Today was back to the grind after a week long vacation. It is weird to say that I was on vacation because isn't this whole trip a vacation? So the family I work for went away for a week, which means I was able to go away for a week. If you had any doubt where I went you obviously have not been reading anything I write about. I went to Taupo of course! The little gem of the North Island. I also know more people in Taupo then I do in Auckland so it makes my time a bit more enjoyable. So after the amazing kite day festival I packed up my stuff and hit the road to Hamilton first and then Taupo.
My only reason for going to Hamilton was to visit the United Sweets outlet store, or as I like to call it, the mecca. I stumbled upon this store online while searching for places to get Reeses in New Zealand. This store, United Sweets, is a family run online store with an outlet store located in Hamilton. Lucky for me Hamilton is both, on the way to Taupo and only 2 hours away from Auckland. They also have a HUGE online store and shipping that is cheap as. They carry a ton of the good ol sweets that they ship over from America. Whilst I am a proud Canadian, all of us Canucks know that most of our products are either from America or the company name started there. So they have so many delicious sweets in stock that you just can't get anywhere else here in New Zealand, including a wide range of Reeses products. The best part of the United Sweets is that they are very reasonably priced in New Zealand standards. The first Reeses I bought here was a gouging $5.50 for one pack of 4 cups. After digging around a bit I have since learned that that store is stupidly over priced. The United Sweets store sells things for more then we would pay for it in North America but still reasonable for getting yourself a little treat. I have browsed their online store in great detail and had a wish list a mile long, but the reality was that I could only afford a certain amount. The item I was most after was their 'Smores pack.' I know that some of you have heard me drone on about how they don't even have graham crackers here, their marshmallows are crap so the poor kiwi children are deprived of the joy of smores. So in the smores pack, which is priced at $26.60NZD, you get an entire box of Honey Maid graham crackers, a whole bag of jet puffed marshmallows and 4 regular sized Hershey chocolate bars. I know you are all thinking that is outrageous, but it really is a good deal for the money down here. I also had my eye on some cans of Root Beer and some Reeses. I wasn't greedy and shared my loot with the peeps in Taupo. I think I have forever changed the lives of some people with the introduction of smores. The Root Beer wasn't actually a huge hit, but oh well! I was lovin the smores, and so did everyone else!
From Hamilton, which I keep wanting to call it the Hammer, I headed down to Taupo to settle in for the week. The week previous we had great weather so of course I was planning all these day trips from Taupo. Turns out the ol Moreeeny law just shat all over my parade. It started raining on our way from Hamilton to Taupo and didn't stop until Thursday of that week. Yep! So all the bush walks, day at the races, etc were all down the toilet. Instead though, for the first part of the week, I did a whole lot of nothing and drank a lot so I guess it was still a good vacation. I did make it out to the Opepe reserve to do a short little bush walk in the dreary weather and owned Thursday, Friday and Saturday with some sweet vacation activities. Thursday my friend Dave and I went for a sunshine cruise down to the other side of the lake and back stopping in at all the little beaches and inlets. It was nice to get a different perspective of the lake from different vantage points. Friday was a sweet day of mountain biking and Saturday I spent gliding along the the great lake on a catamaran before heading back to the big smoke.
Friday mountain biking was great! Big thanks to Ross at Rainbow Lodge for hooking me up with a bike and helmet. There is a pretty good bike trail from town up to Huka Falls and back and taking our time we were out for about 3 hours or so bumping around the trails. After the ride I thought it would be a good idea to reward myself with a glass or two of wine and maybe head to the pub to catch up with Tintin and have a few beers. It was a good idea, don't get me wrong, but when I woke up the next morning and my body was stiff as a corpse that is when I thought that maybe I wrong about that. Luckily it didn't take much for me to get going again, and even managed to bang out a short run. I met up with PK at the pub and he offered for me to go out on his boat with him and some other peeps the next day. What a great day we had for it! It was so nice to sit back and relax on the boat on the water and have a few beers. It made me want summer time that much more because instead of a sweater and pants I would be doing the same thing with a bikini on!
After the boat it was back on the ol coach bus for a sweet 4 hour ride back to Auckland. It actually isn't that bad of a ride, but around 2.5 hours into it I am pretty much ready to get off. Pulled into Auckland just in time to run home, throw my things in the door, change my clothes and head back out for a drink. It was a bit of a whirlwind, but it was fine and I was glad to have Sunday to myself to hang out and do whatever.
Before I go I will tell you a little story about how there are still good people left in this world and as a matter of fact I am one of them. Of course you all knew this already, but Imma go ahead and tell you this story anyway. The Friday before the kite day I found a black camera case with a little pullout slot for memory cards. There was no camera in the case, but there was two 2GB SD cards full of pictures. I popped them into my camera and had a quick flick through the pictures. It was evident that I was now holding a couple hundred of this couples New Zealand vacation pictures. I would like to take a side bar here and share with you a tip I picked up in L.A. That is to take a picture of your e-mail address and leave that picture on your memory card. Take a couple, one at the very beginning, one in the middle etc. That way if you ever loose your camera or memory card someone (if they are honest) can contact you to return it. This couple did not do that. I thought about how gutted I would be if I lost my couple hundred photos I have taken down here, and how I would be praying to the sweet baby cheeses that who ever found it would do the right thing. So I contacted ifoundyourcamera.net and sent them some photos from the camera and the deets of where I found it and stuff, but would they look on there, who knows. So I used my detective work to look through the photos and see if there was any identifying pictures that would help me track down these peeps. I was flicking through them and then I found one! There was multiple pictures of staff of a restaurant on one of the cards as well as a picture of 'the girl' from the couple holding a specials sign for a restaurant. So good ol Google helped me out and let me know that there was a location of that restaurant here in Auckland, on the North Shore. I got their contact info from the website and e-mail them with that picture asking if anyone knew how to get a hold of the girl from the photo. Low and behold, today I received an e-mail back from someone that worked with her at the restaurant and would be more then happy to help me get the SD cards back to the rightful owner. The girl from the photo has actually returned to Scotland but we will work something out. So I can imagine the girl will be pretty stoked to get her pictures back, I did a good deed for the day and all is well with the world. I also told her that there is no camera, I don't know if they lost one too, but when I found it it was just the case with the cards, so hopefully they don't think I jacked their camera!
So there after a week of vacation I am back at er for the next 3-4 weeks and then movin on. I have a funny feeling that some exciting things will be happening in the next 3-4 weeks so there will be stuff to blog about I am sure. Thanks to all that read along today!
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