Auckland Museum

       With the onslaught of a second rainy day in a row and much prodding from L, we decided to head to the Auckland Museum today--our second visit in 2.5 weeks.  Officially its name is the Auckland War Memorial Museum, but it is much more than that and so is usually referred to as the Auckland Museum.  It is located right off of the Auckland Domain and has some great views of the city--which we saw more of the last time we visited than today--as it is situated on the upper rim of the extinct Pukekawa volcano.  Luckily for us, we timed our bus ride and walk well, as we dodged major downpours on our trip.  

The Museum hosts a multitude of wonderful things--and I was able to relive all I learned from an anthropology paper I wrote freshman year in college about the Maori.  (And for you Carleton alums especially, I'd like to point out that it was a 8:15 a.m. class on T, Th, Sat!)  

There are a number of different arts that are practiced by the Maori--and most of them obviously for more than just decorative effect  They excel at carving--wood, bone, etc.  This is a raised storehouse.  It is completely decorated with carved wooden panels of tiki for protection. 

 

We didn't get a great picture of the decorated meeting house (whare whatkairo), but it was a complete original and the coolest part about that type of building is that the Maori interpret the meeting house as a body of their primary ancestor, their lineage, their geneology.  Not only are lines of ancestors portrayed all over the place, but the ridgepole is considered the spine, the rafters are the ribs, the door is the mouth, the front gable apex is the head of the ancestor.

There was also this incredible carved wooden canoe (waka), made from a single solid piece of wood. Here is a quick video of L talking about it for his class and a visual of the whole thing:

One of the other things that is carved and is significant to Maori culture is greenstone or jade.  These objects, especially of jade, provide hold a lot of mana (prestige, status) for their owner.  This hei tiki is a typical image and is an amazing piece of stone, especially when looked at with the light shining through:  

 There was also a natural history part of the Museum, and they had a great replica of the Moa, which is the extinct flightless bird of New Zealand.  Seriously, that is one avian giant!

And finally, as I alluded to at the beginning of this post, L really wanted to go to the Museum today, and the main reason was to go to the cultural performance.  Performers showed us some games and leisure activities of the Maori.  

 And we were able to see an example of the haka, the Maori war dance.  As you may have heard, the haka is also performed pre-game at Maori rugby games to intimidate opponents.  The dance combines   bulging eyes and tongues being stuck out--which is prolific imagery in Maori art , along with the beating of the chest:

And here are some examples of the real thing, okay, of the performed thing:

Although Liam has a slightly terrified look on his face here (although he's trying hard not to), he was much less intimidated by the Maori war dance than the Muppet Movie we saw yesterday.  I'm not sure the ultimate meaning of that, but the war dance is only one part this masculine culture that has much uses visual imagery and physical prowess for intimidation.  It is interesting to see this manifest itself in contemporary life and culture.  I am sure we'll be talking about that on another post.

Auckland, New Zealand (An Overview)

Today is the two week mark since our arrival in New Zealand (three + weeks since leaving home). We have taken on average 65-85 pictures a day--hooray for digital cameras and M's mantra of "we can always delete them later but we will never get another chance to take them".   We have been doing a LOT, seeing something new almost every day.  A new part of town, a new park, or new experience. This post provides an overview of some of our prototypical exploits.

Pictured above is the Auckland harbor.  We live half a mile from the main piers (Quays pronounced keys here). It is an easy 5 minute walk and we walk down here often to Queen Street, the main shopping district.  A short walk up Queen street brings us to Aotera square with the wrought iron gate shown next.  We walk to the piers and around Queen a fair amount.  The library is off Queen, and the main bus mart (Britomart) is at the base of Queen.  For the first month we are being environmentally friendly and only using public transport.  A good enough system and to be fair, we are not in a rush to get anywhere and like not having the hassle of dealing with traffic, gas prices, or parking. :)

There are a number of great parks around and we have hit all the city's major ones.  Closest is Albert Park, on top of the hill.  Queen Victoria looks over it proudly and it has great trees and a super view.  One day we walked over after the library and read books, played hide and seek, and hung out-- Little M even took a nap while L and I climbed some trees.   The University of Auckland city campus is across the street from here.

We also took a ferry across the harbor to Devonport.  Great views off yet another volcanic cone- Auckland has between 48-50 volcanic cones around and Albert Park is on one too.  The kids have been troupers walking a fair amount and then taking turns in the stroller and being carried.  Makes us realize how little we walk in America.  Here we are walking about 4-5 miles a day.

