On and On...

So, as soon as we sold our shuddering car, we made a bee-line for Te Puke (teh poo-kay). It is the kiwi fruit capital of New Zealand, so we thought we could go there and pick up some work. The name of the town is translated roughly as "Barf-Town," or at least that's how it seemed because not only was it full of sketchy characters at every turn and it oddly smelled of cat food, but there was no work in sight. Unfortunately we found this out after we paid for a week of accommodation in the puke's nicest hotel, which meant that it was still pretty dirty. What else should we have expected from a place called the puke? Nothing, actually. On a happier note, we didn't get robbed while we were there.

We finally decided to vacate Te Puke after one day of kiwi picking, along with every Indian lady in New Zealand (Not Shoshone or Cherokee, however) and too many other days in the library doing asinine things like READING! (gasp). We struck out east, along the coast of the north island to try to find a little more excitement, which we found, although it wasn't exactly the right kind.

Emily has this urge, most times, to eat lunch away from as many people, and near as many elements of nature as possible. She is such a hippie. Anyway, it was her idea to dine beneath the famed 'Pukawata' trees (please note that the trees are neither spelled, nor pronounced that way). As we tried to locate said trees, Emily grew impatient, and settled on a flat, rocky area by the bay. Sadly, we never reached this lunchtime destination for our rental car, which could be mistaken for a go-kart, bottomed out on this magnificent rocky area. Some of us (emily) were laughing, while the rest of us (josh) attempted to dig our car from it's buried perch. Needless to say, we didn't enjoy lunch beneath the pukawata trees.

Speaking of our car. In my best summary, it is a metal shell encasing what, at top speed, sounds frighteningly like a leaf-blower. Hills are not her friend.

Moving along. We made our way up to Lake Waikaremoana where the altitude dropped the
temperature to a shocking 4 degrees!!!! Holy chill bumps, Batman! While camping was our first option, we spent most of our time trying not to freeze by sitting in the kitchen, doing more reading. It was a bad evening until a very nice lady realized how cold we were and offered us chocolate cake. Her exact words were, "Oh, you're cold! Let me get you some chocolate cake." I wasn't sure what she was thinking, but I loved her logic. After that, we didn't really get any warmer, but that cake was good.

The 10 speed huffy we were driving struck again with a flat tire. Instead of calling AA (NZ version of AAA, just not as good) for a sweet fee of $85, I made Emily change the tire and we were off to Napier.


Napier was very cool. Lots of old art-deco buildings and...well really that was it. But it was near a really cool place called:

Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamatea-
turipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenaukitanatahu.

A rough translation of this is, "What the heck?!", but it really means, "The brow of a hill where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, who slid, climbed, and swallowed mountains, known as land eater, played his flute to his brother." We tried to get a picture, but the camera switched off at the sight of such idiocy. You have no idea how much I wish I was making this up. If I were that creative, I would be a very wealthy man. On a side note, how would you like to be known as "the man with big knees?" Seems insulting to me.

After we uncrossed our eyes, we headed for Tongariro National Park where we climbed a real life volcano. It was steaming and everything. And we only had to share the trip with about 265 other people. I guess a 7 hour walk up one side of a volcano and down the other is more appealing than it sounds. It only took us 5 hours to finish, and we were first, even though no one else knew it was a race. Even still, WE WON!

After we got back, the 'weed-eater wannabe' car from hell struck again with a dead battery. At this point, I was ready to leave it in the parking lot and hitchhike home. But I found a nice man who didn't mind that I smelled like 4 different flavors of body odor to jump the little scooter-mobile.

We ventured through Taupo, and didn't to anything but watch a beautiful sunset.


Stay tuned for more in the near future.