Nina's Place

March 01, 2007

This is getting awfully close to cherrios for breakfast.  I am in another airline lounge doing the same things I was doing last time and have about the same amout of time.

The last two days in Sydney have been good but exhausting.  We walked far too much but we did see lots of interesting things and place.  I have lots of photos but no way to photoshop them.  I did intend to write last night but I was just too tired.

We stayed in our first backpackers hostel and it was fine.  In fact, it was quite different from what I had expected.  There was a huge variation in ages staying there and no one was poor.  I guess poor people can't afford to travel in the first place.

I think Sydney has done a fantastic job with The Rocks.  It's a heritage area and they have preserved some of the building but they have also left the remains of some just clinging to the cliff.  You can walk through some ones bedroom but it's open to on the front. I belive that The Discovery Museum at the Rocks has a website that I will try to add later.

I also really enjoyed the ferry out to Manley Beach.  It's a lovely little tourist town with beach on both sides.  I'm sure there is more to it but that's the part we saw.  In the sky was an airplane making a sign that said Welcome.  Later we found out that the Amyway Diamond Assoc. was having a conference but we took it personally.

We enjoyed walking down the harbour and along the walk way to Darling Harbour.  It's a bit Disneyesk but nice all the same.  There are some really neat water features there and there is a really nice Chinese Garden.  We saw a lizard there.

There were real storms the first night we got to Sydney but last night was quite beautiful.  There were flashes of lightening really far out over the ocean and the sun rose through a light cover of clouds this morning.

We went to the Art Gallery and had a tour of Paddy (I'll find the last name when I have my bags).  He is an aboriginal and he started painting on canvas when he was in his seventies.  He is now so famous that his work is at the new Aboriginal Art Gallery in Paris.  I really enjoyed his work.  It seems very minimalist but it is actually landscape in dream time.  I'll try to add more about him later.

February 26, 2007

Well, here we are in the lounge at the Auckland airport.  We weren't sure if Stephen's Air Canada lounge pass would work for us but we slipped by on this one.  Very nice lunch and internet service to boot.

A couple of days ago we went to the Cascade Kauri Reserve.  Nicki and Bruce maintain a rat baiting line there to ride the reserve of rats who are not native to New Zealand.  They maintain it about five or six times a year.  Thank god we didn't have to do it because it's really tough slogging.

Have to go, the planes been called.

February 22, 2007

This is not nearly as interesting as I had hoped it would be but it is because from February 6^th to February 22^nd was all written at one time.  I wanted to put in how I felt about the billions of stars and the smell of the desert but when you write five pages of text at one time it dissolves into something else.  Hopefully I’ll do better on the next leg.

Here we are in

Auckland

.  When we first got here we didn’t know how to find Grey Lynn and it didn’t show up on our map so we decided to go straight to A2B Car Rental.  We had a little trouble finding it.  We found downtown alright but we got stuck on a hill next to the park that has the university on it.  Totally stopped.  I said to Stephen that a lady walking up the street looked like a local and he should ask her how to get to the street we were looking for.  I thought he’d just lean out the window but he got out of the car!  Of course the light changed and we started to move.  I was honking like crazy and eventually I just pulled over to the side.  People just drove around me.  We have traveled 2800 km in total.  Bruce picked us up with all our stuff, a ton of stuff, and drove us home. 

Nicki and Bruce invited their friends Linda and Cyril or is it Squirrel?  I don’t know.  They were very interesting and dinner was good but I have to say I was pretty tired by the end of the day.  Today we just stayed home and didn’t do much.  We have to get to it tomorrow though because we are going to dinner and then we are going out with Nicki and Bruce on Saturday and Sunday we are going to

Waihike

Island

then it’s off to

Sydney

.

February 17, 2007

We traveled through Taihape, stopping for coffee at the Brown Sugar Café on Annabell’s recommendation and then pushed on to Turangi and found a campground at Tukaanni.   We drove to

Lake

Taupo

and had dinner at a small warf.  We saw hundreds of black swans.  Back at Tukaani we walked a geothermal area.   It was pretty cool, or as Nicki would say, groovy.  We stayed in a little backpackers cabin, just beds because we didn’t have the energy to set up the tent.  Was that ever a mistake.  The room was hot and filled with bugs.  It did cool down later in the night but there was a horse that whinnied all night long.

In the morning we headed back to

Tongariro

National Park

and headed up to

Whakapapa

Village

on

Mt.

