A curve ball

Ok, blog followers.  It appears that fate has thrown us a bit of a curve. Returning to Wellington after Kaikoura, we shopped and worked hard on Wellington museums and attractions including a planetarium show on the southern skies in honor of astronomer son-in-law Paul (who recently was part of a Univ. of Texas team which discovered a new planet which may be conducive to life).

Then on Dec. 22, Claire stepped off the curb on our very steep hill and rolled her ankle.  It was very disturbing-looking, broken in multiple places and dislocated.  We spent hours in emergency, and she came out of surgery with a plate, screws and a giant cast at 2:30 a.m. Afterwards, there were a couple of days in hospital  and a veto on flying for a couple of weeks till the blood thinners kick in to reduce the risk of blood clots on the long flight home.  Kind of a nightmare.  So we must re-group. We tried not to let this incident completely ruin our merry-making. Claire would not let me post the picture of her with cast and the hat and other goodies from her Christmas cracker trying to make the best of it (prizes from the crackers included single applications of sunscreen and insect repellent btw).

Thought I'd include one of Paul and Emily and one of Anna on the rock wall though.  We skyped with some friends from home and sang carols with the Aussies, who had family visiting from across the trench and made approximations of some of our usual Christmas fare.

Paul and Emily left yesterday, and Anna headed home this morning.  Summer weather has finally settled in, warm and sunny (till next Thursday at least, when Paul and Ann are due to arrive).   The powhutakawa trees are coming into full bloom.  Here's a picture of a tree and a close-up of one of the blossoms, very pretty.

It appears that Claire and I will be returning home on January 6.  This may be the end of my New Zealand adventure, or maybe not, if all goes well with Claire's recovery.  Time will tell.  I will be sad if this abrupt goodbye is my last sight of Wellington.  But, just for fun, here's a shot of the beach on Christmas Day.  Ah, Christmas in the southern hemisphere!

Whale Tales

This is not a great picture, but I thought you might like to see the tail of Tiaki, the whale we saw on the whale-watch in Kaikoura.

The real news, as far as we are concerned, is that our kids--daughters Anna and Claire from NC and Emily and son-in-law Paul from Texas-- are visiting for Christmas. We've been having fun, in spite of the cold and windy weather.  Probably the highlight of the first few days came when we spotted a pod of orcas in the harbor.  I was too stunned to get out my camera in time for that event.  We saw tall black fins--probably six of them in all.  Enough to make you think twice about going for a swim out there.

After a few wet and windy days in Wellington, we were off to the South Island. Took the ferry to Picton, then drove our rented van to Kaikoura.  Koura are the giant crayfish, which are lobster-size.  Here's a picture of Emily eating one on the beach.  Stormy weather thwarted our whale-watching on Saturday, so we consoled ourselves with a visit to a beautiful lavender farm, a sheep shearing, and a visit to a Marlborough winery or two.

On Sunday the weather was supposed to be better, but it was still raining.  We hiked up (!) a misty mountain, then took our dramamine, drank our ginger beer and committed ourselves to a rough ride in spite of the posted warning:  High swells, high risk for seasickness.  The powerful catamaran pushed through the waves.  It was a rocking ride.  We saw many sea birds, including a number of albatross and the western petrel.  Now and then we would stop, and the captain would put down a scope to listen for a whale.  Fortunately, there were also educational videos about the sea life and whales in particular, which distracted us from the sights and sounds of those who had apparently not heeded the memo and did not take their motion sickness meds.  We learned about the kinds of whales we might see and about their movements.  Apparently, whales are drawn to the coast around Kaikoura because of a deep sea trench, like a canyon, where all of the things they like to eat, including giant squid, hang out.  We learned about how their bodies are compressed in deep water so that they must return to the surface to re-oxygenate and digest their food.  We learned about theories as to how the oil in the sperm whale's head may amplify its echo-location.  Then finally, we saw him:  the sperm whale Tiaki, in the distance and sped that way.  The guide said the whales are recognizable by their tail flukes.  Tiaki is middle-aged, around 40, so he and the whale-watchers are pretty well acquainted.  Captain Rick and the guides still seemed enthusiastic though, and for us, it was thrilling.  We headed back past the seal colony and returned to Kaikoura a little before dark.

