The shapes lava form

After our wonderful lunch at the sunny beach, we drove to the other side of the island via the Saddle Road, with Mauna Loa on the one side and Mauna Kea on the other. Mauna Loa is the world’s largest active volcano while Mauna Kea is now extinct, and it is spectacular to drive between the two of them, with the fantastic, otherworldly scenery of black lava flows and cinder cones sticking out of the bare landscape. And once you get closer to the rainy side of the island, the vegetation starts to sprout up until it’s a lush rainforest when you descend down into Hilo. And then we arrived in true paradise. We were staying in the same place I had stayed in before, and it is simply such a beautiful and relaxing place with a pool in the middle of the tropical forest, with so many birds around.

Lava in your backyard

The next day we had signed up for a tour of Fissure 8, the largest of 24 fissures opening up in the middle of a neighbourhood in 2018, when the Kīlauea volcano erupted. The lava lake at the top of the volcano had suddenly dropped, and the lava travelled underground until it came out lower on the flanks – and in the middle of people’s backyards... Approximately 2.000 people were evacuated and half of Leilani Estates as well as the beach town of Kapoho was wiped off the map (again!). Some beautiful parts that I visited back in 2016 were now gone, such as the lava tidal pools and the beautiful Champagne pond with turtles. Very strange to now only have those places in photos and in my memory. And even more impactful to realise what this has meant for the people living there...

When all is left is the shape of a tree in lava

The tour was absolutely fascinating. Our tour guide was living in Leilani Estates and showed us where his house used to be – the only visible remainder was the big tree they had in the backyard, around which the lava had wrapped itself and then the tree burned away. So we could descend a few meters in what used to be the trunk of the tree... Our tour guide also showed us the top of Fissure 8 which was a few hundred meters away, with steam still coming out of some vents (it rains a lot on this side of the island, and there is still hot lava underground). Standing on this fissure, we could also see the remains of the lava river flowing from this fissure towards the sea in the great distance, covering the neighbourhood and cutting a highway close to where we were staying (the highway was reestablished a few months later). And next to that black devastation you could see lush rainforest with intact houses, such as the one where we were staying, at only 1km or so from that lava river. Imagine if this was your backyard... That was really the most impressive part, to really see how this eruption influenced people’s lives. We also visited the National Park, of course, to see the Kīlauea volcano itself, which is also impressive and strangely beautiful and fascinating, but not as impressive as hearing this tour guide’s stories about how he experienced getting evacuated and eventually losing their house – from the first cracks appearing in the roads to the evacuation order coming, and then regularly checking up on the house until it finally was covered by lava as well. And then when you looked the other way, only a few hundred meters further you could see the lucky people whose house was saved because the lava flowed the other way. There are a lot of stories there...

Paradise (with some trouble)

And then we hopped to the second island, the Big Island or Hawai’i itself, where I had dreamed of returning after two fantastic visits in 2014 and 2016. Happy to leave the ‘tiny house’ behind and really looking forward to our next Airbnb, where I had stayed before and which genuinely was paradise, I started to really relax once we took to the air in Honolulu and especially when we touched down in Kailua-Kona airport. The airport is small and cute, and we were soon on our way to the rental car agency. What can go wrong, right?

And you think you have things covered when you have six bank cards

This time we had reserved a car at Avis, and I was just waiting for Søren to get done with the paperwork, when the machine did not accept his credit card for the deposit. Ah, I said with a smile to the agent, don’t worry, we have five more cards (you may remember that I have said this before, when we were trying to buy Birk’s sport school uniform. Apparently, I am an optimist at heart). And what do you know, the machine said ‘no’ to all Søren’s cards... And mine were not possible anyway since we don’t share a last name and the reservation was in his name. And we were like, what?!?

The pitfall of the credit / debit card

What we learned was that Avis has very strict guidelines for debit cards, and the problem was that our credit cards also double as debit cards – yet the machine saw the card only as a debit card (normally you can just select whether you want to use the card as debit card or as credit card). With debit cards, they do a check to make sure there is enough money on the card for the deposit – but they could not do that either since our cards were not American. So, what then?!??

