Happy New Year 2011 - New Zealand

Happy New Year to Everybody!
We are back in New Zealand again after spending a lovely December visiting family and friends in Calgary and enjoying a "white Christmas" with our daughters. When you are a Canadian child from the prairies, there is no other way to have Christmas, but "white". By Jan 5/2011, the novelty of "snow and cold" wore off and we are now quite happy to be back to this country's summer climate, sunny and a nice 27 degrees C.

For the most part, things weren't overly exciting for the first week or so back as we are living in a marina at the heart of Auckland, which is basically like life in any city around the world. It is very nice, don't get me wrong, it's just.... well.... normal. Our boat came out of the water at Oram's Marine Services on Jan 10 for some maintenance work. We had the bottom cleaned and painted with anti-fouling, the props got the same treatment, we did some teak work, upholstery renewal and other boaty things that nobody but us cares about, but that make the Mystery Ship our happy home away from home. During the time the boat was on the "hard", we had the thrill of living like a "Kiwi" in a cute little apartment in down town Auckland. It was a sweet change, but our boat has more space! So we ate out a lot, which I will never complain about, even if it is bad food, which it wasn't, but you know what I mean - I didn't have to cook or clean up!

With all of that hard work (we did do some ourselves), once the boat was back in a slip at the Viaduct Marina, we decided that we needed a "Holiday", so we pointed our cheeky little car (can't be choosy for $29.00 a day) south and drove 3 hrs to Rotorua for a few days. Rotorua has long been a tourist area because of it's intense thermal activity. The early Maori people fought battles over the possession of the land as because of the underground heat, they could have warm floors in their homes, boiling water in nearby ponds to cook their food and bathing never had to be in cold water. All very handy during a cold New Zealand winter. We learned all of this by doing a 4 km hike through Waimangu Volcanic Valley which was originally the site of the "world famous" White and Pink Mineral Spring Terraces. From historic picture records these were stunningly beautiful, but all of that changed on June 10, 1886 when Mt. Tarawera erupted and left instead a series of hot water lakes, geysers and steaming hills. So we got to oooh and aaah at a modern day Jurassic Park as we marched along. After so much exercise, we were understandably thirsty and hungry. The "Pig and Whistle" in Rotorua solved the thirsty part and we were recommended to the "Indian Star" for food. The "Indian Star" is just that, a STAR, this restaurant serves the best, bar none, Indian food we have ever tasted! Our next day of checking out the sites had us screaming down a river (can't pronounce the name so can't remember it) on a high powered river boat, enjoying the sights along the way to a very hidden hot spring waterfall. This place is called the Squeeze as you literally squeeze your way along a waist high water way, between rock faces that have been worn through over centuries of erosion from this hot water fall. The distance is about 1/2 km away from the main river. Then, poof! there you are, this little private hot water jet tub and natural fall, carved out of the volcanic rock, perfect for about 8 people, which we had in our group. The water temp is about 30 degrees C, so very comfortable and relaxing. Cool stuff. The return trip on the river boat involved lots of "hot dogging" something that is a huge hit out here and that we can relate too as well, only it is usually Glen doing the hot dogging! Our afternoon was spent going through the original "Bath House" in main Rotorua, where all the rich and famous of the early 1900's used to come for "healing waters" and "mineral baths". Pretty fancy stuff! Another good day all around.

Today we are back in Auckland on the boat and there is a cyclone passing over the area tonight, so not so idyllic weather. There will be rain and high winds, hopefully we will be sheltered from the brunt of things by being in the marina. It is still warm though, so not missing winter yet!

