new zealand trivia

Here's some information & terminology about New Zealand that we found interesting & amusing and some photos that didn't fit anywhere else in the travelogue!
* elevators = lifts

* If you decide to travel to New Zealand, be sure to brush up on your metric system, because everything there is in meters & kilometers!

* A "motorway" in New Zealand is like a freeway in America; a "highway" in New Zealand is a two-lane road (see video in previous post)

* When you order fast food, they don't ask you "here or to go?" they ask you, "dine in or take away?"

* trash = rubbish

* line = queue

* shopping carts = trolleys

* flip flops = jandals (nope, I didn't mean to type sandals, they are called jandals)

* restrooms = toilets (if you ask where the restroom is, they will give you a blank stare)

* vacation = holiday (if you tell them you're on vacation, they will also give you a blank stare)

* On the back of food products under the nutrition facts, amounts are not listed as "calories," it's listed as "energy"

* Be sure to specify which type of "kiwi" since it can refer to three different things: a person from New Zealand, the kiwi bird, or the fruit

* flashlights = torches

* Money is dollars ($1 NZD = $0.85 USD), but their coins are 10 cents, 20 cents, 50 cents, $1, and $2. Bills are $5, $10, $20, $50, $100. It was very strange to get 2 coins as your $3 change!

* If you are moving to a new area, you are not relocating you are "shifting"

* Ketchup is almost unheard of there - they serve tomato sauce. If you want ketchup and they happen to have it, they will either give you just 1 or 2 packets and often you will have to pay extra for it (one place it was 50 cents per packet).

* Just like they drive on the left side of the road, they also usually walk on the left side of the sidewalk.

* Light switches are upside down (if the switch is down it is ON, if it's up it is OFF)

* Many places had sliding doors (like closets) with no locks to their bathrooms instead of open/shut type doors

* If something is "cool" (like amazing, not the temperature) they say "flash" ("that's flash!")

* There are not many large, chain hotels, most are small (less than 20-30 rooms) and privately owned and operated by a couple who lives on-site. They also usually offer you a small jug of milk (for coffee) when you check in. Almost all of them have a kitchenette included.

* Motel owners tell you to read the "compendium" which is a notebook full of information in your room.

* Drinking tea or coffee after each meal is expected. When we said we didn't want any, they were very confused!

* There are NO fitted sheets. Most just have a flat sheet over the mattress (not even tucked in) and then another flat sheet on top.* School uniforms are required for kids. And it's not just polo shirts & jeans like my boys wear. It's the exact same color button-down shirt, ties, jackets, and everyone has matching pants or skirts, knee socks, and shoes. I kept forgetting to take a photo, but this one I found online is very similar to what we saw.

There were also many interesting road signs (sorry for photo quality, most were taken as we were driving):

* This one was our very favorite of the whole country. We need these here in America because no one seems to do it right! Now every time I merge I think, "merge like a zip!"
* One lane bridge (whoever had the bigger black arrow had the right-of-way...in this case the other people):
*Speed bumps:
* Because food was very expensive and we had a kitchenette in almost all of our motels, we bought some cereal to eat for breakfast each morning. Most of their food were things we had never heard of before, and the few that looked familiar had different names:
* Round stop sign with no top?!?
* This one didn't make us feel very safe!
* And we were wondering if someone goes around and replaces all these signs with "speed up...summer's here!" ones?
* They are very precise with their kilometer measurements on their signs!
* No carpool lanes in Auckland, but they do have BUS ONLY lanes!
* Here are their speed limit signs (don't worry - this is kilometers!). 100 was the highest we saw which equals about 62 miles per hour.
* Yield = give way
* I didn't take any pictures of their toilets (they were pretty normal, though they were more rectangular shaped instead of oval shaped). Thank goodness there were no squatters like in China! But I did run across a few interesting sinks (this was the only one where no one else was in the bathroom so I didn't look like a weirdo taking a photo of the sink!). This was literally just a slab of concrete that the water ran onto that was slightly tilted down.

