Stuart and Keris Tied the Knot!: New Zealand and Engagement

To put it mildly, New Zealand was a blast. We had a really wonderful 2 week trip, filled with adventure and fun.
We started the trip in Abel Tasman National Park (South Island) with a 3 day sea kayaking trip that included camping in tents overnight. We had rain on the first day, but since we were in a sea kayak it didn't damper our trip much. We ended up seeing a dolphin swim within feet of our kayak on the first day.

The next days included sunny weather and beautiful, calm ocean water. We saw brown fur seals, star fish, glow worms, and wetas. Wetas are these ugly large grasshopper-like creatures that are native to New Zealand. They typically live in caves, and while we explored the caves in the evenings it often felt like they would fall on our heads.

After sea kayaking, we travelled up to Wellington to visit a couple of my old childhood friends - Luisa, Robbie & Cherie. We had a fun time in Wellington as they showed us the city. It is a university town with lots of young spirit and character. Wellington has more cafes per person than any other city in the world. Robbie, Cherie and Luisa were great hosts for a fun New Zealand "culture" tour - nature walks, lamb roast, local beer & wine, passionfruit (my favorite fruit). We also saw the national museum with New Zealand history and a great new Monet exhibit.

After Wellington, we travelled to Rotorua for a one night stay in the "tourist trap" city (all of the prices seem twice as much as it should be). On our first day there, we took a trip to the luge and it was really awesome. We went racing down the hill around sharp corners on a little gravity accelerated buggy, and there is nothing to stop you from just running over the side of the hill and crashing. It is SO fun. We had to buy more tickets because we couldn't stop going down the race course over and over again. One of the funniest parts was when we decided to take pictures in the middle of the riding path. We had to move out of the way of other riders so often, and they ended up staring at us as they rode past thinking "just what are you doing there?". The second day in Rotorua, we went on a white water rafting trip over a 7 meter waterfall. The Kaituna River has the highest commercially rafted waterfall in the southern hemisphere. It was a little intimidating at first because our guide was commanding us to "Listen! Be careful! Paddle!!!" I think he was worried that we had a weak group - a bunch of girls and Stuart was the only guy, except for one other guy who didn't speak english, so he was always doing the wrong thing. It was a really fun rafting trip and we got a cool series of Photos where you can see our boat go vertical over the waterfall and then completely submerge underwater.

Next, we travelled to Whakatane/Ohope where I lived for some years younger. Ohope is the small beach side town near a larger city Whakatane. In Ohope we were able to relax for quite a few nights and spend our days swimming in the ocean. We learned to surf (!!), took nature hikes, and had plenty of home grown vegetables and avocadoes. The beach was beautiful and we made it a point to see the sunset every night.