Raunetu

.  In Maori you pronounce “Wh” as /f/.  You figure it out.

To get to Mr. Raunetu you travel though desert flats for a long way.  We walked the Mound Walk and also went to a small falls.   We took a ski lift from 1100 meters to 2200 meters.  Part way up the ski lift was a sign that said: “Remain in Control At All Times”.  Sure.   The landscape is like a moon walk.  The boulders look like they were just thrown about and, in fact, they were.  The last eruption was in 1996.  The mountain was used for filming part of the Lord of the Rings.  From the mountain you can see Mt Ngauruhoe.  It looks like you would imagine a volcano to look.  I think it was the stand in for Mount Doom for The Lord of the Rings.  The mountain lends you really cool jackets but it turned out we didn’t need them much.  The weather was typical for

New Zealand

, changed every five minutes.  The only time we were cold was coming down the ski lift.   When we got down we had a picnic lunch near the Chateau.  We saw a tiny green bird with white around it’s eye on the Flax flower.  I think it might be called a Silver Eye.

On the way out we passed a field that had deer.  They raise them here for eating.

We drove on to Rotorua.  Rotorua is in a volcano coldera.   We had originally planned to stay two nights in Rotorua but it didn’t turn out that way.   We stopped and saw the museum and then drove on to Te Puke.  We stayed the night with Trisha and Russell.  Trisha is Sue’s sister and she arranged for us to visit.  We were quite keen but it turned out even better because they own a kiwi/avocado farm.  The kiwi fields have huge, high hedges around them to keep away the wind.  Stephen and Russell made fried fish before they even started to cook dinner.  Trisha had made this great dip with cream cheese and homemade chutney.  They looked like two little boys with one plate between them.   In the morning Trisha picked oranges and squeezed them for juice.  We walked around the property and she showed me how to cull the kiwi’s, which is something she has to do this week.  She has a lovely walnut tree but because it’s been quite wet this season a lot of the walnuts aren’t good.  Stephen showed her how to “oyster shuck” a walnut.   We forgot Stephen’s hat and ended up driving back an extra 16 km so we had to head straight to

Auckland

.

February 16, 2007

Nicki and Bruce have arranged for us to stay with Sue and Larry who are wine makers in Martinbough.  On the way there we passed through Hastings and Masterton.   We got gas, or petrol as they call it here, in Masterton.  I was tired and asked the clerk if he knew where we could get some good coffee.  He said there were lots of places on main street but the customer next to me said he was headed to a place that had really good coffee and I could follow him so on the off chance that he knew what he was talking about I followed him.  We pulled up and he went in and by the time we were in he had on an apron.  He was the owner.  We had a very nice chat with him and the coffee was good.  We ordered iced coffee because, hey, it’s summer.  Iced coffee here is made with ice cream so it’s kind of sweet for me.

As we pulled up to Sue and Larry’s house Stephen and I were talking about how difficult it is to knock on someone’s door who you’ve never met before.  Would they like us?  Would we like them?  As it turned out we had a wonderful time and the next night when I mentioned this their friend Carla said they had talked about the same things a couple of nights before.  It turns out it’s hard for both sides.  But boy was it worth it.  The first night they had invited their friend John Potter over.  He owns a winery and brought with him a really lovely Pinot Gris.  We also had wine from The Escarpment Winery, which is Larry’s place.  The next day we had lunch in Martinbough and then went to see the winery.  We had a barrel tasting.  The 2006 Pinot Noir had a funny smell at first and Larry explained that it had been in the barrel for a long time and needed some air.  After a couple of minutes it had completely changed. It was fantastic.  Larry showed me an area they had cut away and were going to plant and explained that the soil here is alluvial and so it has good drainage but also it stays warm.  I didn’t know that.  I just knew that clay wasn’t what you wanted for grapes.  We had a couple of drinks with the crew from the winery and celebrated the latest awards.  Air

New Zealand

just got an award for Escarpment Wines so that’s a pretty big deal.   We stayed a second night and had a lot of fun at dinner.  Stephen opened Sue’s fridge and made appetizers from what was in there and Sue said she never would have thought of those combinations.  The chicken, peach, chilli combination was really good and then he made some guacamole.