* L& P stands for Lemon & Paeroa that can only be found in New Zealand. It's like a lemonade soda. Kevin really liked it, I thought it was just okay. But we had a good laugh reading their slogan, "World Famous in New Zealand!"
* There are almost no canned sodas there, most everything is in bottles. It looked kind of strange to see Kevin "drinking & driving!"
* You don't "rent" a car in New Zealand, you "hire" a car. This is our lovely Nissan Tiida. Never heard of it? Neither had we! Most of their cars were makers that we knew (Toyota, Honda, Ford) but they had different model names. And instead of brand new rental cars like in America, most of their cars are older models (I think ours was like 2005) and most are manual transmission. We had to pay extra for automatic because Kevin didn't want to have to worry about trying to drive a stick shift with his left hand while trying to concentrate on driving on the right-side of the road!

That's all folks - I hope you've enjoyed reading about our trip to New Zealand! Now I can get back to writing about what's going on in our "real" life...I don't think I've posted any photos of the kids for almost two months!

new zealand trip - day 7 - coromandel

Our last day in New Zealand! We had read that the Coromandel Peninsula had some beautiful coastal scenery so we decided to take the scenic route on our way back to Auckland. What we didn't quite understand was that the roads were VERY windy and steep, there is almost nowhere to pull over, and what we thought would be a few hours (according to the number of kilometers on the map) was really MANY hours because you had to go so slow. And by the way, this is what they consider a "highway" in New Zealand!



I don't ever get car sick, but I was pretty close after 6 hours on roads like this! And some parts were much worse than this - even too narrow for two vehicles to both drive so you had to play chicken or take turns! And let's not forget about all the one-lane bridges! Oh, and not to mention Kevin was driving on the left-hand side of the road the whole time. Good times!

But thankfully all the crazy driving led us to some truly spectacular scenery! Our bed & breakfast hosts the night before told us about a place called Cathedral Cove near Hahei. They said it was about a 30 minute walk. What they didn't tell us was that it was a 30 minute HIKE up & down a few mountains (plus about 1,000 steep stairs) to get there. But this beach cove is only accessible by kayak or by hiking in, so it's very secluded and clean.

Below is the arch in the rock (hence the name "cathedral"). Unfortunately, it's becoming so unstable they have it roped off and recommend you don't go under it. It was very tempting to run through because the other side was apparently just as beautiful, but we were obedient and didn't.


There were also plenty of other beautiful scenic outlooks along our drive. I think I might make some framed photo enlargements!

It was a crazy day and we were very tired of sitting by the time we got back to Auckland (not good when you're getting on a 13 hour flight!), but we made it. We returned the rental car and headed back to the airport. The only drama came when they told us AFTER they had checked our luggage (which was under the maximum weight) and sent it off that they limited our carry-ons to 7 kilograms (about 15 lbs.) each! After stressing about it and rearranging a million times we could not make it work. Our roller bag was about 10 lbs. by itself EMPTY! A very helpful Air New Zealand employee asked us what the problem was and offered to get our checked bags back out for us so we could put more weight in those. After waiting for about 20 minutes, they finally found them and brought them back out and we were able to put in everything we didn't need in our carry-ons.

The flight home was okay. We were sitting right next to the bathrooms so that wasn't ideal, but we each managed to get some sleep and watch a few movies. Kevin sat next to an Australian Qantas airline pilot so he enjoyed talking to him (ironically, the pilot was very young and had never flown on a long international flight). We left New Zealand Sunday night about 9:00 p.m. and arrived in Los Angeles about 3:00 p.m. Sunday afternoon. It was slightly freaky to go backwards in time! We were trying to catch a standby flight home that left LA at 4:15 p.m. in the next terminal. After waiting through customs and baggage claim it was 3:20 p.m. We thought for sure it was too late, but we grabbed our luggage and ran to the next terminal. The flight had actually closed but the nice US Airways employee opened it back up and let us check our luggage and we got the last 2 open seats on the flight! We hurried through security, ran to our gate, and were some of the last people to board. Thankfully that one hour flight seemed so SHORT after a 13 hour flight!

It was great to be home and see our kids. We missed them, but we had a fabulous trip. We feel extremely blessed to be able to have the time & money to go, and to have a wonderful mom/grandma who takes such great care of our kids! Visiting other countries is a wonderful experience, but being home with your family is what is really important!

There will be one last New Zealand post to come with some random pictures and thoughts and strange New Zealand signs, culture, and terminology!

new zealand trip - day 6 - hamilton & mount maunganui

There isn't much touristy to do in Hamilton (it's just a regular big city, the fourth largest in New Zealand), but the main reason we wanted to go to Hamilton was to do a session in the temple.