Then it was back to Picton for the night, with an early morning sail on the Aratere.  It was probably the first time our kids had seen the sun in Wellington.  It's sparkly and stunning.  The red pohutakawa blossoms are out in force.  Doesn't seem much like Christmas at all.  It seems like a long time since we've been at home.  We miss family and friends and the usual Christmas customs.  Anna and I went down to the waterfront celebration near the big Christmas tree in hopes of singing some carols in the rain.  They were singing about Snoopy and the Red Baron.  Grown men were dressed as sheep.  Doughnuts and snow cones on offer.  As a result, I have had to download the King James version of the Bible onto my Kindle so that we can read the Christmas story.  Still glad Jesus was born and happy to have family near.  Merry Christmas everyone!

Journey on the TranzAlpine

How many pictures of a mountain do you really need?  Apparently, the answer is always "one more."  At least this is what we found on our trip across the South Island on the TranzAlpine Railway.  Our friends Tom and Janine had come to visit, and the train trip was Tom's one request.  Earlier in the week, we had visited some of our Wellington haunts.  The weather was beastly:  cold, rainy, and windy.  So we were hoping things might go better on the South Island, sometimes called "the mainland" by the locals.

I'm not sure Tom realized what the journey would entail.  Early Thursday morning we headed out to the ferry and boarded the Kaitaki for the Interislander morning sail.  Though it's only eight miles to the South Island from Wellington as the crow flies, it takes 3 hours to make the journey, due to channels and currents and rough seas.  The first hour spent getting out of Wellington harbor was pretty rough; even the offer of movies and shopping couldn't quite dispel the rolling of the floor.  Surprisingly, the second hour on the open sea was smoother, and the trip into the harbor at Picton, past the salmon farm, was lovely, all green hills and calm waters.  Then we were in the car again.  We passed through hills and hills covered with grapevines and had lunch at the Brancott winery.  About midway into the 4 1/2 hour journey towards Christchurch, through numerous hairpin curves, we came to the town of Kaikoura (where we plan to return with the kids for whale-watching). The name of the town refers to koura, which are the giant crayfish that look like lobsters and are a freshwater delicacy.  Near there, we had heard, was a path into the woods where we might see a waterfall with the possible bonus of seal pups.  Sure enough, in a beautiful spot,  mother seals were lounging on the rocks where they had been fishing.  About ten minutes into the woods on the other side of the highway we walked under a railway bridge, and there it was:  the waterfall with several seal pups, some frolicking in the water, some just hanging out on the bank.  They didn't seem to mind photos, but it was pretty dark in there, so the pictures are hard to see.  Then it was on to Christchurch.

Christchurch is not quite itself these days, of course.  Two earthquakes in one year have taken a toll, and the city center is still closed.  Construction fences are everywhere; the cathedral is gone; and the red zone is still a couple of miles in the center of the city.  There are still aftershocks.  139 people died, and though the scale is not that of 9/11, people are still traumatized.  It was an unknown that Christchurch was even on a fault.  After driving around a little and indulging in some Indian food, we headed back to the motel to prepare for an early start.

The southern alps are magnificent.  Maybe I should just let a few of the pictures speak.  Tall mountains, some with snow on top, turquoise river, pink, purple and yellow lupines, a lake.  At Arthur's Pass, we took pictures of a cheeky green kea who came to visit.  In addition, we shared our railroad car with what appeared to be a family reunion worthy of Bollywood (lots of laughter, dancing and singing) and a philosophical couple, consisting of a Welsh man and his South African wife, who were eager to exchange views on lifestyle and culture with good humor.  It was an enjoyable all-day journey from Christchurch to Greymouth and back.  Greymouth has had its own recent tragedy too.  Shortly after we arrived in New Zealand there was an explosion at the Pike River mine, which took the lives of 29 miners.  We only had an hour in Greymouth before the return to Christchurch began, but we did our best to stimulate the local economy in the gift shops there :-).

