Month: December 2016

Queenstown Birthday

On By rrainefioreIn New Zealand, Travel, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Morning on the boat was beautiful.  The clouds came in low covering the tops of the mountains, but it was quite peaceful.  The water was like glass.  At breakfast, they announced the sighting of penguins.  I LOVE penguins.  I looked and saw them, but all I saw was a black thing in the water way off in the distance.  You couldn’t tell that it was an animal, much less that it was a penguin with a yellow tuft of feathers over its eye.

Then off to Queenstown.  Queenstown is known as the Adventure capital of New Zealand.  They are famous for skydiving and bungee jumping.  We have three nights in Queenstown.  How great to stay in one place for three nights!  First they took us to Peter Pans Tours to book any activities we wanted to do.  This was the most disorganized tour company.  The lady helping us would ask a question and then completely ignore the answer.  They were obviously only interested in getting our money and getting us out of there as quickly as possible.  Six of us signed up for Canyoning and they couldn’t even tell us which company we were booked with, what day, or what time.  We would get an email later that would tell us.  Later that night, we still didn’t have the email and the shop was closed.  Our tour guide got a hold of the guy from the shop and he agreed to meet us at a local bar and bring us the information.  He was, of course, an hour late.  But we finally got the information.  We spent way too much time in a backpacker bar.  I am so not a backpacker.  We finally went to a bar with live music which I enjoyed much more, but a few in our group couldn’t wait to go back to the backpacker bar so they could have cheaper beer and Jagger bombs.  I stayed up long enough for midnight to celebrate the beginning of my birthday and then off to bed.

The canyoning tour was fun.  We put on thick wetsuits and harnesses and walked through a tight canyon.  We rappelled or slid down waterfalls along the way.  It was only for an hour or two, but just the perfect amount of time.  Four of us went out for a nice Italian dinner and drinks at a rum bar – no Jagger bombs in sight.  Then to another place with live music.  It was a wonderful adult evening.

The last day in Queenstown, I spent wandering around the town.  A few of us went to do the Luge which is similar to an Alpine Slide, but instead of a concrete luge track that only one cart can go down, it’s more like a go cart track.  We went to Ferg Burger which is supposed to be the best burger place in the world.  I don’t know how you get that reputation.  There was always a line out the door and down the block.  The line was shorter when we went and it didn’t take too long to get our burgers.  It was a normal burger with a huge bun and a lot of goop on it.  It was good, but I don’t get all the hype.  However, I don’t get all the hype about burgers anyway.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

Christmas

On By rrainefioreIn New Zealand, Travel, Uncategorized1 Comment

Out for dessert, I asked the group if anyone knew what Pavlova was.  The French girl told me it was a Russian dessert, a pastry that wouldn’t be made well here.  Then again, no dessert is made well except in France.  A couple days later I tried Pavlova and it’s not Russian.  It’s from either Australia or New Zealand. It’s like a pie made of meringue and berries.  And it’s fabulous!

After we left Franz Joseph, we did a small hike around Matheson Lake with views of Fox Glacier and Mount Cook.  Mount Cook is New Zealand’s highest mountain.  I didn’t see the glacier and I have no idea which mountain was Mount Cook.  But it was beautiful.  We also stopped at a lot of cool places for photo opportunities.  One was Bruce Bay which is a very isolated beach.  We went over Haast Pass which is one of New Zealand’s newest roads.  So most of the wilderness in that area is untouched by humans.  I bought new earrings and then lost one on a small hike to a waterfall.  Wow – that was expensive.  We also went to Blue Pools which was a pretty area where a very blue river runs into another river.  When we got to our accommodation, we went jet boating on the Makaroa River.  That was a lot of fun.  Later that evening I lost $10 that fell out of my pocket and no one seemed to ask if anyone lost $10.  Then later I discovered that I lost my new wool/possum hat.  Merry Christmas Eve – Instead of getting gifts, I’m losing things.

Christmas day started off early with a 6:30am leaving time.  We drove to a big lake with a few photo stops on the way.  At the lake we got on a boat and headed across the lake.  Then on the other side of the lake we got on busses.  The busses took us through more untouched wilderness.  The road had been built for the construction of a hydroelectric plant. Otherwise, Doubtful Sound would be even more difficult to get to.  The busses took us to our overnight boat.  Doubtful Sound is part of the Fiordlands.  It is far far less visited than Milford Sound.  We never saw another boat the whole time we were there.  This is another area where there are no introduced species of plants and no animals.  We cruised through the fiord to the Sea to look at Fur Seals.  We took tours in smaller boats or kayaks.  There was swim time too which for me was jump off the boat and promptly swim back to the boat.  The water was so cold.  The dinner was the best we’ve had so far on this trip.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

Mitigating Drama

On By rrainefioreIn Awakening, UncategorizedLeave a comment

There are 3 people from Singapore on our trip.  The husband barely talks to anyone and is so completely controlled by his wife.  The wife has a judgmental opinion about everything.  The 16 year old daughter is quiet too.  I watch the mother make everything into a drama.  Then she can mitigate the drama and be the family hero and control the family.  Then she creates a drama, mitigates it, controls.  It’s fascinating to watch.  So, then I ask myself, where do I create dramas so that I may “be in control”?  I think, more often I create dramas to keep the  “poor me” going.  Thanks mirror.  What other ways am I resisting True Nature?  What am I resisting?  How and why are you creating drama?

