Saying our Goodbyes

After Nelson, we  had just a few days to divest ourselves of our belongings and say our goodbyes to the good friends we'd made in our eight months in New Zealand.   We walked around the harbor, had a last coffee or two and said farewells to neighbors and friends. The flight was predictably long and nightmarish, particularly the ten-hour layover in LA.  We missed our last connection in Philadelphia, and by the time we arrived in Greensboro, we figured we'd been up 36 hours.  Our friend Paul picked us up and delivered us, a bit bleary, at our house on Eagle Nest Ct.  Claire had made strawberry pie, and the animals seemed happy to see us.  Spring in NC is amazingly beautiful, as always.

Since then, we've been working to get back to some sort of normal.  Reconnecting with real life again.  Here's a picture of the homestead and one of John and Fenno, getting started on the weeding.

I keep feeling like I should be summing things up somehow, but I'm not sure I have the perspective to do that yet.  Let's just say that 8 months in New Zealand was a wonderful adventure.  I hope you've enjoyed hearing about it.  Thank you for reading along.

Glaciers, the West Coast, and Nelson

From Queenstown, we set out for the glaciers (in NZ they say "glassy-urs," and I would too if I could get away with it), Fox and Franz Josef.  Because actually hiking on glaciers involves walking on ice and scary words like crevasse (for leaping over) and crampons (which sounds too much like a combination of cramps and tampons), we had decided we wanted to get close but not too close.  Fortunately, we were able to do just that.  We'd read about a forest walk for glacier-viewing, and we did that, but the glaciers were still pretty far away.  Then we turned down another road, which led to a rocky riverbed with a carefully demarcated path leading right to the edge of Fox Glacier.  Along the trail, there were multiple signs warning against stopping or going beyond the barriers with cautionary tales of tourists who'd done those things and not lived to tell the tale.  So this is a picture of me with the cut-out metal ranger set up as a warning.  The other glacier picture doesn't really give you the scale or quite convey the sense of mystery that comes with seeing the blue, blue ice and the markers showing how far the glacier has traveled since 1750  up to the present.  I'm really glad we got to see one before they are all gone due to climate change, which everybody we've met in NZ sees as a major threat.  With the concern for the environment and especially the need to control pests who threaten the native bird population, there seems to be a general sense of urgency about protecting the beauty that is here.

And speaking of birds:  we stayed at the Glacier View motel, a modest little 1950's sort of place within sight of Franz Josef.  It was pretty quiet out there until night-time when the sounds we heard made us wonder about the kea, the NZ parrots who can apparently strip a car of all of its rubber fittings and shiny bits within an hour.  Fortunately, when we woke, the rented Nissan was still intact.

We drove to Hokitika for a little shopping, then up the West Coast through spectacular scenery, up through Haast and the Buller River Valley and nikau (literally "no coconut") palms up to Pancake Rocks, made of layers and layers of limestone that stretch out into and get bashed over and over by the sea.  At high tide, there are blowholes with sea spraying through them. Here's a picture of the rocks.  We didn't get a picture of the weka ( brown hen- like bird who reportedly steals from campers; there's an exhibit in Te Papa showing one running off with a silver spoon) that John saw while I was in the shop buying postcards.

Looking over our shoulders at a vivid sunset, we finally made our way into Nelson.  Nelson is known as a sunny haven in this rainy country, and it is famous for beautiful art deco buildings and chi-chi shops.  For you Carolinians, it's sort of the Asheville of NZ.  It is also known for the fine wines of the Marlborough District.  Some of the best food we've had has been at these wineries, where you can eat tapas out under the trees.

In Nelson, we stayed at a B&B called Warwick House, though locals call it "the Castle" pictured here.  It is the oldest home in Nelson and has been restored by the Ferriers, he the son of a German baroness and she a famous kayaker.  I will not include the picture of our copper toilet tank, though I did take one.  We rambled around the little shops, including Jens Hansen, the jeweler who makes beautiful chunky rings and is probably most famous for fashioning "the one true ring" of the Lord of the Rings movies. We also visited the botanic garden which had some outstanding heritage trees, some museums and the cathedral on the hill.

The second day we drove out past the many orchards of the South Island's "fruit basket", past signs about apples and pears, apricots and plums, to the little village of Mapua.  There we took a ride on the small ferry known as "the flat-bottomed fairy" bedecked with tiny white lights out to Rabbit Island.  There is a spoonbill colony out there, but we didn't see them, though we did see numerous gulls and oyster-catchers, some fantails and a couple of ruddy turnstones.  Afterwards, we visited the craft galleries and saw some lovely and unique items.  We had dinner on the water with the view above, a lovely day all in all.