The next morning we visited the Christchurch Botanic Garden, outstanding for its roses and huge, beautiful trees.  We also visited the Canterbury Museum, where we particularly enjoyed the Antarctica exhibit and mind-boggling costumes from the World of Wearable Art.  Then it was back in the car and back to Picton, where we visited Eco-world, an aquarium and rehab center for orphaned or injured little blue penguins.  We saw two little female penguins from situations where parents had two eggs, then rejected the smaller baby.  They were adorable, swimming and diving and calling.  One was very "stroppy" and kept evading the net when it was time to be returned for her nap.  They were about two weeks old and will be returned to the wild at eight weeks.  We weren't allowed to take pictures for fear of stressing the fish (no eyelids).

A long ferry ride and a short sleep followed.  John took Tom and Janine to the airport at 5 a.m.  Anna and Claire are due to arrive tonight at midnight, then Emily and Paul on Tuesday.  It's a rich time with these visits from home.  We are loving sharing our life here with family and friends who are coming to visit.  And with you too.

Low-key Christmas prep

This is not a great picture, I know, but it gives you a little flavor of the Christmas preparations around here.  It's a big wire Christmas tree that lights up in various colors and swirly patterns at night.  At the bottom you can see the red letter boxes (like the old British ones) where little kids are lining up for a direct conversations with Santa, who must be somewhere remote, like at the North Pole or in the nearby Chaffer's Dock apt. lobby, eating one of Martin Bosley's famous bacon butties, served up at the Sunday morning market.  (They smell great, but we are stuck on the crepes, made by a guy with an authentic-sounding French accent.)  Anyway, parents are lounging around on these yellow, green and blue beanbag chairs while the kids are waiting to transmit their wish lists to the jolly old elf.  I could have used a beanbag back in the day when we were waiting on the girls, at least one of whom had such severe Santaclaustrophobia that she would never talk to him, even after all of that standing in line.

Christmas seems a little lower key around here in general, with tales of barbecues and the beach rather than baking turkeys and huddling around the fire.  I have a little bit of ambivalence about this.  I kind of like not having Christmas quite so "in your face" all the time.  But I am going to miss some things, I can tell:  like the meeting's Simple Christmas craft-making day, caroling, and the Christmas Eve night candlelight service especially.  I hear there will be some carol-singing on the waterfront though.

It's been quiet.  John's colleagues had their Christmas "do" at a restaurant Friday night, complete with Christmas crackers.  We all had paper crowns and little gifts from inside.  By far the favorite were the little men that looked kind of like Spiderman which stick to windows (or beer pitchers) then sort of climb down.

  On Sat. we bought a tiny Christmas tree and cooked burgers with a couple who will be leaving to go home to Virginia in January.  While we were sitting outside, we experienced a quite perceptible earthquake (5.7) which was felt from Picton (north tip of the South Island) and which broke some windows on the waterfront here.  It felt kind of like being on a train that was starting, then stopping.  The earth just kind of rolled.  It lasted about 20 seconds, just long enough to think, "What the...?"  Maybe the locals know what it is right away.  Anyway, that's quite enough for firsthand experience for me if anyone's listening to my druthers.

Tom and Janine are due in tonight at midnight.  After four (!) days of sun last week, it's supposed to rain pretty much the whole time they're here.  The fridge isn't working.  Some kind of Murphy's law thing....

Days of ducks and roses

It's been kind of quiet the last ten days, so here's one more pic of Patti and the ducklings at Taupo.  After Patti left, we had to get ourselves together--cleaning house and doing a little cooking.  Most Kiwis wouldn't know it was Thanksgiving, but we would.