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

Glacier

On By rrainefioreIn New Zealand, Travel, Uncategorized1 Comment

Time to move on.  Two hours after leaving Christchurch, the tour company called our driver and told him he had to pick up people up from the airport.  So now we are behind schedule four hours which makes for a long day of driving.  He dropped us off in a small town and we just wandered around for a couple hours while he went back to Christchurch.  I don’t like this part of the tour.  Just when you get to know people and bond with them, they leave and new people come on.  Maybe my future husband will be one of the new people. It was a full day of driving to the tiny town of Franz Joseph.  The drive was so beautiful.  There were so many waterfalls that we started playing a game to see who could call out the new ones fastest.  All along the trip whenever we are near the ocean, people have been telling us we might see an orca and of course no one has seen an orca.  So, we decided if you see a waterfall, just call out Orca.  I can’t even count how many orcas we saw.   My future husband is not in the group of new people.  After dinner they had dance music and the younger Italian guy likes dancing.  He pulled out some dance moves I can’t begin to explain.  It was like gumby crossed with Saturday Night Fever, some chicken dance and a dash of the Rockettes.  It was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.  The older Italian wanted to play cards so I tried to teach him Rummy.  It was very difficult to teach so I left out some of the harder rules and let a lot of wrong moves, like playing out of turn, slide – Rummy Lite.  All was going ok until he decided he didn’t like the game anymore and proceeded to try to teach me a game.  It looked kind of like Rummy, but with more cards.  No matter what I did, it was wrong and he’d get upset because I wasn’t playing right.  He’d then tell me what I was doing wrong.  Unfortunately, no matter how many times he’d tell me, I still don’t speak Italian.  So, he’d tell me again and I still hadn’t learned Italian.

The next day 8 of us went on a glacier hike on the Franz Joseph Glacier.  Because the glacier has receded so much in the past few years you can no longer hike to the glacier.  You now have to be taken by helicopter.  This made the hike very expensive, but also makes you feel like a bad-ass.  For those of you who don’t know, I am in love with snow.  Ice is equally as wonderful.  I would have been happy to spend a week up there.  It’s so beautiful.  In 3 hours, I took 320 photos.  I won’t post them all, but I will probably post more photos than you want to see.  Sorry.  Sort of.  No, not really.  After the glacier, spent some time in the hot springs, then all you can eat pizza.  Good day.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

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Rainbow

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Orca

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Allergies

On By rrainefioreIn Australia, UncategorizedLeave a comment

I’ve had horrible allergies most of my life.  I had to take allergy medicine every day of my life from 2nd grade until about 4 years ago.  I was allergic to all grasses, pine trees, dust, anything that blooms, citrus, tomatoes, all green vegetables, all melon, cats and dogs.  With all the investigation I’ve done and the awakening work, I discovered that I had a belief that life is not safe.  I was adopted.  I have a deep fear from this, from whatever I experienced in my first days, weeks, months of life.  Because this is long before the cognitive part of my brain existed, it is stuck in my nervous system, my blood system and in the deep parts of the brain.  Because this belief is so deeply rooted, I cannot talk, reason or think it away.  Because it’s so basic to who I am, I actually created a world that is not safe by being allergic to everything.  I created a world to match this belief.  After much work on this through movement and letting the fear and loss be expressed, my allergies disappeared.  The past 4 years I’ve been able to live with only taking allergy medicine once a month or less.  Since I’ve been on this tour, I’ve been sick with a sinus infection and now that is better, my allergies are horrible.  My nose and eyes are so itchy that I think I may go insane.  I’m sneezing a lot.  Ah ha – this is completely connected to the “not enough for me” I was feeling earlier in the trip.  This is just a different manifestation of the same issue.  Then I also have an issue where I get so tired of people not listening to me.  I get interrupted.  I have to say things 2 or 3 times because the person wasn’t listening.  Or I just get ignored.  I try to be understanding, but it just makes me not want to talk, not want to connect with people.  (My magic tattoo isn’t working).  I had a minor meltdown yesterday because of this.  This is the same issue too.  Add on that I’m scared about going home.  I’m scared of reverse culture shock.  I’m scared of finding how I fit when I’ve changed so much.  Life is not safe = Not enough for me = I’m small, insignificant, unimportant, unloved, unwanted = back hurts = feet hurt = allergies = fear.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

