This wine evokes a taste of...grapes

This past weekend, I went on a group wine tour on Waiheke Island, a paradise just a 35 minute ferry ride northeast from Auckland.

Goodbye Auckland.

Hello island life.

Waiheke has 33 wineries/vineyards dotted around its culture of beaches, no traffic lights, intermittent farmland, and a fast-growing property market. It confusingly feels exclusive, yet totally accessible; it's an intermingling of rolling and rocky hills (think northern Italy), sparse though commercial beach front (Oregon coast), and rural simplicity (Michigan or Wisconsin or Iowa or take your pick. Just don't pick Ohio). There's something about Kiwis, people from an island nation, getting really excited about going to another (still smaller) island that is endearing. If nothing else, it enables one to pretend to be a sommelier for a day.

This was my first wine tour. What comes to mind when you think of a wine tour?  

• A single bead of sweat forming on the nape of your neck as you burn to a crisp under a blazing sun
• The parched back of your throat as your try to form the phrase 'dark blackberry aroma and smoked cedar palate'
• The fact that the desiccation in your throat comes not so much from the heat as the lip-smacking dryness of your last Cabernet Franc
• The pinch of your sunglasses as they slide down your sweat- and sunblock-greased nose
• Mental gymnastics to convince yourself that this sixth Syrah had a more peppery aftertaste than the first, second, or third, but that the fourth was still the best (or was it the fifth?)
• The omnidirectional rolling green vineyards that don't so much scream 'fresh and outdoors' but whisper plainly, 'aridity'
• The glare of a morning and midday sun that melts into a desultory hazy glow after 15 tastings

Waiheke had all that and much more.

I could spend time describing the wine in detail, or at least the wineries and their differences in tastes/practices/sizes/locations/etc. But it's unlikely I would do any of it justice. Luckily, I did take pictures (as did Rhiannon, with her superior camera).

I can't help but think how cool it would be to have a vineyard maze, similar to a corn maze but with more drunk.

Three consecutive and fast-paced wine tastings can make you forget your surroundings. The irony is the wine makes the greens more green and the blues more blue. I'll let the scenery do the talking:

Am I too young to plan my retirement here?

Out the shuttle window. Our shuttle driver, an adorable old Kiwi named Graham, was probably between descriptions of multi-million dollar homes when we stopped here.

Actually an island in the southern hemisphere, or just Napa Valley?

After much wine and bumpy rides in undulating landscape, topped off with duck and risotto and gelato, there's only one thing the human body craves, nay, needs - a beach nap. We took a quick stroll down to Oneroa bay:

Turn this into a pastel painting and you have basically every Thomas Kinkade work ever.

Prime location to close eyes, contemplate meaning of life, and develop midday wine tour hangover.

Finally the day came to a close. This meant a pleasant stroll back to the ferry terminal, where even the drabness of public transportation became a late afternoon seaside spectacle:

Tranquil. Tranquilo. Tranquille. Whatever language you want to use, it's still damn peaceful.

Cheers!

It's all relative

I've gotten pretty bad at taking pictures (some would argue I've never been a good photographer), mostly due to indolence. So bear with me, this will be a thoroughly link-embedded post.

If there's anything that travelling (and entering my late-20s, I'm such a sage now) has taught me, it's that relatives are typical, while absolutes are scarce. I would guess this thinking was formed when I took a Modern Physics course some 7 years ago, and then solidified later in Quantum Mechanics. A solid year and a half of physics is spent learning that a set number of equations and their derivatives govern the motion of the universe, and that by simple application one can explain the world and all of space around us. These absolutes led to many important advances in human knowledge and thereby technology, industry, and extensive life-improvement. But (wait, ahh, what?) no, they aren't absolutes; there's a mind-bending caveat:  move fast enough and time and space become relative, dilating and contracting respectively...oof. Not only did this make me scratch my head, it also turned me into a skeptical (and probably annoying) SOB.