On the last morning in Nelson, we got up early and made our way to the Matai Valley bush walk trail to hike up a spot billed as 'the centre of New Zealand."  This last picture is a view from the top.

We had planned to go to WOW, the World of Wearable Art museum but found we were short on time.  New Zealand's roads being what they are (winding two lanes pretty much constantly under construction), we had just enough time to get to Picton to catch the ferry home.  There were some serious winds, but our skipper took a route that smoothed the way as much as possible.  We spent most of the trip talking with some farmers who sat at our table.  They were pretty quintessential Kiwis, down-to-earth and practical but interested in everything and in teasing us about all things American.

Even then, our adventures were not quite over.  John had turned in his car, so we took a shuttle towards home.  As it turned out, it was equipped with shag carpet, Christmas lights, and a karaoke machine, and the driver required that all passengers sing along to the 70's mix, accompanied by the beat of his sub-woofers.  No worries though.  We got our revenge when he had to back the van back down our monstrous hill.

Queenstown and Milford Sound

From Dunedin we drove to Queenstown, one of NZ's top vacation spots, and it was just as beautiful as everyone said it would be.  We stayed at a place right on the glacial lake, with mountains all around.  Quite amazingly lovely in the sunshine.  We rode the gondola up to the top of the mountain, and here is the view of the city from inside.  We decided to forego the bungee-jumping, the parasail and the luge but watched as others took the plunge.  Down below, the steamship Earnslaw ferried folks back and forth across the lake.

We took a walk through town with its many tourist shops and then walked around the edge of the lake.  Had dinner at the Coronation Boat House right on the shore and watched the paragliders coming in for the evening.  Here's a picture of one.  They were aiming to land on their feet on the shore or on a small dock just a little ways out.  People would cheer if they made it and groan if they made a big splash and required a pick-up from the rescue boat. All of this with the sun going down over the water.  Quite entertaining.

The second day was a long one.  We took a a coach with a glass top four hours to Milford Sound for a day cruise, then four hours back.  Milford Sound is in Fiordland, and we learned that a fiord is a bay carved out by glaciers.  We traveled through some breathtaking mountain scenery, past clear mountain streams you could drink from untreated.  We saw where rock avalanches and tree avalanches had occurred and squinted at the glacial ice and snow on the mountains.  Dean, our driver, said everyone should see Milford Sound at least three times:  once in the sun (as we did), once in the rain (which is usual; it's a rain forest where it rains 220 days and over 100 inches per year) and once in the snow.  In this part of New Zealand, the alpine environment gives way directly to the rain forest, also true in parts of S. America.  History lesson:  in prehistoric times, there was a super-continent, known as Gondwana-land, which broke apart into most of the land masses of the southern hemisphere, including Australia, NZ, South Africa, South America, and Antarctica; so a number of these places share commonalities.

When we arrived in Milford Sound, we boarded the Milford Monarch in sun and really enjoyed the cruise.  Apparently, when it rains, there are more waterfalls, but we didn't feel we had missed too much. Here are two pictures:  one with tourists, one without.

On the way back, we watched a movie starring Anthony Hopkins, which was the story of Burt Munro, a Kiwi who'd set a speed record on his Indian motorcycle at a pretty advanced age.  I looked over to see if John was contemplating setting a new record for the luge the next day, but, after twelve hours of travel, we were mostly just ready for sleep.

Dunedin and Otago

We've been traveling, and internet has been spotty, so if you've been waiting for us to account for ourselves, here goes.  I was looking at pictures, trying to decide what to post, and realized that we'd had too much fun to cram everything into one entry, so I'll try to break it up a little in case your attention spans are as short as mine.

A week ago Tuesday we flew to Dunedin, near the bottom of the South Island, or "the mainland," as some of the locals call it.  The South Island has fewer people, but it is home to some of the most spectacular scenery on the planet.  Settlers likely felt somewhat at home in the climate and quickly worked towards making it into a sort of mini-Scotland by importing sheep and deer and initiating farming and industry that made it seem even more like home.  Teddy Roosevelt decided the Kiwis needed elk as well and gifted them with the wapiti.  Now there is even a hybrid of elk and deer on grassy slopes and in the forest.  I still regret my failure to take a picture of John with the huge statue of Robert Burns, but someone was filming there at the time.