Dolphin

On By rrainefioreIn New Zealand, Travel, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Our next accommodation was nice.  We had small houses in the mountains.  We went to the hot springs and dinner.  Then on to Akaroa.  We were supposed to go to Kaikoura which is famous for dolphin and whale watching.  But because of the recent earthquake we were not able to go there.  Three of us went on a dolphin watching cruise in Akaroa and the rest wandered around the town.  It was a warm sunny day and we saw lots of Hectors dolphin.  I had never seen them before.  They are tiny.  I didn’t get any pictures of them so the picture I’m putting in is from the internet.  We saw little penguins swimming and fur seals.  We saw lots of birds and one sheep (not swimming).  The boat was a family run business, small group of people and the boat staff was wonderful.  They also had a dolphin dog.  He ran around with his little life jacket on.  He can hear the dolphin so he would run to the side of the boat where they were long before we could see them.  After Akaroa, we went to Christchurch.  Christchurch was nothing too exciting.  A bunch of us went to the botanic gardens (free) and then wandered around downtown.  Christchurch is still rebuilding from the earthquake years ago.  It feels like a ghost town.  Most buildings are abandoned and there were hardly any people around.  There’s a bunch of Burner type art and murals around town.  My favorite mural was one of penguins.  On the left the penguins looked normal, but then toward the right, the penguins were melting.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

 

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Buster the Dolphin Dog

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Elephant Shaped Rock

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Can you find the fur seals?

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Salmon Farm

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Abel Tasman

On By rrainefioreIn New Zealand, Travel, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Next was a long drive to Wellington.  We had a tour of Weta Workshops booked.  I really wanted to go, but I’m still sick and this was the last opportunity to see a doctor for a while.  Heidi and I skipped the tour to go to the doctors.  Just to see the doctor and tell her I had a sinus infection and her to go, “yes you do” cost me $200.  Ouch and ouch.  We went out for dinner.  It was the last night we would all be together.  Half of the group would end their tour in Wellington and half of us would go on to tour the South Island.  It’s sad to say goodbye to some of our group.  The next morning was an early start with breakfast at 6:00am..  Half the group got on bus or had other plans.  The rest of us got on a ferry to cross the Cook Straight.  I’ve never been on a big ferry before.  This boat was huge, full of semi trucks, cars and cargo on the lower levels and people on the upper levels.  The views outside were stunning, but the wind and cold made it uncomfortable outside so we spent the 3 hours in the café area.  We stopped for wine tasting.  It was a tourist area with some shops – I could have skipped this part.  We had lunch near a river where part of The Hobbit was filmed. I took a picture of the river, but can’t say it looked familiar.

We got to spend two nights near the Abel Tasman National Park.  Two nights in the same place is a small luxury!  The first morning we got picked up by a water taxi.  Because of the big changes in tides, they load you into the boats and take the boats out to the water by tractor.  That was a fun unique experience.  Our boat took us to Split Apple Rock.  Then we went to a nearby island and looked for fur seals.  Our guide told us they were technically sea lions, but they never changed the name.  We saw a few.  They dropped us off at a different bay and we hiked back. There are a bunch of trails in the park and some go along the tops with great overlooks and some go down to bays.  We did some beach time and a lot of hiking.  We saw dolphin, but no orca.  I keep hoping to see orca – maybe later in the trip.  It was a little more hiking than I wanted.  We got back around dinner time.  It is one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen.

They have a great sea gull here.  He’s very white with red eyes and red feet.  There was one on the beach that tried to sneak up behind us in hopes of getting food.  He snuck all around us – up one side, then the other, round back, back and forth in front.  It was a lot of work of pretending he didn’t notice us as he searched for scraps.  He came up empty.  The sand at the beaches is golden due to iron in the minerals.  Some of the sand is black which was obviously metallic because it stuck to the magnets on my backpack, creating cool crystal like structures on the magnets.  The water was too cold for me, but a few people swam.

Then it was time to move on.  We drove through some of the prettiest mountains – very rugged and very green.  More cows, sheep and farms too.

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Jelly – Fish Eggs?

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Some Random Thoughts

On By rrainefioreIn Awakening, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Here are some of the random thoughts running around in my head lately.  They may or may not be related to each other.

A feeling that is coming up a lot for me is the feeling that there is not enough for me.  It has been coming up every day especially around the time to eat and when we get to a new accommodation.  What if I’m the last one in line, there won’t be any food left.  Oh my god, I have to make sure that doesn’t happen.  What if there aren’t enough beds for me?  What if I have to sleep in a room with 10 people?  Oh My God.  I have no idea where this is coming from.  It’s somehow connected to the unwanted thing I’ve been feeling too.  So, more on this later as it makes itself clear.