New Zealand, Port Opua

All in all the trip from Tonga to New Zealand was good. Lumpy and smooth, windy and calm. We arrived at the customs dock in Port Opua at about 1:00pm on Nov 6 and after all of the "whoop-lau" amongst the boating community as to how strict they were with boats entering into their conuntry, a "few packages of chicken taken" later and some pleasant chatter, we were done with customs and pulling into our slip at the marina. Nice! Dinner out was in order as five days at sea left Paule and I very sick of holding pots on the stove. We can't stop from grinning, New Zealand is so very beautiful, but reminds us soooooo much of home, especially Salt Spring Island in the Gulf Islands of B.C., we seriously think we are back on the West Coast of Canada! People are friendly, there are things to buy in the grocery stores, there are clothing stores and restaurants that serve familiar foods and on and on and on. It's just nice to have the option to buy, doesn't mean we have too. Port Opua is in the area of New Zealand called the Bay of Islands. This whole area is on the north east side of N.Z. close to the top of the north island. It is considered the "playground" here. The towns of Paihia and Russel are very close by. We rented a car for two days and toured around. We found a couple of winerys and expect to discover more of these, a choclate factory, a cheese factory, some historical sites - this is where the first Europeans built in 1819 and where the treaty between the Maoris and the Europeans was signed allowing the White guys to live here and we've seen endless square miles of astoundingly beautiful landscape. The bridges in the country side (I mean the real rural areas) are one laned and we had to wait at one of these while a farmer and his dogs herded a bunch of sheep and lambs on to their next paddock. Kind of fun and of course the farmer on his quad stopped to talk to us for a bit. Local insite is always the best. We stopped for lunch at one little place and were tickled to find an antique Rolls Royce club had a ralley with this same spot as their destination. We always have time to admire beautiful old cars. We've checked out the "oldest" and therefore "biggest" kauri tree alive, 2000 plus years and 51 meters high (that's what the sign said!)
 
Tomorrow we will head south to the town of Whangarei, by boat, and will spend a week exploring that area. We think that most of our discoveries here will be done by car on land as opposed to by boat from the water. Many of our sailboat friends have arrived in N.Z. now so we've been busy greeting them and Oso Blanco is already in Auckland, so we'll be catching up with them again soon. A few of our aquaintances are yet to come, but soon all foreign boats will be in N.Z., away from the cyclone season in the South Pacific, enjoying summer in this gorgeous country.

Tonga to New Zealand

We are into day 4 of our passage. The conditions to begin with were not so great, 2.5 to 3.5 Meter swell, at 8 second intervals, with wind waves and 15 to 20 knots of wind. The four of us went through many packages of crackers in order to keep our stomachs settled (Glen and I just ate crackers because we were hungry). Yesterday and today, today especially, was/is beautiful. Currently we are running at 1502 RPM, getting speeds of 9 knots on the most fantastically smooth ocean water we have ever seen in the wide open. Granted the swell is still about 2 Meters, but the interval is about 12 seconds and the wind speed is 3 knots so the water is smooth, like driving over a gently rolling prairie. Perfect conditions for we power boaters, but not so great for our sail boat friends. We have roughly 36 more hours to go and we hope that this weather stays with us all the way. I've had to dig out my jeans though, as the farther south we go, the lower the temperature gets. Evening temps have been 17 degrees and day time has been 20 degrees. It is still just spring in the southern hemisphere.

We are stuffing ourselves as best we can with meat (and of course other things) as our freezers are still very well stocked and the New Zealand Customs will not allow fresh/frozen meats, vegis and numerous other types of food into the country. We will literally roll off the boat onto the dock for inspection. We also have a fair quantity of alcohol to declare (over personal limits by a lot - even with four of us) so we may have to have a binge drinking session prior to docking and in that case, we won't care if we roll, bounce or slide in, will we.

Our current position is 30.02.627 S and 178.21.308 W and and we have run out of satellite service on both our KVH and Iridium. So no emails and no weather reports. It is rather disconcerting to be so, so, isolated. Hopefully by tomorrow we will have some service again. We're just hoping that the navigation satellites have coverage way down here, or we may have to dust off our charts and manual navigation tools. (Now which compartment did I put those in for safe keeping?)

So a reflection on our season spent in French Polynesia, Cook Islands, Samoa and Tonga. It has been amazing to view these countries and their cultures from the street/sea as it is so different from visiting via resorts. Each country's landscape is different from the next and each is awesome in it's own right. All of the people have been interesting. The Samoans and Tongans are the most friendly and generous people we have met to date, everybody says Hello to everybody. The last time I was home to Calgary, I found myself greeting strangers on the street in the same way, only to be stared at like I had lost my mind! We North Americans could use a friendliness refresher course. We only met Api and James from Suwarrow in the Cook Islands, but if they are representative of their countrymen, then the Cook Islands rate right up there too. Now we are on to our next adventure in New Zealand.