The next morning we drove through the Rimutaka pass to

Wellington

.  You wouldn’t believe it.  You go up so fast your ears pop!  And they do the same coming down.   Brent and Annabell (Nicki’s sister) gave us such good directions we had no trouble finding their place.  We had a really fine time chatting we them then we headed downtown with Brent showing us the way.  We went to Te Papa, the national museum and learned a lot about Maori life.  We saw a canoe that it turns out is build by relatives of Brent.  Brent knows  a lot about the collection at Te Papa because he is an historian.   I managed to drive home all by myself and Stephen met up with Larry and his daughter Nina to watch the rugby game.  The Blues have won their last eight games and the Hurricanes, well, they haven’t.  The final score was 22 to 23 for the Hurricanes!

When we got up the next morning Stephen wanted to cook for Annabell and Brent and their son Tom.  There was plenty of food talk.  Annabell says she can’t cook but she had saved me some dinner the night before and it was really tasty.

I felt pretty good about my driving in

Wellington

.  I didn’t have any trouble at all.

February 14, 2007

We were low on gas in the morning but decided not to go into town but to drive to the next town.  Boy what a mistake!  The yellow light came on and we kept on going.  We felt relieved when we got to the next town but it turned out they didn’t have any gas, just diesel.  Finally someone offered to follow us to the next town in case we ran out.  We made it but it was sort of nerve racking.  When we got to the town with the gas station we didn’t even recognize the gas station!

The towns along the east coast are quite run down.  We thought that it might have to do with treaty settlements but it turns out to have more to do with economics.  A lot of towns look like ghost towns.  We had lunch in one like that where we met a dog who obviously had us pegged as a free meal. We called him Chuddley. He was rather unimpressed with the peach we offered but hung around for pats anyway.  We spent some time trying to get a good bird shot and he spent that time chasing the bird away.

We stayed in Gisborn in a small motel right out of the ‘50’s.  It had a bedroom, sitting room, kitchenette and bathroom.  I love stainless steel counters.   We just didn’t feel like setting up the tent but it turned out to be a really good thing because it poured all night.  The weather here is very changeable.  One minute it’s sunny and the next it’s pouring but so far we’ve had pretty good luck.

There is lots of geothermal activity along the coast because it’s right on a fault line so the next day we stopped at Morere to have a dip.  We paid our five dollars and walk in and the pool is munggy.  The water was brown and there was a sign that said you shouldn’t put your head in the water in case you get meningitis.  There was no way I was going to get into that pool.  A lady who was in the pool saw my face and said we should walk up to the bathhouse so we thought we’d give it a try.  Oh my, was it great!  We walked through the forest with a small stream winding it’s way beside the path and the light shining through the fern trees for about ten minutes.  We come to a small bathhouse and it has three stainless steel dipping pools, one hot, one warm and one cool.  There was one other couple there and we chatted with them for a while.  They were farmers who were taking a little holiday.  When they left we had the place to ourselves and spent the time going from hot to cold.  The hot was really hot and the cold was freezing!  It couldn’t have been better.

Next stop: Napier.  We stayed in a top ten campground and it had all the bells and whistles.  A girl came over and told us we should get a new camping spot because they had that spot the night before and there was a big light on all night so we moved.  I met a man who was in a wheel chair who was camping in a van.  The top ten are wheelchair accessible.  How cool is that?  We went for a walk downtown and it was very pretty.  Napier had an earthquake and most of it got rebuild during the 30’s so it’s very art deco.  They were having a fair and there were lots of cars from the thirties being driven by men in spats with ladies in cloches sitting beside them.  There we about 12 cars at our campground so we really didn’t have to go anywhere.  When we got back to camp we even watched a little TV because we wanted to charge up our batteries.

In the morning we went back into town and went to

Possum

Town

.   They sell things knitted from possum fur which is very soft.  They had some dioramas set up to show possums.  They try to make the possums look really evil.  New Zealanders don’t like possums.  They really don’t like them.  People have told us they actually swerve to hit them when they are on the road.  I can believe this because every few kilometres you see a squished possum. 

Possum

Town

said that there are 20 possums for every New Zealander.  Possums are one of the many “introduced” species here that have really taken over leaving no room for the natural species.  We saw lots of falcons but they are Australian.  Possums are a protected species in

Australia

but they don’t like rabbits, another introduced species that has reproduced to the nth degree.

We went into a

Maori

Art

Gallery

and met a lady who told us she was Maori and Lakota.  I asked how that came about.  Apparently her entire tribe is mixed.  Around the 1860’s a ship landed near where her tribe lived and it had some Lakota on it who decided to stay and marry into the Maori tribe.  They have DNA evidence.  We talked a long time letting other customers come and go.  When we left she got up and came around the counter and told us she had a gift for us.  It was a calendar that celebrates diversity and as we left she kissed us both.  She was just so sweet.