  Last weekend we helped a new friend from meeting with a gardening project and renewed connections with meeting folk and a few other friends.  This week's highlights included meeting with my writer friends and visiting Roxy Theatre in Miramar, home of Sir Peter Jackson's studio and the Weta workshop,  Sir Peter's been kind of busy this week.  In addition to working on filming the Hobbit,  he has bought the Bats Theatre downtown, saving those playmakers from financial ruin.  The Roxy is an old movie theatre he had also bought in Miramar.  He kept the original facade but re-did the inside art deco, with a beautiful wooden bar and lovely lighting.  The large rocking chair seats are leather; it smells good in there as a result.  The only slightly odd touch is a statue of Gollum in the lobby, just like the one at Weta.  Here's a picture of John with that one.

We were missing family and friends a lot this week, so it was helpful to make our gratitude list, which included many of you.  We invited our neighbor, Vanaja, a pathologist who ethnically Malaysian and who is getting ready to move back to Australia, and our friend Mary, who is a Kiwi but has spent the last 45 years in the States, over for our approximation of the Thanksgiving feast:  no turkey, but chicken, John's curried sweet potatoes, some sort-of-similar-to-the-usual stuffing, broccoli, cranberry apple stuff (frozen cranberries located at Wellington's parallel to Whole Foods, Moore-Wilson), and pumpkin pie, which required buying and roasting a whole pumpkin from the market.

Mary had lent me a book about the painter, Rita Angus, which I had read as a part of my quest to know more about Kiwi artists and writers.  If any of you are interested, I also recommend stories by Maori author Whiti Ihimaera, especially, "A Game of Cards," as well as the work of Katherine Mansfield.  Don't think she would have been an easy person to be friends with, but she certainly had a gift for description.  I would also recommend the movies "Boy," about a boy living on a Maori marae and "The Orator," NZ's foreign language entry (in Samoan) about a dwarf descendant of a Samoan chief.

Today is election day in NZ, and the newspapers and TV have been abuzz with the contest.  Their system is a bit different from ours, which they call "first past the post."  They currently have something called MMP, which seems a lot more complex, by which they try to represent a spectrum of interests.  Whether or not to keep it is one of the matters being decided too.  As I understand it (imperfectly), people can vote for the system, for a candidate in each race, and for a party.  There are seven parties I know of:  National (currently in power--rather mainstream conservative), Labour, NZ First, the Maori party, the Mana party, the Greens, and ACT.  If a party gets over 5% of the vote, they will have seats in Parliament, and coalitions will be formed.  Elections are held every three years (which people complain is a short cycle), but their campaign season is limited to five weeks before the election (enviable).

Since we are not voting, we've just been enjoying the sun.  So today we visited the rose garden, which was all in bloom.   Tonight we plan to see a British movie, and tomorrow we will have one more Thanksgiving celebration with the other American docs out in Paraparaumu.  Then it will be time to get ready for our next set of company.  Tom and Janine are coming December 4.  We are really looking forward to it!

Honey and Hangi: Waitomo and Rotorua

Wow.  It's been a busy two weeks.  Our friend, Patti Hughes, has been visiting from the U.S., and we have had a grand time showing her all of our haunts and introducing her to our friends here in NZ.  Since her arrival, she has eaten whitebait fritters, has learned how to order a flat white (coffee) and has ordered Malaysian food at the right degree of heat from Monsoon Poon.  We have walked through the Botanic Gardens and past the Beehive (Parliament) in nearly gale force winds and spent days in which, as the weather forecast had predicted, "rain, sun, and wind have all thrown their hats into the ring."  We've visited the Weta Cave, the Quaker meeting and markets, nature preserves, and museums and have shopped in all kinds of weather.  One of the highlights was a seal coast safari where we visited the wind turbines atop the ridge, then rode in a four-wheel drive down a winding path through a game farm where two ostriches protected an egg,  then finally down to a wild part of the coast, complete with a leaning lighthouse and a few seals hanging out, while most of their compadres were on the South Island for breeding season.  But probably the most exciting part of our time with Patti was our trip to Rotorua and the Waitomo Glow-worm Caves.

