Back in Auckland

Well, we made it.. Heaven knows how many vertical feet we climbed on our bikes, and how many vertical feet we rode in the van while our faster and fitter, and in my case somewhat younger, companions struggled up the longest and steepest hills in their lowest granny gears. Yesterday we finished riding at Clevedon in mid-afternoon and were shuttled back to the hotel in the Viaduct Harbour area of Auckland. In the evening we were taken by minibus to St. Heliers for our last supper together. For those who know St. Heliers, we ate at The Vista restaurant, and it was a super meal. Breakfast this morning--Saturday--at the hotel, and then just the two of us were off by ferry to Waiheke Island. We did an hour-long bus tour of the island (well worth it) followed by a two hour hike, mostly around the coast. Joan had a swim on Oneroa Beach: we had two beers and a bucket of chips (the British kind): we came back to Auckland on the ferry, threatened by the blackest clouds and heavy downpours of rain that only clipped the boat for a few minutes, and we emerged at the dock in bright sunlight. After picking up our bags at the hotel, we took a taxi to our friends' house, where we will stay for the next few days.

But the blog will mostly have to wait until we are back home. We have no facility here to upload photos (I am using--and loving--the resident I-Mac), and we would like to plan our next entries rather carefully and be able to post appropriate pictures. We have a number of subjects in mind, including a very brief supplement on public toilets. Maybe something on trees--NZ trees are extraordinary: we even saw a square one on the bike trip. Maybe something on warning signs of one sort or another--they are everywhere, warning you of a very wide variety of dangers. And, of course, the cycle trip needs some memorialization (I spell it with the 'z', Brother John, as otherwise it shows up as a spelling error). We have given our fellow cyclists the blog address, and they could be accessing it at any time: so I hasten to say what a really pleasant and agreeable crowd they were. Marion and his wife, Alice, from Houston: Terry and Bonnie from Minnesota: Mark and Cathy from Michigan: and Tony from Stratford on Avon--and our Kiwi guides, Owen and Alex.

So do not look for much on the blog for the next day or two, but please check in again at the end of next week.

I should also like to record that the rooms in the Sebel Hotel actually have washers and dryers, and we were gratefully able to do a load of sweaty laundry yesterday afternoon after our last day of cycling.

Tomorrow, if the weather is favorable, we hope to walk to the top of a volcano that last erupted only 600 years ago. We will probably read a warning notice that the possibility of another eruption cannot be ruled out, and care should be taken...etc., etc.

Posted by David on Saturday January 30 at 9.17 pm NZ time.

Church Bells?

"What the hell is that?"
"Bells"
"What sort of bells?"
"Church bells."
"What time is it?"
"Six oclock."
"You can't have church bells at 6 o'clock in the morning."
"Maybe there's a service."
"But it's Friday."
"Maybe it's some sort of memorial day--like Anzac Day, and they ring the bells because they landed on the wrong beach at 6 o'clock in the morning."
"Perhaps it's a fire alarm."
"Or an earthquake alarm."
"Or a volcano alarm."
"I'll look out the window and see if there is panic in the streets. No, nothing happening in the streets..but, just a second--IT'S THE GODDAM ALARM CLOCK, switched to wake up the previous guest in this room.
I hit a button and the beautiful church bells, which had reached quite a crescendo, stopped immediately.
And started again in ten minutes--quietly at first, and rising and rising until we unplugged the damn alarm radio.

Auckland Public Library

Sheltering from the rain in Auckland. The rain has pursued us from Raglan, where we woke this morning to thunder, lightning, and buckets of rain. The early part of the drive was miserable--rain pouring down: but luckily the worst of it finished before we did the 7 km up, up, up, and down, down, down, over the range of mountains that separates Raglan from the flatter land near Hamilton. Our GPS did a sterling job and delivered us through the Auckland suburbs to St. Heliers, where we deposited the luggage we will not need on the cycling trip. Great problems finding the hotel--one way streets, blocks cordoned off by the police. I pleaded to be able to get through, saying I would be totally lost if I could not get to the hotel--and I actually drove over a cone the police had set up, with Joan having a fit in case I was arrested...
Just back from the Sky Tower, from which one has superb views all over Auckland. They have a sky-jump, which allows crazy people to jump off the top--about 200 metres down. They are attached to a cable--and free fall until the last twenty metres or so, when they are slowed up and stopped at ground level.
Free Internet here in the Library but only 20 minutes a session.