 We are also fitting in some culture.  We have been to the Art Museum twice (helps that it is right next to the library) and to the Auckland museum once so far.  The latter has a GREAT collection of Maori art and carvings like the one shown below. We have also been to the Zoo, and given a very rainy day today, took Little M to her first ever cinematic show-  The Muppets... We are planning posts on parks, museums, and other jaunts soon.  [RARG]

A Kiwi Christmas

Christmas definitely had a different feel for us this year.  Not sure it was because of our lack of ties here, the slimmed down Christmas trimmings, or the differences of attitude towards Christmas here in the Big Little City (as Auckland names itself) from our typical WI white Christmas.  This post will detail the differences that we experienced with Christmas and the Christmas season.  

One of the first things we noticed was that there wasn't constant Christmas music blasting in every store and on every radio station.  In fact, we couldn't find a radio station with any Christmas music, so we resorted to the holiday music I had downloaded on an Ipod in GB.  A few random street musicians played holiday songs (but it wasn't exclusively so.  One crooner at a central downtown location was singing Nat King Cole's "L-O-V-E" as Christmas Eve shoppers bustled by.)  In the stores, you really had to slow down and crane your ears to hear the low humming of the music.  Only one side street was decorated with giant paper garlands, but other than that, no twinkling lights and few Christmas trees in apartment windows.  There was the infamous Santa that we discussed in a previous post (here).  We did stop by to see it and it is huge.  

Since we've been here, it has made the list of the world's creepiest Santas.  If you're interested, read about that here.

We tried to do a number of Christmas-y things.  If you think that huge Santa on the side of the building we were thinking about living in is creepy, just wait until you see the real thing here:

L and little M also got a direct line to Santa, but unfortunately, they had to leave a message.

On the evening of December 23rd, we let the kids stay up late and we headed to Aotea Square to see the "light show."  [Now, R would not put quotes around "light show" but since I'm writing this post, I can do what I want, and in my opinion it wasn't much of a light show (and little M didn't think so either).  Give me some flashlights and I could nearly duplicate the experience!)]  Anyway, the light show was 5 or 6 uncolored beams of light moving around in sync to some techno music (not even Christmas music, what gives?).  We got there at 9:00 but couldn't really see the lights until about 9:45 because it was still too light out.  I think L liked it because they looked like light sabers.  Truly, the best part about staying out that late was seeing the Sky Tower lit in red and green.  

Another difference that we saw was that many stores and restaurants not only closed early (by 2 on Christmas Eve), but they also closed at normal times the whole week leading up to Christmas (like 7 p.m. on December 23rd.  We couldn't finish doing a bit of New-Zealand-present-shopping because the stores were closed).    Where is the capitalistic greed and shopping spirit, people?!  (And that doesn't even take into account that many, many. many shops and restaurants are closed from December 25 to January 8 or even January 15.  The whole place will shut down.)

On Christmas, we wanted to experience a typical kiwi Christmas--so we went to the beach.  We chose Mission Bay, one of the numerous beaches within a 15 minute bus ride from our place.  And it was hopping.  

Tons of people were BBQing (not sure that's their term), playing cricket and soccer, and having family time, and we felt right at home:

 R was also wearing his Packer gear, but we didn't gt the chance to talk to this guy.  Here's the beach that day.  Even though it was overcast that didn't stop numerous families from taking a dip.

Love this shot:

One of the great New Zealand Christmas things, that we're really enjoying seeing is the New Zealand Christmas tree.  The Pohutukowa tree blooms red flowers right around Christmas, and to our delight they are everywhere you turn in Auckland.  And although we saw some blossoms in the past week, it does seem they showed themselves specifically for the special day:

We thought about bringing our swimsuits, but it seemed just a little on the nippy side for swimming.  Despite that, there were smiles all around.

We headed back to our place and tried to infuse our NZ holiday with some thoughts of home.  We made some (chemical) snow from a test tube that Santa had left the kids in their stockings.  The pictures don't do justice to how much a half a teaspoon full of granules fluffed into the white stuff:

Then we had a lovely dinner of pan-roasted lamb chops with a great wine-reduction with rosemary and shallots, green beans and carrots, and french bread.  It was a tasty way to end a lovely day.  Poor little M though, says she's ready now to come back to GB--primarily because she thinks her Polar Bear is lonely there.  We'll be continuing to try and convince her that it will be just fine.