We stayed another night and had a swim at the Ocean Spa right on the beach.  At first we thought that it was private but Stephen went in and asked.  It was a great way to end the day.  After we walked along the waterfront and there we some young people doing fire dancing.  It was pretty impressive.  As we sat there watching I chatted to a young couple who we had met earlier in the day in the park.  He was from

Belgium

and she was from

France

.  Both of them had permits to work temporarily and were going apple picking in the morning.

February 13, 2007

We drove into Opotiki and needed help to find a campground so we stopped some people who were hanging around the church.  They directed us 6 km up to road.  A little boy ran after us and said there was a garage and a gravel road and an office to the left.  We drove exactly 6 km and pulled off the road to look around.  We glanced up and there was the garage and the gravel road and the office.  What good directions!  I asked at the desk if they knew of anywhere I might hear Maori singing the next day (Sunday) and they didn’t know but said to come back later.  They phoned every church in the town but no one was answering their phone.  The man on the pink bike came to let me know.  

The next day we went back to the church at Opotiki and the same lady was there with her husband, the minister.  I got invited in for tea and they made sure that I got cake too.   In 1866 this church was a mission and the minister got killed by three Maori during the land wars.  These three Maori where put to death.  In 1988 the church community were granted a pardon for the Maori and their descendents.  They were granted a pardon and their character, mana and reputation was restored.   This act brought the pakiha and the Maori of the community together again.

Everyone we met in Opotiki was kind and helpful.

Later we stopped for at Raokokore at another church.   The church asked people to take their shoes off, which was a surprise because every house we go into the people say “oh, don’t take your shoes off.”  It turns out that the church has just had their old wood floors refinished.  The caretakers arrived just as we entered and told us about a family of penguins living under the baptismal font.  We couldn’t hear them but they said they had been making a racket during the service that morning.  The lady told me all about her moko (tattoo).  It represents her, her husband and her two children.  The top part represented how they took care of the children as they were growing and the lower part represented their connection as adults.

Driving in this part of the country is still pretty exciting.  The roads are very windy and very narrow.  On top of that there are lots of one lane bridges.  I have to say the signs in

New Zealand

are very clear.  Have a look at these…

We pulled into Araroa and found a very strange campground.  Stephen says that it had “aspirations” at one time.  It was pretty run down but who can complain when horses just wander into the field your tent is in?

We drove out to the lighthouse that is the most eastward point in

New Zealand

.  We drove and drove and drove and drove some more.  Lots of cattle and horses.  Finally we come around a corner and… the end of the road.  We could see the lighthouse but had not idea how to get to it so we just turned around and went back.  It turns out that it had 700 steps to get up to it so we probably wouldn’t have made it anyway.

Gisbourn New Zealand

We had a really nice time at Hahei. We went to Hot Water Beach and while everyone was waiting for the tide to go out Stephen and I just walked out to about knee deep and dug our feet into the sand. The water under the sand is so hot you have to pull your feet out sometimes. We also walked to Cathedral Cove. It's about 45 min. to get there and so we didn't get back until the sun was almost down. Cathedral Cove is being used to film part of the new Narnia film. I can't download the photos but I will try and post some when we get back to Auckland. We have had to drive way too far the last couple of days and so it hasn’t been that much fun but we did have two really nice stops at churches yesterday. I got invited into have tea at St. Stephen’s which is a historic church that some missionary got killed at by the Maori and after a hundred years or so they ( the Maori) were pardoned and now the church has quite a strong Maori connection. The minister was really nice. Then we drove along the coast and got to another church and just as I was going in the caretakers arrived to empty the donation box. They told me that during the service that morning the penguins who live under the church were making a lot of noise. They think there are about six there now. A family of penguins has lived there since 1946!

Setting up and taking down the tent is quite a bit of work but we are getting into a routine. Last night we met a Maori who was living in one of the tiny cabins at the campsite. He had tattoos all over his face and was quite a jolly guy. Very interesting to talk to.

We stayed in a motel last night in order to charge up our batteries and it turned out to be a very good thing as it poured all night.

Today we are off to a hot spring and then into Napier.