Plainly that's a literal and pedantic example of relativism. Position and time can make things relative in other more anecdotal ways as well. For instance, we've just entered December. For me, this time of year has always meant the arrival of winter and snow. Brace yourselves, Winter is Coming, and for a lot of you in the northern hemisphere, it's already arrived. I usually have mixed feelings about the implication of winter's impending arrival - desultorily shuffling in layers of warm clothes from the front door to the bus stop (con), reading by a crackling fireplace in pajama pants that are not only acceptable but necessary (pro), replacing normal dietary foods with anything that is hot and liquid (pro going in, con coming out...), the brief reflective warmth from a morning sun glistening off the layer of fresh fallen snow (pro), losing what little tan the summer sun left on my pale skin due to the mostly overcast and brusque days (con). In brief it's a toss-up between this and this...¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Holiday season 2012. Pajamas and resulting smile for confirmation of the previous paragraph.

Hey look, an adorable picture of a hedgehog in its native habitat (the front yard of my flat). This photo has nothing to do with the theme of this post.

Down here in the southern hemisphere, summer has arrived. I sleep with my windows open every night, wear shorts whenever I can, and don't have to compromise my fashion (ha, yeah right) for layers of strictly functional body-warming clothes. And in New Zealand, the summer sun is special - that is, dangerous. Here we have a lovely (human-induced) ozone layer hole of sunshine. Seriously, read that NASA article, "The ozone is so thin in this part of the world that the weather report on the nightly news includes five-minute sunburn alerts." If my math is correct, that translates to a 30 second sunburn for my freckled redheaded friends. I can only imagine the horror.

[All this potential for quick and painful sunburns leads me to this sidebar PSA: wear sunblock.  Yes it can be greasy/oily on application and can make your skin sticky (annoyingly attractive to bits of sand), and sometimes the smell isn't even that great. But what's a bit of discomfort now relative (see what I did there?) to shaving skin and time from your life?]

So everything is relative - even the things as absolute as my fettered understanding of when and what seasons are, or the (seeming) immutability of the sun.

Cheers!

Bonus. A few other relatives:

• Time zones:  I find these super fascinating. They were originally introduced in the mid 1880s as a way to standardize shipping and industrial trade, but now are often political and confusing. Look at this map. China spans 5 geographic time zones, but chooses to put everyone (1.4 billion people!) on the same time. Some regions/cities even have half or quarter time zones. Weird.
• Thanksgiving:  Though not actually a holiday here, with enough obdurate Americans and their desire to eat and drink to excess, anything is possible. I had both a Thanksgiving dinner with Rhiannon and flatmates and a Sunday Thanksgiving picnic hosted by my American coworker, Renee. Some things were different - instead of turkey, lamb and BBQ chicken and sausages were served, and instead of backyard football, it was touch rugby.

Throwing a ball backward to move forward is confusing. Also if the goal is to not get touched, I have failed miserably (lower right). I also want to point out how insanely smiley everyone is here.

But the important things remained the same - thanks was still given, though in a big circle of mostly strangers and ambiguous thanks,

Speech!

and my desserts were traditional and highly butter-infused.

Sweet potato (here called kumara) bake and homemade molasses pumpkin pie, both with brown sugar - pecan topping. Nom nom.

Signs

New places and cultures present implants with a number of potential confusing, terrifying and/or embarrassing situations that require explanation:  language (or just terribly mangled accents), cultural norms, driving on the WRONG side of the road, coffee consumption levels, having hermit crabs as pets (this is an admittedly Midwestern thing, but has not stopped being funny for people I tell here), strangely shaped and colored foods...the list seems endless.

Signs (street, construction, hiking, and everything in between) are a constant reminder of these slight but stark dissimilarities in culture. Because people are inherently pretty dumb and need information force fed to them, signs have to be as uncomplicated as possible. Simple illustrations, few words, and bright colors often suffice.

Perhaps what I'm about to present will only be of interest to my American readers who don't experience and interact with these signs on a daily basis. Presented below are several examples of signs that I've gathered that made me AC (audibly chuckle, new more-tempered replacement for LOL?).

On the sidewalk outside of a train station:

How many of you knew what 'busking' was?

No ambiguity in New Zealand street signs:

@schroeder.dan says, "...but what happened to poor Beatrice when she went that way?"

Construction signs always get their point across succinctly:

Just one lonely shoveling dude. 