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Weather Window Wait in Tonga

John, one of the fellows that helped us on our Pacific crossing, was supposed to join us here in Nuku'alofa and do the crossing from Tonga to New Zealand. He was looking forward to a bit of diving, sightseeing, warm weather and so on along with the ocean experience. BUT he got tangled up in a hockey game and somebody ran over his hand with a skate causing enough damage that he couldn't come out. So we recruited Don and Paule (husband and wife) recommended to us by our friend and travel agent Deb (Don is her brother). They are from the Yukon and are avid outdoor sports people well used to the waters of northern B.C. and Alaska. We get them all cleared in and out of the country, but we still have to wait for weather to calm so we all take an island tour.

Tiny will be our guide/driver, he is more expensive than the other taxi guys, but he speaks good English and he is a funny guy. He weighs about 350 lbs so his name is fitting? The island is small, but Tiny has a full 6 hr day planned for us. We see the King's palace from the outside, it is being renovated for his Mother to live in, the royal cemetery, the first church, the local business areas, some more cemeteries and the agricultural areas. As we travel, Tiny provides lively commentary about politics both old and new in Tonga, the people, their customs and current conditions and he answers our many questions and takes a good deal of kidding about everything, especially his rendition of traditional legends. He took us to a magnificent under ground cave with fresh water pools and then to see the famous "flying foxes" of Tonga, huge fruit bats that hang in trees during the day. We were going to do some four wheeling on the beach, but Tiny's truck decided that today was not the day and promptly sunk to the axles in the powdery sand, not 10 feet off of the road. So we all piled out to push and with the help of some passers by managed to get the vehicle back on to the road. We had a good time teasing Tiny about that. He made it up to us by taking us to a nice resort for lunch (we paid, but it was very good) and then we went to the "blow holes" the greatest feature of the day and they were truly amazing. We probably could have spent the day just there. The steep rock cliffs have been battered by the ocean for so long and water has formed tunnels through the porous rock such that when the waves pound against the cliffs, the water shoots high into the air through these holes. Beautiful and awesome to see. When our day of touring is done and we are busy thanking Tiny for our fun he invites us to a Sunday feast at his house. We are all genuinely touched and accept.

Sunday after church, we had to let Don and Paule experience the Tongan choirs, we meet Tiny and head to his house. We have a cooler full of cold drinks and excess meat that will be confiscated upon our entry to New Zealand. Tiny and his family may as well enjoy it. Tiny and his family set before us a true feast, roast suckling pig, sweet potatoe, taro leaves and corned beef (a must try), raw fish salad, sashimi of another type of fish, cucumber salad and papaya desert. Delicious! We are so honored to be invited to these personal gatherings. We are learning so much from our travels about the generosity of others. Our Thank you's seem insignificant in return.

Monday, Nov 1, 2010, we have a window to leave and we haul anchor and head for New Zealand. All things considered and God willing, we will be there in 5 and a half days. We're on the water again.

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Bits and Pieces of Tonga

While we were in Neiafu on Vava'u, we meet a colorful couple from Banff, Alberta. They are the owners of the "Giggling Whale and the Tipsy Turtle" a happening little restaurant and bar. Sandy and Cathy come to Vava'u every year for six months to run the restaurant and their small guest house while they ultimately enjoy the Tongan winter (30 plus degrees in tropical beauty - tough!). Then they rush back to Alberta, Canada to wallow in our winter months while they put their hands to the ski industry in Banff and Lake Louise. They certainly like extremes! Being the great Canadian advocates that we are, we quickly found them out by noticing the "Ski Louise" sticker on their restaurant door. Great people, fully engaged in their Tonga community, they offer the local school children an evening to perform their traditional dance and music at the restaurant, a very popular event for the traveling yachties and a great way for the kids to generate donations for their education (school is only free until 7th level). Meeting Sandy and Cathy broadened our experience of Vava'u which makes traveling that much more special. They came for a BBQ on the boat and we of course attended their restaurant. Cathy took us shopping, which is an adventure in itself, you go to one little shack with bars on the window/counter to buy hard to find North American products, you go to a store 6 blocks up and one over to get good meat, you back track 3 blocks for the store with best cheezes and yet another store for the best bakery selections. For fresh produce, the local market is the best place for selection of seasonal items and the best price, plus Glen really has a good time teasing all the shop ladies, young and old, as he searches for the ultimate tasting watermelon. Sandy just does everything and anything for anybody that needs help. You need it? Sandy can find it.