Although the logistics of how their temple operates and the setup were slightly different than we were accustomed to, as soon as the session started we felt perfectly comfortable because it was exactly the same. That is the beauty of the gospel! We did feel slightly out of place since the majority of the people were of polynesian heritage, but they were some of the friendliest people we've ever met! In fact, we even got invited over to a man's house for lunch afterwards (we declined because we had other plans)!
The New Zealand temple is older (dedicated in 1958, just after the Los Angeles temple) so it has a visitor center. After our session, we walked over there and learned about the history of the church in New Zealand and the Maori people. We had fun talking to a nice sister missionary from Utah (and we enjoyed hearing an American "accent" again!).
After the temple, we drove 1 1/2 hours over to Mount Maunganui on the eastern coast. When we were planning our trip on such short notice, we just knew we wanted to stay near the coast. I randomly picked this area because it had a bed & breakfast for a reasonable price. Little did I realize that Mount Maunganui is one of the most popular and beautiful beach destinations in New Zealand! But since it was the end of winter, it was practically empty.
I found these photos (above & below) online so you can see the full beauty of Mount Maunganui. It's a beach town set on a peninsula. At the end is The Mount.
You can either hike up to the top of the mount or walk around it. We chose to walk around. It was a lovely afternoon and we can understand now why it's such a popular vacation destination! The rest of the photos below are ones I took.
All the water you see is the Bay of Plenty!


Surprisingly, we had never stayed at a Bed & Breakfast before but we had a wonderful experience. Our hosts Jim & Lorraine were very kind and helpful. Their motto is, "enter as guests, leave as friends" and I truly feel like I now have friends in New Zealand (he even sent me an email to make sure we made it home safely and to thank us for staying there). The other family that was also staying there were equally delightful and interesting (they immigrated from South Africa to New Zealand), and they invited us to stop by their house on the way back to Auckland.

new zealand trip - day 5 - waitomo

We headed north out of Taupo the next morning. Our first stop was Waitomo Caves, which was a 2 1/2 hour drive away. Normally, I'm not a big fan of long car rides, but when the scenery looks like this, I could probably ride all day. This is what most everywhere in New Zealand (at least in the areas we visited) looked like. It was simply breathtaking!
There are three Waitomo Caves ('wai' meaning water, and 'tomo' meaning hole or shaft). Because we had the time and likely will never be there again, we decided to do all three tours. The first tour we took was Ruakuri Cave. According to Maori legend, Ruakuri Cave (‘rua’ meaning den, and ‘kuri’ meaning dog) was first discovered 400-500 years ago by a young Maori hunting for birds. He was attacked by wild dogs just outside the original cave entrance. Some of the things in these caves were almost impossible to capture on film due to low lighting, so I borrowed photos from the internet. This is the spiral entrance to Ruakuri Cave. It was phenomenal. You come in at the top and then walk all the way down the spiral to the cave entrance. Ruakuri Cave is a "living/active cave" - with a river running through it and still growing. You can actually do a blackwater tour floating down the cave river in wetsuits and jumping off the waterfall inside the cave (we did not do this tour!). Ruakuri Cave was the longest tour (2 hours) and our guide was fantastic. He was very knowledgeable and humorous! We even got to see glowworms up close.
Our next cave tour was Aranui Cave. I was afraid that it would be slightly redundant, but the caves are very different. Aranui Cave is much smaller (45 minute tour) and is not a "living cave" (no water source and not still growing); but it had wetas (cave insects that look like giant crickets or grasshoppers); and thousands of beautiful stalactites, stalagmites, and other typical cave formations. It was much more fun to photograph! Too bad our guide for this tour wasn't nearly as good!