It was a long drive, but the scenery was spectacular.  Patti said the green hills reminded her of wrinkly Shar-peis, with a snow-capped volcano in the background.   We saw a prawn farm and watched blue-green water cascading down Huka Falls, and bought various honey-related products at the Honey Hive. We stopped on the way to take pictures of Lake Taupo, and were greeted by a peeping flock of seven black-striped ducklings, who followed us everywhere, finally distracting them to keep them from stowing away in our car.  Maybe they wanted to visit Rotorua.

Rotorua is home to a couple of Maori tribes and is a hotbed (literally) of geothermal activity.  It is famous for hot springs and geysers.  Steam rises from the lake, and hot pools bubble.  There is a pervasive scent of sulfur.  After dinner at a Middle Eastern restaurant called Abracadabra and a walk through the bubbling landscape, we went to bed, then headed out the next morning for the Waitomo Glow-worm Caves (wai=water, tomo=hole), arriving in time for our 10 o'clock tour of the Ruakuri Cave, named after a Maori chief's encounter with two dogs there.  We spiraled down and marveled at the beautiful rock formations, listening to the drip of water.  Others were tubing in the freezing black water below, and we occasionally got a chance to wave down at them or at least at their head lamps shining in the dark.  No doubt about it though, the glow-worms on the walls and ceiling of the innermost dark passages were the most spectacular part. Our guide explained that they are really larvae who suspend themselves by something like spider web and glow to attract food.  But, even so, the sight of them as we walked through Ruakuri, then glided silently through Waitomo in a boat, was like a starry sky.  Amazing.  Unfortunately, my picture-taking skills do not extend to recording glow-worms, so those of you who want to see them will have to check with Patti.

The next day we decided to check out the Thermal Village Tour, where representatives of two tribes of Maori still live and work.  Our guide, one in a long tradition of women who are charged with passing on the history of the people, walked us past bubbling pools,  answered questions about the community's meetinghouse and history, then waited patiently as we took pictures of erupting geysers before ushering us to a cultural performance with singing, dancing, and the teaching of a few Maori words.  Only after we returned to the Visitor Center did we begin to appreciate the honor and tradition of these women, who have guided such illustrious visitors as Eleanor Roosevelt and Queen Elizabeth.  Two tribes merged to live in Waka Village after a disastrous volcanic eruption in 1886 destroyed one of the communities, along with the legendary Pink and White Terraces which once adorned the mountainside near Rotorua, now submerged in  water below.  The terraces were made of silica and shone pink and white in the light.  They held pools of blue mountain water, where people, both Maori and pakeha, came to bathe in healing waters.

In keeping with that theme, we decided to visit the Rotorua Museum and Government Gardens, where many pakeha came in earlier times to "take the cure" offered by hot springs.  Some of the museum exhibits featured the baths and rugby (of course), but the most interesting were those about how the Maori came to NZ, traveling by canoes with sails woven of reeds, from somewhere called Hawai'ki.  All Pacific Islanders trace their roots to this story.  No one knows the literal location of Hawai'ki.  Sometimes it sounds as if it's a mythical place, since it is also where souls return after death.

In addition to this exhibit, there were beautiful paintings by a painter named Charles Blomfield, who was the most famous painter of the pink and white terraces on the mountainsides.  There was a film, with surprising special effects-- loud noise, seats shaking as if one might actually be experiencing the destruction wreaked by the volcanic eruption which sent the terraces tumbling into the sea and caused many deaths, destroying the home of the Maori who lived there.

That evening we had another cultural experience, called People of the Land, Beauty of the Night.  We stood on the banks of a stream, while Maori warriors came paddling down in their waka.  Then we enjoyed the hangi, a feast of foods cooked by the geothermal pits in the ground--delicious roasted meats, potatoes and sweet potatoes, with NZ wine and a few other dishes added in (like pavlova).  We were seated in language groups, so we chatted with other Americans and a lone Frenchman at our table and were later led
 in song by a Dane.  After dinner, we went on a night walk through the Rainbow Springs nature preserve, where they incubate and protect hatching kiwi.  In addition to the kiwi, there were a number of other birds, along with tuatara and a few fish.