Tipping the competition

Happily, the agent was really helpful – he suggested we try to rent a car with one of the other agencies. We had successfully rented at Thrifty and Dollar in New Zealand and Australia, and happily it turned out they did have available cars at reasonable prices (phew, for a moment I was worried everything was sold out and you really don’t want to do the US by public transportation – believe me, I tried). He even suggested we still book online because that saves a bit of money compared to going to the counter. So we sat on the bench outside of Avis and tried to get online. That didn’t work either – there was no WiFi, Søren didn’t have any data on his phone in the US anymore, and I had only very little connectivity. After another frustrating twenty minutes we gave up and just marched to the Thrifty agency across the road, where we got in just before 15 other people (phew again) and got a car. Yes, a bit more expensive than our original reservation, but it was still reasonable, and most importantly, it was a car! It even was a Jeep, though Søren was a bit disappointed it wasn’t the type he wanted to try out.

Paradise at last

And then the relaxation could start! We were quite exhausted from all that, so we just drove to a nice restaurant I had found on the coast, and had a wonderful lunch there. I really enjoyed the three types of poke that I got, artfully arranged on half a bamboo stick. And it was sunny, there were palm trees, and turtles swimming around in the clear blue waters. That’s more like it!

Off grid in Hawai’i

Different tastes and sounds

Our time in New Zealand has now come to an end. It has been characterized by many different experiences, tastes, and sounds. Here is a selection of them:

• Something I knew but had completely forgotten about is that the sun moves in the other direction. I was a bit sad when arriving in Christchurch after the long flight when I realised that I wouldn’t have the sun shining on the lovely deck of the cottage I had hired, where I had planned to nap off my jetlag. Until it did, because the sun moves in the other direction! I have gotten used to it, putting my towel in the right place on the beach so that the shade will hit / or not hit.
• The sun is not the only thing moving in the ‘wrong’ direction, traffic also does. I’ve gotten so used to this now that, when I see a film where they drive on the right side of the road, I’m thinking ‘hey, that’s weird, they are driving on the wrong side of the road!
• The tides are also much more pronounced here than where we live in Denmark. There is usually about 3 meters difference between high and low tide, so there is quite the difference at the beaches. At low tide, you can walk quite far along the coast, underneath the cliffs, but you have to keep an eye at the tides because two teenagers got stuck on some cliffs when evening fell and the tide came in. They had to be rescued by the coast guard (and no, they were not our teenagers!!).
  
• In terms of sounds, one of the first things that we noticed was the kiwi accent, where they bend the ‘e’ into an ‘i’ so that it sounds like they are saying ‘twinty’ or ‘shit’ when they mean ‘twenty’ and ‘shed’. Especially when they talk fast, we also have some difficulty understanding what is being said.
  
• What is also very special in New Zealand is the beautiful nature and many trees and birds that only exist here. We saw a 1200 year old kauri tree, there are palm trees everywhere (including in front of our veranda) and I simply love the many pōhutukawa we see around Devonport and in the north. They are also called the Christmas tree here because they flower bright red in December. The way they bend their branches and cling to the cliffs is really amazing. They are also still green – it has become autumn now with some autumn colours here and there. There are also many special birds here, though I find them hard to spot and identify. We do have a Tūī in the garden next-door, and they make such funny and special sounds! These sounds will certainly remind me of New Zealand. And I’ve also been very happy to finally see a Monarch butterfly in their real habitat – they are just floating around here!!
• In terms of tastes, we had the opportunity to taste many cuisines in Auckland, which is a very multicultural city. With a Thai, Indian and fish & chips restaurant just around the corner, we were already well situated for take-away meals. Fish and chips is the most popular takeaway in New Zealand, with many options: hoki/terakihi/snapper and battered/crumbed/grilled. We also spotted many facades that proclaimed they offered ‘Chinese and European takeaway’ but never really tried those… We also explored many restaurants in Devonport, Takapuna and Auckland itself – French, Italian, Mediterranean, Lebanese, Dutch, Belgian, Brazilian, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, U.S. American, Mexican and Argentinian streetfood… It was also interesting to see the Japanese restaurants here – in Denmark, you mainly get sushi restaurants (at least outside of Copenhagen), but here we got to try a donburi. We were also quite happy to find a really nice crêperie in Takapuna and a French lunch café we could walk to, and when an Italian espresso bar opened around the corner as well, Søren was especially happy. There are also a lot of breakfast and lunch places that close their doors around 3pm or so. Great places to have delicious Eggs Benedict or an Avocado smash on toast or sourdough.
  
