Photos: Auckland, Rangitoto, Tongariro!

Here are some photos of my first few weeks in New Zealand!

MARILEES 21ST BIRTHDAY!

Lany (Mar's little sister), myself, Marilee, and Robin (another friend visiting from Winnipeg)

Some of the decorations! A 21st birthday is a big one that people celebrate in New Zealand, even though the legal age is 18. So a lot of the time the birthday person rents out a bar and invites all their friends! Which is just what Marilee did! So we decorated it up a little and got all dressed up and had a great time!

Day Trip: Rangitoto

Mar and Robin and I did a day trip to a dormant volcano island called Rangitoto, which was amazing!

There were lava caves to explore...dont worry it was old lava, not new stuff...

Inside the caves! My head lamp came in very handy, and looked very stylish

Easter-Long Weekend

Ohhh it was so cold!

13 more to go!!!! It was just under 20 km in total!

Mount Ngarahoe (AKA Mount Doom from the Lord of the Rings)

Emerald Lakes (or one of them atleast)

Mar and I

We just finished climbing that!

Gordon, Marilee and I!

Can you believe it! we ran into our gym teacher from high school!

The next day a bunch of us went kyacking!

We adventured under into a bridge, and they were channelling water so we first went under the bridge and then portaged across to this stream and then went into the bridge, and then had a race...of course

Easter Long and the week leading up to it

Easter long weekend was amazing! But i'll get to that in a minute.

This past week Marilee took Tuesday off so we could climb Rangitoto (i cant spell or pronounce anything here) which is a dormant volcanic island just off the coast of Auckland. It was amazing and so much fun even though we had spent the night before dancing and were a little tired. This island was so lush and green and just beautiful and we had a perfectly clear day so we could see the harbor and downtown. I'll put up pictures later but they don't do it justice. If anyone is ever coming to Auckland, Rangitoto would be my first recommendation.

Alright so that was a highlight of that week which leads up to this past weekend, where instead of climbing a dormant volcano I climbed an active volcano! Because this was a 4 day weekennd a bunch of Marilee and Gordon's work mates decided to rent a couple baches...bach's... I don't know the plural..basically it's a cabin..outside the city maybe 4 or 5 hours drive. So there was 12 of us total and we had two baches and 4 days! We got there on the friday and just hung out all evening and relaxed and had a few beers. The second day we (well most of us) got up early and took a bus to the Tongariro (once again I'm unsure of the spelling) Crossing and prcceeded to climb for a long long time. It was 20 km long and fantastic the whole way! And no, if anyone's wondering I didnt see any fresh lava. I'll put up pictures for you later so you can better understand what it was like but it was definitly worth it...even though a lot of it smelt like sulfur. Oh and also for you Lord of the Rings fans that may be reading this...I was climbing up beside Mount Doom, which was pretty neat...even though i'm not a huge fan myself. Ok so that was saturday. Sunday was just as beautiful so we decided to work a different set of muscles and go kyacking for the afternoon. That was awfully eventful and filled with a lot of waterfights and people falling into the water and it even involved an adventure upstream into a bridges waterchannel. Then today we woke up and packed and tidied up and drove home, sadly, back to real life and into the beginnings of my hunt for a job!

chicken transportation in the Himalayas

more from mommah

Ever the dancing queen, there is a full 3 minute video now on your tube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCByCfP34nc of Alicia dancing Nepali-style in the kitchen with our assistant leader Boje .... all the while the cook and Pierre kept making the meal over an open fire while the dance craze raged on!

not exactly in order here .... but we are at the world famous climber's bar that everyone has gone to for years .... you get to hang up a foot fore each expedition and this was ours ....

When Pierre decides to ride on the top of the bus he can't resist hanging over the side to catch a splendid photo of Alicia hanging out the window.

.... so Alicia decides to go swimming but forgets that she has on her money-belt .... so here's my girl drying out "another" wet passport, cash, ID and other precious goodies!

photos from Mommah

This is Alicia getting a Tikka from a local store keeper. Check out that stone pathway .... you have to really watch your step or you will end up doing a donkey dance!

We happened to be in remote village during the festival of "Holi" when everyone gets colours thrown at them and everyone offers to give you a Tikka at least, or a full face of red powder if you are not careful .... Alicia was just starting to get really sick at this point but wore her Tikka with style! She also played with every puppy we came across!

Mom and Alicia get reunited after 5 days apart ... horay!