We have been busy and not attending to our blog. Lots to catch up on.
First of all, I would like to congratulate our daughter, Jill, on winning the Kiwi Trivia Contest. She had 7 correct answers. Her accomplishment is not diminished by the fact that she was the only entry. You may have noted that there was no fine print about relatives not being eligible. Her brother, Tyler, had the best shot, as he just spent 3 weeks with us and more or less had all the answers spoon-fed to him. But he who hesitates... Jill's handcrafted NZ gift will be waiting for her when she gets home from Europe in mid June.
Sometimes events happen when you are traveling that suddenly make being on the other side of the world not the best place to be. One of those unfortunate events occurred the second week in Feb. Sandi's Dad, Aaron, had been in the hospital with lung and heart problems for a week, when we left Waimate on Sat., the 16th for Dunedin - 2 hours to the south. Her brother, Rob from Sisters, OR, was flying in to Austin. Aaron and Margie had lots of support from Sandi's sister, Debbie and brother, Aaron, along with 2 grandchildren in Austin.
Dunedin, Gaelic for Edinburgh, reflects its Scottish heritage. We started with a tour of the old train station and adjacent Saturday Market to stock up on veggies, spices and preserves. We then toured the Octagon (8-sided traffic circle surrounded by an 8-sided block). A large of statue of Robert Burns is strategically place in the middle of the Octagon. From there we went strait to Speights (rhymes with streets) Brewery for lunch and samplers of juice glass servings of their 6 varieties. Sufficiently fortified, we followed the bay road out on the Otago Peninsula to McAndrews Bay to have dinner with Lea and Craig Werner, friends of friends who immigrated from Spokane 5 yrs ago. We got lesions in Kiwi English with an American accent and tips on all the best places in the S. Is. to visit.
Our B&B host sent his wife off to stay with relatives and gave us their room to make room for us. The whole town was booked with returning University of Otago students and their parents. Off the next morning to the tip of the Peninsula, spectacular scenery all he way, along the edge ridges with bay on one side and ocean on the other. We reached our destination – The Royal Albatros Center in 30 mph winds, but that is just what the Albatros ordered. They need the wind to get their 6 foot wing span, glider designed bodies off the cliffs. The adults circumnavigate the southern Hemisphere for a year and return here to their lifelong mates to spend another year raising one chick. The teenagers (up to age 4-6) come home to play and, with the wind, the party was on. From our observatory we had a 360-degree view as they soared all around us. We maxed out the memory on our digital camera and they were just getting warmed up. Both Sandi and I were thinking about her dad.
We arrived back at our B&B at 8 PM to find that Tyler had called Waimate, found out eventually that we were staying at a B&B in Dunedin and gone through the alphabet on line until he got the 19th in the Ps. Our host had heard 4 hours before that Sandi’s dad had a stroke and was on life support. When Sandi got through to her sister in Austin, he had already passed.
Aaron had a long life and a good one until the last year. He had been short of breath and too weak to make his barn wood furniture. He had been in the first infantry wave in both Lyete and Okinawa. He came home on a hospital ship. Very few of those he stood with him came back at all. He was a respected manager. He raised 5 kids and had 9 grandkids that were all proud to call him their Papa – all on what he considered borrowed time. He had a flag on his coffin to honor the Purple Heart and Military Cross that he earned with his quiet strength in the Pacific.
Sandi, Jill and I had a good visit with him over Thanksgiving. Sandi’s family encouraged her to stay in NZ. Tyler flew from Seattle and stood in for us at the funeral. Sandi will spend some time with her mom in Austin in June.
Weekend Adventures: Wanaka.
On the weekend of Feb. 23-24, Sandi and Steve were off to Lake Wanaka, The southern Alps separate the rest of the S. Is. from the rugged rain forest of the west coast. From the near tropical eastern plans and foothills we crossed the arid mountains that lay in the rain shadow of high mountains. Nestled in between the mountains are the long crystal blue lakes and reservoirs that are the weekend playgrounds of the island. From Wanaka’s Info Office we looked out over the lake – burnt orange hills on the east shore, green mountains raising straight out of the water on the west. When we told the woman behind the counter that our B&B was “Rocks of Roy” she paused, sighed and congratulated us on our choice. We had gotten a reservation there just because it was a working sheep farm and it sounded nice. Obviously she knew more. We drove along the west shore, but got sidelined because we always brake for wineries. Rippon Winery with a tasting room overlooking vineyards running straight down to the lake. We were joined by two American guys in there 20’s who seemed wise beyond there years in wine tasting lore. They were working in various wineries in NZ during their off season at home. Now there’s a tough seasonal job!
