Catching up on some New Zealand pics

First off, we have to share our favorite pictures from our sealing during our visit to Utah. We LOVED having Becky as our photographer. Call her when you need someone to take some awesome pics.

Now, onto our New Zealand visit.

So how about this: the scenery is gorgeous, everything is clean, the roads are nice, the people are great, the fresh produce is cheap and the meat and dairy are expensive. Does that sound like our kind of place or what?

We were able to see a lot in two weeks, but it actually feels a little like torture. Two weeks is not nearly enough time in New Zealand and we are itching to go back. I’ve never seen anywhere like it. We peeked into paradise and then had to leave. Maybe we were better off not knowing. Nah. We just gotta go back, that’s all.

After arriving in Auckland and overcoming our fear of driving on the wrong side of the road, we made our way down the freeway to Hamilton. If there’s a Provo anywhere outside of Provo, Hamilton would be it. There’s the temple, the stake and mission offices, the church high school (now closed) and a whole neighborhood called Temple View that is three wards big and 100% mormon. Right away we were blown away with how pretty the area was, and we had a fantastic setup with great hosts. Maybe a little too much Mormon, though, if you know what I mean.

On Saturday we drove out to the East coast just to see what it’s like – Tauranga – and then drove over to Rotorua, which is like our Yellowstone, but with a whole modern city around it. We had a chance to use a private, two-person hot spring jacuzzi right on the edge of the lake, which was amazing. Picture an indoor hot tub but with the fourth wall missing, and where the wall should be you have a view of Yellowstone Lake and mountains all around you. Yeah, that was nice.

Sunday was a drive out to the West coast to attend church at a small branch in Kawhia (wh is pronounced “f”, so it sounds like Kafia) where our Hamilton hosts attend. When I say small, I mean small. Besides our group there were maybe another 6 or 7 people there, so guess who got to speak in sacrament meeting. “Thanks for coming today. What are your names? Great. I’m the branch president. We have a little time left to fill on our sacrament program today so we’ll have you two take a few minutes. Nice to meet you.” And just like that we were on the program. That was actually the most fun we’ve ever had with a speaking assignment. No time to get nervous, no time to prepare, so you just talk. Love it.

After several days in Hamilton, visiting the city’s famous gardens, we did a straight shot down to the capital city Wellington. Beautiful. If you could take away the San Francisco type weather, we’d find a way to make it our home. Week one ended with a beautiful drive down to the capital city Wellington. Imagine a really green, clean, straight San Francisco.

We stayed with some locals here as well and that made it even more enjoyable, even if we did have to sleep on the floor. Ouch. Wellington is laid out between three big hills and the Cook Strait to the south. So you can imagine there were plenty of ups and downs coming in and out of the city. The downtown area is fantastically nice, and we also walked by the theatre where they did the world premier for the Lord of the Rings movies. Yeah, the LOTR craze is still loud and proud here.

Wellington would be an easy place to live. We enjoyed everything about it except for the fact that there we were on a summer day, the wind blowing, rain coming in sideways, and our hosts told us that we were lucky to have such nice weather. Too cold and windy! We read an official sign saying that the city gets 235 days of near gale force winds every year. Yikes.

We were planning on making a visit to the south island to see Christchurch. The earthquake happened the day before we were going to head down there so that quickly changed our plans. It really was sad to see that happen there. The country has been put in a state of shock because of it. After meeting a few tourists who were there for it we felt lucky to have not been there. So we headed back north.