Service Interruption...Sorry

Dear Readers--the half dozen we know about and any other odd visitors who have happened to find our blog--it is with great regret that we have to announce that there will be an interruption of blogging on this site, starting tomorrow, Sunday January 17, 2010. We are leaving here at the end of our lease of this storm-tossed glass box apartment at Point Jerningham, where we look out at the whole expanse of Wellington Harbour on one side and Evans Bay on the other. Needless to say, a full gale is currently blowing. (Couldn't resist it, although I swore no more weather reports)

We are heading up the west coast of the North Island with stops at Wanganui, New Plymouth, Raglan--and on the last lap we will arrive in Auckland on Thursday January 21. On the next day we will start a nine day cycle trip: bus to Rotorua and then working our way back to Auckland via the Coromandel Peninsula.

The computer will be packed away; but if we can, we might manage a little time in Internet cafes, just to let you know we are still alive. But we doubt if we will be able to do much. Nevertheless, with two indefatigable digital camera-persons like Joan and me, I have no doubt that, when we get back to Washington on February 2, we will load another extensive set of pictures into the computer and blog away about the cycle trip and our return to the US, which will no doubt start with us being strip-searched before we can get on the plane.

So bear with us...

(Posted by David, with photos by Joan, on Saturday January 16)

Google is Watching

A brief line to show you how clever Google is. When you hit the key to publish the blog, there is an intervening screen on which you have to make a further click. My last post mentioned motor bike accidents. At that intermediate stage before I published the posting, up came a Google advert--small, discreet, just a few lines--advertising motor-bike helmets.

Car surfing..emigrant diaries..

In her tackling of New Zealand sports, Joan has not mentioned "car surfing." Yesterday a headline in the newspaper puzzled us: "Woman Injured in Car Surfing." The item did not make clear what "car surfing" actually is, so we went into the newspaper's web-site and searched for "car surfing." We found incident after incident--almost as regular as drownings, climbers falling off cliffs, and motor-cycle accidents. So here is one, cut and pasted from The Dominion Post:
"A Christchurch man was crushed after the van on which he and four others were "car surfing" rolled on Okains Bay beach yesterday.
The man was riding on the van's roof on the Banks Peninsula beach after an all-night rave party in a cave.
The van rolled in soft sand, landing on its roof and pinning the man by his torso.
He was revived at the scene by a passer-by before being airlifted to hospital.
Okains Bay Camping Ground caretaker Alan Watt said he was going to the cave about 7.40am yesterday to ask the partygoers to turn down their music when he saw the van "having a rip up the beach".
It disappeared out of sight and when he reached the van it was on its roof with its former passengers spread around it.
"There was a gentleman partially pinned under it. He had stopped breathing. I managed to co-ordinate enough of the idiots to push the van off him. We did CPR and got him to come round again"

What restraint--waiting until 7.00 am before asking them to turn the music down.

I tell you, these New Zealanders are a crazy lot. I have, however, been disappointed by the bungy jumping set-up down on one of Wellington's main streets. There are two tall towers, and a form of double seat is drawn up between them: when released, it drops like a stone down to the ground, only to be arrested at the last second by the thick rubber bungy attachments, which then have the passengers bouncing up and down until eventually reaching a standstill. My disappointment is that I have never ever seen anyone actually doing it. It does cost about 30 US dollars to get your adrenaline rush, and perhaps this is just too expensive. Rumour also has it that the bungy cords once broke during a test.
BTWay--let me quote from the Oxford History of New Zealand: "Latitude, longitude, wind direction, rain, wind, and sun: it is the exceptional emigrant diary that does not make frequent and explicit reference to weather conditions..no single factor was as dominant an influence on a pioneer existence as the climate."
So our constant references to the weather are only a new and digital version of the pioneers' diaries. I mention this because on this --our last Saturday in Wellington--we woke to pouring rain and a southerly gale. No running for Joan. No walk to get the newspaper. But as the early pioneers, huddled in their makeshift houses, besieged by wind and rain, turned to write their diaries, so we have turned to our blog to help pass the time.
Posted by David on Saturday January 18.

