Dress up we did..

We attended a friends wedding today. The entire family dressed up after a long time.. what I mean by that is that I wore a suit on a weekend after a long long time.

 

The kids are right. I do clean up "nicely" and the pictures look better if daddy also "dresses up"!

Missing in action

I have been traveling. That means a weekend presence with the kids, then gone again for the week type thing. 

In between I "put scene" as though I am some stay at home dad by picking up kids from school wearing my sweatpants and sandals. While making conversation with the moms at school, they envy my wife for having such a "house husband" without realizing that I haven't been around much of this month. 

It is fun to watch wife's face go all red and turn to "Bhadrakaali" mode when someone compliments her on having a husband who "shares" with the chores. Hey, one has to get his entertainment someplace, no?!

Then I get to have some fun taking pictures of the pretty girls as they dress up to go some event.

This time, made sure that there is a "family" picture.

 

The girls gave me a lecture on how my t-shirt and pants are not a match to them and why I should also "dress up" when going out. I dress formally every day during my travel. So there is no way I am dressing "up" during the weekend.  

Now that summer is almost here, we will start doing more outdoor activities.  Cannot wait for the long weekend in a few weeks!

Tongariro National Park- New Zealand

One of the places that will stay in our memory forever in the December New Zealand trip is Tongariro National park. A place that has majestic volcanos, snow covered mountains, breathtaking waterfalls, scenic views of the plains with clouds moving so fast.. the list goes on!

Here are a few select pictures from this place..

The Taranaki waterfall is simply breathtaking. It takes a 2 hour hike to get there but it was totally worth the effort! The red rocks and the green waters somehow make a soothing combination.

The clouds dashing against the three big mountains in Tongariro national park.

We did not see many animals or birds on a day long hike through Tongariro all the way to Taranaki falls and back. We then proceeded towards the worlds highest working hotel (?!) which was in Whakapapa. Unfortunately the ski lift used to get there was closed. So we got to the base and drank hot chocolate. The views from this place were awesome. 

On the way back to Turangi (where it all starts at a visitor center), the boys decided to go for another hike in the rain to Emerald lake. We thought we were gone for an hour, but it happened to be two and we will never forget the reprimand from the ladies..

The lake was amazing. Crystal clear water, nice beaches, no people, just a hike through a fern forest!

Even this panorama shot doesn't do justice to showing how beautiful this place is!

There were supposed to be more than 20 types of birds in the rain forest.. but I saw one. My BIL maybe saw two.. The pidgeon in New Zealand is 2x the size of the normal pidgeon you see in the US!

By the time we got back to the vehicles after seeing the lake, it started pouring. There was a plan to see the trout feeding outside the visitor center in Turangi, but after we learned that the trout was imported from California, we passed and headed back to Lake Taupo basecamp.

The sunset that welcomed us back at Taupo was out of this world as well. As you can tell, this was going to be the "Happy New Year 2014" greeting card from New Zealand.

We did go to four more places in the North island over the next three days. The way things are going, we may not see those photos processed for a month or two. 

If you go to the North island in New Zealand and are a "National Park" type person, you cannot miss this one. Must see! 

Intelligent but not smart

My mother always used to tell me "you are intelligent, but not smart!" and it would usually be in the context of how my people skills lacked a certain element of "guardedness" and a track record of my faith in the fellow human being placed on the wrong beings.

Recently the kids go on a spree, pointing out why Grandma is right!

We had to do passport pictures. San did the usual diaglogue of "you have thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment. take the photos yourself" and the photo session was done. 

When it came time to print the photos, yours truly said "Hey, I can get us all the photos in one print!" and put them as a 8x10 grid and sent it off to print.

It did come out nice and we were in and out of the local pharmacy photo printer area in 5 minutes. 

Then came the realization. Instead of printing it as a 8x10 and paying upwards of 5 bucks for it, we could have made it into four 4x6's and got it for under a dollar. 

The little one is smart enough to figure this out.  Going forward, will have to include her in any of my "projects" to put the smart factor in!

Hells Gate - A trip to Rotorua, New Zealand

On our recent trip to Australia and New Zealand, we got to spend a day at Hells Gate, a mini Yellostone of sorts with its own unique quirks which also happened to be a one of a kind "mud bath" and spa! 

When you get hot mud bubbling at 40C, the obvious thing a human being can do is to build a spa around it. It just so happens that this special mud full of sulphur may be bad for your lungs, but is great for your skin and joints! Yours truly had a rare experience sitting in the mud for 20 minutes followed by sititng in a spa for another 20 minutes. The mud bath left me weak for a few hours and smelling of sulphur for a few days, but given I am allergic to sulpha drugs, this experience did not leave me with any allergy symptoms. 

The place had very knowledgeable folks who answered questions related to the sulphur mud. Guess they have seen everything there is to see when it comes to side effects!

Enough about the mud! There was a lot more going on in this place. Rock formations made of sulphur, a mudcano, places that were simply out of this world and a beautiful lake which happens to be a crater. 

We had set up base camp as Lake Taupo and visited many places from there as day trips given we had 5 kids and a pregnant woman in our group. This was one perfect day trip. 

Here it is in pictures.. 

Apparently the whole place is full of mud baths. You buy a house, dig a little in your backyard and before you know it, you are a spa owner. 

One thing that we learned in this trip was that the Maori's showed up only in 1300's and the Europeans showed up a few hundred years later in New Zealand. Before 1300's it was pretty much uninhabited by humans. Given that we can see that no matter how long humans have stayed in a place, it takes only a few years for us to mess things up! 

The trails were beautiful and one walks a mile without realizing it! Then you get to see something like this.. 

The place was aptly named Hellsgate. This view was scary where it said "this can erupt anytime" and it looked like the place was going to blow!

That pit is huge and it was bubbling away! We got to walk through more greenery..

Catch glimpses of a "hot waterfall" which is apparently one of a kind!

and a few creeks which were "warm" as the cold rain water mixed with the hot water. 

We were told not to touch the water as there is no "guarantee" for the temperature in those creeks. So we made sure the kids stayed away from the creeks. What was more interesting was that there are some birds which literally walk on this hot surface and are picking something from this water and ground to eat! 

I could not even go closer to take this picture. Had to use the zoom at 400x. The bird was fearless!

We saw more out of the world scenery and most of them are visible only through a zoom lens maxed out. So if you go visit this place at least take binoculars with you!

This one location was surreal! It is a wonder that I got anything with all those fumes coming towards the lens.

The "mudcano" which is 5 meters in diameter and a "blow anytime" threat!

On the whole the place must be pretty unsafe and they keep moving the paths to accomodate the changing landforms. So hat's off to the owners for constantly adjusting the trails! 

What do you do with mud boiling and flowing over in different colors? 

The rest of the interesting photos go to the Gallery section of the website. You can catch them under landscapes. 

If there is one thing I will remember from this trip.. it is this!

A balding middle aged man goes into a mud bath with visions of Angelina Jolie walking out of a rejuvenating wax bath in Wanted.. and came out of the mud bath looking like.. his usual self! 

It did feel good, for a good four days after this!

Strongly recommend this to guys and girls who visit Lake Rotorua! 

Like they say in India, "paisa vasool"!