Sarah – New Zealand 2011

Acclimating in Wellington

Nov 13 '11 Tagged with: AnimFX, beer, Carl, church, coffee, food, Sarah, top of things, Wellington, Weta

Nov 132011

The first thing we learned upon arriving in Wellington is how good the coffee is. We had a bit of time to wait at the airport before Kim and Ray picked us up, so we grabbed some coffee at a shop by baggage claim. I was introduced to a ‘Flat White’, which is a Latte with a double shot of coffee in it, and it was excellent. This has become my new standard in NZ.

Kim is a friend of mine through the Visual Effects Society (VES), and is the reason I was invited to speak at AnimFX. She and Ray (both from Sauce FX) picked us up and gave us a driving tour of Weta on our way to the hotel. After hearing about Weta Digital for the first time when they were ramping up for “Lord of the Rings”, I’ve been following their work and rise to CG superpower. As is the case with so many effects and animation ‘shops,’ their humble exteriors hide the amazing work that is going on inside.

The Weta Cave - their retail shop

We checked into the Museum Hotel, right across from the Te Papa Tongarewa Museum where the conference will be happening.

View of the Te Papa Tongarewa Museum from our room at the Museum Hotel. The AnimFX conference is held at the Te Papa.

After lunch down the street and a walk through the Sunday farmers’ market, we boarded a bus tour of Wellington to help us get our bearings. We learned a bit about NZ politics (though it still remains somewhat cryptic to me), saw some wonderful historic architecture, drove along the Carmel-esque shoreline, and went to the top of things.

Wellington, from the top of the cable car

Old St. Paul's, a beautiful wood church in Wellington

Sarah, in Old St. Paul's

The view of Wellington from Mt. Victoria

We ended the day with a walk along the waterfront, stopping for drinks and a great dinner at Macs brewery.

I had a Macs Wheat Beer, while Sarah dreamt of sleeping

Chicken breast marinated in hard cider, with leeks, carrots and mushrooms. Yum.

AnimFX NZ – First Conference Day

Nov 15 '11 Tagged with: AnimFX, Carl, Sarah, Wellington

Nov 152011

Welcome to AnimFX NZ at the Te Papa Museum

(Not too many pictures today, I was mostly sequestered away at the conference, and didn’t give Sarah a camera to take with her.)

AnimFX began its three day run today with a full schedule of sessions. I presented a session at noon, so was able to sit in on three morning sessions (which I wrote about on my main blog). Lance Priebe spoke about his experiences starting Club Penguin, Patrick Hudson talked about transitioning Robot Entertainment from a console game developer to a mobile and web game developer, and Tracey Sellar from Microsoft gave us insights into their user testing labs.

My forty minute Company Pitch Session was set up as a precursor to my Master Class on Entrepreneurship tomorrow – anyone who wanted to do a practice pitch about their company was invited to do so, with the promise of a friendly audience and constructive feedback. I had a Plan B ready under the assumption that people would show up to be in the audience, and no one would be willing to put themselves out there and pitch. It pays to be prepared, as there was an audience of over fifty people, and no one wanted to brave the crowd. So instead I spoke about reasons to pitch, some good rules of thumb to use, and then we deconstructed a very successful pitch from a company who made their TechStars Demo Day presentation available on line.

After lunch were more breakout sessions, but I spent much of the time talking to individuals in the lobby.

The highlight of the afternoon was a presentation by Enrico Casarosa from Pixar speaking on the making of his short, “La Luna.” It’s a beautiful film and he put together an inspiring presentation about the design process.

Meanwhile, Sarah went on a tour with one other woman who was visiting in the area. They went to the northeast of Wellington, through the suburbs and along the high-cliffed island-studded coast. They visited a chocolate factory, where Sarah discovered that kiwi chocolate wasn’t covered fruit, but rather covered jelly. Yeech. But the honey chocolate was fantastic – or so she says since she didn’t bring any back for me. The tour also went to the Southward Car Museum, Sir Southward’s personal collection, including Mickey Cohen’s 1950 Cadillac with bullet proof windows, bomb proof floor and reinforced doors. The windows had been strafed with bullets. The most impressive feature to Sarah was the pivoting windshields for machine gun accessibility. I had no idea she dug that kind of stuff. The Nash Metropolitan (similar to the one I used to have which she didn’t really dig at all) looked huge next to a Fiat 500 and an Isetta.