Upon arriving at Nuku'alofa on Tongatapu, we anchored the boat with the herd of sail boats off of the beach on a small island across from the commercial wharf. On the island is Big Mama's Resort, a rustic pole building with sand floors and a ceiling filled with flags from every corner of the world, signed by the boaters that presented them. Mama's strives to make everybody's life easy by providing free internet, garbage disposal and of course cold beer and easy pub food. They also have a water taxi service to the main island where the town of Nuku'alofa is. She held a big birthday feast for the resort while we were there complete with the traditional roast suckling pig. Very nice and well attended - the food was free, you paid for your drinks.

The weather is not so nice at this point in Nuku'alofa, the wind is a steady 15 to 20 knots and the water is constantly whipped into steep white caps. A trip by dingy to the main island is maddness and travel in the whaler is a guaranteed salt water bath, but we have to go there so you just do it. We picked up our boat parts and Jeff got the boat all tuned up. We are crossing our fingers, but so far the smoking is greatly reduced. Jeff really was loving life, we went diving and eating and checking out the town. We enjoyed having him on the boat too, he turned out to be good company and a knowledgeable boat hand as well as a talented mechanic (the reason he was sent here for). Arranging a taxi for his trip to the airport on his departure was easy as the drivers hang out at the dingy dock ready to offer their services as soon as you set foot on land.

This is our last port of call before New Zealand, so we have to clear customs, immigration and so on here. There are a lot of boats expected in the next short period of time, all preparing for the 1100 mile crossing. The ideal is to clear in and out of the port at the same time as you have three different stops to make in order to get all of the paperwork done and the offices are at opposite sides of the town. You also get your duty free fuel paper at the clearing out stage. The catch is that when the officials have cleared you out of the country, they want you gone within 24 hrs. But as boaters, we have to wait for weather conditions to be safe and they are a moving target, obsessed over at length by all boaters, we need to have everything done and prepared so that when the conditions are right we can leave on a moments notice. With clearance proceedures taking the better part of a day and fueling appointments the better part of the next day as you have to wait for high tide to access the fuel dock, there is nothing spontainious about the leaving process, thus we all strive to have everything done in advance. As it turned out it took two days for us to clear customs as the officer would not clear us in and out at the same time because we came in the afternoon, if we had come in the morning we could have cleared in and out, so we had to return the next "morning" to clear out and get our fuel paper. Diesel is $2.49/ltr normally and $1.53/ltr duty free, well worth the wait. So with all of the boring stuff done, we settle in to wait for our weather window (we need 5 good days) to begin our journey. As things unfold, we get to wait a whole week. But we won't have any problem filling the time.

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Home and Back and Plans Change

Our next two days out at anchor provide us with two very, very interesting dives. We decided to dive on the bump in the water that we almost ran into on our way to this anchorage days before. Being only 13 feet deep at the shallowest point, it was easy to secure the whaler as we could target the rock we wanted the anchor to hook on by sight from above. A truly amazing world unfolded before us on this little world of it's own. The fish and coral life was so astonishing that we dove the same location the next day and still came up thrilled with what we had found.

In this anchorage there is a small floating art shop and a small Spanish restaurant. We visited the art shop and came away with a cute little painting, lots of local knowledge and the promise of a banana and coconut delivery for the next day. We were getting tired of my cooking and I guess Glen's cooking too as he is the BBQ king so decided that dinner out at La Paella was in order. So we made our reservation by calling on VHF channel 11 and at the appointed time pulled up at the beach with the whaler, took a few minutes to tie it to a tree forward and stern anchor the rear, then headed up the hill for a flavorful and interesting evening. The Spanish family that owns and runs the restaurant have lived in Tonga for 30 years. They have a quaint little restaurant, rustic and charming that overlooks the bay for added ambiance. They keep life simple by offering a set menu which consists of a series of tasty little morsels served tapa style one after the other followed by a flavorful Paella and a locally inspired desert. You can buy wine or beer there or bring your own. The food was both good and satisfying, Mrs. is the cook. The proprietors are diverse and talented, when it came time for the entertainment (live music is featured nightly) Mr. came on stage, flamboyantly dressed with guitar in hand and serenaded us with a spicy collection of Spanish/Cuban/Latin music with a few old rock songs thrown in for measure (he definitely appeared like he had once been part of the "scene"). To our pleasant surprise, when harmony and added percussion were needed for the music, Mrs. and her cook's helper (a local man) came on stage and added their gifts to the mix. We had to leave early as a big rain storm was threatening and since we didn't have our "wet suits" on we decided to go. This meant that we were going to miss the second set of entertainment which was to feature their dancing nanny goat, but the young fellow serving us didn't think the goat would be performing well as she was hiding because of the impending rain. She did make a hasty appearance, trotting through the restaurant, giving us all a "wild eye" and promptly high tailing it again. What a great evening and we did make it back before the waters broke loose from the heavens yet again.

