Wellington and beyond (briefly).

Journey to Weta workshop- where they worked
on the special effects for Lord of the Rings.
Worth it? Only for this picture.

Yes it's true, another blog has finally arrived. Apologies for the wait. You'll be glad to know that the snide remarks on facebook and strong hints from various family members were duly noted, and I have once again taken on the task of relaying our New Zealand adventures to you- the avid readers (and especially the accidental internet surfers who I'm sure don't care but read anyway).

Rachel and myself have both been working about 43-47 hour weeks over the holidays, so we have been busy, but the weather has slowly been getting warmer and we have tried to take advantage of any coordinated days off by seeing as much of Wellington as we can. We went to WETA Workshop, which is a special effects department that Peter Jackson started up to handle all the effects for those little movies called Lord of the Rings.

The people over at the New Zealand Tourism Headquarters must LOVE Lord of the Rings and all it did to put New Zealand on the map. You can go just about anywhere and find some sort of cheap souvenier about Lord of the Rings and how New Zealand is the real-life version of Middle Earth. Since the movies were filmed here, I guess that claim is basically true- although it's still kind of a nerdy claim to make. That being said- we totally went to WETA, because, yes, we totally like Lord of the Rings and all that hobbit stuff. Call us nerds if you like, but it's our blog so we'll just delete it ;)

Unfortunately, after we got out to the "Workshop", we were dissapointed to see that it was really more of a souvenier shop with a few of the life-size models from the films and a few of the other props on display. We didn't actually get to see how they do the special effects or anything like that. Although we DID get to take our picture with Gollum, and an Orc donning festive attire, so that kind of made up for it. Kind of. Not really.

Fortunately our other excursions in Wellington haven't been as disappointing, and we have spent a lot of time hanging out on the Oriental Parade, where there is a great sandy beach for us to relax in the sun.

Oriental Bay, a nice beach... but a fake beach.
The city council decided to revamp the area in 2002 and
hauled 27,000 tons of sand over from the South Island.

It's practically like walking on the South Island!

Near Civic Square, Wellington.

Civic Square, and Rachel (squint)

A really cool wooden bridge with Maori designs.

People in New Zealand are so polite that they put their graffiti on
sticky labels, so you can just peel it off if you're offended.
How thoughtful.

For Christmas, Rachel got us some nice felt Santa hats
that we wore (for about two minutes while we took pictures).

On the beach on Christmas Day.

Christmas was a weird day for both of us, because:
1. It was warm and sunny outside, and
2. It was warm and sunny ouside.

We spent some of the day talking to our families, and then we went and relaxed on the beach, where every other foreigner who didn't have family in the country was also hanging out. Of course nothing was open, so we couldn't go out to eat, and we were too lazy to cook anything special, but it was still a really nice day. We didn't get nearly as homesick as we thought we might. Again, the warm and sunny thing made it feel not-like-Christmas-at-all.

The Pohutukawa, also known as the New Zealand Christmas Tree,
is everywhere in Wellington (and the rest of NZ) this time of year.

New Zealand loves these vans, and so do I.

Besides having Christmas day off, Rachel and I both worked a lot through the holidays. It was nice to get paid time-and-a-half, especially for holidays like Boxing Day (day after Christmas) which we wouldn't normally celebrate anyway, and therefore didn't mind working.

I did manage to get three days off on the 28th through the 30th so that I could travel up the North Island to Gisborne to go to the Rhythm and Vines music festival (Rachel stayed in Wellington to work). I love music festivals, having already been to two last year, and I wanted to add one more to my list before the year was over. Also, Franz Ferdinand was headlining and most of you probably know how I feel about that band :) A german girl (Heike) we met in Paihia also happened to be heading to the festival, so she and I met up and drove there together.

When we glanced over the road map, we saw two routes to Gisborne that both looked about the same distance. We picked one at random and started out on what was supposed to be a 4 hour drive from Taupo to Gisborne. 7 hours later we finally made it. Tourist Tip #1: When in a hurry and you are faced with two route options, always avoid taking the route that goes through a National Park and has windy, dirt roads. Unless of course you have three extra hours to spare... then totally go for it.

In Te Urewera National Park that we accidently drove through.
Looking out over Lake Waikaremoana.
It's the North Island's deepest lake, and is also considered the country's
"most attractive" lake. Apparently there is someone out there
who knows so much about lakes that he can make that decision.

After our slightly-longer-than-anticipated drive, we made it to Gisborne. The city was very busy and full of people who were getting excited about the festival. This also meant that all the accomodation in the city was full. Heike and I were lucky because some of her friends managed to get us a spot in a campervan park, so we could sleep in Heike's car but still had access to showers and toilets and the like.

The festival was AWESOME, even though it was raining off and on all day long. This was actually a good thing and kept things a bit cooler, because it was 75 degrees even with the sun behind clouds. It did keep me from getting nice clear pictures, but I tried my best...

Jamie Lidell and his band were definitely the best dressed at the festival.

The Kooks had a great show, but I didn't attempt the moshpit
for that one. I wanted to live to see Franz Ferdinand.

When it came time for Franz Ferdinand to appear, I made my way down to the moshpit and got really close to the front, where I befriended some tall guys who offered to take pictures for me. I think they felt bad for me being so impossibly short. I even got onto one guy's shoulders so I could see better, and it was awesome for about ten seconds before the security guards started spraying water in my face. Apparently they don't let you do the shoulder thing... I guess it's not the safest thing to do in a moshpit... yeah it's definitely not safe... I won't do that anymore, now that I think about it...

Slowly getting pushed backwards in the moshpit...

The show was great and a lot of fun. I managed to survive the pit and
live to see a sunny new day in Gisborne.

On the beach in Gisborne.

Heike, the car we slept in, and the beach in the background.

On the drive back from Gisborne to Wellington, we stopped
in Napier for lunch and hung out on a black stone beach...

...and Heike got her first ever speeding ticket.
Apparently in Germany they aren't so strict about speeding...

...then, we got caught in a major rain storm and had to stop
driving for about ten minutes...

... followed by gorgeous clear skies ten minutes after that.

Cruising back into Wellington after a fun festival trip.

New Zealand celebrates New Years before the rest of the world, and
practically a whole day before the USA.
Me and some of my co-workers from
Wagamama celebrating in Civic Square.

Nate from Minnesota texting everyone back home
to let them know what 2009 is like.

Rachel and I happy (clearly) about 2009.

How creative of us.

Some more of my cool co-workers.

New Years eve was really fun and it was great to bring in 2009 with lots of friends, since we couldn't be with our families. Hope everyone else has had a great start to the New Year, and my New Years resolution is to try and blog more often... so... we'll see how that goes :)