Portrait of Wellington

"It is true that this tight intimacy of people and buildings, imposed by the pressure of harbour and hills, makes Wellington different. It is a difference not always appreciated by inhabitants of the flatland cities. Few people simply 'like' Wellington-- they either love it or despise it. Certainly, it is not a city for the faint-hearted." (from Wellington, by Fiona Kidman and Grant Sheehan).

As our six weeks here in Wellington draw to an end, I am certainly in the category of those who love the city, although my feelings have been put to the test by the last two days of fierce and frigid southerlies whipping around, bringing cold rain (everyone claims apologetically that this is an unusually awful summer and blames it on El Nino's effects). But we have had days like that depicted on the left. So perhaps it is appropriate to close the Wellington chapters of the blog with a photographic essay, recording some impressions and memories.

Wellington is a relatively small and compact city, and this geographical aspect is reinforced by the individual identities of its various neighborhoods. Many of the areas and streets here derive their names from the ships that brought the original settlers (e.g., Cuba, Oriental, Tory). Here is a brief look at some of the places we've gotten to know and enjoy.

Let's start with Cuba Street, with a mall at its center. As it moves away at a right angle from the harbor, it becomes tackier, a more modern day Haight Ashbury, set below early 20th century facades.

Wellington also features a variety of Art Deco buildings, which seem to be concentrated in the area below Mt. Victoria. However, they are a bit lost between the Victorian "gingerbread" houses and the more modern structures around them.

Neighborhoods have their own histories and identities. Thorndon, known for the house where Katherine Mansfield lived, once housed "workers' cottages", which have now been gentrified. The main street is lined with antique shops and restaurants.

In nearby Wadestown, we were finally able to experience a private cable car, visiting our displaced landlady for lunch where she was housesitting. You can get a sense of the height from the rail on which the car rides. At the end of "Happy Valley" (mentioned in my Dec. 9 post "The Quirky Side of Kiwi Live") is Island Bay, facing the South Island (and the southerlies), and known for its Italian fishermen.

Close to Victoria University, Kelburn is perched at the top of the Botanic Gardens and is the destination of the cable car. As elsewhere, houses have been ingeniously perched on its hillsides.

And, finally, we get to Oriental Bay, Wellington's "touch of the Mediterranean" (at least on a good day). Oriental Parade features a constant stream of people out strolling, jogging, cycling, on scooters, or just sitting on the seawall fishing. At its heart is the Freyberg Pool, built in 1960, with its notable angled roof and glass walls allowing light into the pool area.

Houses are situated to afford the best views of the harbor and the beach area.

As we're about to begin the "road trip" phase of our NZ adventure, we bid a fond farewell to windy Welly (image below of "the sun rising over the eastern hills on a cloudy windless morning" (HA!!) is taken from Wellington Harbour: A Heritage of Tara, by D.R. Neilson).

(Posted by Joan on Jan. 16)

A lady with a bike...

No--I am not trying to pick up the lady with the bike. Joan, ever watchful in that respect, is a few paces away, snapping the shot of the lady with the bike and hoping that I am distracting her from noticing this photographic invasion of her privacy. I am actually eliciting information from her about her cycling. This was back in early January--I think we were down by the harbour for the unicyclists. And you see from our shadows that the sun is shining, and I am wearing a neckerchief to stop me becoming a redneck. It has not been all bad weather.