It seems that everywhere I go, there is a cute guy.  I kind of hoped I would meet someone special on vacation or while in Thailand, but I always find myself attracted to one person on the tour or boat that I’m on.  Then I start wondering what they think, who are they, are they interested, etc.  Why can’t I just enjoy people’s company without there always having to be a potential of my future boyfriend.  It’s very frustrating.  Is this just human nature or am I still resisting alone and oneness?  Has anything really changed on this journey?  My feet have been hurting a lot lately and I think I am noticing that they hurt more when I’m thinking about a guy.  Then again, if I’m thinking of guys, my head is in the future.  So, is the foot hurting more global about living in the future instead of being present.  I feel like 80% to 90% of me is present most of the time, but the rest is living in thoughts about the future.   Then I am aware that I am in the future.  Then I’m in the future and present at the same time.  Future = Foot hurts.

Here are some good AH Almass quotes from the book I am reading.  They better explain what I was writing about a while ago.  Even if what we are experiencing isn’t “happy”, “peace”, “joy” or some other perceived good thing, we can still be present with it and see what we learn.  It doesn’t have to be seen as bad or suffering.  Instead, be curious and experience it fully.  “Even if we can stay present with an emotion or manifestation, it doesn’t immediately transform into its True Nature.  An emotion is not just a simple reaction to whatever is happening in the present situation. Usually the emotion has an entire history”.  He’s talking about being aware, being an observer on the outside.  I am very good at this and it’s happening almost 100% of my day.  But he is also talking about a different level of being present.  This, is what I tried to explain in past blogs:  “Normal awareness is observing experience from a distance, with the detachment of a subject viewing an object.  Not only noticing it, but you are also in contact with it, you are touching it, feeling it, sensing it’s texture and quality.  You are not only looking at it from the outside, you are aware of it from the inside as well and from all directions, from everywhere.  So presence brings in the quality of immediacy of awareness, which means having no distance between the awareness and what we are aware of”.

I think Americans are the loud kid on the playground – Hey look at me!

I would consider doing odd jobs and “lesser” jobs to live abroad, but not at home.  Why?

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

Maori

On By rrainefioreIn New Zealand, Travel, UncategorizedLeave a comment

The Maori show/dinner was fun.  The bus driver that picked us up was funny.  He taught us “Kiora” which means “Hello, Goodbye, How are you, etc”.  Then he proceeded to translate it to almost every language in the world, including accents in that language.  At the dinner/show they did a ceremony before letting us in.  Then there were different educational stations where they showed us different parts of their culture. They were warriors and great sea navigators.  Many of their games were based on hand eye coordination and agility to make them better warriors.  After that they took us to a room where they did traditional song and dance.  I found it interesting that they shake their hands a lot in the dancing and they explained that this was the life force.  Louise, are you reading this?  They believe shaking of their hands is life force.  Then dinner.  The dinner was similar to a Hawaiian Luau where the food was cooked in the earth.  After there was more singing and dancing and more funny bus driver who knew the national anthem of many countries.

 

On Day 3 of the tour we started off by going to see some mud pools.  There is a lot of geothermal activity in the area.  It was exciting for a minute.  Then we went to a place where two creeks met, one was cold and one was warm.  A few of us sat in the creek for a little bit.  There was supposed to be skydiving today, but it got canceled.  I wasn’t going to skydive anyway so it didn’t matter to me, but I think the mud pools and two creeks was an attempt to fill the extra time.  Then we went to Huka falls.  It’s a very impressive waterfall.  It’s not tall, but it’s a tight rock canyon and the volume of water being pushed through it is insane.  A sign said the volume of water could fill 5 olympic sized pools every minute.  After that we went to Blue Duck Station which was a ranch in the middle of nowhere.  We were supposed to do some 4wd touring of the ranch, but because it was raining, we didn’t go very far.  They spent a long time telling us about the ranch instead.  It was very beautiful, but it would have been more interesting if we could have seen more of the ranch.

On Day 4 of the tour we were supposed to hike the Tongarino Crossing.  It is supposed to be a live volcano, but I don’t think you can see lava or anything.  It got canceled because of weather.  Everyone on the bus was so cranky about it.  So we did a smaller hike to a waterfall.  Half the group did that and then went back into town for lunch.  The rest of us did a hike from there that went to two lakes.  The hike was longer than I expected and it was all above tree line with a lot of exposure – it was so windy.  I decided I wanted to spread some of Scott’s ashes above the lakes.  I got one guy to take the picture and I tested the direction of the wind.  Right after we had a discussion about how many times I’ve been covered in Scott’s ashes.  Just as I let the ashes go the wind changed direction and blew Scott all over another girl on the tour.  She was a bit freaked out about it.  The guy and I kind of joked about it and that freaked her out more.  I felt a mixture of embarrassment and humor.  I wanted to laugh, but didn’t think that would help much.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

 

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