Wanganui River

Two of our good friends from Santa Fe (Mark and Hallie) came to NZ for two weeks and we took a trip to the southwest part of the North Island and took a 3 day canoe trip (they call it "Canadian Kayaks" because they apparently don't know what a canoe is) down the Wanganui River.

All of our camping gear was tied up in these water tight containers that were secured to the canoe, so when we tipped (and we did) nothing but us would get wet.  One of the more hilarious things about the trip was that there were tons of wild goats roaming the banks of the river.  There are no real predators in the woods here so the goat population is out of control and people actually hunt and eat the little buggers.  You can see a few here along the bank.

The water was incredibly warm so we would stop and swim about five times a day.  We would have slept under the stars, but the campsite we chose was infested by rats (again no predators), so we'll have to save that for beach camping...

East Cape

"East Cape" is the eastern most point in NZ and about a 5 hour drive from our house.  There is a lighthouse right at the tip and considered the first place on earth to see the sunrise each day.  We dragged the boys up to the lighthouse to see the sun rise (but it had already risen when we made it there).  So, we had to stop along the way to get a view of the sunrise!  

The lighthouse was such a beautiful spot.  The road to get there was rather scary but well worth the trip.

Leo and Kai walked most the way up and were quite proud of themselves!   Although they got lots of rides on our backs along the way.

On the long drive home, we spent the day stopping along different beaches.  We managed to hit some really isolated spots, but luckily we had our trusty van.

We stopped at Ohope beach, about an hour from our house and the boys loved it!  The beach had this little stream running into the ocean.  They stripped off their clothes and proceded to dive in, straight onto their bellies!  Nate and I couldn't stop laughing because they looked so crazy!

Gillispie Pass

Well, we are totally trying to immerse ourselves in the outdoor spirit of NZ, so after our skydiving we set out on a 3 day hike (it's called tramping in NZ) in Mt. Aspiring National Park just outside of Queenstown.

It was a tough, long 3 days where we went up one river valley, over a pass and back down the other side.  This is a shot of the pass as we were approaching it on the first day.

You can see how steep (and dangerous) the trail got toward the top where we spent half a day going up switch-backs as we climbed toward the pass. 

The views from the top were pretty awesome (this is looking back down toward the river valley that we walked up) but I spent the whole time worried that I would fall to my death if I twisted an ankle.

On the way down we came some real "Lord of the Rings" type forests and had to ford a couple knee deep rivers.  The day after we finished, my back was sore, my feet had blisters and my thighs burned so bad I had to climb steps one at a time, but overall it was well worth it.

Skydiving on the South Island

After Kate's birthday we flew to Queenstown on the South Island and immediately went to Wanaka where we went skydiving at 15,000 feet.  Here is Kate's video of her jump...

I thought she had made some funny faces until I watched my video.  It was so cold up that high that I immediately got an ache like an ice cream headache through my upper jaw and spent the whole time trying to pull my lips down over my teeth.

Kate's TinMan Triathlon

December 5th was Kate's Birthday, and as a present to herself she went through the hell of running an Olympic distance triathlon. 

It was a beautiful day but "momma" was battling a horrible cold so felt like she was going to die most of the day.

Overall she did quite well and finished in the top half of the field despite her ailments.  This was her longest triathlon yet, and now she has the bug so has signed up for another in February.

Playing at "The Mount"

I realized that most of our posts have been about the weekend side-trips that we have taken away from Tauranga, but that we haven't put much on about Kai and Leo.  We are very lucky to have my parent's (GiGi and Poppy) living near by in their own apartment for the first 4 months of our stay, so we have been using the 24hr a day daycare availability to make all our trips while we can, but the reality is that we spend most of our time working or at home with the minis.

  One of our favorite things is to take the five minute drive to "The Mount" and spend time at the ocean.  There are always tons of surfers on the water and it is getting warm enough for normal people to get in the water as well.  This is a video from yesterday of a typical morning off...

Here is a short clip summarizing a typical evening.  This is Kai and Leo acting "normal" after their bath and before going to bed.  Notice how Leo loves to wear his sunglasses, but doesn't always get them on right side up.

Tongariro Crossing

Last week we (again) left Kai and Leo home with GiGi and Poppy and drove down to the middle of the north island and did a 20 km day hike up the side of Mt. Ngauruhe which you can see in the background of the above photo.

This is the mountain from "The Lord of the Rings" that was used for Mount Doom.  You can get an idea from this photo of the shape of the crater at the top.  We had to get up at 5am to start the climb and figured that it would be an easy tramp (that's what they call hiking)

But unfortunately it was pretty much a straight up, followed by a straight down, which led to a lot of my complaining about how I was hungry and a lot of Kate telling me to "man up."

We hiked with one of our new friends from the hospital, who is also a locum from Wales, and we made her take this photo of us near one of the glacier lakes.  I'm pretending that I'm eating Kate, but don't worry, it is only an illusion.  I'm sure she thinks we are incredibly strange Americans, but secretly I think she thinks we are awesome.  This climb has inspired us to book a trip to Queenstown to attempt a 4 day hike up the side of another mountain, so we'll see how I hold up...

Bungy Jumping in Taupo

Since we are in the country where Bungy Jumping was invented, we felt like we had to give it a go.  Below are videos of our jumps.  

It took Kate a little bit longer to decide that she could do it, but in the end it was totally worth it...

Baby

This is a picture of "Baby."  She was named by Kai and Leo, and since they recently learned that anything small is a baby, they immediately started calling this tiny hideous rat "Baby."  I felt like they were missing their animals since all 3 of our dogs are being kept back in Michigan with Kate's parents, so I went to the pet store and made an impulse purchase of a giant filthy rat.  