After we were done with Aranui Cave, we had to wait a bit for our last tour, so we decided to take a short hike. Doesn't it look like a rainforest?
Our last tour was the world famous Glowworm Caves. It was also a short tour (45 minutes), but our guide was a lot of fun. Usually these cave tours have about 1,500 visitors per day. She told us that day there were only about 300 people total. There were 6 people on our first tour, 6 people on our second tour, and only 4 people on our last tour. And four of those people (us and a New Zealand couple) stayed together the whole day! It was fun to chat and get to know the other people and feel like we could ask the guide questions whenever we wanted. Our glowworm cave guide told us since there were only 4 of us and we were all adults she would take us to an area that they don't usually take the regular tours.
The first part of the glowworm cave tour was not that impressive. It was much like the other two caves we had just seen, but didn't have as many spectacular formations. But the second part of the tour where you get in the boat and ride through the glowworm grotto was amazing. These type of glowworms are found exclusively in New Zealand. They are actually maggots (but they didn't think a "glow-maggot" tour sounded very fun!). When we saw them up close in the first cave, the guide explained to us how they survive & catch their food and what makes them glow. Basically they drop these little strings (very similar to spider webs) and catch any flying insects. The hungrier they are, the brighter they glow. Obviously it's very dark and you cannot use flash, so I pulled some photos from the internet so you could see what they looked like.
After we were done with all the cave tours, we headed another hour north to Hamilton where we would stay the night. It had rained a bit that afternoon while we were in the caves, so we even got to see a rainbow while we were driving. It was amazing to see the sun set over this beautiful country.

new zealand trip - day 4 - rotorua & taupo

We headed south out of Rotorua to Wai-o-tapu, which is similar to Yellowstone, "a wonderland of stunning geothermal activity" (according to their website)! We saw the largest mud pool in New Zealand (photo below). It's huge and there is no way to capture it all in one photo, but I tried. To get a size perspective, you can see Kevin on the right hand side standing by the fence.It was cold out and the thermal areas are boiling hot, so we didn't get a great view of them because of all the steam rising off. This one below is called the Champagne Pool and is one of the main attractions. Again, it was so large and hard to capture on camera so here is close-up of one area showing some of the bright colors. It is 213 feet in diameter and with a depth of 203 feet.
This one below was one of our favorites. It is called Devil's Bath and was literally neon green - much brighter than the photo shows. See Kevin on the left side for size perspective!
One of their other main attractions was the Lady Knox Geyser (or as they pronounce it "geezer"...we laughed every time we heard it!). It is an active geyser which would naturally erupt every 48-72 hours, but for tourist reasons they activate it each morning at 10:15 with some natural soap-type product.

Here it is to start:
After they add the soap it starts to bubble a bit:
About 3 minutes later it starts shooting up in the air:
To be honest, we weren't all that impressed, but that is probably because it is small compared to Old Faithful at Yellowstone. The best part of the whole thing was watching an Asian man while we were waiting. He had a camera in each hand and was trying to figure out where to place his video camera. He decided propping it on the railing would be a great idea. Kevin and I were just WAITING for it to fall in the thermal area and sure enough a few minutes later it did! We thought he would probably climb over and get it (we saw a different Asian man climbing over the railing in another part of the park to get his photo taken while kneeling right next to the boiling thermal area!), but this man didn't. He actually waited for an employee who went down and got it back for him. After experiencing China last year none of this surprised us, but it was quite entertaining!
We walked around the rest of Wai-o-tapu for a few more hours. There were many interesting geothermal areas and it was definitely worth our time.

We drove down to Taupo (about an hour away). We finally got to talk on Skype with our kids. It was supposed to happen the day before, but we never had internet access in Rotorua.

After talking with them, we headed out to see Huka Falls. We had read mixed reviews about this, but it was nearby and free and only a short walk so we decided it was worth our time. It is not that big or impressive (only a 36 foot drop - you can see a man on the left side of the photo) until you learn that 58,000 gallons of water flow through it every second. To put that in perspective, that's enough water to fill an Olympic size swimming pool in 20 seconds!
Also near Huka Falls there was a scenic outlook. Here is the city of Taupo with Lake Taupo in the background. The large mountain in the far background with snow on it is Mount Tongariro. Everything south of Taupo is mountainous and much colder (known for their skiing). Since it was the end of winter, we decided this was as far south as we would go! But you'll notice that most everything in the areas we visited, even at the end of winter, was very green and not dead and ugly.
After dinner at Burger Fuel (their famous burger chain...we thought it was just okay), we headed to Waikite Valley Thermal Pools. We had read that it was much nicer and less crowded in the evening. I didn't take any photos because I didn't want my camera getting wet, but here are a few from online that I found. Best of all they somehow make it so the pools don't stink! They have 6 different pools of various temperatures. The hottest one was a bit too hot for us - we could only handle it for a few minutes. And we didn't go in the big pool since there were kids playing in there. But the other 4 pools were very nice and warm and relaxing. Unfortunately, it was freezing cold outside so it was terrible to get out!