• We also enjoyed going through various supermarkets (especially the New World) to see what is on offer. One thing that we benefited from is their many one person pies, which you can get freshly made in the deli or the bakery, packed as one-person takeaway meal (Dad’s Pies) in the supermarket, or as a bigger version to share from the freezer. We’ve eaten a lot of those, either as lunch from the bakery around the corner, where they also had a monthly changing vegetarian version, or from the supermarket on our way back from a weekend trip with the kids. We were also impressed by the incredible number of hummus variations in the supermarket. There is also a LOT of meat in the New Zealand supermarkets – but we were not impressed with the hot dogs we bought in one of the first weeks. And another acquired taste is the tap water, which contains chloride, so we boil it before we drink it, which helps. On the positive side, it’s not very hard like in Denmark!
• We also managed to taste the infamous ‘vegemite’, this black substance Kiwis and Aussies put on their bread, and that apparently you only love when you grew up with it. The kids were very skeptical about this (aka refused outright to try it), so I had arranged some interesting candy as reward (frozen strawberries with a chocolate cover) and the moment came when their mum was visiting and expressed an interest to taste it. And there you go, social pressure + a reward does the trick, and we all had a go. And what do you know, the kids actually didn’t dislike it – I did tell them they might actually be okay with it if they only took very little (that was the trick to it, I had heard from someone earlier – just spread it incredibly thinly on some toast with butter first, and then it’s nice). Linus was the most positive about it, which was probably because he really only took a few molecules :D.
• Funnily enough, I also discovered it is easier to get Dutch goodies here in NZ than in Denmark, I guess due to the many Dutchies here and that they can’t easily import stuff themselves. In the shopping mall about 15 minutes from here there is a shop called Amsterdam – Dutch owners – where you can get lots of Dutch cheese (including the Gouda goat cheese which I love), hagelslag, cookies, drop and chocolate peanuts. And pretty much every supermarket has stroopwafels and actually also often kano’s, for some reason (I love them too!). There is also a Dutch restaurant in the other suburb, where I couldn’t resist to get a frikandel speciaal (definitely not as good as in the Netherlands). The Double Dutch fries I got a food truck event in Narrow Neck also were not very special (though they did have the right Zaanse mayonnaise!). So I’m looking forward to my next trip to the Netherlands!

Reading the landscape

During the last three weeks of our stay in New Zealand, we did a few more day trips to explore Auckland and surroundings. Auckland is built on an active volcanic field, with approximately 53 volcanoes so far, some of which we have already explored – we windsurfed on Lake Pupuke, the oldest volcano, and we walked up the North Head and Mount Victoria, both in Devonport, and spotted Mount Eden and One Tree Hill (yes, the song from U2 is about that hill) from the Skytower. The interesting (and scary) thing is that this volcanic field is still active, and it could erupt at any time and any point. Apart from at Rangitoto, the youngest volcano, it has never erupted two times in the same place, so it could happen anywhere in Auckland. Imagine that…

Rangitoto

The most recent eruption was about 600 years ago, on Rangitoto, which is the island right across from Narrow Neck beach, which is a 10 minute walk so it’s in a lot of pictures. I took the ferry there twice to have a walk, once up to the top and once along the perimeter to the only beach on the island. While the island looks fully forested from a distance, there are actually quite a few places where there is a lot of bare lava-rock with vegetation growing in between – it reminded me of Hawaii. The interesting thing is also that there are not that many birds on the island because the forest is still very young and there are virtually no streams on the island – it gets very hot with the black lava rock. Nobody lives on the island, though there are some ‘baches’ – short for ‘bachelor pad’, which is the kiwi ‘summerhouse’.

Black sand, a fossil forest and crumbling cliffs

We also went for a day trip to Piha beach, which is completely stunning. Its black sand beach is famous for surfing, and the giant rock in the middle is what is left from the cone of an ancient volcano (16 million years old). I was also surprised to recently discover a fossil forest pretty much on our doorstep, at Takapuna beach. It is next to the Pupuke lake/volcano, and when that erupted, the lava flows encountered a forest. The lava flowed around the trees, cooled down where it met a tree and then set it on fire. So what we now see are round forms of lava with a hole in the middle, where the tree used to be. Really cool! It’s also very interesting to see the black and red lava rocks at Takapuna, and also the red and grey cliffs closer by, here at Narrow Neck, for example. The Māori called it Paringawhara or ‘The place of the crumbling cliffs’. We’ve been looking with interest on all these houses built on top of them. They obviously have fantastic views, but when you see the many places where a slide occurred, you also wonder about how this is going to look in 50 years…

Jurassic rocks and wine at Waiheke

And then when you take the ferry to Waiheke Island, you get to a very old piece of land. Most of Waiheke island is made of rocks dating from 145 to 158 million years ago. The island is known for its many vineyards – we sampled three of them on a wine tour with the whole family – and on another day, I rented an e-bike to tour the island. It was very good that it was powered by electricity, because there is a crazy amount of going up and down there. Very enjoyable with a bit of ‘e’ to help you along!

