New Zealand - Day 16

November 18, 2010

We were determined to make our final day in New Zealand extra awesome, and I think we succeeded. Our booking at the Tree Adventures high ropes course was at 11:00 am so we didn't get much sleep, but that's ok. Making memories was way more important at this point. We figured we could always sleep on the plane.

The ropes course was about 45 minutes northwest of the city, in the thick forest on that side of the "Northland." Apparently they rarely open on weekdays but there was a big group of young school kids there on a field trip so they agreed to work us in. Also, since the kids had free reign of the course and were running all over the place, they let us choose any 4 courses we wanted instead of restricting us to a pre-determined plan like they normally would have.

I was pretty upset when we first arrived and they were explaining how everything works because the others were happily chatting about how they couldn't wait to head right to the highest courses. But I wasn't very confident about my ability to keep up and didn't want to be left behind on the lower, easier courses. So, once again, I was having that internal battle between the sensible side of my brain that says it's better to be safe than sorry, and that part of myself that hates to be left out.

Thankfully I have a wonderfully patient husband who was willing to stay behind and do one of the easy courses with me. After we saw how I did, we could proceed from there. Surprisingly, I was actually pretty good at it. Once I got over the physical strain of climbing the ladder up to the first platform, the rest was fairly easy and a lot of fun. They gave me an extra padded harness for my back so it didn't hurt me at all, and with the way their pulley system works I knew I was safe and walked nimbly across the wires. We made sure the courses I went on wouldn't require me to bend or do anything that would hurt too much. And then I was free to enjoy myself. I even felt confident enough to go on 3 of the 4 high courses so I could hang out with my friends. I was also glad that Lisa brought her little camera up in the tress with us so we got some great shots of us all having a blast. My favorite part was taking the big zip lines back down to the ground after each course was done. It was so much fun that the 3 hours we paid for flew by.

You can see how high we were!

These 2 carabiners are all that kept us suspended up there!

You can see James and I over there through the trees.

All sorts of fun challenges!

After we were finished, we were starving so we stopped at a cute cafe for lunch. Then we drove to another one of the points of interest near Auckland - the Muriwai Gannet Colony. I had seen a picture of it in one of my photography magazines and figured it would provide some great photo ops for our final day. It was definitely interesting: tons of white sea birds nesting on these huge, jagged outcroppings of rock along this cliff on the west coast. There were dozens of them swooping in and out. It was fun to see them interacting with their mates and chicks.

By this time we were all exhausted due to lack of sleep so we decided to head back to the room for a nap before venturing back out into the city for dinner. On our way we stopped at one of the local produce stands and bought some fresh, locally grown strawberries as a snack. SO good. Our short nap turned out to be about 3 hours long. We woke up at 6:15 and were slightly upset for wasting so much time sleeping. But at the same time, we knew we'd have to wake up early the next day so we probably needed to rest.

Not wanting to let the evening pass without something fun to do, we drove to the Skydome Observatory and watched an hour long presentation about the constellations that can be seen in the sky in the Southern hemisphere. The guys know a lot about navigation due to their Air Force training, and have been confused and intrigued by the fact that they don't recognize the sky. I think they were slightly disappointed with what we saw since the narrator mostly pointed out constellations we're already familiar with but were just upside down instead of showing us new ones. But it was still very interesting and relaxing since the chairs laid back pretty far to give us a good view of the planetarium's dome. It was dark and the guide's voice was so soothing with his deep accent that I was really relaxed and had to fight to stay awake.

After the main presentation was over they took us into a separate room and told us a little about what's going on in the search for life on other planets. Again, it was very interesting but by this time it was 9:15 pm and we hadn't eaten dinner. Derick was starving and anxious to find a restaurant that was still open. We figured our best bet would be somewhere downtown and started driving in that way.

When we emerged from the parking garage beneath Sky Tower we were greeted with an odd scene. The road in front of us was completely blocked off to traffic and there were fire trucks, policemen and construction workers everywhere. Bright, portable lights were all aimed at an old building across the street. We asked around and found out that they were planning to demolish it that night. None of us had ever seen a building blow up before so we decided to stick around and watch. But the time dragged on and still not much was happening so we gave up and grabbed some food at a 24 hour restaurant across the street. It was called Char Grilled and served burgers, fire roasted pizzas, and kebabs. The whole restaurant had a Mediterranean/Middle Eastern flare and the food was so good! It was a fitting final meal, but definitely a bitter sweet one as we have all fallen in love with this country and will have a hard time returning to the cold temperatures of Japan tomorrow.