  Dunedin's original name was New Edinburgh, and its current name is that, translated from the original Celtic.  It was home to the first university in NZ, and our friend Mary's father was dean of the medical school there.  It still feels very much like a university town.  We had a somewhat charming accommodation, close to the Octagon of the central business district, with a lovely courtyard with fountains and lots of flowers.  Unfortunately, there also seemed to be a tap dance convention next door, stocked with early risers, who clattered about at 5 a.m.

We ventured downtown, resisting the delicious smells wafting out of Cadbury World, and made our way towards the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.  It included some interesting art, but the building itself was also lovely in an art deco sort of way.  Afterwards, we visited the botanic gardens, which seemed very manicured, like an English formal garden.  Walked by the water in the sun and admired the big trees and the beds of flowers, more imports than those that flourish in the native bush.  Also a highlight:  an aviary that contained many species of parrots with bright colors and engaging ways.  They seemed to enjoy interacting with humans, and we certainly enjoyed interacting with them.

The next day we began at the Museum of Otago.  The two outstanding features were memorabilia of Sir Edmund Hillary (photos, the cup with his name on it he'd used at the top of Everest, family history, a letter he'd written saying he thought of himself as an "ordinary person") and a wonderful butterfly exhibit.  We'd gotten there just at the time they released the newly- hatched butterflies into the "rain forest" aviary, so we got to help.  There were bright blue morphios, many kinds and colors of swallowtails, a brown moth with tangerine and orchid spots, black and green "jades," and many more. Also two geckos, too lazy to eat butterflies, quail, tarantulas, turtles and some tiny finches. We were invited to put our fingers near the new butterflies' legs, to let them climb on, and then to release them into the air.  Apparently, they like sweat as well as fruit and flower nectar.  One of them stayed on my chin for quite some time.

In the golden afternoon light, we made our way onto the Otago peninsula.  It is rocky and winding, even more so than the Shelly Bay Rd., for those of you who've visited us here in Wellington.  The views were breathtaking.  Sun and boats and blue, blue water.  At the end of the peninsula, we found ourselves at the Royal Albatross Reserve.  The wind had turned cold, and we bundled up a little for the walk out to the edge of the rocky cliffs.  These are magnificent birds, with a wingspan over 10 ft. After visiting the center, we would have loved to see the huge, fuzzy chicks, but we didn't have time for the next tour before our date with the penguins (!).

So, it was back up the curvy roads towards Penguin Place.  We were a few minutes early, so we had time to view the red monarch butterflies and admire the fuchsia and agapanthus on the hillside.  John initiated a relationship with Simba, the long-haired cat, and I got in a little dog time with the 4 springer spaniels while we waited for Rhonda, our guide, and our two other companions to arrive for the tour.  Yellow-eyed penguins (hoihoi) are the second-rarest on earth, with only 1,000 in the world.  At the reserve, they're trying to help them make a comeback by creating a nesting habitat on the coastline, protected on its outskirts by a working farm. First, we visited the penguin hospital, where they had one chick, an adolescent too underweight to molt, and two others.  Then we boarded a shaky school bus and wove towards the nesting grounds.  Tiptoeing along the paths, we followed Rhonda, who shushed us and motioned us to freeze as they approached:  two males, Todd and Flax.  They came quite close.  Here, the limits of our camera and photography skills become clear, but it was really something to see them.

From there, we moved down towards the water and took some pictures of a seal family while scanning the water for penguins who might be coming in the evening after fishing all day.  No go.  So we worked our way back uphill to the cleverly disguised trenches to stealthily view the two mating pairs still "at home" for molting.  Doug and Donna were pretty quiet, but Jim and Jess obliged us by grooming one another and "kissing" in that way you see in nature programs on TV.  Rhonda shared that they'd been together for 9 years, then split up for 3 after losing a chick, then reunited.

Inspired by penguin love, it was time for us to move on.

Beginning to say our goodbyes

This week has been very different from last week's sightseeing fest.  Not so much about seeing new sights as about beginning to say our goodbyes to familiar places and people we have come to know and care for here in Wellington.

