Rarotonga & Arriving in NZ

Apologies for taking so long to get this post up! It's been a bit crazy back in NZ, getting settled in and starting work etc......

We arrived in Rarotonga in the early hours of Jan 3rd. Good old Lucy came to collect us from the airport at the crack of dawn. It was HOT when we arrived. Rarotonga airport is hilarious. After you get off the plane on the tarmac, they make you shuffle through a narrow corrugated iron tunnel thing with zero ventilation. You're then greeted with the sounds in the arrival hall of an older gentleman strumming away on his ukulele and welcoming you to Raro with his lyrics.

I've always wanted to go to Rarotonga and it didn't disappoint. This place is beautiful, that's all there is to it. We were AGAIN spoiled rotten by our friends. Lucy and Justin were able to get us into a five star villa for about four days. There was a gap in the tourists, so we took their spot! The place was amazing. You'll see what I mean in the movie. Thanks SOOOO much Lucy and Justin.... I was speechless when you guys showed us around Te Manava. What an AWESOME bonus!

It was also cool to catch up with Bjorn and Kells who were there on holiday from New Zealand. There's a tiny piece in the movie of Bjorn kite-surfing. He's a brave man! Oh - some funny footage of his diving attempts into the villa's pool as well!!!!

Did everything we could here.....Kayaked, slept in, sunbathed, snorkeled, afternoon naps, ate and drank coconuts straight from the tree....just everything you'd imagine doing in paradise.

Perhaps one of the coolest and unexpected experiences of the trip was being able to sit in on percussion with a local act. They're two very talented gentlemen that have residencies at a few of the resorts there. The first night, we were the supporting act for a guy touring there called Peter Morgan. He was very talented! I was privileged enough to play percussion with him too on one of his songs!!! Here's his site: www.petermorganmusic.com - very nice guy and very talented! Anyway, I put up a second vid of the second night of us playing at the Pacific Resort.

Our trip to Raro ended with Lucy taking us to a road that runs along the end of the runway. You can literally get within feet of the runway and watch the plane that you're about to board, land. That was a scary site!! And we caught it on film too!

For anyone thinking about travelling to New Zealand from the States, you can fly via Rarotonga with Air New Zealand. Raro is on the way, and it caters for all budgets, so you've got no excuse!

The movie finishes with us breaking the news to our Mums about our bubba on the way! We had to include this in our last movie as it nicely sums up the end of our roadtrip blog and why we're here......at home.....

Thanks for reading and watching and coming along with us on our journey!....Hmmm...maybe we'll do a baby blog or something.....ha ha ha ha......

Daniel and Margot

LAST STOP: Los Angeles, California

Our US Road-Trip came to a close on Jan 2-3, as we made our way to Los Angeles and stayed with Michael & Laura Blaich. We managed to get a ride from Santa Barbara with our friend Noah who was going through to San Diego ;-). Lance and Xavier decided they wanted to come along too and spend our last days together.

Mike and Laura really rolled out the red carpet Hollywood style for us all. They took us to every touristy site imaginable (in the short space of time we had), they fed us like we were royalty, we chilled out in their hot tub, and we soaked in their beautiful Californian sun. Still can't get over how it can be so warm there in their winter.

So - MASSIVE thanks to Mike and Laura for your hospitality. Can't wait to extend the same kindness when you come to New Zealand.

Our video closes out with us saying goodbye to Lance and Xavier at LAX, catching a bus back up to Santa Barbara then onto their respective destinations in Boston and Paris. Very sad saying goodbye and we miss you already.

This road-trip rocked. It was full of drama and awesome people along the way. We were spoiled rotten by our friends, the scenery, complete strangers, and Mr. Eisenhower's awesome interstate highway system. Oh...and I can't forget Tom Tom for telling us how to get where we needed to go. I love that GPS! Marriage saver!

We're going to add a few more bits and pieces to this blog.....Rarotonga was our next destination and that was way too beautiful to not include here. Also - I think a bit of New Zealand has to enter into the equation just so you can see what we have down here in the South Pacific for you to enjoy.

Thanks to everyone that hooked us up along the way - Morgan, Lindsay and family, Barry and Rachel, Nikkala and Mario, the people of Price (Christy, Joe, and the couple that pulled over and waited with our broken down car), the Gretchens, and the Blaich's. And thanks to those that met up with us along the way.

Enjoy the movie....see you in Rarotonga....

Introducing Craig & Ashley Ryan!

Finally back in New Zealand but the blog must go on!!

The wedding of Craig & Ashley Ryan took place at a beautiful golf course in Santa Barbara on Jan 1st, 2010. I was VERY privileged to be asked to be best man. Thanks Craig, it was an honor!

The video attached to this post is one of the longer ones. It shows Craig and Ashley getting ready for the big day and some footage of the ceremony itself. We have A LOT more footage but for the sake of the blog, we kept this vid at about 7 mins.

Not much more to say as the movie does all the talking for us. Enjoy!....

The next post will be of our last days in the States staying with Mike and Laura Blaich in LA. We were SPOILED rotten there and we caught it all on film. As well as Lance meeting a transformer and introducing us to Samuel Jackson. Stay tuned!

Daniel and Margot

San Francisco & the Pacific Coast Highway

We arrived into San Francisco on the evening of Dec 24, after our 17 hour train journey from Salt Lake City. I love this city….and I know that’s a cliché! But – this is one my favorite cities in the world to visit. It has so much to offer and it’s unlike any other city that I know of. Xavier flew in late that evening, and we all caught up properly the following morning at Lori's Diner.

We HAD to do all the touristy things. That's what San Fran is all about. We did the cable car, Lombard Street, Chinatown, Fisherman's Wharf, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Embarcadero. We saw most of those sites by taxi!! Our cab driver was cool too....let us jump out on the side of the Highway to get some sweet pics of the Golden Gate bridge and San Fran. Big thanks to Buddy and Ashley for showing me that spot on one of my previous visits!

We parted company with Quentin on the 27th, and Xavier also went to catch up with some family friends. Margot and I rented a car to drive down to Santa Barbara for Craig and Ashley's wedding, which was fast approaching. We met up with Noah in Monterey and had dinner on the Fisherman's Wharf there with him. We left for Santa Barbara the next morning.

We did the Pacific Coast Highway, Route 1, to get to Santa Barbara. In fact, we followed it all the way from San Francisco. Such a beautiful stretch of road that spans most of the west coast of California. You're literally driving along the coastline most of the time, except for when you go through the mountains with extremely curvy roads. So curvy in fact, that Margot got pretty bad car-sickness! We caught this all on film, so you the observer can be right there when it happened!

We've uploaded two movies here. One of San Fran and one of the Pacific Coast Highway. The next stop on this journey was Santa Barbara and Craig & Ashley's wedding. We got A LOT of footage from that, so we'll be working on putting something together over the coming days......stay tuned!!.........

Train from Salt Lake City to San Francisco

Once we came to terms with the fact that my car was going to have to stay in Price, Utah - we needed to figure out a mode of transportation to get us out of there. Every possible combination of options was considered and investigated on the internet. Do we rent a car and carry on the roadtrip regardless? Do we fly from Price to San Francisco? Do we skip out San Fran and head straight to Santa Barbara and wait for the wedding? WHAT DO WE DO?!??! In fact, I would say that most of our time in Price was spent weighing up our options, going on the internet to check pricing, and moving onto the next idea.

Finally, we decided to catch a bus at 6:15am to Salt Lake City, then catch a 17 hour train that leaves at 11:30pm bound for San Francisco. As you saw in our previous movie, we managed to score a ride to Salt Lake City from Price with Christy - a complete stranger manning the reception desk of our motel. That was good because it meant we didn't have to get up so early to catch the Greyhound bus, and we didn't have to wonder what we'd do with our luggage while waiting for the train. This actually did turn out to be the better decision as the train station didn't open until 10pm! And it was COLD in SLC.

So....this movie is shot on the train and a few of the sights we saw outside of the window. You get to see our unimaginably small room that we booked, and Quentin's chicken legs.

Even though ditching the car in Price was "heart breaking", this train ride was an unexpected bonus for our trip. I've always wanted to do a long train ride and stay in a sleeper carriage over night. The scenery was absolutely breath-taking, and I wish we'd filmed more of it for this movie. We traveled across the top of Nevada, then onto Northern California where we hit a snow-covered mountain range. I can't believe how many changes of scenery we went through. By the time we got to San Fran, we were back into a warmer climate and less clothing!

Now for the cliffhanger so you'll stay tuned for the next post: San Fran was awesome, we met up with Frenchman Xavier, and we talked a cabbie into illegally pulling off the highway for some sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet shots of the Golden Gate bridge and San Fran. All caught on film.

Price, Utah.....The Two Day Nightmare

What's a story without a nightmare eh? How could we think this roadtrip would go 100% smoothly?!?! Oh no.....not the Carneys! There HAD to be a MASSIVE spanner/wrench in the works didn't there!?!?

The drive from Aspen, Colorado to what was supposed to be Salt Lake City, Utah - was absolutely beautiful. In fact, we all agreed, of all the scenery we were privileged to encounter, Utah had to be the most consistently beautiful state we drove across. We had a nice lunch on the ride, we admired the views, we laughed, we listened to good music......all until about 2 hours west of Salt Lake City when the nightmare struck.