Off to our B&B, we passed a Lord of the Rings filming sight. Our map had these marked with a movies camera all over the S. Is., but as far as we could tell, Jackson could have filmed anywhere in NZ. It all looked like the Middle Earth to us. We drove around Mt Roy – - we had to be close, then up a gravel road past a lot of sheep – we were getting closer, around a bend and onto a bench 500 feet above the Lake. There we found a new adobe house surrounded by gardens on the side of “Roy’s Rock” with stunning views of Lake Wanaka, and the glacier clad Southern Alps. Our hosts were 3rd generation sheep farmers. They had picked this spot to build their house for the view and then decided – much to our benefit - to share it.
The next day we set off to explore Mt. Aspiring National Park. Pavement (metaled) road rapidly turned into gravel. Wind gusts turned into a strong Ellensburg-esk headwind. But it stayed warm and mostly dry as we followed the river valleys deeper into the mountains. Then the bridges turned into fords – some gravel on the sides of steep banks. Finally, we arrived at the end of the road, where Rob Roy Track heads up to the glaciers. We just hiked (tramped) a couple of kilometers to a suspension bridge. Back to our B&B, the wind blowing us back to another cozy night at “Rocks of Roy”.
Weekend Adventures: Woodcraft Fair, Banks Peninsula.
The first Saturday in March we stayed home in Waimate for the annual Woodcrafter’s Fair. Steve, the woodworker who still has hopes of finishing at least one project, lobbied for a 1/3 of a weekend to take advantage of one of little Waimate’s many homespun events. It was the best woodworker’s event that we have ever seen. There was one guy demonstrating how to make wine barrels, literally from the inside out. Another man was selling an amazing NZ make lathe chuck, for you that might know what that means. There was a willow basket maker from just down the road at Oamaru. Be afraid, Longaberger, but we couldn’t figure out how to get it into a suitcase. Steve was in a most amazing workshop on steam bending, he now knows all the tricks to the trade. As with other Waimate venues, there was good representation of local craftsman. First prize went to the maker of a wood scale model of a sheep hauling semi-truck. Later we were honored to meet the artist, as he was married to one of the local nurses.
We still had 2 days of the weekend left, so we headed to Lyttleton, near Christchurch. Lyttleton Harbor was once a major port, but now known as much for its arts and crafts. We stayed at a B&B that was on the edge of the cliff. We climbed down from the road to an excellent view of the harbor. The B&B was run by a woman who also used it as an art studio. We had a showing of her various works in several media. Sandi liked a photo of The ubiquitous primary color Kiwi clothes pegs (pins) on the line with the blue sky in the background. Our host, who lived alone, had given up an apparently lucrative career as a photographer to pursue art and her B&B. She was one of many independent, free-spirited women we met in our travels in NZ. The next day we took a very scenic, but windy road to Banks Peninsula.
Banks Peninsula was discovered by Captain Cook, who initially thought it was an island. In fact it is an extinct volcano attached to the mainland. The rim of the crater forms a range of mountains that drop sharply into the sea. The crater itself is a protected bay that opens into the sea. The result is a spectacular little bit of the Mediterranean conveniently attached to the south Island adjacent to its largest city. Despite its proximity to Christchurch, Akaroa, the fishing village in the bay is surprisingly low key. Sandi checked out the shops, but Steve had to visit the local pharmacy to get some motion sickness medicines after the drive there. He recovered quickly for the drive around the bay and up over the rim and back to our bungalow in Waimate.
The next weekend Steve was on call. We still had Monday free, so we took up an offer from our next door neighbor to visit his fishing digs, where Allan virtually lives during the March salmon season.
First we need to define Kiwi neighbor. Everyone’s back yard is a veggie garden and the front is all flowers. The whole center of our block is a vegetable garden shared by two of our other neighbors. Janette and Allan kept us supplied with more veggies than we could eat. Allen brought us salmon fresh from the Waitaki River. But what defined a Kiwi neighbor happened Steve’s first week in Waimate. Sandi had not yet arrived and Steve was practicing some well atrophied domestic skills. He had hung out his first load of laundry on the ubiquitous Kiwi rotating clothes line. He didn’t have any clothes pegs yet, but did have a REI camping line with tiny alligator clips to fasten his white load of mostly boxers. Later while on the computer on the sun porch, he noted a brief, but vigorous wind storm go by. Still later when he decided that he should check to see how the alligator clips held up and went to the back yard to check his laundry. There was nothing on the clothes line and there was not a white boxer to be seen anywhere. Steve had visions of meeting all his new neighbors by going door to door to retrieve his boxers from their back yards. He was spared when he found a plastic bag on the back porch with his neatly folded boxers inside.
Neighbor thus defined. We met Allan at the mouth of the Waitaki, just a few minutes drive from Waimate. NZ has hedges around their fields. These are usually a solid mass of evergreen trees 6-10 feet thick and 20-30 feet high. One of these hedges surrounded 2 dozen minature summer homes and a community room with a scales that was Allan’s fishing shack community. We got a tour of his shack decorated with a generation of family memorabilia. He showed us how his salmon canning machine works and took us down to the river and described how the water level peaks 5 days after they let water over the dams up near the Southern Alps. He explained how the palm sized pancake rocks that form the 30 foot high bars that protect the coast are being washed away because the dams have stopped the river from suppiing more rocks. We didn’t get to fish, but we did get photo of the fishing shack next to Allan’s that is for sale – to show to Steve’s brother-in-law, Guy.
Tyler and Nicole’s Visit.
Our son, Tyler, didn’t have any trouble taking off 3 weeks from work at The Psych ward at Children’s Hospital in Seattle to come to NZ. It took a little convincing to get his girlfriend, Nicole, to travel that far for her 10 day spring break from medical school. But they took the leap across the globe and arrived in Christchurch on the 13th of March. We gave them one nights rest, woke up to sunshine and we were off to Mt. Cook. We sent them on the same hike to Hooker Glacier that we did in Jan. The old folks took an easier hike to a viewpoint over a glacier lake. All of us were treated to a moonrise right over the peak of the Mountain. We paid our respects to Sir Ed’s statue at the Heritage Center. There was no room at the inns in Twizel, but we did stop for another smoked salmon and cream cheese pizza at __.
Next stop Queenstown, adventure capital of NZ. This is where bungy jumping got it’s jump start. We passed on that form of flirting with suicide, along with hang gliding, parasailing, river surfing. But, our B&B host at nearby Arrowtown did convince us that we couldn’t leave NZ without going up Skipper’s Canyon for a jet boat ride on the Shotover River. He convinced us that we could handle the jet boat ride, but didn’t tell us that the jet boat was a piece of cake compared to the bus ride up the canyon. After gold was found in the Canyon in 188_, it took _ years to carve a road out of the near vertical canyon walls to get to it. The gold was gone in a few years, along with some mining equipment and several miners that got washed away in flash floods. An old bridge is still there. It was briefly the world’s 2nd and also highest bungy jump, until the local Kiwis found a higher bridge downriver. Thus the locals were faced with a quandary, how were they going to scar the liver bejesus out of tourists on the canyon road, if they didn’t have a bungy jump to entice them up the canyon. Enter the jet boat, designed to go like hell in 4 inches of water, zip past narrow rock walls and turn on a dime at full speed. Needless to say, we were well entertained by both rides.
Back at Willowbrook lodge we relaxed on the deck and watched the hang gliders come off the ski hill, catch the updrafts and float down to the valley. We took in Queenstown, where everyone is under 30 or acts like they are. We met a 72 year matronly woman from Pennsylvania, that was celebrating her bungy jump. We took the gondola straight up a mountain 3 blocks from. We had great views across Lake __ to the Remarkables to the west, the Fiordlands to the east and back up the valley to Arrowtown to the north. But Queenstown doesn’t do serenity. So while we were taking in the view, hang gliders were flying over us and the bungy jumpers were diving off the cliff below us.