John's last day at work was Thursday.  It's been a week of rain and wind (surprise!), so we've been cheering ourselves up by going to the movies.  We've been trying to eat all the food in the cupboards (the combinations are getting pretty interesting--hmm, what can I do with peanut butter and olives?) and planning how to divest ourselves of our temporary worldly goods (guitar, GPS, etc.) we'd acquired just to use while we've been here.  John has become very skilled at putting ads on Trade Me, the NZ version of Craigslist, so we'll see.

Friday was the last meeting of my writer's group.  We met at Tessa's for cake and our last face-to-face session of critique.   Friday night was John's farewell "do" at a Cambodian restaurant (kind of like Thai with different spices).  He received some lovely koru cufflinks, and we enjoyed our evening with the work mates, several of whom had become quite dear to us.

Afterwards, we stopped by a neighborhood get-together to say goodbye to Vanaja, the pathologist who lives next door and our landlady and her husband.  Tonight we'll cook dinner for our other next door neighbors, Jacqui and Tony, who were so helpful to look after Claire for a weekend when she was laid up here.   Tony is a sound engineer on "The Hobbit," and will quite likely be late as they work all hours.  Saturday night we went over to our Australian friends' to say goodbye to Hannah and Chris, their daughter and her partner who were visiting from "Palmie."  I made a pie out of our various fruit bits (see above).

Yesterday was likely our last time at Wellington Friends Meeting.  A beautiful sunny day, a long, deep silence, a message about a tuatara, a picture shared by 8 year old Stella in her feather headdress, a cup of tea among F(f)riends.  After, we went to the market for one last roti to eat by the water and afterwards had a last coffee at the Te Papa cafe and looked for one last souvenir.  In the evening we took our good friends from Australia out for fish 'n' chips.  They are off to Bangkok, then Kenya, for the Friends World Committee meeting, so they will be gone when we return from our trip to the South Island.  Ronis and I do plan to swim today and to take a splash in the whirlpool at the Freyburg and have one more cappuccino as a last celebration of our time together.

We're excited about the upcoming trip to the South Island.  We'll be covering lots of miles and plan to see some amazing places, so stay tuned.

A Trip to the Far North

There's so much to tell about our trip to Northland, I'm not sure I can do it justice, but I'll do my best to give you a taste.  John had planned this trip while I was away and did an excellent job, making for a variety of adventures.

 Mostly we went to Northland to see the giant kauri trees, which grow only in the rain forest above Auckland. They were the inspiration for the movie, Avatar, with its special effects from Weta here in Wellington and its strong message about environmental preservation.  It's hard to give you a sense of the scale of these incredible trees.  This one, on the left, is the McKinney Kauri, reportedly number 4 in size, so perhaps you can imagine the size of Tane Mahuta, the largest.  He was named after the god of the forest, represented here between his two siblings, god of the sea (Tangaroa) and god of the winds (represented here on the right).  We saw him too, but our pictures don't really tell the story.

These trees are tall and straight and were harvested to make the spars for ships and for Maori war canoes.  The wood was also used for fine furniture.  The trees produce gum, which was dug from the roots and used for various purposes, including jewelry, since when it hardens, it resembles amber.  The consequence of all of this harvesting, of course, is that most of the trees were cut down.  They are very slow-growing, so now they are endangered and protected.  Now the only carving is done using trees which have fallen into swamps.  The wood is so hard it will not rot, even when it has been underwater for thousands of years.

We stayed in the Puketi Forest in sort of a farm stay/B&B.  Ok, it was a cow shed.  But it was a very cute cow shed that had been made into a sort of apartment.  Our hosts, Ian and Barbara Candy, own a beautiful dairy farm and do eco-tours in the forest as part of their work with the Puketi Forest trust.

Our first day we took an all-day cruise around the Bay of Islands.  It is called the Cream Trip, because in earlier times the boat collected the cream from the dairy farms on the islands.  Now the boat just picks up and delivers mail and dog biscuits to residents and their dogs who come down to meet the boats.  It was a gorgeous day, cloudy in the morning but sunny in the afternoon by the time we reached the climactic destination of the trip, the Hole in the Rock, pictured above.  From the boat (the Tangaroa), we saw dolphins and blue mau-mau, along with other smaller fish, and a number of sea birds. The young and thrill-seeking (not us!) took a turn being dragged through the cold waters in a net attached to the boat, but we were content to drink it all in, along with the sun, and listen to the educational commentary provided by our skipper, Tammy, whose mother was the first female skipper in the Bay of Islands.