Quentin was driving and I will never forget the look he gave me when the car just simply died. He didn't say anything and I knew something was up but seriously, I couldn't tell the engine had stopped - it was just that look of "oh crap" on his face. I was hoping he was kidding when he said that the car had died. Anyone that's known me for a length of time knows that I haven't had the best of luck with cars, so I was dreading something like this happening. But, what I was mostly concerned about was that we were literally on a highway in the middle of nowhere. No towns close by, surrounded by freezing, snowy conditions, nearly dark...and NO cell phone reception. We could not have picked a worse place along the entire roadtrip to break down.

We rolled the car to the bottom of a hill and pulled it over onto the teeny tiny shoulder. The left hand side of the car was pretty much on the line. This was a single lane each way highway. Two trucks passing in either direction was nail-biting moments for us. I swear we were nearly hit at least once. Having no cell phone service meant we had to literally stand in the middle of the highway flailing our arms like a drowning monkey. We thought trucks would be the only option as they would have a CB radio that would work. When two drove straight past us, we thought we'd better flag a car down or we'll freeze! The first car we waved at stopped. They were an awesome couple that proved to be our guardian angels as they not only had cell phone coverage, but they stayed with us until the AAA tow-truck came and collected us. I think all in all, we were probably out there for close to 1-1/2 hours. The couple had heat in their car......sweet!

To cut this long story short - the car was fried. Essentially, the damage that was done is the same as if the timing belt broke. Anyone that knows Audi engines knows that kills the engine. After two days of "what do I do" and not wanting to make the decision.....the car was turned over to the wreckers......not happy....Especially because I got the timing belt done when I bought it. I'm not going to go on about the people who did the original job but I will say - when you pay for a 100K mile job on your car, you don't expect it to run for about 15K. Man....I'm fuming just writing this.

Anyway - this has turned into the longest blog entry yet. Probably because this was the most drama on this roadtrip. I really have to try hard not to let this one event stain the whole trip. One thing I can say though, is that stopping in a tiny town in the middle of America for two days was not on the agenda. Instead, we had chosen main city centers, tourist spots, 'fun' things etc. This little unexpected event forced us to see the 'real' America. The people we met in Price, Utah were quite possibly the nicest we encountered on this entire trip. Everyone we met, tried to go the extra mile to help us out. People like Christy actually drove us all the way to Salt Lake City to catch a train to San Francisco.

So.....without planning it, our roadtrip took us to the heart of middle America and the great people that live there. Thank you the people of Price.

The video attached to this post is the longest one yet. We had A LOT of waiting around while Joe the mechanic figured out what was wrong with the car and how much it would cost to fix it - all when he had the xmas/new years rush/hours going on. NOT a good time to break down. The video shows what we did to keep entertained in and around our motel. It ends with us waiting in the Salt Lake City airport as the train station didn't open until 10pm.....we had nowhere to go.....so we sat in the airport for hours and cabbed it back to the train station for our 11:30pm 17 hour train ride to San Francisco. The sites we saw and the experience of being on that train in our own room is the next topic for the blog.....it was actually a really cool journey.

Snowmass, Colorado

We finally arrived in Snowmass on the evening of December 18 after a very long 10 hour drive! After checking in, Quentin and I headed straight for an apres-ski pub, a much needed pint, and a few games of pool.

The next morning, we hit the slopes. It had snowed a few days before, so the snow was pretty good. We actually had perfect weather the entire time we were on the mountain. Snowmass is definitely up there with the best slopes in the world. I just wish I was as fit as I was when I visited places like the Three Valleys!!! On that subject, I was boarding OK - in fact, I was surprised as I missed a season - but, I was SOOOO unfit and my thighs were burning, as well as just being generally tired. I was dead by about 3pm and had to meet Quentin in a bar at the bottom while he did a few more runs.

That night we were all too tired to go out for dinner. So, we went and bought some cheeses and wine, and chilled out in the room. We also took a much needed dip in the hot tub outside....MmmmmMmmmmmmm.....

The next day was FAR better. I think my muscles had gotten used to freaking out at working them for a consistent prolonged period! The coolest thing about day two was cutting across about three runs which were all separated by trees. We just boarded straight through them and onto the next run. I've never really properly boarded through trees before so that was really cool.

We left for Salt Lake City the next day, heading to what was supposed to be one more day on the mountain at Solitude Ski-field.....but....as you'll see in the next post....Things turned a tad nasty and our road-trip took a massive unexpected turn...Stay tuned...

Huge thank you to Leah Cushing for hooking us up big time in Snowmass...we owe you!