus nearly always the lowest-price result, I've been recommending kayak.com unreservedly. At least for international searches, there are serious shortcomings with both kayak, and my second-favorite site, orbitz.com. Yesterday, I did a flight search on kayak, and I've repeated it today, for which ticking the "include nearby airports" box results in the lowest-priced result being $900 more expensive. Surely including additional airports shouldn't omit the original search! Similar things happen, unfortunately, with the flexible date option.

I suspect I understand the problem, which is that properly searching for flexible dates and/or airports is a very time consuming process, and your average user simply doesn't have the patience to wait for good results. So the sites don't bother with that, they just return mediocre results quickly. The point is easily illustrated on orbitz. They've got a very handy, in theory, feature: search for a flights which result in a trip of a flexible length, across a range of days. Perfect! Tragically, it simply doesn't return good results. When I searched for a 10-12 day trip from SEA-AKL, between 15 Jun 09 and 15 Jul 09, Orbitz flexible date search feature dutifully (and quickly) returned a lowest price of $1819. However, by doing a traditional search (i.e. departing on a fixed date and returning on a fixed date), on orbitz, and repeat it across the dates which were part of the flexible search, you get much improved results, by about $250! The moral of the story is that if you're thinking of visiting NZ (or the UK, and you should be!), you'd look at the former, rather than the latter... Hopefully at some point there is a flight search site which can do flexible and accurate searches quickly, or perhaps just one which takes a while but emails you the results later?

dates 06/15/2009 to 06/26/2009, price $1,826
[...]
dates 06/16/2009 to 06/28/2009, price $1,819
dates 06/16/2009 to 06/29/2009, price $1,586
dates 06/17/2009 to 06/28/2009, price $1,819
dates 06/17/2009 to 06/29/2009, price $1,568
dates 06/17/2009 to 06/30/2009, price $1,826
dates 06/18/2009 to 06/29/2009, price $1,599
dates 06/18/2009 to 06/30/2009, price $1,826
[...]
dates 06/20/2009 to 07/02/2009, price $1,826
dates 06/20/2009 to 07/03/2009, price $1,599
dates 06/21/2009 to 07/02/2009, price $1,826
[...]
dates 06/23/2009 to 07/04/2009, price $1,826
dates 06/23/2009 to 07/05/2009, price $1,617
dates 06/23/2009 to 07/06/2009, price $1,586
dates 06/24/2009 to 07/05/2009, price $1,599
dates 06/24/2009 to 07/06/2009, price $1,568
dates 06/24/2009 to 07/07/2009, price $1,826
dates 06/25/2009 to 07/06/2009, price $1,599
dates 06/25/2009 to 07/07/2009, price $1,826
[...]
dates 06/30/2009 to 07/11/2009, price $1,826
dates 07/02/2009 to 07/15/2009, price $1,827
dates 07/03/2009 to 07/14/2009, price $1,820
dates 07/03/2009 to 07/15/2009, price $1,820
dates 06/30/2009 to 07/12/2009, price $1,618
dates 06/30/2009 to 07/13/2009, price $1,587
dates 07/01/2009 to 07/12/2009, price $1,600
dates 07/01/2009 to 07/13/2009, price $1,569
dates 07/01/2009 to 07/14/2009, price $1,827
dates 07/02/2009 to 07/13/2009, price $1,600
dates 07/02/2009 to 07/14/2009, price $1,827
[...]
dates 07/04/2009 to 07/15/2009, price $1,827

Labo(u)r-day weekend

We'd been planning for some time to spend the first bank holiday weekend we've had here hiking in the Coromandel, a penisula about two hours drive to the east of Auckland. We'd been told the traffic over there would be really awful, so decided just to do two days, avoiding the Friday night/Saturday morning traffic. This turned out to be a rather good plan, due to heavy rain most of Saturday. The rain continued into Sunday, making our drive out of Auckland less than pleasant. However, the forecast was for the weather to clear, so we continued on undaunted.

The nice man in the Kauaeranga Visitor Centre was clearly very bored, but he promised us the weather would clear, so we collected our hut passes and started on our way. The hike up was fairly steep, with many steps hewn into the rock, and we got a little damp, but by the time we arrived at the Pinnacles Hut all forecasts were correct and the sky was beautifully blue.


After a quick cup of soup in the hut, we made our way up to the top of the Pinnacles themselves. More a scramble than a hike, the last portion of the walk was well worth it - at the top was a secluded spot with wonderful views, fit for any very special occasion...

Long-distance voting

I sent in my absentee ballot for the US election this morning, doing my small part. Not that it will make any difference. I've linked to pollster because they have state-by-state pages, which cannot be said of the otherwise superior fivethirtyeight, which currently projects WA to Obama by 14.6. Not exactly a squeaker. Speaking of your vote mattering though, those same clever guys at 538 have an interesting analysis of how likely it is that your vote will matter. Tragically, for some of the most strongly-opinionated people I know, that chance is identically zero, as many of those most interested in the outcome aren't US citizens at all...

Disclaimer: geological activity may affect features on this map

The New Zealand ski season is surprisingly long, so last weekend we headed down to Mount Ruapehu for a weekend of skiing on an (active) volcano. The weather the first day needed a little improvement - visibility was low, to say the least. But on the second day the forecast of unlimited visibility held true and much good skiing was there to be had:





There are several differences between skiing on the Alps or the Rockies, and skiing on an active volcano. First of all, especially this late in the season, when much of the snow has melted, it looks somewhat like you're skiing on the moon. There are warnings signs about what one should do in the case of an eruption (the last major eruption was in about 1995), and you have in the back of your mind the strange knowledge that the aforementioned geological activity is not on the timescale to which we are usually accustomed.

Our chariot

Photos have been promised to many -- at long last, here they are.




One of our early tasks was to find a car. While we don't need it for commuting, as the ferry is much easier, we decided that a car is by far the easiest way to explore the island. We (and by "we", I mean "I") settled on this 01 Toyota Corolla. Glamorous it isn't, but I'm satisfied we made an excellent choice. Besides, it's not easy finding a manual in NZ!

Golf

I've read or been told that New Zealand has the highest per capita rate of golf courses in the world, and it doesn't surprise me. A bit of research/googling seems to indicate that NZ is second, or perhaps tied for first, though there are lots of claims to the highest rate. Anyhow, the result is a good situation, lots of good, cheap golf. The Waitakere Golf Club is a nice spot to play -- the course is in reasonable shape, very affordable, none too crowded and about a half-hour drive from the city. The scenery is pretty impressive, though you can certainly get your workout walking up and down all the hills.



Now if only I could hit the ball from an uphill lie...

The sad, sad Chicago Cubs

I have to say the cubs have managed to exceed even my expectations for ineptitude in their inevitable failure. While some might accuse me of bitterness as a fan of the second-worst team in baseball, I have to say that the cubs just wouldn't be the cubs if they didn't do this sort of thing.

I am slightly disappointed that they did so poorly that I can't even espouse my conspiracy theory involving the trib and the potential sale of the cubs. That involved losing in the NLCS in 6.

That said, I think the BoSox are going to regret having shown Manny the door, I'm taking the dodgers over the rays in 6.

The wild west

After Graham's very successful car-buying adventures last week, we decided to take it out for a little spin on Saturday and do some exploring. We made our way out into the Waitakere ranges, west of Auckland, towards the beaches of Piha and Karekare. After illegally climbing higher than we were supposed to on Lion's Rock on Piha beach,


we did a short hike up into the hills, to the isolated White's beach, only accessible by boat or foot (gmap). We then made our way round to Karekare, where some scenes of the film "The Piano" where filmed: