New Zealand 2017, November 30 (Is There A Chance The Track Could Bend)

A long drive to Arthur's Pass national park and back again. Last minute research I found the drive described as 'majestic and beautiful but can test of nerves for the driver' on Wiki Travel, but I didn't find anything wrong with it. The real challenge in the beginning was not falling asleep while driving along the same flat, straight road for about an hour. Made a quick stop in the town of Springfield because they have a big donut in the playground.

Springfield.

The first real stop of the day was at Kura Tawhiti conservation area. Had some huge limestone rocks all over the hills which was a bit peculiar. Driving again and reached the mountains, so lots of that annoying accelerating and braking and sharp turns, only got stuck behind one truck I think but finally got some good scenery.

LET'S ROCK

The next stop was at Cave Stream scenic reserve, there's a one kilometre underground cave you can walk through, but you're supposed to take proper safety equipment like a head lamp and you would get wet going through it, so didn't attempt that journey. Stopped nearby at Lake Pearson for lunch instead, got swarmed by ducks wanting food, otherwise not much happening, it was more just like a rest stop.

Somewhere above the cave.

About 50 kilometres still to get to the actual Arthur's Pass village, just a few shops and a visitor centre. Lots of different walking tracks to go on, took the shortest one called Devil's Punch Bowl for some reason, which ended at a big waterfall after about a thousand steps. Also went to Bealey chasm and Bealey valley which was a longer path, ending at some river. Unless I was mistaken, it looked like they still had mountains with snow not far away.

Village map.

False advertising, no kiwi.

Punch Bowl waterfall.

Is that snow or white dirt?

That was about it for the day, another long drive back to Christchurch, some roadworks meant part of the road was only going one direction at a time which slowed things down a bit. Only other highlight was getting a bag of one dollar donuts at Coupland's - kind of like a Dunkin' Donuts.

Steps: 19000

New Zealand 2017, November 29 (At The Mountains Of Madness)

Another long walk to collect the car, the last one for a while at least. I had an option of paying extra for another Commodore but just went with the compact option for city driving, which turned out to be a Hyundai Accent. Always a Holden, Hyundai or Toyota at these places, it was new and had a hand brake so it did the job.

Compact car.

Jason had the job of setting the GPS for the base station of the gondola, but instead sent me through a tunnel under the mountain and out the other side to Lyttelton. Had to revert to poor man's GPS aka street signs to find the way there instead. First observation from driving, almost all city roads are a standard 50km/h, even some that are wide and have more than one lane in the outer areas. Managed to find Radio Hauraki on the car radio again, a really good channel that plays a mix of 1990's and newer, but actually 90% of it is good, even had a Tool song come on.

Took the gondola up to the top of Mt Cavendish, you can also just walk up there but I wasn't sure how long or difficult the track was, looking out the window it seemed like it would have been easy enough. In the station at the top there was this free 'time tunnel' moving cart ride which was very disappointing. It goes for less than 10 minutes and you just get taken around inside this cart and they have some videos play about the history of New Zealand. They listed Phil Keoghan from The Amazing Race as one of their famous New Zealanders during the last video, which seemed an odd choice. There wasn't even any jump scares.

Some of Christchurch.

After looking around inside, braved the outdoors and started out on the Crater Rim walkway. A lot of twists, hills and gates on the route, so probably took about 45 minutes to go 2.5km. Unlike the cows from Taupo that don't really care to get out of your way, there was sheep on these hills that run for their life before you can even get close to them. Then they just resume eating grass and keep a close watch as you walk past. Reached some retired anti-aircraft station at Mt Pleasant which was a good time to stop for lunch, before turning back. I'd already paid for a return ticket on the gondola so took that down instead of walking to the car park.

Down to Lyttelton.

Sheep in the fog.

Drove through to Lyttelton again, nothing to see there, so back to the city. There wasn't many people around but somehow every parking spot in every street was taken! Went to the Canterbury Museum since the price was good (free). Nothing too special about the museum, the settlement history of Christchurch was probably the best, as well as the Antarctica rooms. Seems like NZ has some history with Antarctic exploration too, but just reminded me of a H.P. Lovecraft book a bit too much.

Only kiwis I saw.

Went over the outlet mall just before closing time, no Nike store so had low expectations. Didn't find much, just a new brand of running shorts to try out.

After dinner was a bit tired, but went out for a run down to Hagley Park anyway. It was about 750 metres on the footpaths to get there which was a bit crap, but the park was much better and had some good paths to run on.

Steps: 18000 + 6km run

New Zealand 2017, November 28 (North vs. South)

I sure overestimated the airport procedure while planning the schedule, about 15 minutes to drive there and 5 minutes to check-in. The whole airport consisted of one departure lounge and about 50 people for the flight.

Made it to Christchurch on time, early afternoon, and got a shared shuttle bus instead of a taxi this time, much better. The hotel location could have been a bit better, it was about 20 minutes to walk to the city, but only a problem for one day until getting the next rental car.

The day was almost over, so just walked down to the city centre to do some exploring and see what was around. The streets were a bit confusing at first because some of it was a grid but others were diagonal that you don't realise at first. Found the Cathedral Square in the centre though, half of the church has been rebuilt but the rest is still the old ruins, as with many other buildings too. Also walked around some of the mall streets along the city tram route, it was about 5:00pm on a weekday so it was strange that there wasn't a lot of office workers just finishing for the day, instead everything looked like it was about to close.

Looks a bit like Hiroshima.

Not sure what this is.

Now that's a shop name.

Every good city needs a tram.

Passed a few more landmarks on the way back like the Bridge Of Remembrance and the Avon River, before another long walk back to the hotel. My lower leg was really starting to hurt by the end, not good news.

Earthquake memorial maybe?

Bridge of Remembrance.

Avon River.

Steps: 17000

New Zealand 2017, November 27 (The Fallen)

Last day in Rotorua, a longer drive down to Taupo, probably about an hour without stops.

The first stop was at the Aratiatia Rapids just as they were about to release the water from the dam, I thought it might be interesting. I went to the upper lookout which was a bad choice, too far away from the action. The lower lookout was a bit better, but the water wasn't really *that* rapid, just slowly rising water. It went for about 10 or 15 minutes then everyone got in their cars and took off.

The rapids.

A bit further upstream was the Huka Falls, an actual waterfall that was a bit more lively. Lots more people were hanging around here so they must have done better research. It would be fun if you could ride down the falls in some craft, maybe a barrel, but it's probably a bit too dangerous for that.

The falls.

So back in the car to get to Great Lake Taupo. It is a really big lake so the name is appropriate, but the town seemed to be quite dead. Had some lunch then went to explore what was going on around the lake. There was a path with various artwork and then a hole-in-one golf place where the green is floating on the lake. A few people managed to hit the structure, but it was so far out that I doubt you'd even know if you got it in the hole, unless they are monitoring it somehow. Further up the road was the Twin Peaks hotel! but sadly not associated with the TV show at all.

The lake.

FIRE WALK WITH ME.

In many of the side streets in the city centre there was some good art work painted on the walls. Also came across the world's coolest McDonald's - it had an aeroplane in the playground so I guess that's a bit cool. That was it for the city a bit earlier than expected, so drove a little further over to Mt Tauhara.

I think the trail can take up to 2 hours to get to the top, so I didn't plan on going the whole way. As far as we did go it turned out to be a very strange path, you had to climb over farm fences and walk through paddocks just to get to the half-way point. It was a very steep path and a lot of the ground had been worn down to dirt, so it wasn't easy to find a good way up.

Find your own way up.

Cows taking over.

After driving back to Rotorua there was still a bit of time left, so I called up one of the escape rooms and made a booking to give this thing a try. The theme for our room was to put together the clues to find some jewelery before the time limit was reached. It was my first time doing one of these, Jason had done it once before, but I think I was finding more clues in the beginning - basically just walk around and start inspecting everything, no real strategy. We made a couple of mistakes that wasted a bit of time, but there was a couple of vague parts (vague people would have been impressed) which we didn't get past so ran out of time. I think you'd need two young whippersnappers with a knack for solving mysteries to have solved this one. It was fun though and I'd try another one some day.

More walking back to the hotel, then fuel up the car, drop it off, then walk back to the hotel a second time. Had used up about 25 litres of fuel so that came to about $50.

Steps: 22000

• Rotorua
•  7 out of 10
• Good
• Lots of outdoor spots for biking or running
• Not much traffic
• The Redwoods
• Bad
• Not much activity at night
• Too much sulphur in some places
• Missed Out
• Okere Falls
• Tongariro Alpine Crossing

New Zealand 2017, November 26 (Redwood XIII)

Another early start for the Rotorua half marathon at 7:30am. The good news was the start line was only about a kilometre from the hotel, so still better than travelling to any Melbourne events. I was interested in this event because it appeared to be at least half off road from the course information, which is so much better for your legs, getting a haka performance before the start was a bonus too.

The first 5 kilometres went straight down the main road to exit the city and go around the outside of the golf course, then had to pay special attention to avoid twisting an ankle at some incomplete road works that was basically a rock pit. Next it was a detour off towards The Redwoods forest, a much better surface to run on but you do need to be careful not to trip on any tree roots. After crossing through a car park the second part of the forest had a lot more hills but the track itself was much flatter, then back to where the forest began and out towards the city again, but this time through the sulphur lakes near where the park run was held the day before. The last few kilometres were back on road around the city gardens, my ankle started to feel bad by about 16 kilometres but I was able to manage it through to the end. I finished in about 1 hour 33 minutes just in the top 30 of about 650, just a medium speed training run since I didn't want to be injured for the following week.

Just cruising to the finish line.

After another buffet breakfast we drove to nearby Blue Lake that I can confirm was blue. There was a walking track along one side, but I was trying to limit my walking for the day so didn't investigate too far. There was some metal detector group meetup just kicking off, not sure what they expected to find in the recreation area around the lake, maybe some coins or lost car keys?

Blue Lake.

Got some lunch at then stopped in at The Redwoods forest again, just to walk around the tracks a bit slower this time. There was a number of different tracks for running and biking, seemed like a good place. One of the good things about their forests is I don't think they have nearly the same amount of snakes and spiders to deal with as we would get here, although I do still have several bite marks from something on my legs two weeks later.

The only real downhill segment of the half marathon course, great fun.

Still at The Redwoods.

Stopped off at the hotel for a rest, the NBA was on TV and Oklahoma City was playing of course - New Zealand's best player Steven Adams plays for that team and is coincidentally from Rotorua. When they got to half time we went over to one of the spa's in the city for a bit of recovery, the water temperature was 42 degrees in the 'hot' spa which was really at the limit of comfortable, you are basically sweating in there. There was also a 'tepid' spa which was a little colder, but I think they could have come up with a better name than that. Stopped in at Burger Fuel on the way back to the hotel, they still don't have any in Melbourne yet.

Burger time.

Steps: 14000 + 22.5km run

New Zealand 2017, November 25 (Skyfall)

I battled tiredness to get up in time to walk across to the local parkrun at Puarenga Park. I started with a short 500 metres out and back along the course to preview it and warm up, and was surprised to find the course goes through these sulphur deposit areas that look like a rockier version of salt flats, the closer you get the stronger the fumes too. Other than the smell the course was quite fun, like a trail run and certainly unique.

Back to the hotel for the breakfast buffet! The chocolate croissants were the best, the muesli had too much fruit in it which was a shame, otherwise it was the usual cereal, fruit and toast selections.

Cream cheese muffin, not so great. Why aren't you custard?

I had to walk back to the city again to pick up the rental car, for some reason I had put down 12:00pm as the collection time so they weren't quite ready at 10:30am for us. That was alright because I planned to have a look around the Government Gardens nearby at some time anyway. After waiting a bit longer the car was finally ready, they didn't have anything left in the small or medium car category I had chosen so got a free upgrade to a Commodore SV6, not sure if that's good or not.

Near Government Gardens, similar terrain to the park run course.

The first drive for the day was a short 20 kilometre trip down to Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland to visit some other geothermal areas. The car didn't take off as quick as I expected, but had good acceleration once it got going. Trying to park the car for the first time in the car park was a bit of a challenge though due to the size, and I really hated the electric braking system - didn't know if it was engaged and often the car would still roll a bit afterwards.

Only took about five attempts.

The 'wonderland' is a self-guided tour where you get to see different lakes of varying colours, also there were mud pits bubbling away, and lots of warning signs that the water temperature was 100 degrees - but the birds can still go in there somehow. The highlight was probably the main pool which was full of steam so you couldn't even see the other side, or the lime green one at the end of the circuit. It was maybe a bit expensive but you could probably say the same thing about everything. Took about 1.5 hours in total.

Lots of science going on here.

Champagne Pool, maybe.

Lemon lime.

A drive back to city after that, got a pizza that was very disappointing and a few magnets, then it was over to the Skyline Gondola. The gondola ride wasn't very exciting like usual, but for a few extra dollars you can get a bunch of luge rides at the top - they have a similar one at Queenstown I think. On the first ride we went with the scenic course which was the beginner one I guess. I had a bunch of stuff in my pockets - camera, keys, phone, wallet - that all felt like it was about to fall out so I didn't really go too fast. At one point I tried to take one hand off the steering device to fix up my pockets and the vehicle turned sharply and almost straight into a wall!

Skyline.

We got the chairlift back up but didn't realise there was a bar you were meant to bring down in front of you for safety, thinking it seemed a little dangerous and easy to fall out. The next time I gave all of my stuff except camera to Jason, which was a bit better but still not great, and took on the intermediate course. I was getting a better handle on the acceleration of the carts now, but it's still very hard to judge how much you need to brake for each corner - if you lose too much momentum it takes a long time to get it back because you're basically just waiting on gravity. We merged in with another course half way down and I got to race some guy for a while, but he only kept up for a couple of corners.

Spotted the second time, what's a bail?

One of the highlights on the chairlift rides back up was watching the other luge races underneath, lots of crashes and one guy even came out of this cart and ended up in the dirt. There was also lots of very dangerous looking mountain bike tracks with big jumps, but hardly anyone using them. For the third and final race we did the scenic again since it wasn't much different but seemed to be a bit longer, and the expert course appeared to be closed off.

Somebody lost all momentum, attempting to kick start it.

Somebody lost their cart.

There wasn't much else to see at the top other than a Jelly Belly store that seemed very expensive, so took the gondola back down shortly after.

Better than Bris Vegas?

Driving back through the city we had some luck that the late entries desk at the finish line of the Rotorua half marathon was still open. I had signed up a couple of months earlier and specifically confirmed that we would get our race packs mailed out, but they never came, so just got some replacements numbers issued.

Steps: 15000 + 6km run

New Zealand 2017, November 24 (Double Down)

Two years without a holiday, what better way to start than a 6:00am drive to the airport, leaving a car in the long term car park for ten days and hoping the battery would still work at the end. The airport was quite empty except for one idiot trying to play the same tune over and over again on a free piano in the departure lounge, I soon moved away so I didn't have to listen to that crap for half an hour. Only after getting out onto the runway we found out that we'd be stuck there for an hour, because there was only a single runway operating for planes taking off and landing combined! Not good news with a connecting flight and a two hour gap.

I'm not sure how this happened, but one of the tickets was 'seat and bag' and the other was 'the works'. What does 'the works' get you? It seems to be just a breakfast meal and I think you get access to the full range of content on the entertainment screen, otherwise you have to pay to watch some premium movies or TV shows. I just listened to a couple of sports podcasts instead anyway so it didn't matter. Just before landing in Auckland one of the attendants said because of the short margin until the Rotorua flight we should just take our bags directly to the gate, because they might not have time to put them through normally.

After getting through passport and customs check there was only about 20 minutes to get over to the separate domestic terminal, a bus leaves every 15 minutes but who knows when the next one is coming, otherwise you can walk one kilometre. I walked as quick as I could while rolling a suitcase, but arriving at the terminal I found out that the flight time had actually be moved back by 15 minutes anyway! I asked at the gate what do with the luggage and they seemed like they'd never heard of anyone taking luggage straight to the plane before, neither had I, so just took it back to the normal bag drop anyway. The flight was delayed an extra 15 minutes on top of that, so there was plenty of time in the end.

I was going to change my phone over to an NZ SIM card while I waited, but I had forgotten that the Samsung Galaxy A5 has a pin hole you have to poke to unlock that compartment. Of course I don't take safety pins on a holiday, so I had to go and buy a whole pack of fifty at the store, then spent about half of the 30 minute plane trip trying to get the old SIM card out. The plane to Rotorua was tiny and the airport itself just as small, getting out of the plane the first thing you notice is this really strange smell in the air, which turns out to be sulphur fumes.

The options to get to the hotel about 10 kilometres away were to wait about 30 minutes for an hourly bus, get a shuttle bus or get a taxi. We went with the taxi despite my dislike of them, and actually cost a bit more than the shuttle bus for two people. The rate was like $3 per kilometre, but given the crazy price of petrol that is somewhat understandable. At last a long day of travel was over at 6:00pm local time.

During hotel check-in the receptionist said due to the sulphur in the air the magnetic key cards might stop working, so you receive a regular key as well. I'm not sure of the chemistry behind that, but the cards worked exactly once, as advertised, and then it was over to the backup solution.

Feeling a bit hungry so walked down to the city centre, got some nachos! from a cafe then stopped at Countdown (fake Woolworths) which was just across the street from the hotel. Nothing too different at the supermarket except for a limited edition raspberry Coca-Cola, but I like the cherry flavour better.

Somewhere in Rotorua

Steps: 9000

October Review

This is the October review. Not much time left to achieve annual goals - whatever they were.

I passed 10,000 kilometres of running on Strava recently. This would not cover every running activity, but would be pretty close - once I purchased my first GPS watch. This month was time for another Melbourne Marathon - fifth in a row, but slower than all but one, even the first one back in 2013. I'm still not close to feeling my best, so was just aiming to stay under 4:10/km, which was quite easy until the last three kilometres just ran out of energy. I was unlucky to get a bad blister the week before the race, but it didn't cause too much of a problem during it.

Since the marathon I've managed to run one new park run at Diamond Creek - just under 19:00 - and had limited opportunity to make improvements for upcoming 10 and 15 kilometre races.

I guess I reached my 300,000 shares goal for the year at least, unless something really bad happens. I'm not sure if next years goal would be 400 or 450, but also depends on using that money for a house instead. I got a bit bored with my current investments so bought and sold three each, going into more small cap companies with more risk but more growth (and loss) potential - but no dividends either. I also started filling out an investment loan for 100,000 against my existing shares, but that will take a while to go through since it's a bit complicated. I will review the whole process later.

Not much happening in sports at the moment. The baseball finished and the New York Yankees just fell short of the world series, but much better than previous years. The NBA hasn't been too interesting yet as the same teams are at the top, and all other teams seem to have about a fifty percent win-loss record so far. I have started up some daily betting with mixed results.

The to do list I guess didn't get too far again:

• December holiday
• I need to find out what my company expects first
• The standard is two weeks (eight days) off which is annoying
• It's a bit hard to know right now since I'm not allocated to a project
• NBN
• Finally got the NBN but it's the crappy hybrid cable version
• Had a couple of dropouts but the speed is a bit better
• Not paying the extra money for the fastest speed though
• NZ holiday
• Got the final bookings done for car rental and organised a SIM card
• Just have to look at some final preparations, maps etc.
• USA Lottery
• Well I did register again just to have a go
• Now it looks like they might cancel the whole thing due to the latest incident

I finished work in October and since this is not meant to cover November I won't mention what I've been doing since yet. However it wasn't great to not know for sure what I would be doing next even on the last day, but I'm still getting paid at least.

I had to put together another resume using our company template which is annoying, I hate writing a resume more than almost anything. Since I went to an AWS training last month I found out everyone is expected to sit for the exam, so I will need to find time to study for that somewhere.

That's it for this month.

• Books
• None
• Movies
• Alien Covenant
• So bad, not even worth talking about
• 2 out of 10
• Music
• Foo Fighters ticket for January
• Grouplove ticket for February
• Grizzly Bear ticket for March
• The Killers no ticket because of a website session timeout!
• TV
• Somewhere Between
• An interesting first episode but the story was just stupid afterwards
• There was no explanation why two people had experienced the future
• 4 out of 10
• Survivor Australia Season 4
• Fairly happy with the winner
• Otherwise the tactics of most contestants were a bit frustrating
• 7 out of 10
• Video Games
• PC
• Alwa's Awakening
• Annoying rooms with consecutive trick jumps later in the game
• Finally finished
• The final boss was easy and then there was no ending
• 6 out of 10
• Xbox One
• Ordered Forza 7
• Ordered Mafia 3 and Watch Dogs 2