Upon arriving home, Baby made the mistake of biting me on the tip of my finger and since then I have basically refused to touch the thing.  That has left Kate to care for him alone which has in turn left Kate questioning why I ever thought Baby was a good idea.  I do try to get Baby out every day or so and let the boys hold him, and they actually really like him.

This is Kai kissing Baby, which I try to discourage.  Unfortunately it turns out that that is really all they want to do to him.  Forget about "holding" or "petting," they only want to "kiss!"  To make things worse, Baby has started to itch like crazy and is now hopping around the cage like something is attacking her so I am convinced that she has mites or rabies or something worse.  I'll let you know if Kai or Leo start acting the same way....

Coromandel Peninsula

This weekend we drove to the Coromandel Peninsula, which is about a two hour drive from our house in Tauranga. 

It is a pretty rugged area with very little population, but has huge stretches of beautiful beaches.  We had booked a sea kayaking tour around some rock formations, but this is a picture of the ocean where we were supposed to start from.  As you can see it was quite windy and choppy, so the kayaking was canceled and we spent the weekend walking around.  It is not quite summer here, so the water is a bit cold, so there were very few people on the beach.  Most of the time we found ourselves alone on 
long stretches of white sand beaches.

This is a picture at "hot water beach."  At low tide, there is a natural hot spring that bubbles up from the sand.  People can dig their own personal hot tubs and soak in the hot water.  Once tide comes up, the holes are wiped away and at the next low tide the beach is a clean slate for the digging to start again.

Saturday night, we found a little campsite near the beach and slept in our van.  We have spent a lot of time making fun of the giant euro-van that the hospital got for us but we have found that all the seats fold down into a queen sized bed so we are making the most of it!

Mt. Maunganui

Mt. Maunganui is a giant dormant volcano that sticks out from the ocean.  It's about a 5 minute drive from our house and has one of the best beaches in NZ at it's base. Today we climbed "The Mount" for the first time and it was beautiful and bizarre at the same time.  For one, we got cool views of both the Pacific and the city of Tauranga, but the hill is also littered with sheep that seem to be wild (do they have wild sheep here?).

Anyway, the whole thing took only about an hour total, so it was an easy morning that we will definitely be doing again!

Rotorua

Last weekend we left the boys with Grandma and Grandpa and drove an hour away to this city, Rotorua, which sits over an active volcanic zone and has tons of different hot springs that come bubbling up from the ground.  There are lots of cultural and historical things to see, but we pretty much just sat in the hot tubs...

Life So Far

Life so far has been wonderful here.  It does seem more laid back and less stressful than back in the United States, but we don't have as many luxuries that make the US so great.  I sometimes miss having my smart phone to check my e-mails, or having stores open past 5pm for shopping, but overall it has been nice to not have all the extra "stuff" which usually just meant more things that needed to be done.  We are both only working part time, so have had lots of time to spend with Kai and Leo.  Also my parents are here now (Poppy and GiGi) so we have been using them a lot to babysit while we explore the country.

This is the hospital where we are working. It is a similar size to where we are used to, but the medicine is quite different.  All the medicines have different brand names (which everyone uses) so I spend most of my day looking up the names.  Also, they are much more strict about use of resources since healthcare is all free and the government is trying to not go bankrupt.  We do a lot less testing (especially CT scans) and a lot more admitting for observation and only progressing to a CT if the condition worsens. 
On one of my first shifts, this local was vigorously eating a "lamb shank" and got a huge shard of sheep bone lodged way down in his throat and actually went straight to the OR with ENT to have it removed!  That was classic New Zealand!

We're Here

Well, we've made it to NZ and the trip was relatively painless.  The 13 hour flight from LA was aided by a bit of benadryl for the minis who slept for almost 8 of the hours.  This is a photo from our hotel room in Auckland after we arrived.  We spent the first night there and had to attend an immigration interview the next day before being officially allowed into the country.  The hospital has been great and set us up in a beautiful house.

The people here are very similar to the US, but it still feels like we are very far away from home.  Our first trip to the grocery store ended with very little bought since all the brands and food were very different than what we are used to.

This is a photo of the beach near our house.  It is beautiful and apparently where all the New Zealanders go for their beach vacations.   It's still a bit chilly here, so nobody is really swimming much, but for us it is just turning into summer, so the weather should get much warmer.

Kai and Leo act like nothing has changed, still as active and happy as ever.  This is them at another beach.  I didn't know what the heck they were doing until I figure out that they were mimicking me as I squatted down to take their pictures...

Our first day of work at the new hospital is tomorrow!

Preparing for NZ

Well, we've made the plunge and are now less then one month away from packing away everything we own and moving two 2 year olds literally half way around the world to work in New Zealand! We have have accepted jobs at an Emergency Room on the North Island and will work there for one year. The staffing company we have gone through supplies us with a furnished house and two cars which makes the logistics a lot easier, but our nerves are still running high!  We are lucky enough to have Nate's mom and dad, and Kate's mom and step-dad that are all retired, so we have roped them into coming over for a while to help with child care.  We have promised to rent them an apartment near our house in exchange for being full time nannies, so we will have family just down the road.  Nate's parents will be coming over for about 3 months from October-January, then Kate's mom will be there for almost 2 months after that.

Since medical school we have been talking about working overseas.  We settled in Santa Fe and have been working here for the last 3 years, but our dream of living abroad never died.  Once Kai and Leo were born we knew we only had a small window of time to live our dream before they were in school, so we started looking for a new adventure. Randomly we settled on New Zealand. We have never been there or to that part of the world at all, but thought it looked beautiful (Lord of the Rings?) so away we go!