Back to Rwanda!

Zae, Caleb, and I are back in Rwanda for a visit!  We left the day after Christmas, flew overnight to Frankfurt, spent a tired day there yesterday, flew to Brussels and stayed there last night, and then flew to Kigali all day today.  Arrived around 9 pm and Kevine and Anaclet picked us up at the airport.  So good to see them!  We stopped by Sole Luna on the way to the house to pick up a couple of pizzas, and then drove to the house.  Since it was after 10 by then I thought we might just sneak in, but our big safari vehicle was spotted by a couple of neighborhood kids as we were driving up and a crowd quickly assembled to greet us!  Lots of hugs from mamas and kiddos - hard to recognize many of them in the dark!  We'll see them again tomorrow.  Came up to the house and Theo blessed us with a long prayer in Kinyarwanda, and then we had our pizza and said goodnight.  Figured out internet and put on the Bronco game, which is just starting at 11pm.  I'm gonna help Zae get to bed and probably turn in myself.  

The TV that was not stolen (after we replaced the stolen one)

It's good to be back!  So familiar and so different to be here for a visit instead of a long, living here, figuring everything out adventure.  We'll share more as we settle in and do our thing.

It was colder in Frankfurt

Election Eve Thoughts

Oh hey there, blog.  It's been a minute.

It’s Election Eve 2024 and boy are there a lot of feelings.  I am trying to figure out how to survive the next few days/weeks… who knows how long it will take to have a result, and who knows what chaos, and possibility, that result will birth.  Living with this uncertainty is brutal.  I want to fast forward but I also don’t, afraid of what I might see.  I’ve also been cycling through phases of wanting to mentally & emotionally prepare myself, somehow, for the outcome that terrifies me, and wanting to live with and hold onto a space of hope and joy and opportunity that a Kamala Harris presidency carries for me, for as long as possible.  If suffering is ahead, why suffer now?  So I’m trying to stay in that hopeful place, and also to remind myself of the good and light that will continue to exist in the world no matter what happens.  The absolute beauty of my mountains and this big, wide, gorgeous natural world. My magical and ridiculous children. My parents and my siblings and my wonderful partner and my whole loving family and my wider community of friends and neighbors who support me and work with me and play with me and imagine with me.  All of the passionate and caring and inspiring people I see and connect with, who I know will continue loving and fighting and working to make the world better.  All of that is mine – ours – to have and to hold, no matter what this week brings.

Sunday - Trees!!!

Same shit, different day. (but in a really cool way) We woke up at 9 (well, I wake up at 6 and Mazie wakes up at 9) and headed out for a local breakfast.  Today we found a GREAT little breakfast spot called Third Place Cafe.  We had great views of the lake in Rotorua.  It's called Lake Rotorua.  

I didn't realize that Rotorua was so thermal.  Everywhere you go in this town there is a bit of steam rising from the ... well everywhere.  Out our window at breakfast we noticed an interesting grouping of buildings and we went and investigated.  It was a Marae Village.  Most of the building were closed for the winter, but it was still cool to walk around and see the architecture of the area.  

Then we visited a park that we had driven by a couple of times.  There was steam everywhere, so we knew it was a thermal pool park.  So cool that this is right in the middle of town.

After all the nice local adventuring, we were ready for the big adventure of the day.  This is best told in pictures.

Here we go on our nature walk

So BEAUTIFUL. Some of the trees are more than 1,000 years old. Humans arrived on the island 800 years ago.

We walked along this cliff with a 200ft..sorry, 60m drop.

Hang on to that rail, Mazie!

Some beautiful bridges along the way.

Including this "suspension staircase."  What???

We discovered and fed several little birds along the way.  It was a Tomtit day!

Okay, okay.  We didn't wear helmets and harnesses to enjoy nature!

So brave!

So happy!

We had SO MUCH FUN today.  It was totally worth it and the guides were awesome.  Mazie was super brave.  It was absolutely the best ziplining experience of my life and I've had some good ones in Puerto Vallarta and Rwanda.  

We learned a little bit about their ecotourism plan here.  In 2012, a company wanted to put a zipline tour through this virgin forest and the gov't said, sure.  As long as you do conservation work at the same time.  So greed and profit and creativity partnered with national interest to conserve, preserve, restore the forest.  There are 3 mammals in the forest that have kind of destroyed it.  Possums were introduced from Australia for the fun of it, Rats from wherever rats always come from...probably a boat, and Stoats to deal with a Rabbit issue.  Not sure why the rabbits were introduced.  (I can picture my wife reading this post and thinking...why is he capitalizing the animals in that sentence?  I don't know.  I did.) Possums, rats and stoats did quite well and now there are like a billion of each.  Conservation in this forest looks like "KILL MAMMALS!!!"  It's a little hard to get behind the lethal trapping of these animals, but they are trying to get the echo system back in order.  Apparently the birds are easy targets of these mammals and we were told that 72k birds are murdered every night (maybe every week) by these predators.  Okay, so how are there so many birds?  If I got rid of 72,000 of anything every day, it should be gone soon. Did you know that 2 rats can produce 2,000 rat babies every year?  Our guide told us that, so it's true.

