*Warning: The first part of the blog contains rants. You might want to skip a few paragraphs if you want to give the moaning and angry tirades a miss.
Did I mention our family doesn't quite do routine? No? If not, let me mention it right at the beginning of this posts, so you don't think of us as raving loons (well, you might think that of us anyways, and may not be far off the mark, but lets not digress). So, here was out flight plan to Auckland: NY - Charlotte- LA-Auckland. Something to do with airline booking and round trips, the baa lamb reassured me. (I was not reassured.) A total of nearly 20 hours in the air. Add the interchanges and layovers, that's about a day - if you're not counting crossing over the international date line. Throw that in, and whoa, you're in Auckland 48 hours later completely zonked out of your head. Your poor body doesn't know whether to eat, sleep or just skip it all and take the next flight back to a time zone that's more manageable. Which sounds traumatic enough. But the icing on the cake was the woeful Airline that we'd booked ourselves on. American Airlines. We encountered our first and only set of rude Americas in the form of American Airlines employees at Newark. The ticketing experience was a hoot - lady didn't know Visa norms for non- Americans and she took 25 minutes just to check the 4 of us in. (Baa lamb in particular was scrutinised for a whole 10 minutes.This, I kid you not, included unapologetic staring at face for about 7.5 of those minutes). We were in for further rude behaviour at the boarding gate. Without prior warning, we were told our bags would be checked-in - with 2 kids and a 13 hour onward journey, we needed a set of spares and pillows. On mentioning this to the airline staff, we were met with complete indifference - nay, high-handedness, when a staffer told us he'd 'had enough' and if we continued with our protests, he'd be happy to offload us and get us on another flight the following day. This, after allowing at least half the plane that boarded before us to carry on two or more pieces of luggage. American Airlines, I don't know what you call that, but in my books, that was blackmail, pure and simple.
Our misadventures with this airline don't end there. Just as luck would have it, the entertainment systems on the long-haul flight wouldn't work. Asking for alternate seats and wifi access were apparently also out of the question. And of course, wherever heard of handing over entertainment packs to kids? Not AA. Have your tried entertaining kids on a 13 hour flight with NOTHING to do? Not for the faint of heart.
For my LOTR fellowship
Auckland: We landed on a Sunday, and coming straight in from the bustle of New York, it was even more of a shock to the system to see how clean, uncluttered and quiet New Zealand was. We hardly spotted another human for miles sometimes and 3 vehicles at a signal qualified as a traffic jam. We didn't spend long in Auckland though, we drove to Rotorua the following day.
We had fun Quoting from this one :)
But our stay for the night was at a wonderful air bnb close to the shore. The room was cozy and had access to a relatively secluded cove which the kids lost no time in exploring.
A couple of white faced herons gave us company
The ducks looked on, quite amused by our antics
Child 1 and 2 delighted to have the beach all to themselves
The next morning we set off to Rotorua. En route, we stopped at the Waitamo glowworm caves. We weren't allowed to photograph the caves ourselves, but it was wonderful inside. Our guide too us on a tour of the caves, where stalactites and stalagmites had carved crazy, beautiful shapes. My favourite part of that tour was when the guide sang a song in Maori inside a section of the cave known as the cathedral. The chap was definitely talented. And then there was the boat ride- in utter darkness to see the glowworms. What a magical experience. It even drove my little one to silence!
Entrance to Waitamo Caves
...and the Exit at Waitamo. The magic in between remains...
... unphotographed. Exit, Waitamo
By lunch we were at Rotorua. Rotorua is on the thermal highway and is a fantastic place to experience the Geothermal wonders of New Zealand's North Island. Our first stop that evening? - The Polynesian Spa. Its a lovely place to relax with the family while we soak in the geothermal pools. The pools have 3 temperatures, the hottest perhaps a tad too hot for the little ones, but they could happily splash about the cooler pools which has a tiny slide and splashing area. So that's exactly what we did, until dinner.
A purple swamphen spotted at the carpark.
The public springs which are free to everyone... good for a foot soaking
The next morning we set off to see Okere Falls. A beautiful place with a very short trek to see them. We even caught sight of kayakers trying to navigate the falls.
Kayakers trying to navigate the rapids
calmer waters further downsteam
Okere falls
Kids and Arun found it quite a game to navigate to the edge. Me? I was too busy screaming at each of them.
We discovered a lovely little hideyhole.
a baby fall at Okere
The next stop, another place where we could catch sight of Rotorua from the top - via the skyline Gondola. The gondola was pretty much like any other gondola, but the ride from the top to the bottom - in the luge, now that was fun. We really would have preferred to just the luge - and the ski- lift back to the top, for another 10 gos (but good sense and budget reminders stopped us).
speed junkies L and XS luge down the slope
speed junkie M coming up the ski lift while enjoying the views
We then heard from the locals about a place called Kerosene Creek which was a bit off the beaten track. The last 2 kilometres to the creek was practically a dirt track. It's not to be attempted with a car with a dodgy suspension. Once you got to the springs though, it all seems worth it. Just be sure to grab your suit and pick a good spot to soak - and there are plenty to choose from. your own personal jacuzzi in the open.
kerosene creek
This was our spot. Had a nice little island where we could picnic once we were done
After a really good soak, we though it only fair that we ought to get a glimpse of the national bird of New Zealand, the Kiwi. We headed out to the Rainbow Springs Park. Apparently the Kiwi are notoriously shy and nocturnal. So, after meeting with a few of the locals, we decided to revisit the place after dinner to see if we could spot them.