The next morning, it was back to Wellington.  But first, we made one more stop to see the redwoods near Rotorua.  We returned, tired but happy.

Computers, Quakers, and Rhododendrons

Apologies to all of you blog-followers wondering about the whereabouts of your NZ blogpost of the week.  We had a computer meltdown and lost all of our files and are just now back up and running.

That did not stop us from pursuing our travels last weekend though, and an amazing weekend it was.  We traveled first to Whanganui, where we stayed at the Quaker settlement and then to the Taranaki Garden Festival in New Plymouth, a couple more hours away.

Whanganui (the "wh" sound pronounced as an "f" by the Maori) or Wanganui (just like it looks) is a lovely river town on the west coast,  and is also the name of the river which runs through it.  It was a site of violent clashes between the Maori and pakeha in earlier times. Now it has a charming downtown bordering the river, with art deco touches and an art-y feel.  There are riverboat cruises, an extremely interesting and evocative small museum and the Sarjeant Art Gallery.  We visited the museum and admired its collection of Maori wakas (large elaborately carved canoes), beautiful greenstone and bone ornaments, musical instruments and artifacts of Maori life from earlier times.  Also, an impressive array of taxidermy birds, animals and mounted insects (including many colorful butterflies) and lovingly displayed items from life in earlier times.  Downtown, we sampled Thai and Indian food, watched glassblowers at work, and considered (but resisted) buying beautiful glass items we might break in transit.

We experienced warm and wonderful hospitality at the Quaker  settlement.  Originally the site of a Quaker boarding school, the 20-acre settlement is now a community owned by NZ Yearly Meeting.  Settlers lease their homes and participate in the community in various ways. The settlers have a weekly business meeting where they deal with the logistics of living together Quaker-style and have a weekly shared meal, which they re-scheduled so that we could join in.  They raise gardens, sheep, chickens, bunnies and ducks.  There is a beautiful free-standing quiet room in the round with a central skylight where the light pours in where there is meeting for worship every morning.  They also host groups and seminars, most related to Quaker social concerns.  We felt very fortunate to spend time with Michael and Merilyn Payne.  Michael is the architect who designed the settlement in its current incarnation.  They showed us around, gave us tea, lent us books, encouraged us to harvest lemons and grapefruit from their trees, and offered stimulating conversation.  They are dedicated to eco-sound living and have been lifelong activists in the Quaker world.  Current projects include encouraging purchase of solar cells Michael has made as carbon offsets for travel and the harvesting of a grove of mature pine trees he is making into extremely beautiful simple coffins which can double as standing bookshelves till they are needed :-).

On Saturday after meeting for worship, we headed to the Taranaki region around New Plymouth for the rhododendron festival and garden tour.  There were 60 or so gardens, and we only had time to visit a few.  This is a picture of Tupare, an English style garden with an arts and crafts style house, where I could have easily spent the day exploring.  Next we went to Pukehara Park, which had many lovely spaces, including waterfalls, numerous ferns and other native plants, and red bridges spanning waterways.  Our next garden was a tiny Japanese one at a little house in the suburbs, where an older Japanese man explained the tea ceremony and showed us a picture of Mt. Fuji, comparing it to the view out the window of the majestic NZ volcano, Mt. Taranaki (or Mt. Egmont among the pakeha).  Next we had tea and cake under the trees at the simple and lovely Hirst Cottage, home of one of NZ's prime ministers in the early 1800's.  The guide there encouraged us to visit Putekei, partway up the mountain in the rainforest.  There the rhododendrons were on full display, gigantic, colorful, and fragrant. I finally had to take the camera away from John.  Rushing back to make it in time for the shared meal at the settlement, we stopped for just a few moments at Chriesi Wald, a very quirky home garden in Patea.  Created by its tiny, elderly resident, Rudi Milesi, it was a series of 12 garden rooms filled with sculpture, strange artifacts, and live birds.

Computer traumas aside, it was a great weekend.