"Surprise! Trucks"

When on a hike here, signs for navigation are pretty scarce. You'll often see something like "MacCLAREN TRACK 4 HOURS," with a wooden arrow pointing in an enigmatic direction. But advisory signs are plentiful, and can be pretty perspicuous,

'DANGER, brought to you by Auckland City Council.'

or vague,

Spoiler:  a certain smart and swinish character from Lord of the Flies met his fate this way.

or both,

Landslide, whee!

or just too thorough.

So, like, don't move?

And finally, the funniest and most unexpected, are the signs reminding people to use basic toilet etiquette:

A little sad this wasn't a complete limerick.

Yes, a repeat picture from a previous post. Still hilarious to me.

My good friend, Ricardo, who has traveled parts of SE Asia, tells me the above sign is necessary. This is because toilets are designed for squatting. He even provided an extremely helpful picture/diagram of this lovely bathroom procedure:

No caption necessary.

Cheers!

A Weekend, nay One Day, Trip to the Coromandel

This past weekend was Labour (where'd that 'u' come from?!) Day weekend here in New Zealand. There's actually some interesting history related to it, but essentially it's a free day to commemorate the NZ struggle for an 8-hour work day back in the 1890s. It's celebrated on the fourth Monday in October every year. That kind of makes it like (USA) Thanksgiving - suddenly you're at the end of the month and you get a day off work. Since we are in high spring here, that means this is a holiday weekend as well (like Memorial Day). 

After loading up on junk food and coffee, Rhiannon and I set off early on a Friday morning to beat the traffic induced by Auckland's holiday diaspora. Our destination was a 3 hour drive down and around the Firth of Thames (just a great name, apparently firth = bay) to get to the beautiful Coromandel Peninsula. The Coromandel is known for good hiking (both in the mountains and along the sea), gorgeous beaches, and numerous seaside towns dotted along the coast. 

Winding up and over a lush and low mountain range brought us to Tairua, a small coastal town with a nice brewery, a small art gallery, and a wicked public playground. It also has a sandy and extremely level (can something be extremely level?) tidal flat that you can walk several hundred meters onto when the tide is low:

Sandy island that quickly disappeared as we were shooed away by the climbing tide.

When you're on a shell-infested tidal mud flat, you do hand stands. It is known.

We then continued on to our destination for the weekend, Whitianga (FIT-ee-ayn-gah), stopping along the way for a quick hour long walk at Cathedral Cove. At the time I had no idea, but Wikipedia now tells me this is both where some recent filming occurred:  a scene in The Chronicles of Narnia:  Prince Caspian (that's the only reference to that you'll ever see in my blog) and a portion of a Macklemore video. Anyway, it was a lovely little walk filled with some cows, quails, and nice vistas, ending on a secluded beach:

Get off my beach I live here now.

"Wow this is where Macklemore once stood." 

And when we got back to the parking lot there was this very sad one-footed winged rat atop my car:

Had a real taste for dried cranberries and being pathetic.

And then a few excellent beers at a local brew pub to cap off the day:

Really the best APA I've had so far in NZ. I'm a beer snob apparently

And...that's it. I would love to show you more pictures and regale you with loads of other interesting and fun things we did over the weekend on the Coromandel, but I can't.

Ya see, that night we ate some grilled chicken. I woke up a few hours later feeling like death had crawled deep inside me and was clawing its way out, and I was inconsolably (and often violently) ill for the whole evening. I didn't sleep a bit, and we decided to drive back to Auckland the next day. I spent the rest of my Labour Day weekend convalescing and eating toast and apples. I tell myself it wasn't a total loss because the weather was crap all weekend. Now I'm just steeled to try to visit it again, naturally avoiding grilling chicken at a campsite..

Cheers!

Bonus:

During my recovery, Rhiannon and I made some Halloween-themed decorated cinnamon-ginger sugar cookies. Some of them are really scary, so it's okay to look away now before it's too late. Happy Halloween!

We only had black food coloring, so our palette was white, grey, and black.

Climb for your Life!