On the Island (Part 2)

The title of this episode may evoke Lost imagery for those who saw the series and to be fair there were some parallels. First, time felt out of synch.  We rarely looked at a watch and lived in the future- it was always the previous day in Green Bay. Fiji prints the ‘first newspaper’ in the world being just across the international date line (yes, we saved a copy). Second, without the routine of school or work and with no internet connection and nothing we had to do, we were in a twilight zone of sorts. The time change was not a big deal (we added 5 hours to the current time and that gave us the current time in Green Bay though the calendar would show the day before).  Every day in Fiji was awake, breakfast, water or sand activity, eat, ‘quiet time’, water or sand activity, dinner, storytime, bed.

We ate most of our meals in the Old Copra Plantation restaurant, mostly buffet style and mostly unremarkable. Breakfast was tiny Danish pastries, sausage, ham, scrambled eggs, pancakes. Lunch often ‘pie’ or ‘roti’ or ham and cheese sandwiches. Dinner some variation on the theme of fish and coconut or Indian food.  The last evening we ate at Ananda’s, a 10 minute walk along the beach (food about the same).

Different novelties punctuated the days. In addition to kayaking, the kids built coconut boats (later released out to sea as pictured below), R went on a tour of a Chinese graveyard and got an interesting lesson in the culture of the islands (see separate posting on culture), M got a lot of hammock time, R&M trekked out to a point to snorkel (little success there but lots of success outside our bure), kids got their hair beaded and tried mocktails (pictured),  we saw blue star fish and collected coconuts,  played putt-putt golf, and took a little trip to the next island.

Our island Mololo Lai Lai is next to a bigger island, Mololo. We took a speed boat to a little village on the big island named Solevu (nick-named ‘Shell Village’ for the tourist appeal).  Our trip was to leave at 8.15 am but come 8.30 no water taxi. We checked and it appeared the water taxi had forgotten to pick us up so we got a special speedboat ride over, jumping waves and creating waves too.  Solevu was a nice departure from the resort. A true Fijian village, it was razed to the ground in 1840 as part of a British naval reprisal but rebuilt and housing about 500 folk, most of whom work at the surrounding resorts.  Houses ranged from bricks and mortar 2-3 room ranches to corrugated iron huts. In the middle of it all sat a well thatched Chief’s house (with AC). We walked around the mud paths bula-ing our way here and there.  Kids played rugby. Women lay on mats drinking tea (?). Papayas and mangoes abounded.  On the beach women lay wares out on sheets for sale.  We supported the local economy.

Too soon, it was time to leave Fiji.  We took a 5am water taxi to Port Denaro (wake-up was aided by a crab scurrying across the bathroom floor), a short shuttle to the airport, and then a 2 hour 50 minute flight later, we touched down in Auckland, NZ. [Posted by RARG]

Merry Christmas!

Christmas morning, 8 a.m.

Merry Christmas from New Zealand!  We just want to confirm with all our friends on the other side of the world that Santa made it to one of his first stops of the night here in New Zealand.  We're sure he'll make it to your homes soon as well.  

We've already started our day and opened presents.  And then, we're having a kiwi Christmas and will be heading to the beach after breakfast!

From all of us to all of you and your families:  Have a wonderful  Christmas!  

On the Island (Part 1)

I feel like we've been out of contact with the world forever!!  We do have internet connectivity now and we're settled in Auckland.  However, I'd like to finish up with telling you about Fiji first, and then we'll get to New Zealand....

After Denaru, we climbed aboard a catamaran and took a 45-minute boat ride to our Fiji retreat, Plantation Island resort on Malolo Lai Lai island.  First, let’s be clear, Plantation Island resort is a nice place and we had a fantastic room, friendly and prompt service, and tons of fun, but the word “resort” conjures up something way different than what we experienced.  Take the luxury out of resort, and you’re closer to this family-friendly, pretty basic, but ultimately lovely retreat.

It was interesting arriving on Plantation Island, in that there were only about 10 of us on the boat (including a captain and first mate who slept the entire way), and one set of passengers was greeted by name when we stepped off (later we surmised they were the family of the owner’s son).    It was a quiet, subdued entry, not at all what we had expected from an island welcome.  What had happened is that the day before the resort had just finished hosting 500 schoolies, and nearly all the staff was taking a needed break.  (Schoolies, by the way, is the outing that some Australian families pay their 17, 18, and 19 year old kids to have after they graduate.  This resort is one of three in Fiji that ends up hosting some unbelievable number of kids off on their own, partying for graduation.  We’re glad we missed that!  Sounds like the infamous spring breaks in Florida.)  The number of guests at the time of our arrival, we bet, was close to around 50 so we basically had the whole place to ourselves and it was grand—any hammock we wanted, any seat in the restaurant, any pool became private, and quiet, quiet, quiet (well, except our 3 and 5 year old, which wasn’t a problem for us, and no one else either, since there wasn’t anyone here!).  As the week rolled on more and more guests came and then by the end we had to reserve our hammock and lounge chairs well in advance…more a resort experience, but less intriguing really.

