Thursday, February 28, 2013

Fly Fishing Lake Otamangakau


Today we headed out fly fishing on Lake Otamangakau, which is known to be a great trophy lake, early in the morning to spend the day. It's a beautiful spot surrounded with volcanic mountains, one of which just erupted a few months ago, and is still billowing out smoke. We started off great with Jill landing about a 4 pound rainbow. It slowed down to a crawl for about the next 5 hours, with just one very small catch by Dave. After a picnic lunch Jill missed a couple, then landed a nice 6.5 pound rainbow. Dave hooked up a couple of times in the afternoon and lost both. :( Even though it was a much slower day than expected, we still had a fabulous day with great weather.

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

We've Arrived in NZ


After about 30 hours of travel we have made it to Trout Beck Fishing Lodge near Turangi NZ on Lake Taupo. Our flight from DFW to LAX was very enjoyable. We flew Virgin America for the first time and we both were very impressed with the service and updated plane. Our Air New Zealand flight from LAX to Auckland went well. There was a bit of turbulance for a few hours toward the end of the flight, but we did manage to get some sleep and were happy throughout the flight. Once we landed we got thruogh customs without any issues and caught a cab to pick up our car. Last year we rented a used car from Rent-A-Dent which was easy, so we did the same this time. We got a VW Polo, which is the smallest car we've ever driven. It is hillarious to watch Dave drive, because he looks so huge in the tiny hatchback. It is a four seater, and much bigger than a smart car or Fiat, but it is still much smaller than what we are used to. It was comparable to playing Tetris trying to fit all of our luggage in the car. We took the 7'6" fishing pole out of the case and it just barely fit from rear hatchback window to front windshield. There certainly isn't any room for anything else.  We had about a 4.5 hour drive south from the airport to the B&B we are staying at for a few days. We stayed here last summer to flyfish, and we had a really great time and established a friendship with the owners. Since Dave is going to be busy sportfishing the rest of the time we are here, we decided if we were gong to do any flyfishing, we better squeeze it in at the begininning of our trip. So rather than drive north to the Bay of Islands, we drove south to catch trout. We arrived totally exhausted, but happy to be here. A shower and a good meal is an extra wonderful thing after traveling for that long!






Saturday, February 23, 2013

It's not "Good-Bye", It's "See You Later"

The last several days have been full of good-bye's, hugs, love, and words of encouragement. We left Key West on Feb 19th after spending a wonderful weekend with Dave's family. We then stopped to see some of Jill's family in Palm Beach and Melbourne FL. Currently we are at Jill's parents' house, which we leave tomorrow, and then we will be at Dave's dad's house for 1 night. After all the visiting, we will be on our way to New Zealand Sunday!! We are so excited to get there and dive back in. We plan to spend a few days fly fishing, then it's back to work for Dave. Looks like it will be a busy few months for him on Libertas.