Day 1 in Raglan

Rain and wind caused us to spend the afternoon on the beach playing with Ben's failboard (he insisted on calling it a skimboard). Before that we checked into "Sunscape," a small eco-community/campsite/hostel/experimental living/hippy haven up on a hill above the ocean. Some relevant pictures:

we're living in a train car...it's awesome

marvin struggles with the laws of physics for the first time

Day 1's dinner was delicious. There might have been lamb. The rosemary plant outside the kitchen might have been involved. The local police are still sorting through the details.

Day 2 in Raglan

Sunshine! Glorious sunshine meant that it was time to surf. Or as Matt said, "Surf's up, but DC is not." Once we all woke up, we headed to the beach, rented surfboards and the required wetsuits, and headed for the beach. Before we break into surfing photos, it's worth mentioning how awesome this beach was. Ngarunui Beach, a black sand beach, consisted of several miles of perfectly(unnaturally, we think) flat sand. So flat, in fact, that most of Ben's pictures seem mirrored. This isn't just water, the ground was probably cut by lasers....

Anyways, pictures of the beach:

nathan getting his TRON on

Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. This does not make sense. There are horses on this beach. Again, this does not make sense.

why is this not an album cover?

And now, moving on to day three, lovingly entitled: "THE BRITISH ARE COMING." Here we go!

THE BRITISH ARE COMING*

*they're not. We were going to meet up with some members of the Cambridge Solar Car Team, but they were waylaid in Auckland by administrative details including but not limited to lost wallets and persnickety rental car companies. Very sad. Hopefully we'll see them around at some point in the future (NASC hint hint nudge nudge).

Anyways, we spent a third day in anticipation of meeting the Cambridge team for dinner in Raglan. In order to pass the time, Matt, DC, and myself did what we usually do the pass the time...climb a mountain! This hike was amazing, and involved lots and lots of mud. I felt like a good hippy with my feet:

finger-lickin' good...

Anyways, pictures of the hike:

hike

the view from about 3/4 of the way up. We're currently staying in the closest spot of civilization.

The others went into town to do laundry and get kebabs, which were supposedly really really good. Upon hearing this, the first thing both Matt and I asked was "what was the place named?" Over the past several weeks, we've realized that the kebab quality is proportional to the quality of the pun in their name:

Abrakebabra: 9/10

Mecca Kebab: 6/10

Ali Kebab: 5/10

Wrap-Up: 9/10

We've gotten to know a few of the characters around the hostel over the last couple days. I talked to a guy from Germany for a bit today and ended up asking him what brought him to New Zealand. He said: "In Germany...everything has its place....is exact. This is not for me. New Zealand is....different." This is the most insightful description I've yet heard of this awesome country. It's a shame we're leaving so soon.

I leave you, as always*, with a picture of Marvin!

what is there to say?

*it's a lofty ideal...we don't always make it, but we try.

Therefore, we decided to do something EXTREME.  If there is one place in New Zealand that is extreme, it is Rotorua.  This town has taken upon itself the enormous task of subjecting people to extreme risks and hazards without killing them.  Activities such as bungee jumping, zorbing, downhill luge, and jet boating are just a few of the things that you can do.

In Rotorua, we stayed at a nice little holiday park with access to geothermal hot tubs and the hot sands of the beach.  All you have to do is dig into the sand a bit and you find warm/hot water, just waiting for you to bask in it.  We also visited some hot springs and refined our abilities to jump over said hot springs, which happened without incident.

Little did we know, we would soon be sucked into the EXTREME activities.  We arrived at the poorly named Agrodome and first saw the Zorbing hill, which is much too small.  Ben, Marvin!, and Nathan' decided to Zorb down the hill, and they were left dizzy with big smiles on their faces.

Marvin! walking away from the Zorb, dizzy and smiling

Matt, Nathan, and DC decided to search for something more extreme, so they chose to find the trails that Gary Fisher himself said had "the best singletrack ever."  We rented bikes from a cool guy named Ed at Planet Bike, just at the trailhead.  He was very interested in our solar car exploits, so we fed him lies about how fast, light, and strong our solar car was, they ran away with three of his best hardtails.