Sydney

Mid May we flew to Sydney for five days, where I had a few meetings with colleagues. We were apparently very lucky with the weather because it had been raining for the past three weeks. We just got sun and 20 degrees!

Disconnected

The first day was mainly spent in the neighbourhood because I had a meeting with a colleague at the University of Sydney Technology, and he showed us around the beautiful “paper bag” business school, built by Frank Gehry. Getting back was a bit more troublesome for me – somehow, my New Zealand sim card wasn’t connecting to data and it turned out that calls and texts were also blocked. It was interesting, not to say the least, to find yourself thrown back in time to before we all had cell phones with roaming. I tried to get on the wifi here and there to see if Søren had gotten home yet from his walk, but that didn’t work. After ringing the doorbell and getting no answer, I went back to the restaurant of the night before to get on their wifi, but they couldn’t find their password... In the end, someone was kind enough to make a hotspot with their phone – problem solved.

Seeing the sights (and an asbestos tree)

We were based in Surry Hills which was a nice location with lots of restaurants to choose from, and also quite central. The second day we spent walking around Sydney which we loved. We walked to Darling Harbour, then to the city centre and Circular Quay, the Rocks, the Opera House, and then back via the botanical garden. We walked a total of 18km but with a good break for brunch and for dinner, so it didn’t feel that long. We also walked around Centennial Park and took a ferry to Watson’s Bay and walked around the headland there. One thing we spotted in some of the parks was that trees were fenced off with a sign of ‘asbestos’. Happily my colleague could enlighten us about the recent ‘asbestos crisis’ – apparently they had discovered that mulch spread around trees contained asbestos, so now they are spending a lot of money on meticulously removing all the mulch and cleaning the sites, with closures of parks, playgrounds and even schools.

Where are the signs??

The not so fun part was when we got totally confused in traffic one day. I had a meeting with a colleague in one of the suburbs and thought it would then be fun to explore some areas north of Sydney. That turned out to be a bad idea. Not because of the beauty of the scenery – we went to Dobroyd Head, the North Head and Manly and had some great views of the harbour – but because it was impossible to find the right way back, even if we had Google to help us. Especially the part just north of the city centre, which is a complete chaos. We went through it first from west to east, and then from north to south, and neither experience was pleasant, to say the least… Traffic signs indicating directions often came a bit too late to be of much use, because by then you are stuck in a lane with too much traffic around you to move out of it. On our way back to Sydney we were completely confused when we were sitting in a sea of cars in about 10 lanes of traffic and could choose between the tunnel or the bridge – all going south – and the only thing the GPS mentioned was Cahill Expy, which was nowhere in sight. We then found ourselves on a lane that had turned into bus lane so we had to get out of that quickly, and then, apparently, we chose the wrong lane which made it impossible to join the Cahill Expy when it did appear on the signs…

Another issue was that the situation in reality often was different from what the GPS indicated, and several times we had a split second to make a non-informed choice on where to go. So, after having crossed the harbour bridge at snail’s pace (and it was dark by then, so not that many views to be had), we even ended up smack in the middle of the central business district of the most populous city in Australia. Not a fun experience either, with bus lanes all over the place (literally, sometimes they are on the left side at the curb, sometimes they are in the middle of the road) and cars doing all kinds of crazy stuff (like park on a very busy road). And then when you keep to the left lane because you see on the GPS you need to turn left in about 1km, you find yourself forced to turn left at the next crossing… Argh!! Well, we did survive, but, boy, were we glad to see the inside of our parking garage!!

Hot water and volcanic beauty

Then in mid April, when the school holiday had started, we took a longer trip to both Rotorua and Taupo to see some volcanoes.