Despite the darkness and the relative quiet, we had to wait for quite a bit for the Kiwi to make a mad dash from one shrub to another. it was all quite exciting, but Child 1 was of the opinion that all he spotted was something that looked like a football on legs. So, naturally, the kids insisted in visiting the enclosure again in the light of day. This time we finally encountered a Kiwi that wasn't as shy as the rest and was willing to come out and root in the mud in front of us (basically a Kiwi version of Child 2). The kids were in complete awe (to be honest, so were we) and we left Rainbow Springs very reluctantly for Taupo....
*Video courtesy, Arun Kumar Krishnamurthy
...But not before we caught sight of a host of birds, a bird show, some rainbow trout and some very dodgy articles at the giftshop.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Yeah, Dickens could very easily have been describing our trip to the Danube Delta. It was the May bank holiday weekend, and just like England, the weather was wonderfully sunny throughout the previous week, but come weekend, there seemed to be a thunderstorm in the offing.
Nevertheless, it takes stronger stuff than the presence of a few thunder clouds to throw us off our plans and we set off in the morning, stuffing the car boot with suitcases and miscellaneous junk.
It took us about five hours or so to reach our destination - the quaint village of Murighiol. Which is very close to the Delta but very, very far from anything else. Knowing the husband's penchant for looking up the places we visit on the net, doing his research and only then booking destinations, I was surprised to find his choice of accommodation. This wasn't the usual run of the mill service apartment. This was a proper family- run B & B (and by family run I mean we were literally living out of two spare rooms in the family house). Ah. Slightly surprised there. But the family were a very nice couple who between the two of then spoke exactly 3 words in English. Oh. Still, soldiering on, we decided we would make do with our smattering of Romanian and a whole lot of sign language and shrugs and grins.
On the bright side however, we discovered that the house owner himself was a boatman who would be happy to take us on the delta cruise. Perfect. We had just enough time to smother the kids with Mosquito cream and for me to grab my camera and off we went with our chappie in his boat.
The delta was beautiful, with the landscape and ecosystem changing every few kilometres.
The boatman told us he'd spotted a colony of Pelicans nesting that morning, so that's where we were headed. En route we spotted quite a few Cormorants:
The Cormorant in flight...
...cleaning its feathers...
...giving us the stink-eye
... and finally flying away in disgust.
Swans:
shy things
Poetry in motion... this is the same swan captured in flight...
and Egrets:
Finally, we spot the Pelican Colony and the Boat explodes into a frenzy of frantic clicking (we had another family accompanying us for the delta ride). I have to shamefacedly admit that we kind of Papp-ed the Pelicans. They (the Pelicans) seemed to take all this in their stride as they were near a marshy piece of land where there was such an abundance of frogs that we couldn't hear ourselves talk over the croaky din. Yup. Pelicans are the 'Anything-for-free-food' sorts of the bird kingdom.
That's the 'watch out! Too close!!' look
'Yes, there's only so much we can take before we decide to take off until the blooming tourists disappear!'
We also spotted a few other birds, some of which I could capture, some I couldn't.
The Mallard
Seagulls adding to the cacophony
That's either a Tern or a Kingfisher. Not sure.
The common tern
The Ferruginous Duck (or geese, as the boatman called it)
The Delta also had a lot of local colour, with the fishermen, the unique modes of transport and quaint cabins
All in all, a most productive three hours, I'd say. The kids of course, were famished by the end of the ride and were classing everything we spotted purely as 'Can or can we not we eat this'. Once we got off the boat, we set off in search of dinner. Dinner wasn't as easy as it sounded in this village at the back of beyond. For the vegetarians, we had the wonderful option of mamaliga (with or without the Smantana) and Potatoes in various forms. Still. We were hungry enough to gobble it all down and even ask for seconds. Once we got back, exhaustion got the better of us and all of us crashed out - but not before Arun was invited to sample the Palinka personally brewed by our host. A mere sniff of which, Arun assures me would have been enough to knock out a bull elephant in his prime. After having about 3 sips of the stuff, Arun made his polite excuses and weaved his way back to our room. Thank God we weren't intending to drive out anywhere early next morning.
Morning arrived and we realised that we have seen all there is to see in this little town of Murighiol and we made a snap decision to depart a day early to Bucharest. The kids were reluctantly pried away from their new best friends the Guest House's two dogs, Teddy and Oli. Oli was, erm, how shall a put it... quite amorous towards all things living and non-living and making things quite annoying for Teddy and very amusing for the grown-ups.
Oli and Teddy
En route we would cover the archaeological ruins of the Halmyris monastery and probably stop for lunch at Tulcea.
Halmyris, like all on-going archaeological digs didn't have much to offer in terms of the site, but had plenty of history, both Greek and Roman.
Pickwick was quite intrigued to learn that some of these structures could date back to 600 BC
Tulcea was a much bigger town which housed the Danube delta Museum and Aquarium and had the kids really excited for the first time in this trip (Well that and the dogs at our guest house was the highlight of the trip for the kids). You know what else was great about Tulcea? Food! Stone baked Pizzas and fresh brewed coffee and Ice-creams! Yay! (Now you know why we never have camping trips. Not enough ice-cream shops!)
We also stopped on the way at Enisala, which is the site of a medieval fortress. The elder child and the husband had great fun clambering up and down the ruins, nearly giving the Mother-in-law a cardiac arrest.
The fortress. We didn't exactly have the best weather.
The view from the fortress. Would have been splendid on a clear day
The landscape of this country never ceases to amaze me, and this time we came across miles and miles of mustard fields and meadows. Beautiful.
Well, we got back home in time for dinner. And just in time for the miserable weather. Bloody brilliant. But at least we weren't stuck with Mamaliga and potatoes. Gah!