In New Zealand, they have a rating system for MTB (mountain bike) trails.  They range from 1, which is for tots, to 6, which means death.  We rode mostly 3's and 4's, which are "intermediate."  We soon learned once again that New Zealand is very EXTREME, because the trails we were on were full of ridiculously steep terrain and crazy jumps.  There were 100 miles of trails, and we ended up lost many times, the worst of which resulted in using the iPhone compass, which was a crazy idea, just crazy enough to work.  DC managed to ride faster the more lost we got, and eventually Nathan hit a tree, did a flip, and got a grease tatoo.  Nathan is fine, all he got was a bruise and a sprocket-shaped series of punctures on the back of his leg that he can show off to girls.

DC charging up a fireroad to get to the most EXTREME trails

Meanwhile, Marvin!, Nathan', and Ben found "actually quite serious" cars and raced them around a very short track.  To everyone's suprise, Nathan' had the fastest lap.  This is interesting for those longtime readers out there, because Ben beat Michigan in the hot lap at Hidden Valley Raceway (to be fair, Michigan uses MTB brakes and sometimes has trouble slowing down for corners).

After getting our fill of EXTREME, we decided to hit the surf.  According to the Interwebs, the best surf is in a little town called Raglan on the western coast of the north Island, about 2 hours south of Auckland.  We were disappointed by cloudy weather at first, but the clouds cleared, and we tested the waters with a skimboard that caused us all to faceplant into the sand.

In conclusion, Surf's Up!

this Ben climbing up the last 50m of Mt. Mount Ngauruhoe. He really, really needs a haircut.

It's not actually mount doom, it's only the mountain they used as a base for the CGI confection that served as Mt. Doom in the Lord of the Rings series. That being said, we hiked the Tongariro Crossing, a 19km day hike involving volcanoes, steam vents, fire (water), brimstone (sulfur vents). The hike only around a thousand meters of vertical gain, but what they don't tell you is that it involved at least 3000000 m vertical gain AND drop. It was intense.

Mt. Doom

That being said, that didn't stop DC from running up at at least three times our speed.

DC climbs a bit faster than we do. This is about 30 seconds into the hike.

Anyways, we encountered some spectacular views that had us all humming LOTR themes. At some point, we realized that we had actually left the ring at the hostel (silly, we know, especially considering it will continue the hold evil has on this planet). Oh well.

Anyways, that didn't stop us from re-enacting the movies in as many ways as possible. First up, we have:

Gollum fishes for fishies.

Also,

matt contemplates the enormity of the task of destroying the ring. while wearing sunglasses.

We were thoroughly surprised by this signpost in the middle of Mordor (Mt. Ngauruhoe is in the background. We were on top of the crater earlier that day):

you would think that evil would not be nearly this helpful. you might be surprised.

Anyways, the fellowship remains unbroken:

Hey look! Marvin! is in this picture. He was there over the course of the whole hike, RIGHT BEHIND YOU!!!!!

We drive to Rotorua today for some zorbing, biking, hot springs, and EXTREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEME(sp?)

We wanted to get two manual transmission cars. This was unsuccessful because the car rental place had extremely limited stock. What they did have was a Nissan Sunny. The only place I have ever heard about a Nissan Sunny before is the show Top Gear. This is how Nissan Sunnys are treated on Top Gear:

Nissan Sunny

The other car is a Daihatsu, which I believe is some kind of Toyota, and is actually kind of nice, considering it has a 1.3 liter engine. I'm pretty sure cars with engines that small are considered unpatriotic in the US.

Anyway, the drive was exciting, and we've now seen some small fraction of the sheep in New Zealand. Around two thirds of the way through we could see Mount Ruapehu, which is (according to Wikipedia) one of the mountains filmed for Lord of the Rings, but (according to Nathan) not the real one. At this point we stopped to look at it and so Matt could graze.

The Sunny isn't on fire... yet

Later, we were far enough around Mount Ruapehu that we could see Mount Ngauruhoe, which is apparently the real Mount Doom.

It didn't look as scary as I was worried it might

Better photos to follow tomorrow when we actually climb it! (Assuming Sauron doesn't find us)

P.S. I don't think I've ever actually seen the third Lord of the Rings, and I'm pretty sure that's the one that Mount Doom appears in, so any references I make come from wikipedia.

The customs people took my toothpaste, and I must buy more now. Which I just remembered. I should go buy toothpaste.

Goodbye. I will finish this post later.