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!

Traditions and Gorillas

In the mid nineties a friend at RPI told me a story (he said it was an experiment, but I am not sure if it was really done or just a story).. so let's just call it that for now.

It goes like this. The scientists put three gorillas in an enclosure which was moated on three sides and on the fourth side was a tall metal gate which was electrified but not locked.

Initially the first gorilla attempts to open the gate but gets a shock so it comes back to the middle of the enclosure. Same thing happens to the other two gorillas. Soon there is a baby gorilla born in the enclosure. They also add another new gorilla to the mix. When these two new additions tried to go towards the gate, the other three pulled them back with a lot of warning. 

Soon the original three gorillas were long gone and new ones were added to the enclosure. The fence was not electrified anymore, but not a single gorilla made it out. If anyone tried, the others would stop them from the terrible fate about to befall them. 

Now there may be many morals to that story or many inferences from that experiment on behaviour, but my takeway is that sometimes traditions are just formed along these lines and we do things out of context to present day just because our parents and grand parents did so.

Now why bring up all this now? This week has a special day in it.. aka Valentine's day. So "tradition" has it that the kids give a "Valentine" to all their classmates, irrespective of wheather they like the person or not. 

This translates to us buying a bunch of cards, envelopes, pre packaged trinkets and putting them in envelopes and getting them to school. They have nicely segregated the Valentines for boys and girls.. so if there are are 20 kids in the class and you have 12 girls, you have to buy two boxes of 20 valentines. 

To make things interesting, the envelopes and the trinkets don't always fit and we cannot seal the envelopes easily with the heart stickers provided. If there is one item on the shelves this week that has no concept of quality, it must be the valentines.

In spite of all this, the joy on the kids face doing this activity is worth the griping over the quality of these things. I am not sure if we will ever eliminate this "tradition", given that it provides much needed jobs to a bunch of factory workers and also given that it keeps the paper and pulp industry going again.. well, one can always try to find a silver lining in this somewhere ?! 

Every year I suggest skipping this tradition for our kids but don't succeed in it. We also have a shoebox for each kid where all the valentines they received over the years are stored.

The good news? The middle schooler does not have to do this anymore. It seems to be like trick or treating. Once the kid goes to middle school, this is seen as an activity for "small kids" or as Jr. puts it "it is for kids", which is a hint to us that she should now be counted with the adults. 

Happy valentine's day to everyone in advance. May your weekend be filled with cards, candies and flowers and at the least, lots and lots of love!