Action weekend

After leaving my American friends in Waiheke I was back to good ol' Devonport.
I woke up at 5am Saturday morning and headed south again.
Destination: Whakatane
Mission: Kill Something
We stayed with Sam's family for the weekend. They were so gracious and fun! It's crazy how hospitable everyone is in NZ!
When we got to Whakatane, the weather was beautiful, so we decided to go out on the ocean and do some fishing.

I've run out of superlatives for the NZ scenery

I had so much fun. It was my first time ocean fishing from a boat.

The beautiful island we anchored by

Who caught who?

One guy dove and grabbed some crayfish, which are NZ lobsters. Then we caught a bunch of mau mau that were schooling around our boat.

I won the bet to land the first one. The loser had to lick my fish from mouth to tail. Man I'm twisted.
That night we feasted on our catch and hung out with Sam's family until about 11pm. Then we went out hunting till 2am.

I will love him, and feed him, and call him George

I shot a possum.
It was the first time I've ever killed anything with a gun.
The possums here are adorable. They are cute, fuzzy, marsupials and I shot one through the heart.
Even though they are pests here, and harmful to all the native plants and wildlife, it still took me some time to decide if I could shoot something I wasn't going to eat.

Early the next morning we were up and headed into the wilderness for a pig hunt. We hiked through a sweltering jungle and up a mountain for about 3 hours.
I never laid eyes on a single pig. All I saw was jungle and a few sweet vistas that showed the valley and ocean below.
The dogs smelled a pig and took off for about 45 minutes chasing it, but none of us could keep up. haha. We had to just sit and wait for the dogs to return. I was pretty happy to take a much needed break from hoofing through thorns and mud and jungle vines.

Happy Hunting

The Kiwis are constantly dropping the c bomb, and they call the backcountry bush. So I had a long laugh at the expletives used to describe the "bush" we were fighting through. It was a great time.

Flashback to my tour in Nam

I was so tired. We got back to the house and I passed out for the rest of the night . I only woke up for about an hour in order to eat dinner.
The next morning we drove to Rotorua. We stopped at a geothermal exhibit called Hells Gate.

No, seriously

Hell's Gate, very cool

It was very cool and made me want to revisit Yellowstone when I get back to the states.

Hell's Gate

We were so beat from the day before that we just walked around town and ate and drank the whole time we were in Rotorua.

The Princess Gate hotel where we stayed in Rotorua

 We found a micro-beer pub called Brew, and I had my first real IPA since Ive left California. Sooooo gooood. Once it hits your lips...
I'll definitely have to go back and do the luge, zorb, and thermal pools.

Black swans at Lake Rotorua

My "Black Swan" impersonation 

Lake Rotorua