Blogs from Oceania - page 7777

The same day we left the Thermal wonderland we drove to Lake Taupo - I was booked in for a skydive that afternoon and didn't want to miss the appointment! The Skydive At this point in my life I have got to say that the exhilaration from the skydive - the feelings of freefall and the accompanying visuals - is the purest feeling I have ever felt. I was on a buzz for a long while afterwards, replaying the first seconds in my head like a videoclip. We arrived at the Taupo Tandem Skydive office with plenty of time, and proceded with choosing what altitude to jump from and whether or not to have a personal camerman (and suchlike other choices). I opted for spending $100 extra on going to 15,000 feet instead of having all ... read more

hey! A morning entry, would you believe it. I am, unsurprisingly, sort of waiting for a bus. Yesterday night I went to the Maori Arts 'n' Craft centre where we had a guided tour round natural phenomena like geysers, hot mud splashy things (98 degrees centigrade at top) and plants, and indeed real life Kiwis (the birds). These geysers are apparently real and uninterfered with, unlike some rival geyser that goes off at 10:30 every day apparently, even when daylight savings time is on. Magic, no? Even so, they spurted magnificently. Also saw them doing actual arts and crafts, weaving, carving and the like. Follow that with Maori welcome/challenge/dance 'n' sing type cultural event. And then Maori FEAST. This consisted of an all-you-can eat buffet cooked by traditional means, which even though it had a fish ... read more

Not a real entry today, just on some uberexpensive machine waiting for a bus to the Maori Crafts Institute or something like that. In reply: Can't remember what I wrote, but if it was wanting to make more then it was probably swans. If it was not making more then that'll be the fiends that we call children. There are too many already - population = pollution as it says on a sign here :-) Glowworms glow cos of some biochemical magic - they're not plugged into the socket or anything (so they claim). Sorry about lack of detail, but here is an interesting fact (!): the hungrier the glowworm the brighter it is. Yep I did go to Milford, sorry, forgot to mention that. It was full of tourists but I still saw some unbelivable ... read more

On the 23rd of Feb we left Auckland for the 83rd and final time (although its immense gravitational pull is getting larger and larger as it sucks in more and more galaxies). As the van reached the necessary escape velocity (80kph, Southeasterly direction, State Highway 1) we felt a strange sense of sensation as over 35% of the entire country's population were now behind us - we were heading into Real New Zealand. As we headed towards our target destination, Rotorua, we contemplated visiting "Hobbiton" on the way. It was not to be, partly because of the extortionate cost ($50pp) of visiting the little Hobbitty Lord of the Rings set and partly because we had a tightly planned itinerary which was not able to accomodate the sidetrip. No worries, we were to see much better LOR ... read more

The other day my day started not so good, and it should be sufficient to say that I found it a tad hard to be welcoming and smiling to all the customers on the boat. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) I had students that day, which gave me lots of good opportunities to yell at them and roll my eyes for no good reason. On our first dive for the day the students needed to do a compass swim. As I have earlier had students’ watches interfere with compasses and a few students on their way to PNG, I decided to make my students take their watches off and leave them on the boat. Which of course sounds like the most reasonable decision. However, things were a bit hectic on the back deck, since the sea was ... read more