We had dinner at Ortega’s Fish Shack, enjoying wonderful dishes that we had never heard of before and couldn’t pronounce anyway.

After a great dinner at Ortega's Fish Shack

Napier, New Zealand – Art Deco Tour

Nov 19 '11 Tagged with: Art Deco, car, Carl, Napier, Sarah, tour

Nov 192011

Napier Art Deco

Napier was almost leveled by an earthquake in 1931. What remained standing was soon destroyed by subsequent fires. The quake came in two parts, the first lasting a minute at 7+ magnitude followed by a minute of rest, then a second jolt simliar in size and duration to the first. In the process, the Pacific Plate rammed itself under the Australian Plate, raising the town of Napier two meters and adding 8,000 hectacres of new land to the area. The townspeople rallied and in 22 months had rebuilt the entire city. They chose to build in an Art Deco style to represent their modern and future-looking attitude. Plus, it was fast, cheap, and earthquake safe to pour concrete walls.

We booked a car tour of Napier through the Art Deco Trust, and were picked up at our hotel in a 1939 Packard by our guide Tony, who was dressed in fine ’30s style.

The 1939 Packard that we toured Napier, NZ, in. Our tour guide, Tony, is in the background dressed in his '30s finest. Behind Tony is the National Tobacco Company building, an exquisite Art Deco building with new Art Nouveau flairs.

Looking over Tony's shoulder. You need a megaphone to backseat drive in this car.

Sarah and me in the roomy backseat.

After the two hour tour we had him drop us off downtown so we could grab a late lunch (almost impossible at 3pm). Everyone had told us that the walk back would be about fifteen minutes, but we’re pretty sure now that their accents were throwing us off, as the walk actually took fifty minutes.

Another example of Napier Art Deco style.

We crashed in our hotel room for awhile and listened to the guys upstairs singing along horribly with the ’70s rock they were blasting. We hoped that after dinner things would quiet down. We had a nice meal across the way at East Pier, followed by coffee and dessert downstairs. All was quiet when we returned to the room.

Or so we thought…

Hawkes Bay Wine Tour

Nov 20 '11 Tagged with: Hawkes Bay, Sarah, tour, wine

Nov 202011

We got an early start at 12:30am when the guys upstairs turned on their music again, and then cranked it way up. We called the front office to complain, and we also heard other residents knocking on the floor, doors and walls. About 15 minutes later all was quiet again – we learned in the morning that the hotel actually took their speakers away. We wished they had taken the Jacuzzi away also, as our walls continued to hum for another hour.

We managed to get back to sleep and even slept in a bit, we had a late breakfast and were ready for our Hawkes Bay Wine Tour at 12:30pm. Hawkes Bay is one of the two major wine regions of New Zealand, and home to dozens of wineries. The tour we booked took us and seven other people to four of them. The first stop was at Esk Valley Estate – it appears relatively humble compared to later stops, but they made of a few of our favorites of the day. Sarah enjoyed the Verdelho white, and I fell in love with the peppery Syrah. They don’t have US distributors, so we bought a bottle of each to take home.

Esk Valley wine selection. The peppery Syrah is on the right.

The second stop was Mission Estate Winery – one of the oldest and largest of NZ wine makers. Thier beautiful building was constructed in the early 1900’s, and sawed into thirds and towed up the mountain in the 1920’s to get out of the flood zone it was originally built in. Their restaurant comes highly recommended, both for food and view/location. If we’re ever in the area again we definitely would book a table there. Their whites were a bit too ‘creamy’ for my tastes, but I enjoyed their Merlot a lot. One of our tour mates, from England, had the best line about it: “Quaffable. The evaporation rate won’t be very great.” (Meaning he’d drink it fast.)

On the balcony of Mission Estate Winery overlooking a few of their vines. Awesome possom sweater.

Craggy Range Winery was a highlight. Built at the foot of Craggy Range, it’s a very modern looking winery with a spectacular view of the mountains. We loved their wines (especially the Savignon, Syrah and the blended “Sophia”), which are available through Kobrand in the US. Hopefully we’ll be able to find some when we return home.