At the end of the cruise, we hopped off in Russell, once known as "the hellhole of the Pacific" but now a charming little seaside village with a Swordfish Club, displaying trophy fish and the stats on this year's fishing contests.  It is also home to some interesting history.  I especially enjoyed seeing Christ Church, the oldest church in NZ, where Charles Darwin attended when he stopped by NZ on the Beagle, and which had a lovely little cemetery and an amazing array of tapestry cushions with seaside themes, which have been made by members of the congregation.  That night we had dinner at the Pear Tree in KeriKeri, near a mission house with a lovely little garden with a stone store and Maori village nearby.

The second day we took an all-day forest walk, 9km in and 9km out, with Ian as our guide as we looked at trees and flowers and listened to the birds and stories of him hunting wild boar and weta in the woods with his brothers.  Here's a picture of John hugging the kauri where we stopped for lunch.  At the end of our trip, Ian took us to a gorgeous waterfall on the property where at least one adventurous Kiwi bride and groom climbed down by rope in their fancy clothes for wedding portraits.

Day #3 found us searching in vain for NZ Scopes, where they make kaleidoscopes out of ancient kauri, bits of paua, and fishing tackle.  Frustrated, we took consolation in a winery tour at Ake-Ake vineyard and brought back a bottle of their red, called Chamboursin, for our hosts.  The next stop was the Parrot Place, which had a variety of brightly-colored parrots from NZ, Australia, Africa and South America, including the Quaker grey and my favorite, a young African grey (like Felicity, for those of you who've read Julia Glass)  We even got to hold a few parrots and fed them some peanuts. I was "honored" to receive "the mark" on my shoulder and had to be sanitized; apparently, being pooped on is a common occurrence.  John noted that this is a common occurrence in any true relationship.

Afterwards, we decided it was time for a little history and drove to the Waitangi Treaty Grounds.  We lunched in the cafe and marveled at a giant kauri canoe, which held up to 80 warriors.  We saw a film about the treaty between Britain and the Maori chiefs, signed in 1840.  British Resident James Busby had been appointed to guard the interests of British citizens and to also protect the interests of the Maori.  He moved his family to Waitangi, and they lived in a small, unassuming white frame house which had been preconstructed in Australia and which was used for negotiations and to provide hospitality.  Busby had no real authority, and he and his family had the challenge of living in the midst of wars among the Maori tribes of the area.  The display includes a tableau of a famous occasion when one of the Maori chiefs sheltered the Busbys' 9-yr.-old daughter in his feather cloak.  Finally, Captain Wm. Hobson was sent as an official representative of the British Crown to negotiate a treaty with the Maori, and after much deliberation, it was signed in Feb. of 1840.  Since the Maori, like many native peoples, had no concept of ownership of the land and since the translations of the Treaty were imperfect at best, its implications are still much discussed and debated in NZ today, but it was the beginning of a conversation among NZ's people that is alive and ongoing.

Today the Treaty House still stands on a majestic overlook next to a reconstructed Maori fishing village.  In 1940, Lord Bledisloe bought the property and gifted it to the people of NZ.  At that time, to celebrate the centennial of the Treaty, the Maori built a beautiful meetinghouse that stands nearby.

We had just a little time before the shops closed, and we stopped in Pahia for a kaleidoscope we had seen there and some cheese and crackers before heading back to Puketi for a night walk.  We joined Helen, our guide, and a couple from S. Africa for the walk through cow pastures, then into the forest as night fell.  In the woods we saw weta and a number of spiders and heard kiwi and moreporks, the tiny native NZ owls.  We climbed down into a creek where we saw eels and the red eyes of crayfish reflecting the light from our headlamps.  We turned off our lights and saw glow-worms on the banks in the darkness.  On our way home, there was a hedgehog by the roadside, and we looked up at the night sky and the bright stars of the Southern Cross before falling into our beds exhausted.

We decided to spend our last day driving to the very northernmost tip of the North Island to Cape Reinga.  We enjoyed the views but decided to take the road instead of driving on the 90-mile stretch of beach, especially when we read that damages incurred would not be covered by our renter's insurance.  On the way, we stopped at the Ancient Kauri Kingdom to view the amazing carvings.  I took a picture of John climbing a staircase made of one kauri stump, which led to a gallery of amazing carvings and intricate inlaid bowls.  At Cape Reinga itself, the wind was gusty as we walked out towards the lighthouse.  This is the place where the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea crash together in turbulent beauty.  Maori legend says that souls go to the one lone pohutakawa tree on the rocky outcropping to jump from this world to the next.