As we drive around New Zealand we often see cyclists loaded down with gear, grinding their way slowly up the long, long hills. This lady--middle-aged and not a person who would strike you as athletic--came from the United States. She told me she had bought her bike and all her carrying gear in Christchurch on the South Island, and that she had ridden all the way around the South Island--across from Christchurch to the west coast, down the coast, over the Haast Pass and then all the way up to the ferry at Picton for the crossing to Wellington. She was now going to 'do' the North Island. From Wellington to the top of the North Island is more than 600 kilometres, and it is also a long way across from coast to coast--so she would have a lot of cycling ahead of her.

We wished her the best of luck, and when the wind has been whistling around our apartment building, I sometimes wonder where she is, battling her way against the gales.

Posted by David: photo by Joan. January 15

Actually it is Thursday January 14....

...but our computer obstinately sticks to Washington time. We are getting to the end of a beautiful day that will no doubt be remembered as Wellington's summer. Joan is in the kitchen cooking venison burgers. I have to reach for the binoculars again and again as the sailboats from the sailing school heel over in a stiff southerly wind. The sailors look very competent and I doubt if we will have a repetition of our drama of the capsize last week.

We started the week with another Sunday of miserable weather. After a pleasant get-together with our very hospitable new-found Wellington friends, we started to walk down into the Botanic Gardens for an outdoor concert...it was raining a little, but it got worse and worse. But there were these hardy New Zealanders wrapped in rain-gear, swathed in tarpaulins, sitting on groundsheets, listening to some very good music from a couple of women singers. And others, in the lashing rain, were actually dancing. We ended up soaked...my umbrella blown inside out (umbrellas are not much good in Wellington winds).

On the Monday we drove up the coast to visit some friends of an IMF colleague at Waekenae. They were two very charming ex-government employees, retired close to a wonderful beach. Enthusiastic trampers (as serious hikers are called here): they have tramped almost every major trail in New Zealand with their 15 kilo packs on their backs--staying in huts along the way. The hike they took us on had some drawbacks--as usual after a serious uphill climb, the descent was more problematic, with a couple of falls, and eventually the trail was blocked by a fallen tree, which meant we had no alternative (other than going all the way back up the step descent we had just made) but to trespass on private land, climbing over barbed wire fences and eventually squeezing through a locked gate at the end of a long private drive. At the top of the climb we did have a great panorama. And that is the first photo shown above. But it was not at all a bad day, and we really enjoyed the company of our hosts.

I have just read Joan's triumph of cutting and pasting the Top Forty from the NZ Concert Channel. Yes, it is an excellent program, and it could never exist, I am sure, if it had to rely on advertising. The audience cannot be very large, and the program does so much more than provide musical wallpaper, which is what our local Washington station does.

Now...the picture above? On Wednesday we did a pleasant and not overly taxing hike in what is called the East Harbour Park, accompanied by our Wellington friend and (twice) generous hostess, Helen. As you can see, the hike is called the Butterfly Creek walk, and it ended at a picnic area, where picture below was taken. We were not tempted to swim, although the water in the picture is described as a swimming hole.

Helen had some kitchen knives she wanted sharpened, and after the hike, and a beer and sausage roll at a cafe overlooking the sea, we went to a store with more knives than I have ever seen before. Every sort of knife you could think of--from Swiss Army to Sabatier.

Thursday--today. Up to what is one of the highest points around Wellington--Mount Kaukau, where a huge TV transmitter stands. Always noticeable in night as it has a very bright light. The mountain is not that high in absolute terms--about 450 metres--but it is not far from sea level and so it is quite a climb and the views are spectacular. Google maps showed us the route to the starting point--up, up, up, round the usual hairpins to an area called Khandallah, where the trailhead was at a community swimming pool, filled with kids. Lots of roads with 'colonial' names--Kenya Rd., Burma Rd., Lucknow Rd., but Cornwall was represented by Trelissick Park.

Photo taken at the top of the climb by an immigrant from Slovakia. On the way down we had a long conversation with a Dutchman who had come here in the early 'fifties. There's a great variety of immigrant groups here. (Why are most of the checkers-out in the supermarkets Chinese?)

This was part of the spectacular view. The circle in the middle is the WestPac Stadium--WestPac is a bank--where some of the World Cup Rugby will be played. It is referred to as 'The Tin Can.'

