Would You Do it Too?

What a rad weekend. That’s all I can really say. What a rad weekend. It started off with an inner battle to go through with bungee jumping, ferry rides, Pacifika festivals and sail boat races! 

Friday

Bungy Jumping

If all of your friends were jumping off of a bridge...would you do it too? I never thought I would do it, but I did. I went bungy jumping!! 

Deciding to bungy jump really was a huge inner battle within. I knew I would be so mad at myself for not doing something that originated in New Zealand. How many people (that don’t live in New Zealand or near it) can say that they have been bungy jumping in New Zealand, off of the Auckland Bridge, into the ocean? Not many people and I am one of them now!

 We got to AJ Hacket Bungy and Climb and started to get pumped for this petrifying experience. We got our harnesses on and then began the walk to the bridge. We had to wear goofy white hard hats ot protect our heads just incase some of the debris from construction fell. Ya, I said construction. Nothing is scarier that having construction being done on the bridge you’re about to jump off of. Anyways, we chained ourselves in and walked to where we were going to be jumping.

Once I got up to the top my nerves steadied and I was totally fine. That was until the guide strapped my ankles in and Margo told me it was scary. That was something I did not need to hear when I was about to jump off a bridge. It was my turn and he had to switch out the bungy for the next weight group. (They did it in two groups and did the lightest group last.) He asked me if I minded if I got a little wet. I was actually really excited about this. If I was going to bungy I needed to make it good. As I walked, well more like waddled since my ankles were strapped together, down the plank to the edge where I was about to jump for I had quite the grip on the guides shoulder. He counted to three and I began my free fall ever so gracefully. The guide was right! I was going to hit the water. I thought he meant just my head was going to get wet because the lightest people generally don’t even get wet, but I went in a little passed my hips. I hit the water and couldn’t do anything but laugh. It was so much fun! Who knew that facing your greatest fears could be fun…and make you want to do it again?

To get the full affect...watch this video! 

Waihike 

Then we took a ferry out to the island of Waihike, One of the girls said it sounds like “why have a hicky”, and it kind of does. This was a really cute fun place to go. The streets were filled with small town shops and of course a gorgeous beach.

I jumped off of that!!! 

Because it was so hot Kirsten, Austyn and I were in dyer need of some ice cream to cool us down. We went to this fruits and vegetables shop and bought ourselves a tub of OOB organic ice cream. Phyllis brother is actually the man that started this ice cream and it is supposed to be a healthy version of ice cream. Because it was so good I’m just not sure how healthy it really is. Oh well. We walked down to the beach and ate our tub of ice cream. It was a really tender moment to share together.

Saturday

Pasifika Festival

Today was the day of the Pasifika Festival. The Pasifika Festival transforms Western Springs Park tinto10 villages offering music, food, arts and dance from 10 cultures. The purpose of the Pasifika Festival is for Pacific to communities come together to celebrate their unity and, at the same time, their diversity. The cultures represented were: Tokelau, Tahiti, Tonga, Cook Islands, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Niue, Kiribati, Samoa, Tuvalu, and Fiji.

This was definitely a cultural experience. It was a lot of fun to walk around and see the different things from every culture around this area.

Here are some of the highlights:

We finally tried the legendary umu food. An umu is the traditional method used by Samoan's for cooking food. A fire is built and stones placed on it. When the fire is down to the embers green bananas, breadfruit, taro, fish, and lu'au are placed on the stones. When everything to be cooked has been placed on the umu, it is covered with banana fronds and left to cook. For us the meal was slightly different. It had taro, rice and steak chop suey, mayonnaise potato salad (I swear everything has mayonnaise in it here in New Zealand), and either chicken or pork.

The most interesting part of it all was the banana poke. Poke is a traditional Cook Islands recipe for a classic dessert of cooked bananas mixed with milk, thickened with arrowroot, and sweetened with sugar that's baked and served in coconut milk. 

We are all familiar with Zumba (Latin style dance workout), but here since there are very little Latinos they have the same concept but in the form of Hula Fitness. This was quite the site. There were so many different people doing it. There was even a fairly old woman doing it. It was great.

There were also heaps of performances going on in each of the different cultures. Here are some of my favorites.

Volvo World Ocean Race

After we finished we got back on a bus to downtown Auckland once again, but for a very unique experience. We went down for the Volvo World Ocean Race! This is where 6 teams of sailors come together and race around the world. Amongst the 11 crewmembers on board each of the six Volvo Open 70s are the world’s best sailors including Olympic gold medallists, world champions and America’s Cup winners.



The sailors represent 15 nations -- New Zealand, Australia, France, Spain, United States, Great Britain, Ireland, South Africa, Sweden, United Arab Emirates, Germany, Norway, Brazil, China and Belgium.



The 11th edition of the race brings many firsts, including the first sole Chinese entry, Team Sanya, and the first United Arab Emirates entrant, Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing.

The teams started in Spain and will end in a final stretch from France to Ireland. They do this race in legs. They start in one area and then go to the next and wait a couple days to fix anything that needs to be fixed on their boats and then start again. It is quite intense.

To see the official sight for the Volvo race and to learn more click here.

Last night, was when they were supposed to be coming into the harbor so we wanted to be there when they did. But alas, there must have been a storm and their time was thrown off by 4 hours. Instead of coming in at 8:00pm they would be getting in a midnight.

Even though we didn’t get to see them come in it was still fun to be down on the pier because this world race was a lot bigger than we expected. There was so much to see and do while we were there. There were concerts, street performers, a 3D movie and so much more so it was worth it anyways.