Next it was back to Neiafu harbor. I was scheduled to fly home for seven days (which I did) and Glen had a long list of little items to fix up (which he did) as well as wait for the diesel mechanic to come in from San Diego. Woo Hoo, we will finally be rid of the smoking and soot problems (we sincerely hope anyway). Upon my return, Glen is almost local now. As we walk down the street to the market all kinds of people call out to him and wave, he has stories and more stories to tell of all the things he has involved himself in. It sounds like he had a lot of fun. The parts for the boat did not arrive with the mechanic, Jeff, so the two of them have done the prep work on the boat and Glen has been showing Jeff around.

Here is the change of plans. The parts for the boat have been located in Nuku'alofa on Tongatapu (main city and capital of Tonga) so instead of risking further delay and loss, we have decided to head to Nuku'alofa, a 20 hour run, and pick them up personally. So with Jeff on board we head out. This decision means that we will totally bypass the Ha'apai group of islands in Tonga, which is sad as some very good diving is reported to be there and we really don't want to miss anything. But along with the parts thing, there is some stronger weather coming in and Ha'apai Group doesn't offer much secure/protected anchorage so it is for the best that we bypass this beautiful little piece of the South Pacific. So we'll compensate by exploring Tongatapu Group more extensively. Right now, I am watching a beautiful dawn transform the horizon from night to day.

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Beer on the Beach

Our jaunt to the beach for Happy Hour was a sweet change of pace. Once we figured out how to tie the whaler off so it didn't bash up onto the beach and become high and dry as it was a receding tide, all was calm and peaceful. To our pleasant surprise, the beach turned out to be two sided, beach on the side that we tied up and a very short walk (100 steps) up and over a bump and we were on a beach on the other side of the island. So we had a walk on the sunny side and then a quite beer on the shady side. A small herd of goats joined us in our relaxing.

We moved to a new anchorage off of the beaten track of the Moorings Fleet that plies these waters (charter boats) and were rewarded with a very serene and beautiful setting. The Vava'u Group here in Tonga is a collection of small islands joined by reefs and narrow waterways resulting in nearly 100 cozy anchorages. The landscape is high rocky cliffs next to white sandy beaches, a perfect play ground. The weather was calm and sunny and the water below us reflected the sandy bottom for a swimming pool effect. Only us in the whole bay. We snorkeled the nearby reef and spotted quite a few new fishes and coral species that we haven't encountered before. As divers, our greatest thrill is finding the rare, the unexpected and the new. I am convinced that this is the perfect location to find the elusive "frog fish", it looks like a yellow/orange sponge, so this is my mission while underwater.

We've moved again to another lovely spot. This one is a bit more boat populated. We have our most calm and perfect conditions to date. The water is truly "glass" calm, you can see the star fish on the sandy bottom as clear as day, the sun is shining and there is a "breath" of moving air. When it is like this, you can't imagine being anywhere else and because it is so fleeting, you absorb as much of it as you can. The clouds rolled in for the afternoon while we were out trying to find a suitable dive spot, getting lost in the labyrinth of surface crashing reefs, and the skys opened up and water poured forth. Good thing we had our wet suits on as we certainly got wet. Navigating in these parts, even in a small boat, is best done in high light conditions so that you can see the color variations of the water and therefore the depths. With the dark sky and rough water conditions, we definitely could not tell where the shallow spots were (don't want to run aground), we headed back to the big boat. Today it is still overcast, but we aren't complaining, it is still warm and wonderful. We'll use lat/long coordinates to get to our chosen dive site for today.

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