Nicole had only one request for her NZ trip, she wanted to go horseback riding. In retrospect this may have been some sort of test for Tyler. We thought it was a stoke of luck when we saw where we had booked them for a ride near Glenorchy at the north end of Lake _. (We had not yet been convinced by experience that whatever site we chose to see in NZ, it was always the most beautiful.) Glenorchy is a tiny village that serves as the tramper’s supply post for hikes into the south end of the Southern Alps. Here the lake turns into a flat valley, but the mountains rise straight up from the valley floor. From here there are trails south to the Fiordland and north to where we drove to the base of Mt Aspiring from Wanaka. We delivered Tyler and Nicole into the capable hands of a young Irish woman who traveled to this stunning valley and couldn’t leave. She deposited them on their steeds to explore the valley for 4 hours and Sandi and Steve were off on Fast Camel.
We had previously stopped for directions, and got on the right track with the help of one of the locals. Satisfied that we were reoriented, she announced, “You’re off on a fast camel.” When we told this story to Tyler, he decided that we should name our white Nissan Primera, Fast Camel.
Sandi and I tried to get Fast Camel lost in the mountains, but instead found a trail that was on somebody’s list of the 10 best day hikes in the world. It followed a creek through a beech forest. Beech trees in NZ do not loose their leaves in the winter, instead a small clump of leaves turn a golden color and then fall. This continues while the rest of the tree stays green. They are big trees with small leaves and there canopy prevents much undergrowth. The effect on the tramper in the morning light is walking through a snowfall.
Tyler was stiff and couldn’t sit for 2 days, but survived the ride and the test.
Sandi entertained our guests for a couple of weekdays while Steve worked. She showed them the local sites in Waimate, including the Wallaby Farm and the knitwear shop that uses Merino wool and possum hair. They saw NZ’s mountain parrot, the Kea, in the mini-zoo in Victoria Park. These intelligent birds are reported to make life difficult for trampers by performing tricks such as getting into their cars by removing the rubber from around the windshield and trapping them in their huts by locking the latch while they sleep. Sandi took them back to the Moeraki Boulders and for another excellent meal at Fleur’s Place, this time served by Fleur herself. They got tours of both the Blue and Yellow-eyed penguins in nearby Oamaru and with Steve rejoining them for the weekend, the four of us went back to Dunedin to show them a little piece of Scotland in NZ and to see the Albatross soar. We saw a Divinci machines exhibit at the Otago Museum and toured the grounds of Larnach Castle, but the highlight for Tyler was hike with Nicole down to Sand Fly Beach.
We got Nicole on her plane in Christchurch on Sunday. Sandi and Steve introduced Tyler to a Backpackers (NZ style hostel) near the beach at Sumner. Sandi and Steve liked it so well they became regular Backpacker customers their last month of traveling. The three took the back roads again to show Tyler Banks Peninsula. This time we avoided motion sickness from the windy road and arrived back at Waimate on Sunday night.
Transitions
The end of March was moving week for Sandi and Steve, actually Sandi and Tyler did most of the work. We moved from our tidy house on Harris Street to a large older house attached to a hotel on the main road. This was to make room for a new physician from England and his wife and 3 boys. The other Steve was a welcome addition to the practice and lightened this Steve’s workload significantly for the last month. About this time word got out that the practice was about to be sold to the former chairman of the board of the local nursing home. This caused some anxiety about job security amongst the staff, except Steve L, who was the only one who had a contact. The sale was put off until the end of April and from reports went smoothly and everyone kept their jobs.
Off on Fast Camel with Sandi, Steve and Tyler.
Steve arranged a 5 day weekend so Tyler could get a tour of the north end of the South Island. First stop Kaikoura. Every place in NZ seems to be the best place for something. In this case for whale watching and fur seal colonies. From Kaikoura to Abel Tasman National Park, where Tyler and Steve went kayaking with an excellent Maori guide. We saw Tyler off to the airport in Christchurch.
S&S had a party for the medical community in Waimate the last week of work. Then they had a fantastic weekend on Doubtful Sound. Off to the North Island for month - land of sandy beaches, volcanoes and Maori culture. One week time shares at LakeTaupo and another at the Bay of Islands. Wine tasting at Hawkes Bay. Soaking our feet at Hot Water Beach on the Coromandel Peninsula. Finally, back to reality in Spokane at the end of May. Despite our best efforts to avoid winter, it snowed on our new garden transplants on the 10th of June.
S&S
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