I've rock climbed before, which is to say I've gone into an indoor climbing gym and pulled myself up (huffing and puffing - the technique and finger/hand/forearm strength and fancy footwork elude me) a simulated rock wall. It can be intimidating, and takes a little getting used to the heights to which you climb and the belayer in which you put your trust. Otherwise indoor rock climbing is a very safe activity (especially when compared to playing a physical contact sport or even just running on rough terrain). The only injury I've ever suffered occurred when I first stepped onto the gym flooring my first time at the Madison climbing gym, evidently not knowing of its extra squishy consistency. I rolled my ankle. The safety is due mainly to the double and triple checking of ropes, the soft floor you'd fall onto and the relatively low height from which one would fall. Difficulty in climbing a gym rock wall really depends on which holds are on the route, and where they've been bolted.

A few weeks ago, mainly on a Thursday afternoon whim, I agreed to partake in a weekend climbing adventure at Froggat Edge. This free-climb paradise is located a few hours south of Auckland, just as you approach the ethereal world of Sir Peter Jackson's take on J.R.R. Tolkien's Hobbiton. We weren't far from the theatrical version of The Shire, and the landscape helps you understand why Sir Peter chose the locale. Hint:  one of the following images is not from Froggat Edge. Can you pick it out?

I want to see mountains again, mountains Gandalf!

Even the name 'Froggat Edge' has a token Tolkien ring to it.

If you picked this one, congratulations, you are not a robot!

This was my first outdoor climbing experience, ya know, scampering up a sheer rock face attached to some rope threaded through bolts some crazy guys installed at some point. I have to admit I was a little nervy going in. But while camping the night before with a group of very experienced climbers, my anxieties were put to rest. For the safety of everyone involved, they would keep a close eye on me and make sure I didn't do anything with which I wasn't comfortable. It was strange and captivating to see such vertiginous volcanic rock formations jutting up out of a soothingly rolling and verdant landscape.

Ungh. I think I might move here and become a shepherd.

I got my 'climbing' gear on, which consisted of an Under Armour®‎ long sleeved tee, some running pants, and borrowed harness and climbing shoes. I own no climbing gear.

Let's do this? Confidence.

And the climbing began! The rocks were porous, kind of like a pumice stone, but angrier. At one point when reaching for my next hold I felt a painful bite into the tips of my fingers. Just the sharp and brittle rocks defending themselves? I yelled down to my belayer, "I feel like I just grabbed a rusty knife!" I clearly didn't have the tough hands (or mental fortitude) that my companions did. It was an exhausting five hours, and watching others take on the big 'classic' climbs was a treat - some were close to 30 meters (~100 feet) high:

Center:  Renee the Spider comfortably resting halfway through her lead climb, so cool and relaxed. Other adventurous humans pictured for scale.

And Marco, from whom all these pictures come, cleaning the same route.

Because of the local topography, there were actually pretty easy routes walking up the back sides of these formations, so that I could enjoy the view as if I had traversed the difficult climbs myself (though in fact I did successfully climb 3 or 4 of them).

Everything the light touches...

Photo of a guy taking a photo of other guys climbing rocks.

So maybe I didn't partake in all of the difficult and harrowing climbs, nor did I (or do I) have the expertise to go out there and do this on my own. But I did learn how to tie myself in and how to belay, gained some massive forearm muscles, carried gear like a champ,

Actually slipped and fell in front of everyone at some point.

and generally really enjoyed the company, climbing, and landscape. Maybe I'll stab my hands with steak knives every few days to toughen them up before next time.

Cheers!

Endless Sands and Lofty Heights

I've been doing a lot of hiking recently. Perhaps it's in place of other hobbies that have been put on the back burner (mostly soccer; I miss you soccer, we shall be reunited soon). But main reason for the plethora of hikes has to do with two things:  feeling like it is obligatory in this very beautiful country and the unique feelings a hiker experiences during tramps (uh oh, Eric is going to talk about feelings again..). Hiking feels very natural. Yes it involves natural settings, but that's not really what I mean. It's human nature to always be nomadic - running from a predator and chasing prey, finding new and better shelter, or just reaching for some unknown new height or discovery. There's a certain serenity I get when I know my feet are moving underneath me, carrying me up a hill or along a seemingly eternal black sand beach. 

