Sitting on the dock of the bay, watching the ORCAS go by...

New Zealand is growing on my, exponentially right now. The rains appear to have gone away and I've had two fabulous back to back weekends and have the suntan to prove it.

On Saturday I left Auckland behind and spent the day on Waiheke Island. First stop, Oneroa Beach. Quality beach time and a great lunch here at Vino Vino overlooking the ocean.

Then onwards to Mudbrick for wine tastings and patio time. Have I mentioned that this is my favorite place in Auckland?

We finished off the afternoon at Stony Ridge, then back to the beach with some fish and chips for dinner. Not a bad day!

After a good nights sleep (and plenty of lotion), Kwang, Lauren and I took off for a day up on the Northland. We kicked it off with brunch at "The Art of Cheese Cafe" in Puhoi (home of the Puhoi cheese factory), then headed to The Vintry for wine tasting.

Followed by Ascension Vineyards for lunch!

Finally Snell's Beach late afternoon which turned out to be pretty spectacular.

We saw these fins and we were wondering...dolphin or orca? We decided to call them 'dorcas' which must have really ticked them off because then they started to jump out of the water. Amazing! There were at least 5 of them, and one of them was a baby with its mother.

Talk about an awesome day and weekend. And as the orcas distracted me from reapplying sunscreen, I'll be reminded of it for the rest of the week...

30 hours in the Coromandel

You can accomplish a lot in 30 hours...an overnight call shift for example...and when you've had, say, 3 of those in one week, you are pretty exhausted. But not too exhausted to get out of town for the weekend. Geez, it's been six weeks since I last road tripped in in New Zealand!

So...the Coromandel Peninsula it is! It was originally a gold mining town, but since that dried up, it's mainly just a jumping off point to great beaches and spectacular hikes.

My first stop was Hot Water Beach. So there's this story that at low tide you can dig a hole and it will fill from beneath with hot water (147 degrees F) and make some sort of hot tub. Well, based on the weather I was skeptical and I'm pretty sure unless I dug a hole to China (or wherever) it wasn't getting warm. So, I abandoned that plan...

Onward to Cathedral Cove where the clouds began to part and the sun began to shine!

I love that the first part of the hike went through a farm...a common theme I later discovered...

Verdant pastures...

Excuse me, is this seat taken?

Then I descended through a sort of tropical rainforest with lots of fun tree ferns

Before finally ending up at Cathedral Cove (aptly named as you can tell).

Nice sheltered beach.

Then a nice stop off at Gemstone Beach (a rockier one)

After working on my Vitamin D levels a bit, I headed back to the car and crossed the peninsula to Coromandel town. Gorgeous descent near sunset.

After spending the night in Coromandel town, 'El Cheapo' and I decided to take to the unsealed roads...all two hours of them...winding along the cliffs to Fletcher's Bay (the start of the Coromandel Coastal Walkway). The drive was a bit unnerving but simply breathtaking...there were even dolphins frolicking in the bay!

The walkway starts out in pastures (again) and then hugs the cliff line to the south in the picture.

Absolutely gorgeous hike to lookout point! (Looking south towards Stony Bay)

Looking North towards Fletcher's Bay

And sadly, the drive home.

So life is good in New Zealand - it's springtime and it can only get better from here. And then there's work tomorrow...

Hopefully there will be posts in increasing frequency!

I've got Sunshine (for a few brief moments) on a cloudy day!

Despite actually making it down to Christchurch before the earthquake and touring the city, I didn't actually take many photos...which in retrospect is pretty disappointing considering that many of the facades I admired have now crumbled. But from what I hear the city is coming back to life and hopefully they will begin the rebuilding soon.

This weekend off I recovered from some long weeks on call and spent my Sunday afternoon at Muriwai beach (in between the rain showers). It only about a 45 minute drive from Auckland...through groves of fruit trees and nurseries and sheep farms (in the drizzling rain) before descending down to the beach. There were, once again, way too many roundabouts which invariably mean a few too many expletives issued forth at them during the drive...