I thought a lot about Anaclet, our wonderful friend from Rwanda who is the Chief Guide for Great Native Safaris.  Taking people into the forest is fun, but educating them about the trees, the birds, the plants, the indigenous people, and the rodents was very cool.  Anaclet would have loved this adventure.

As always, we had to move again.  We hit the road and drove to Otorohanga for dinner.  We made the mistake of having a 3pm "appetizer" that filled us up.  So dinner was just a shared Bao Bun and some curly fries, but we watched the New Zealand v Switzerland game at a local pub with quite a few American fans again.  We met a nice family from Raleigh, NC and the girl turned out to be a 15 year old Sophomore, so Mazie made a new best friend.  We didn't get her name, but we've decided it's Emma.  We'll see her at the game in Auckland for sure.

For the first time on the trip we have an Airbnb that I wish we were spending time at.  We have a whole house, 2 bed, 2 bath, kitchen, living room, back deck overlooking the city (from a hilltop).  It's really nice.  But, we'll just sleep here and leave at 9:00am.  :)

One more exciting adventure (our last planned nature event) tomorrow and then we head to Hamilton for the Costa Rica v Zambia game.

Saturday - Mother Nature is weird

Just like all the other days, we woke up where we went to bed.  This time, it was Taupo.  I worked a little and blogged a lot while Mazie slept in and then we went to breakfast.  This has been our best meal of the day, everyday.  This time we went to Dixie Brown and we ate a nice meal by the lake.  I got a haircut and Mazie listened to a new album that just dropped.  

We headed north towards Rotorua but made a stop along the way and oh my god.  From oceans to volcanoes to lakes...and now we have Thermal Pools.  I've been to Yellowstone once in my life and I thought to myself, I'm on another planet.  This was very similar.  It's hard to imagine how this kind of thing just exists in nature.  Much like on Turtle Island, the native people used these thermal pools for cooking, cleaning, and healing.  They even used the area as a burial ground and a place to return placenta after the birth of a child.  We went with the "take only pictures, leave only footprints" strategy.

Here are too many pictures.

 

This is actually just soup.

Our Mt Ruapehu Volcano in the background

As we left, I was hoping to have some fun in the bathroom, but I guess that's not allowed in New Zealand. How else am I supposed to talk to the person next to me?

We went from this amazing place to a natural hot spring that you can swim in, but without any towels, Mazie was not game for that adventure.  So, we pivoted and found a Polynesian Spa that I had heard wonderful things about.  They had towels...and smoothies.

Featuring my new Kiwi sunglasses and Taupo haircut

Check out that moon in the sky!

After all our daytime fun and travel we settled into our next airbnb.  This is the third in a row that is just a hotel advertising on Airbnb as an "apartment."  "I swear, we don't have any amenities or a sign or anything...we're just some guy who will meet you to give you the keys...at the front desk of the motel."

I don't really care, but if I were going to stay at a hotel, I would have looked for hotels.  I was trying to stay...I don't know...somewhere more personal and interesting.  Whatever.  We basically just sleep in these places and then take off for breakfast.  But I think they charge all the normal airbnb fees and cleaning fees, which is total bullshit.  If I owned a small hotel I would do the same thing.  :)

We got dinner at a fun Italian place with the intention of having a decent meal before we went to a sports bar to watch the Italy/Sweden game.  The Italian restaurant had a big tv that was showing a rousing netball game.  When the World Cup game started they switched over and put the sound on.  So we stayed there for a long time.  There were lots of Americans cheering loudly for the game it was really a lot of fun.  

I have not had good experiences watching the Women's World Cup outside of the US.  When Katie and I were in France 4 years ago for the World Cup in that country, it was hard to find a sports bar that was playing the games.  We even went out to a bar during the FRENCH game and it was hardly a big deal.  It's been mostly the same here with many Kiwis not knowing that the event is even taking place.  My barber asked me if Colorado was in the tournament.  I told her the whole country, USA, was in it.  "Are they any good?"

So, while the Italian restaurant was full of people from California, Colorado, Oregon and other American cities, at least it had great energy and we had fun cheering for the Swedish domination of Italy.

Tomorrow night will be a good test.  The New Zealand team plays at 7:00pm and we're going to drive 30 minutes to the nearest sports bar and hope like hell there is some local interest.