But back to the point, we didn’t get the island welcome with the 5-man singing group serenading us when we arrived, but, as I mentioned, there was friendly service and beautiful views to behold while we were checked in.

By far, the best best best thing about our time here was our little bure and its location.  We had a little two bedroom thatched roof hut that was beachside, literally beach side (see photo).  Walk out about 10 steps and there was the hammock, lounge chairs, and the water!  Because the resort was in a little lagoon and there were barriers of old coral (dead, unfortunately, from over fishing and hurricane damage) that kept the waters  calm and very swimmable for L and M. 

We spent most of our first several days swimming in the ocean, swimming in the pools, and playing in the sand.   Then we expanded our repertoire…We took the kids out in kayaks to a little spit about 500 yards from our place and enjoyed shell hunting (and as it turns out, hermit crab hunting—that would be in the same shells, but we didn’t realize!) and relaxing with a whole new view from the other side of the island out to sea.

Can't take the snow to Fiji, so we'll bring the snowsandman to us...thanks for the inspiration, David:

And finally, this looks like an innocent family portrait, but actually it is to commemorate Liam falling off the dock into the water (don't worry, Nana, it was only about 1 foot deep) while feeding fish.  We knew it was bound to happen....so we just let it play out.

More to come….

Bula from Fiji!

After an uneventful, but nearly 11-hour long and fairly sleepless plane ride from Los Angeles (who sleeps well in an airplane?!), we made it to Nadi (pronounced "nan-di"), Fiji on Saturday morning AT 5:15 A.M.  although we had left on Thursday night.  And as I asked "Where did our Friday go?" we could honestly answer "Up in smoke," we reached our first international destination.

We were greeted with "Bula" which means "Welcome" and "Hello," and the greetings continue and continue.  Bula, bula, bula...

Our first stop was Denaru Island.  Our ultimate destination was booked full the first night, so we spent one night at this Radisson.  Our reactions were that Denaru Island looks a lot like Goa (a tropical state in India where Regan's mom's family is from).  We had a lovely time, and it is beautiful to look out and see various islands of Fiji.

Our hotel room had a lush view and we even experienced a tropical rainstorm the afternoon we were there to make sure we didn't forget we were in the tropics.  We had some great food here, much of it Indian-influenced.  For example, the dosa we had in the morning and the fresh coconut chutney were to die for.  The tandoor pizza was definitely different, but not something we are likely to have again.  We also had a chance to try Fijian punch and start over-indulging in tropical fruit.  

The hotel had numerous pools and restaurants.  We're not sure the kids cared whether we were in Fiji, on the North Carolina coast, or visiting Door County, just as long as there was sand, but R and I were happy that we could experience something tropical and sandy without any (obvious) American tourists, excepting us, of course.

Most of the other guests were Australians, with at least one French family (who we knew were French first because there children swam in their underwear and then once we heard them speak).  This was the family pool where there was a lot of swimming and jumping!  I appreciated the shade with the intense sun.

We also were able to take one long walk along the beach, discovering new shells and building lots of sand creations along the way.  The kids were in heaven...oh, I mean paradise!

During our walk, we saw this beachside church/altar.  Most of the Fijians are Hindu or Muslim, so we were a bit surprised by the Christian church--although we were in a very touristy area.  That is completely not true--see what happens when you don't have the internet?!--almost all Fijians are Christian.  Speaking of which, we were a little out of how we like to travel because we weren't able to travel inland to see some of the indigenous houses and villages.  Clearly, many tourists didn't seem to mind the isolation too much, but we wish we had taken the time to at least rent a taxi for a day to go inland.  We won't have the chance with this island we're on now (more about that later).

We even had the requisite torch-lighting by a man in a grass skirt.  I wonder if they like doing this or whether they feel a little embarrassed.  It is all for the tourist show obviously, but I wonder if the experience would be less "authentic" or lacking without it.

All in all, we spent about 36 hours on Denaru.  Then we were picked up and taken to the port for our next adventure.  More about that in our next post.