It was a long day, but when we returned to Puketi, we were rewarded by a feast prepared by Barbara.  We had roast lamb and roasted vegetables from the garden and a topnotch apple crumble with honey almond ice cream.  A very interesting couple from South Africa joined us for dinner.  The man was from the UK and had worked as a general surgeon in Zimbabwe, where he met his wife.  They decided to buy a farm in NZ, and it sounded as if he was especially enjoying the big digger he had bought for his sideline as a gentleman farmer. John's wheels were turning as he considered all of the uses he might find for a digger at home.

After these four fine days, it was time to leave Northland, just as the rain and gusts were due to arrive.  So after a long drive and one last stop at the Kauri Museum, we flew back to Wellington.  We're planning to be here till the 27th, as John says his farewells to the CCDHB and to prepare for our final South Island trip before the passage home.

Return to Welly

Hello, blog readers!  As some of you know, I have returned to NZ, thanks to the fact that Claire is mending and good friends have helped to restore us both.  I am very happy to be back in Wellington, as I have missed John and am looking forward to saying my goodbyes to New Zealand a little more mindfully.

I left Greensboro on Monday, March 5 and arrived here on Wednesday, March 7 (whew!).  It was fun to be able to look out the window of the plane and see beautiful and familiar sights as I came into Wellington on a gorgeous sunny day.   I could see the Maranui Surf Club, brown rocks and blue, blue water.

Chilled a bit Wed. afternoon but the next morning headed out to a park near Petone with  the "tramping group" from Wellington Friends Meeting for a hike through some lovely bush.  It was lush, green and cool, and once again I wondered if I'd brought enough warm clothes.  After the hike, we went to Judith's house (the friend in the picture) for cheese and homemade crackers and a cup of tea.

That night John and I walked down to Cafe Istanbul for a yummy Turkish meal by a warm gas brazier.  Pictures of Turkish baths and one of Attaturk himself on the walls.  Then we headed out to the Hotel Bristol to hear John's work comrade, James, play drums with his blues band.

The following night we went to eat dinner with another work-mate of John's, Marianne, and her husband Karel and their three "full-on" children and listened as they described their most recent travel adventure, which included Bangkok, Morocco and Disney.

On Saturday, the weather was again too beautiful to stay indoors.  We had planned to go and hear some writers read who were part of an International Festival, but we chucked it in favor of outdoor activities, including a brick-laying project at Wellington Friends meeting and a trip to the Botanic Gardens, where there was a wedding in progress and where we had gone especially to see these lovely cork trees from Portugal, planted in 1868.  The cork is harvested from the trunk and branches every 10 years.  Amazing.  That night we ate dinner with our Aussie friends and heard about their impending visit to Kenya for the meeting of the Friends World Committee.  It does seem that people in New Zealand often expect to travel the world.

There was a surprise at the mailbox.  I had received a letter from Radio New Zealand with the news that they want to buy the broadcast rights for a story I'd sent.  Needless to say, I am thrilled and hope that this will work out if we can sort out the details of my tax code, etc.

Sunday there was singing at meeting for worship, and it was great to reconnect with a number of Friends, including two little girls who frequently wear fantastic feather headdresses into meeting and share their art work with us.  From there, we went to an Indian restaurant and then to see a movie made from Jo Nesbo's "Headhunters," a Norwegian crime story which has hilarious touches reminiscent of Carl Hiassen.

Today is Monday.  This morning  we worked a bit on the tax code thing, then drove around my favorite part of the coast, slowing down at the little blue penguin crossings and stopping for a cappuccino and a caramel slice at Scorcherama (in Scorching Bay).  This picture shows you what the day was like, and we think we have solved the mystery of the birds on the rocks (white-fronted terns).  From there, we drove into the Brooklyn neighborhood, near the wind turbine, for a very affecting film about a Kiwi searching for a brother lost to the Khmer Rouge 30 years ago called "Brother Number One."

Haven't taken many new pictures, but stay tuned faithful blog followers.  Tomorrow we are headed up to the Coromandel Peninsula, above Auckland, in search of the giant trees of the primeval NZ forest.  Most of New Zealand has been timbered, but Northland, above Auckland, includes a rain forest, where some of the original native trees can still be found.  I'll do my best to get a couple of good pictures.