I mainly went to see the Gannet colony. Every year they fly over to Muriwai beach and camp out for 3-4 months from September to January where they nest, hatch their chicks and teach them to fly before heading back to Tasmania. Pretty remarkable birds!

The Gannets would take off from the cliffs and ride the updrafts around in circles...sometimes swooping right overhead.

When flying against the wind they looked like they were in slow motion...hovering right next to me.

It also must be mating season for the gannets and I'm suspecting that this 'necking' is part of their mating ritual.

Looking Northward up Muriwai beach

One last look at these beautiful birds in flight!

What a wonderful world...

In two months I've been blessed by a wonderful group of friends here who planned an awesome birthday trip to Waiheke Island. If you have to turn thirty, that has got to be the best place to do it. Pouring rain overnight gave way to sunny skies on the ferry trip over and within 45 minutes of leaving Auckland we were docked in Waiheke.

I was pretty much captivated from the start. It felt like a world away from rainy Auckland...an oasis where the sun shined warm upon your face. We rented a van and headed to Stonyridge Vineyards.

The patio looked out over the grape vines to rolling green hills dotted with sheep. Gorgeous. After tasting a flight of white wines and sampling their bruschetta, we headed to Mudbrick Vineyards.

I absolutely love this place. I want to kick out the owners and turn it into my house and live there forever drinking their wine.

Lauren, Cindy, Kenny, Shannon and David...my fellow Americans in New Zealand...and a great group of friends!

Heavenly views combined with lavender fragrance...

Next we headed to Cable Bay vineyards for the sunset and a scrumptious dinner of New Zealand lamb.

Great food, great wine, great friends, great location. I couldn't ask for anything more. Thank you.

Over hills and vales...the Waimangu Volcanic Valley

After a night of torrential rainfall (its gotta be monsoon season here) there was a glimpse of blue in the sky Sunday morning and I thought I'd tempt fate and head to the Waimangu Volcanic Valley...silly me...

You start out at the top of the ridge and descend into the valley...here is a view of Echo Crater and Frying Pan Lake from the hillside. I love the steaminess!

Here you have Frying Pan Lake up close, and looking up at Cathedral Rocks below...

But as you can see, it was quickly clouding over...turns out that just increases the steaminess!

Inferno Crater...with a temperature of 300 degrees F and a pH of 2.1, I don't think I'll go swimming in that one!
Crossing the marble terraces...

On the way to Lake Rotomahana
Where there were a ton of black swans!
So, another soggy but pretty cool day.

The Devil went down to...Rotorua!

So, at one point in time over the past two weeks, I worked overnight 4 out of 6 nights. I cannot actually tell you how or why it happened...but at one point I was flown to another hospital to drill into a kids head and place a drain, then brought back to Starship to suck a clot out of a kids head. When all that's happening, I kind of lose track of time.

Therefore, when I finally left the hospital carpark at 7:30 Friday night, I hit the road to Rotorua with Shannon and David. I thankfully slipped into the back seat and slept most of the way. We awoke to rain Saturday morning but didn't let that dampen our spirits as we grabbed our suits and headed off to the natural hot pools. Kerosene creek was the prettiest...but not warm enough for me.

So we headed to the bridge where two streams (one cold, one hot) merge and you can move further up or downstream until you find the perfect spot. Awesome!

After we raised our core body temps a few degrees, we headed to the Wai-O-Tapu Geothermal Wonderland, home of the devil and his playground. It was drizzling when we started...

then it switched to pouring rain about the time we got to the devil's inkpots...

So we took shelter from the storm at the views over Artist's Palette...the cold and the rain made it all steamy...

We crossed the Terrace then trekked through the Sacred Forest...

And onwards to Frying Pan Flat and Lake Ngakoro

Bird's Nest Crater
And Lake Ngakoro which really can't be too vile because there are ducks swimming in it...

The champagne pool was gorgeous...but you only caught a glimpse of it when the wind blew the steam away...like a hidden surprise beneath the steam...

And we passed by Devil's Bath on the way out of the park...we definitely needed a hot shower and a few logs on the fire after this afternoon!

I'll post on the Waimangu Volcanic Valley tomorrow night...need to get some sleep before work tomorrow! You never know what that will bring!