We went shopping in the local organic/fair trade type grocery store in the morning to "provision" for our trip to Piha.  Things seemed slightly more expensive but then again I am not used to shopping g at Capers.  I looked around for things that were different but only found caffeinated water.
Off we set for Piha along a long and winding road surrounded by lunch forest that, when you first look seems much the same as the forest along the road to Sooke but on closer inspection is filled with vegetation that I have never seen.  The trees that stand tall above the rest are Kauri.  Alongside those are Pohutukawa with its gnarled and twisted branches.  These trees can seeming ly dominate where no other species can go.  We saw a massive one hanging out over the water when we were kayaking.  The canopy of the forest looks like plush velvet mottled from pale sage colour to bright yellowish green.  No blue-green in this forest.
After arriving at the "bach" we spent the first hour getting it ready for habitation.  This involved picking up dead palm fronds and cutting the grass.  it took no time at all to go from threatened overgrowth to the tidiest little cabin I've seen in a long time.  New Zealanders seem to love light and so many homes have windows along one side and the little bach is filled with light most of the day with a clear view out to the Tasman Sea with its waves crashing onto black sand topped with a light dusting of brown.  Bruce says that the black sand is more dense than the brown sand and that is why it forms the patterns.  They mine the black sand for iron.
The bach itself is a simple affair, one large room that includes a tiny kitchen set up and two day beds and another small room that has a double bed and two small twins.  Out back is a "long drop" toilet (we call that an outhouse) and Bruce has build a platform shower stall with a plastic shower.  It's so nice to shower and do your business with sun shining in.  Another nod to the sun gods.
We walked down to the beach which took about 20 minutes of back and forth paths with steps, many, many steps and then walked up and over a large headland to come to a beach called The Gap where we dipped into the water and floated back and forth in the waves while listening to stories of death by ocean.  Apparently an Asian carrying a fishing rod is said to be carrying "a suicide kit".
Back to the bach to prepare dinner which Stephen had picked dandelion for and then grilled up a massive amount of meat.  Then we headed back down to the beach.  Mercifully, we drove this time.  We walked along Piha Beach passed Monkey Rock and onto the headland where at one time there was a Maori fort.  These forts are called a pa.  There was also one on Lion Rock which, I have to say, seems rather small for a fortified fort.  The sun set and we headed home to the bach to sit around the fire and head to bed.
We were expecting visitors for lunch but they got stopped on the road way due to an accident and so they changed the plan and made it for dinner.  Instead we walked up and over a hill (about 300 m high) to get to a beach called White Beach.  Dinner was fun.  Lots of talk about wine and wine judging and lots of laughs. 
We headed back to town today and I picked up the car.  It is very unnerving driving on the other side of the road.

The Grand Adventure Begins

We arrive in San Francisco and we have to get on a shuttle but to go to the right gate.  There are about 40 of us on the bus.  We get off and are hearded into a small room with a large elevator and the door is locked behind us.  The elevator door opens and people get on and the door closes and nothing happens.  The door opens and the same people are standing there.  We can't leave the little room because it's a secure area.  Another bus load of people arrive.  People are asking if there are stairs to take but the answer is no, we are in a secure area and the stairs are not.  Finally, they decide we shoud take a freight elevator.  About 80 of us are trooped off, we get on the elevator and it takes Stephen saying "I think you should pull on that strap for the doors to shut.  We do and the door shut and there is a cheer.  Nothing happens, the doors open and there are the same people we have just left.  Second try the doors shut and we more but not to the second floor.  We go to the third floor.  Off we get.  We are once again in a locked lobby and the doors won't open.  Finally, we get the door open and we find the right gate and they tell us that we must change our boarding passes for Air New Zealand ones (this after we've waited in the line up for some time!)  Stephen says in his best "hitchhiker's guide voice"  Don't Panic.  No one laughs.
We finally get to New Zealand and we are early.  It's like 4:45 am but miracle of miracles Bruce is there waiting for us.  He takes us to Mt. Eden to watch the sunrise but it doesn't open until 7 am so we reroute to Tekapuna Beach to watch the sunrise.
I have picrture but I can't get then to load just now.  I'll try again later.  In the photo you can see Rangatoto in the background under the bridge.
We go for coffee and Bruce tries to convince us that we need a translator to order a coffee because what they order here is "flat white"  but we give it a try and the guy just says OK.
Off we go to Mt. Eden and look around the city.  They have cows to keep the grass short!  As you can see in the photos it's a long ways to Vancouver.  We ended up on the beach on the other side for sunset.
Today we kyaked out to Watchmans Island and went to the museum.  Tonight we had drinks over at the neighbor's house.  All in all a very good beginning.