Oh the smells

Rotorua is certainly a special experience, where the volcanoes announce themselves not necessarily by sight, as in Taupo, but by their smell (which, by the way, we didn’t get used to…). There are also a lot of places where steam rises up from the earth – it’s actually kind of difficult to decide which park to visit. We walked around Rotorua itself where they have a free public park with hot water running into steaming ponds, and we visited Te Puia and Waiotapu in the days after. Both parks are good examples of how the Māori population is gradually getting back some rights. The land of Te Puia itself was transferred to two local iwi (or tribes) in 2009 and last year the business itself was also transferred, so it is now fully owned and run by Māori.

A taste of Māori culture

Te Puia was special because of the geyser that erupts 30m in the sky and we also saw a kiwi there (in their shelter where it was completely dark – they are night animals). We saw lots of carving and weaving up close in the Māori Arts & Crafts Institute, where you need to have 1% of Māori blood to be allowed as a student. We also got a taste of Māori culture with a traditional welcome ceremony including the famous haka and a hāngī buffet (from a traditional underground steam oven). It was cool to see the hāngī in the thermal landscape as well as the natural hot pool that they also used to cook their food in – it was just hot water bubbling away in a pool of about 2 meters across, and they would lower the food, in some cloth or a flax basket, into the water and there you go!

Colours and a floatplane

The next day we went to Waiotapu, which is spectacular with its different colours. It also has a geyser which they make erupt every morning at 10.15am by putting some soap in the vent – fun to see, but much less spectacular than the one at Te Puia. Then we went onto Taupo, where some bad weather unfortunately hit us. Happily, we were able to move our floatplane ride forward, so we got to still see the volcanoes from the sky – even though Ngauruhu (or Mount Doom) was hiding in the clouds. Amazing views!

Soaking away

And the great thing about being in this area is that there is hot water in abundance. Our accommodation in both Rotorua and Taupo had heated pools (of different sizes) and we also found some good spots in nature where the hot water just came out of the rocks! I loved the place we found close to Waiotapu – a quiet spot where hot water flowed into a stream, and there were some pools made out of rocks, one even with the perfect rock shelve to sit on. But probably the best place, according to the kids at least, was the hot tub we rented in the forest, because there you could order a drink at the press of a button!

Coromandel and hot water beach

While we are in New Zealand to experience normal life here for a few months, we are also taking the opportunity to see some different things. Though we already are aware that there is so much to see that we’ll simply have to come back, especially to the South Island, to be the proper tourist.

Digging for hot water

At Easter we went to the Coromandel peninsula to stay for four nights at Whitianga. On our way there, we, of course, stopped off at the famous Hot Water beach. It said online that the best time to be there would be 2 hours before low tide, so that was a perfect timing with us arriving from Auckland. So, when we arrived, we could already see a crowd of people standing around one specific part of the beach, with the rest of the beach stretching empty for quite a few hundred meters more. What could it be they are looking for? 😉 So we joined them with our spade, and Linus started digging. But it turns out the hot water does not bubble up at all the places, so we joined some others in the already made craters, and ended up with a sandy hot pool of our own when a family left (there are only so many hours you can sit in hot water). That was nice – it was even hot enough for Linus! We also discovered more hot spots in the water itself (so hot it actually could burn your toes if you dug them down), where the occasional stingray floated past.

Green lipped mussels, Pavlova and kauri

The next day was my birthday, and I took the opportunity to soak in The Lost Spring (with poolside service and an Indian head massage) and we had a nice birthday dinner where I tried the New Zealand green lipped mussels. I also managed to find the national dish ‘Pavlova’ with whipped cream and strawberries as birthday cake – not as good as the one Jessie made for me when I celebrated my birthday 15 years ago in New Zealand, but still (and don’t let Australians tell you it’s their national dish!). I also saw the famous Cathedral Cove as well as the amazing coastline and some fish from a glass bottom boat (where the captain’s daughter dove up a sea urchin), and we took a long and quite arduous walk to the Shakespeare Cliff Lookout. Beautiful surroundings! On our way back we drove the north route, via Coromandel, and took a short walk to see a 1200 year old kauri tree (it’s the second longest living tree in the world!). These native trees have been suffering from some pathogen for which there is no cure, so we had to go through a shoe sanitizing station to make sure nothing untoward would be brought into the area. And then we drove back to Auckland along the peninsula coast – another twisty drive that the kids did not enjoy quite as much as I did… Great views!