Hiking also provides a sense of accomplishment:

• from a physical perspective. Walking for several hours up and down graded terrain is not just good for development of some huge calf muscles (sick legs, bro), it also is a pretty good cardio workout. I often eat the junkiest food during and after hiking, like the two gas-station donuts during a recent foray to Hunua Falls.
• from a social perspective. Perhaps no better way to bond with others than to plan and execute a long hike in a foreign landscape. Team building!

The hiking crew at Karekare beach - two Americans and two Canadians. Team North America?

And the next weekend at Hunua Falls. Having company for a hike is extremely valuable. Upper right: when did I become so serious? Probably has something to do with being 28 now, ugh.

• and of course in pursuit of that next great view. Pretty self-explanatory, so I'll let the pictures do the talking:

Eden? Maybe not, but Marco claimed it was his 'paradise.' Certainly a good spot for a picnic.

Atop a ridge overlooking a secluded black sand beach. My paradise.

Sometimes these views can inspire creativity. Here is a driftwood beach sculpture I call "Driftwood Beach Sculpture." This is art, get it?

Once more, the endless Karekare beach. 

Hikes are called walks here, so I believe any type of longer walk should be included. Here Rhiannon peers from a pier at the Auckland City wharf on a beautiful birthday Sunday.

These still frames, no matter the technological capability of the camera taking them or the skill of the photographer (sorry Marco), cannot fully capture the moment. Which I guess is why you have to go out, do the hiking, and soak in the views and company for yourself.

Cheers!

Between Two Minds

In a dense morning fog, causing nearby skyscrapers to seemingly puncture through the low-hanging clouds, I boarded. "So early for a Saturday," I thought as my exhaled breath quickly condensed and appropriately matched the haziness in my head. Yet I knew the fresh air, an amalgam of salty sea breeze and dewy mist, would quickly sweep out my drowsy cobwebs. The ferry pushed away from the wharf, sputtering and rumbling at first, yet nearly motionless while water churned beneath, unseen. Imperceptible and continual acceleration finally brought the boat up to cruising speed. Astern, the city center receded while its sprawl became apparent:  bridges teemed with the low thrum of traffic, cliffs crammed with million dollar homes rose along the shore, and volcanoes reached their green fists into the air, searching for the few patches of rising sunlight the fog would allow. Away from the hubbub, the journey soon became soothing as the boat dandled in mild harbor waves. The island called Rangitoto rose before me, dark and immense. Its thick tropical forest concealed the lava rock fields I knew covered the island, half a millennium old remnants of an eruption. The intrigue of exploring this deposed and desolate force of nature stirred my impatience. Moments later as the ferry approached its destination, dichotomous thoughts bounced around my now clearing mind. 

* * *

Man seems driven by inherent contradictions:  1) progress, the pursuit of a greater self brought on by conscious thought; and 2) instinct, a deeply woven base layer of human fabric. 

Progress is long term. On a personal level, it's careers, shiny new things signifying status (level up!), and striving toward leaving a mark on history. For humankind, it's improving life, building structures that touch the heavens and machines that can bend nature to our will; it's creating the best humankind there can be. 

Progress is thinking then doing. 

Instinct is short term. It's the next meal, best shelter, and survival. It's not about making history, it's about never being history. It's also a oneness with nature, hearkening back to when human settings were not something created, but merely dwelt in. 
Instinct is feeling then doing.

Progress gives us this,

Pluto from NASA's New Horizons mission. Note: this is not Auckland, could you tell? 

and this, 

Countless places to live and eat and be in comfort.

and these, 

#2 wins out in my personal beer-snob opinion.

and I guess even this?

I love this sign. You'd think common sense human brain developmental progress would prevent the need for this, but no.

But instinct draws me to the types of places/views that Rangitoto offers:

Green and looming clouds and heights.

Lava fields. A desolate reminder of the destructive force of nature.

Lava caves, cool and damp and only slightly treacherous. Cheers to Maggie for the great photos!

To sum, these two propulsive forces are contradictory, but also complement each other. The changes we humans have made to our surroundings are constantly taken for granted (look how I'm communicating with people everywhere just by clacking my fingers against some plastic, incredible!). Perhaps, then, progress is best appreciated from afar, or within the context of the nature that has molded and still stimulates our instincts.

Bustling and lost up close, beautiful at a distance.

Cheers!