Craggy Range Winery

The view of Craggy Range from the tasting room.

Sarah at Craggy Range

Before out last winery stop on the tour we took a detour to Te Mata peak at the top of Craggy Range. It’s about a 15 minute drive up the mountain to a spectacular lookout point with a view directly down to the winery. There are a myriad of bike trails and hang gliding launch points up there also.

From atop Te Mata you can see Craggy Range Winery and the Pacific Ocean. The ramp in front is to launch yourself off of for hang gliding.

Our final stop was Vidal Winery. It was between lunch and dinner hours, and they had preparred a delicious spread of food for us in the restaurant to enjoy while we tasted their wines. This is another place I would love to eat at sometime – the tasters we had were terrific, and almost outshined the wines.

Awesome food sampler at Vidal Winery.

Once we arrived back at the hotel, we grabbed a pizza to go from downstairs and crashed in our room. For the first time on the trip we turned on the TV, only to realize why we hadn’t bothered before.

Hiking Near Bay of Plenty

Nov 22 '11 Tagged with: Bay of Plenty, beach, Carl, hike, Sarah, shells, waterfall, Wentworth Falls, Whangamata, Wharekawa

Nov 222011

After a tasty and filling homemade breakfast on the deck we ventured out to take on a couple of local hikes. We decided to do both ‘beach’ and ‘bush’ in one day, beach first. We drove up the coast a few kilometers to the car park for the Wharekawa Wildlife Refuge. There is a short hike through the woods before arriving at the 5km white sand beach. Our pace worked out to be more of a meander than a hike – the shoreline was littered with shells and we took our time beachcombing, collecting a few prized shells and experimenting with ways to photograph them.

The trail to the beach at Wharekawa. We came to a fork and took it.

Sarah and Me on Wharekawa Beach, NZ

"Flying Shells, I" - A portion of a shell found on the beach, dropped from out of the camera's view to catch it floating above the horizon.

"Flying Shells, IV" - A small starfish in flight.

All of my (good) pictures from the beach are here: flickr.com/photos/rosendahl/tags/wharekawa/, including four of the flying shells.

We grabbed lunch in the town of Whangamata, and headed for part two of our day – the hike to Wentworth Falls. The hike was about a three hour round trip, including stops for photo-ops and falls gawking. The trail had been recently refurbished – we were told it was good for strollers, we pictured people pushing baby strollers up the hill and laughed, sure that they meant for old people strolling up the hill. Within the first mile we ran into a young couple charging down the path with an actual baby stroller. That’s a pretty nice trail. The falls were a nice reward at the far end of the hike, they are across a small valley from the lookout point, dropping halfway down the cliff into a pool, then dropping the remainder of the way.

On the trail to Wentworth Falls

Wentworth Falls. A bit tricky to photograph since it is best viewed from a vantage point through the trees. The most interesting thing about these falls is the pool on the side of the cliff about halfway down.

Once we got back to the lodge I laid down on the floor to stretch and woke up an hour later. Well rested and hungry, we went to an Indian restaurant in town that David and Sallie recommended. It was a great day.

Bay of Plenty to Bay of Islands

Nov 23 '11 Tagged with: Auckland, Bay of Islands, Bay of Plenty, Carl, coffee, drive, map, Paihia, Sarah, Whangamata

Nov 232011

Wednesday was another long day of driving in our quest to travel the length of the north island from Wellington to the the top of NZ at Cape Reigna lighthouse. We travelled from Whangamata on the Bay of Plenty, up Highway 25, across to Highway 1, through Auckland all the way north to Paihia on the Bay of Islands. We estimated it would be about a five hour drive; it took seven including stops for gas, lunch, coffee and a bit of casual sightseeing along the way. This wasn’t a particularly visual day, it started on the coast, through the hills working our way to farmland, then through the city, back to farmland and through the hills back to the coast. It was like this:

The Drive from Bay of Plenty to Bay of Islands, NZ

The drive from Bay of Plenty to Bay of Islands, via Auckland.

Once we arrived in the Bay of Islands though, it was beautiful. We checked into our hotel with a beautiful beach view from the second floor, relaxed on the balcony for awhile, then went into town for a nice dinner. After dinner we walked through the whole town: all four blocks.

