Super Bowl Monday in Taupo (Feb. 5)

Congratulations are in order! For whom, you might ask? Well, us, of course! Today marks the one month anniversary of the date your intrepid world travelers struck out from Mt. Gretna, PA to travel to this lovely little piece of the planet. An anniversary calls for a proper celebration, and we opted to celebrate the best way we know - by watching the Super Bowl. That’s right – through the power of satellite television, Andrew and I sat down in a sports bar in Taupo at noon on Monday afternoon to watch the game that our friends and family (and according to the announcers, one billion other people worldwide, umm… right) were watching on Sunday evening. Sadly, the Super Bowl commercials were not part of the broadcast, but we did see many promos for the upcoming program on the illustrious history of cricket – you won’t find be able to enjoy that one on ESPN in the States! Also sadly, the game sucked from the other side of the planet, as the Colts and the Bears failed to excite in the big game. It certainly didn’t have the excitement of, say, the Curling World Championship.

Earlier, we stopped by Waipa Brewing, a very small brewery in Rotorua that was on our list of breweries to try and visit. I think Graeme, Waipa’s manager, was surprised to see us at 9 o’clock on a Monday morning, but after we explained we were interested in small breweries and not looking to get our buzzes on that early, he was happy to show us around their small operation. They’re a pretty small-scale operation, using extract instead of grain and fermenting in 50L buckets, but what blew our minds most was that they are currently hand-filling all their bottles for sale! Having filled our fair share of bottles homebrewing, Becky and I certainly don’t envy the poor sods who have to manually fill them from the taps, then capping each one.

Site of the infamous camera fumble

Graeme did mention that they’ve only being bottling beer for sale for less than a year, and that with a deal in the works to greatly expand the brewery, they would need to really modernize and upsize their facility. He gave us a free four-pack of their beer, a terrific gesture that we’ve been appreciating the last couple days. Cheers, Graeme!

Unfortunately, things haven’t gone completely smoothly here, as I dropped our new camera on the concrete floor at Waipa. At first, it seemed to work fine (which left us thinking, that was a freebie!), taking perfect pictures at the brewery, but once we got to Huka Falls near Taupo, it ceased taking clear pictures, and will have to be serviced somehow. Hopefully Kodak has a service center in NZ? Fortunately, we do have a backup, so we will continue to have pictures of the trip until our new camera has been repaired.

Otherwise, we are continuing on our whirlwind tour of the North Island. After two days in Roturua, we have commenced our travel southward, stopping in Taupo (famous for the cheapest skydives available in NZ) and Turangi (favorite spot of trout fisherman). Tomorrow we will embark on the Tongariro Crossing, billed as the best day hike in New Zealand. After the tourist crowds we experienced over the last few days in Rotorua, we really struggled with the best way to do the Tongariro Crossing without having to walk shoulder to shoulder with five hundred other people. In the end, we have decided to do what most people do – take the shuttle. It will drop us off at one end of the track in the morning and pick us up about eight hours later in the afternoon. Other than walking approximately 34 km round trip or hitchhiking back to our car, it seems to be the best (and really only) option. We are opting to take the early shuttle in hopes of beating the crowds. Hopefully Andrew finds 6:00 AM more appealing tomorrow than he does on most mornings.

It certainly feels as if we have increased the pace of travel these last few days. We have spent two nights in Tauranga, and two nights in Rotorua, but places don’t take on the same familiar sense when you’re not experiencing them with the locals. We really haven’t traveled that great of distance in miles, but it still feels like we are moving at a intense pace. Towards what? The South Island sounds good to us.