First week in New Zealand and things are going great… pretty much been meeting up with people every night of the week. Glen and I are going to stay in Glenfield (a suburb of Auckland where Glen’s mom lives) until the Rugby World Cup is finished at the beginning of October.
The weather has been pretty Vancouver-ish the last week… cloudy and rainy (but I guess it is winter). Taken some drives, Glen and his friends went for a dive to catch scallops at a place called Tawharanui so while they were doing that, I walked around this sanctuary that was right next door. It was pretty creepy since there was no one else there, but very beautiful. Everything inside of the sanctuary are native plants/animals, with a special fencing used to keep pests out (mice, hedgehogs, ferrets). Apparently there are some kiwi birds in there but I saw no sign of them. Either way, it was a sweet secluded spot. The sanctuary is huge with some hiking trails and camping, so hopefully we go back there.
Rugby World Cup begins next Friday (September 9th), which is going to be the biggest event in NZ. We’re going to go into downtown Auckland where there’s going to be a bunch of activities similar to the Olympics and the largest fireworks display in NZ history, so that should be pretty sweet! We went to a Warriors (NZ) vs Cowboys (Australia) rugby league game last night at the Mt. Smart stadium close to the city with a bunch of people and it was good times… over 20,000 people in the crowd and the game was really fast paced… and the NZ team won.
We’ve been planning lots of ski trips, this week we are going to go to Mt. Ruapehu (about 4 hours south) for a few days and we’ve also booked flights to Queenstown where we will be for a week snowboarding the different mountains surrounding it. Going to be awesome!