The view from our hotel room in Paihia of the Bay of Islands.

Dinner in Paihia

Today’s adventure:

View Bay of Plenty to Bay of Islands in a larger map

The Top of New Zealand Tour

Nov 24 '11 Tagged with: 90 Mile Beach, beach, bus, Cape Reigna, Carl, gumdigger, Kauri, lighthouse, map, sand, Sarah, toboggan, top of things, tour, video

Nov 242011

Good Morning

This is it, the big day we’ve been driving for: The Top of New Zealand! There’s quite a bit to do at the top of New Zealand – there’s the Cape Reinga lighthouse at the tip, there’s sand tobogganing and there’s 90 Mile Beach. It’s legal to drive the length of 90 Mile Beach on the sand, but the rental car companies won’t let you take their cars out there, and amatuers get bogged down in the sand and flooded at high tide almost every day. So we booked ourselves on a day long bus tour and left the driving to Paul. The 300 mile round trip takes all day, so we were picked up at our hotel at 7am.

An early start - up with the sun.

Gumdiggers Park

After picking up our bus mates and box lunches our first stop was at Gumdiggers Park. Gumdiggers were like California’s golddiggers, except this gold is dried sap from ancient Kauri trees, more commonly known as amber. In the 1800’s and early 1900’s it had tremendous industrial use as the main ingredient in resins and varnishes – of essential importance to sailing ships and furniture makers. The gum trade coincided with the devistation of the Kauri forests, similar to our logging of giant redwoods in California, so resourceful entrepreneurs began searching for amber in buried ancient Kauri forests preserved in the peat bogs of northern New Zealand – thus the name gumdiggers. Gumdiggers Park is a site still in the condition it was in the late 1800’s. Underneath the site are at least two layers of ancient Kauri forests which were destroyed by natural disasters and preserved in the bog. As part of the tour you visit a perfectly preserved non-petrified Kauri tree that is carbon dated at over 100,000 years old.

An ancient Kauri tree, estimated to be over 100,000 years old. The layer over it is from a forest that is 40,000 years old.

Cape Reigna – The Top

At noon we arrived at Cape Reigna. Part of my vacation algorithm is to go to The Top of Things – this generally leads to pleasant surprises, and at the very least to a nice view. New Zealand, however, has a stunning gift for you when you get there. Beyond the lighthouse, the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean collide. Waves created by the prevailing Southerly winds arc around the top of the island and crash in a frothy seam. We were awed.

Cape Reigna, with the Tasman Sea (left) and Pacific Ocean (right) actively colliding.

Here’s a snippet of video I shot that will help:

We tried to get some pictures in the wind, and it was quite challenging. Sarah did a great job of shooting me. I was trying to compose a good shot with her and the colliding seas behind her, but the wind was just going crazy. I ended up firing off a bunch of shots and laughing. Sorry dear!

Us, at the Top of New Zealand

Sand Tobogganing!

The next stop was only about 15 minutes away at the top of 90 Mile Beach. Paul, our driver, slogged the huge bus through a river to get us to the biggest dune, then whipped out slick bottomed boogie boards for all of us.

Our Tour Bus and Sand Dune

Long hike up, short ride down. Completely worth it.

That is really fun. About two thirds of the way down the dune, I'm using my feet to steer a little bit. At the bottom is a very shallow river, if you keep enough speed you skip across it. Which I did, right into the far bank.

Survivor.

90 Mile Beach

The west coast of New Zealand is a 90 mile long beach that is completely undeveloped. It’s open to the public and you’re even allowed to drive on it. But not in a rental car, you fool! We rode the bus for an hour and a half down the beach with a view that rarely changed. It was serene and relaxing and beautiful to watch go by.

Our Bus, on 90 Mile Beach

Bus stop. We stretched our legs and waded in the Tasman Sea.

The Final Stretch

The bus stopped at “Ancient Kauri Kingdom” to wash the sand off and to provide busloads of people the opportunity to buy souvenirs. We also stopped for an early dinner at 4:30 at a Fish & Chips place in Mangonui.

That evening we went into the town of Paihia and had dessert at Alfresco’s. It was excellent and we were beat.

An interactive map of the day’s activities for your enjoyment:

View Top of NZ Tour in a larger map