It has been a busy first week out of the country for Steve and I. Hard to believe it is day 9, but when you think that we still have 2 years or so to go, it isn’t much at all. Fiji went by in a blur and we spent 3 days in Auckland getting a lot of work done, including wading through the endless b.s. pile of paperwork for the cars, getting some stories lined up for the next few weeks here in New Zealand and popping into the Tourism Australia office to start the ball rolling over there. We have, however, been living very cheaply thanks to the Explore New Zealand media passes we got hooked up with from Vanessa and Gabrielle at the NZ tourism board.
After getting a lot of work done and making decent headway on a lot of tasks, we finally experienced our first bit of adventure and it came in the form of a shark tank dive at Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater World in Auckland. It was actually Jane, a nice tourism rep from the Northern Territory, Australia who suggested we check it out. After suiting up and getting a briefing from the staff, we plunged into an aquarium tank full of half a dozen or so10 foot long Seven Gill and Bronze Whaler sharks. Not bad for really only our second “real” open water scuba experience. It was a little intimidating at first, but it actually became quite tranquil and you truly got to see first hand how beautiful and graceful sharks are even if they can fit your entire head into their mouths if they wanted to.
As soon as Steve, myself and the ink our on Shark Survivor certificates dried off, we were off in our Mazda wagon for a 3 hour drive south to Rotorua, navigating left hand drive roads in a right hand drive car for the first time in quite a while. If signaling a lane change by turning on the windshield wipers was good motoring, we would be kings of the road.
Rotorua has become quite a hot spot for activities and tourism in New Zealand and is also a location that has a lot of cultural significance for the Maori people. Today was a busy day filled with Zorbing, mud baths in geothermal springs and a traditional Maori hangi dinner and concert. It also seemed as though we inadvertently followed part of the course of the first season of the Amazing Race today, although I think we had more fun and learned a lot more.
Stay tuned for some video and photos of the days activities (Once we get situated with our editing process… that is another blog entry). I think we are finally staring to get into a happy balance of getting work done, planning, filming, learning and enjoying our travels. Keep in mind that it is just Steve and myself at this point shouldering all of the tasks from visas, logistics, filming, editing, website maintenance and producing so it will also be a nice change when we meet up with more of our crew in Australia in a few weeks. By that time, TWBR will be a well oiled machine even if we have to wait a little longer for the Toyotas.
