Holiday from Windy Welly!!

Well everyone, it's been awhile since I last let most of you know what is going on in my side of the world. This past week, Lindsey, who is the sister of Chris and Annie here, came to visit us so we all went on a little vacation around the north island with her. It was really nice for myself, because this is pretty much the first time of getting out of the Wellington city area since we moved here, 5 months ago! So, I was excited to get out of here and get a little break from the routine of work and play around home.

We started the trip off by renting a car for 5 days and then driving to Taupo, where we didn't really go out and do much of anything the first day, since it seems like the country is shut down on Sunday afternoons. The next day though, we had plans for Chris, Lindsey, and I to go skydiving. As most of you know, this would be mine and Chris' second jump out of a perfectly good plane and Lindsey's first. As a side note too, I haven't flown much and I believe have been in 5 planes that I can remember. This would mean that I would jump out of 2 of those, so the average of me doing that is nearly half, which to most people may be a little different. Anywhase, we arrived at the skydive place, the same one that I was at before and we found that we would have to wait for about 1 1/2 hours to jump, which is really great when you are nervous, which just lets the anxiety build up!! So, as we were waiting around talking about dieing (sorry about the spelling, Heidi?), I was feeling nervous, but actually not as much as the first time. I then got suited up into the jump suit, harness, and a life jacket pouch, which I don't know what good it would do down around my waist. After that, I got to meet my tandem master, which was a Swedish guy by the name of Patrick and has done over 5,000 jumps! We then boarded the plane, with me being the last to jump, Lindsey the first, and Chris in the middle. Once the plane took off of the ground and we were making our way up to jump height, I lost all nervousness and felt fine, ready for the jump this time! Once we got up just before 12,000 feet, something interesting and a little nerve-racking happened. The jump signal light at the back of the plane turned green, so up the door went, with Lindsey and her camera-man to jump first and out they went. But, little did they know that everyone in the plane was yelling at them telling them not to jump, waving their arms at them, because the green light changed to red. There was then talk about whether or not there was a plane underneath us, but Lindsey made it fine, so their fears were kinda for nothing! The door then went up again for the real 12,000 foot green light jump. It was really neat this time for me, because I was more aware of what was going on and got to see everyone else get sucked out of the plane and see how much the plane shakes when 300-400 pounds leave the plane at a time, which is kinda a lot. It then came to just before my turn, and my tandem master was kind enough to lean way over out the door as the person in front of me went out, so I was just staring straight down at the ground. Then came my turn to jump so we moved up to the edge, smiled for the camera, and out we went, doing a backflip as I had requested!! It was incredible again, flying in the air at more than 200 km/h. I even steared us a bit with my arms towards different directions, which I thought was really cool. The freefall was really cool, being over the water this time and seeing the different colors, feeling again like it lasted longer than about 45 seconds. Then around 5,000 feet, Patrick pulled the chute, which apparently takes about 1,000 feet to open up. Then, just pure silence again, except for when we spoke, as we floated down until we landed, not quite as softly as I had the first time. So, safely on the ground again, I felt the rush again, from just getting hurled at the ground from a perfectly good plane, and we all left the place feeling pretty good! While in Taupo, we decided to take Lindsey and throw her off of a bridge! So, we went to a place where they can actually make you hit the water and submerge you if you wanted, so Lindsey walked to the edge of the bridge all alone, with no waiting and as much anxiety as when we all jumped the Nevis! She then jumped after the count-down, about 43 meters in the air and mostly just got her arms dipped in the water. After she got dried off and such, we headed to smelly Rotorua for the night.

The next day in Rotorua, it was Annie's birthday!!!! So, we went out to a nice cafe of her choice, with delicious food. We then headed out to do some more fun stuff. We first went to the Zorbing place again for Lindsey, as we had all already done it before, but Lindsey had fun, I think rolling around in the hampster ball. We then headed to do some luging again! We all did this again, because it's pretty cheap for a lot of luging and a gondola ride. It all went pretty well this time, with no major crashes, except that Annie had a mishap once or twice, apparently not being able to stand up quick enough, before the conveyor belt took away her sled! It even started to rain again while we were luging, which made the track nice and slick and more dangerous!! Unfortunately though, it also becomes a lot colder, so when we were done, we went into the cafe they had and got ice cream cones and hot food!! We then did a little shopping and headed back to our car and back to Taupo. On the way, since we were all still cold and feeling numb in places, we decided to stop by a naturally heated pool, since Rotorua area has heaps of hotpools and geothermal stuff. So, we sat in the pools, which were basically like hot tubs, just without the bubbles and jets and such, for awhile, warming up quite nicely! We then arrived in Taupo where we had another nice birthday dinner for Annie and then went to quiz night at the Irish bar. This actually ended up being pretty lame and we left before we found out who won, but started talking to some people who were at their brand new Turkish-themed(?) restaurant and they invited us in, where we talked about stuff like their restaurant, home,hukas, and such that you would over a nice Guinesse and delicious cake!

The next day, we headed out to the Napier/Hastings area, which is famous for all of it's wineries. We spent the whole day driving around to about 7 different wineries and sampling all the different wines. I probably tried about 30-40 different wines, and purchased 4 bottles of nice wine, which some of you may be lucky enough to try when I return home with them. Some of the wineries that we tried and some of you may want to look up were: Eske Valley, Mission Estate, Vidal Wines, Te Mata (which makes good cheeses too), Black Barn, Clearview Estates, and Alpha Domus. We then headed back to our hostel and headed back home to work and the usual stuff the next day.