On the road back down. The cafe by the swimming pool had sun-block available for patrons who ate their food outside in the sun. And now, at 8.00pm--just before we walk down to the sea to get an ice-cream, the TV tower is completely blotted out by cloud, and the southerly wind is whistling. So--though the glorious sunny day was untypical, the ending in cloud and wind is only too typical.

No boat has capsized...one from the sailing school is going back on just the main, the other just on the jib. We debate whether it is woth going out...

Posted by David on Thursday January 14, 2010

A (Musical) Note of Appreciation

Before we move on from Wellington, I wanted to post a short note of appreciation about Radio New Zealand Concert, the public broadcasting station (a companion station features talk radio). According to their website, "Music comprises 85% of air time. Much of this is classical, with additional specialist music programmes covering jazz, contemporary and world music. [The station] actively promotes New Zealand music and composition, providing an important showcase for the best of the country’s performing artists."

You have to love a station that prefaces the morning news with a different bird call each day ("And now, the skylark...").

(A devoted listener concentrates above). Their selections are incredibly eclectic, covering centuries of music, both instrumental and vocal, and not the typical diet of "classical pops" that we are used to in Washington. On New Year's Day, they play the favorite choices of listeners in an all-day program called "Settling the Score". Here is this year's list (Gorecki is actually in the top 20-- I kid you not):

1. Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending
2. Mozart: Clarinet Concerto in A
3. Handel: Messiah
4. Strauss: Four Last Songs
5. Bruch: Violin Concerto No 1 in G minor
6. Beethoven: Piano Concerto No 5, Emperor
7. Bach: Mass in B minor
8. Beethoven: Symphony No 6 in F, Pastoral
9. Allegri: Miserere mei, Deus
10. Elgar: Cello Concerto in E minor
11. Bach: Goldberg Variations
12. Gorecki: Symphony No 3, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs
13. Dvorák: Symphony 9, From the New World
14. Schubert: String Quintet in C
15. Saint-Saens: Symphony No 3, Organ
16. Mahler: Symphony No 5 in C# minor
17. Pärt: Spiegel im Spiegel
18. Bach: St Matthew Passion
19. Schubert: Impromptus D899
20. Sibelius: Symphony No 2 in D minor
21. Mozart: Don Giovanni, Overture
22. Lilburn: Aotearoa Overture
23. Mahler: Symphony No 2 in C minor, Resurrection
24. Sibelius: Finlandia
25. Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue
26. Mozart: Marriage of Figaro, Overture
27. Sibelius: Violin Concerto in D minor
28. Bizet: Au fond du temple saint, from The Pearl Fishers
29. Rachmaninov: Symphonic Dances
30. Haydn: Trumpet Concerto in Eb
31. Chopin: Piano Concerto No 1 in E minor
32. Shostakovich: Symphony No 10 in E minor
33. Tchaikovsky: Gremin’s Aria, from Eugene Onegin
34. Beethoven: Grosse Fuge
35. Finzi: Eclogue

36. Fauré: Requiem
37. Elgar: Introduction & Allegro
38. Handel: Water Music
39. Beethoven: Violin Concerto in D
40. Borodin: Polovtsian Dances
41. Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No 2 in G minor
42. Schumann: Widmung
43. Mendelssohn: Octet
44. Handel: Let the bright seraphim, from Samson
45. Tchaikovsky: Piano Trio
46. Schumann: Fantasia Op 17
47. Brahms: German Requiem
48. Wagner: Meistersinger, Overture
49. Psathas: Three Psalms
50. Ravel: Daphnis & Chloe

(Posted by Joan on Jan. 14, with fern photo credit to David)

Unexplained Blog mysteries: a note to readers.

There is much that puzzles us about the mechanics of the blog. For example, Joan started a blog called Kiwis at Play on January 4, saved it as a draft, and has just (on Jan.9) completed it. But it has got posted in the archive (in the left-hand column) dated January 4. It could easily be overlooked--but click on it, as it contains the most blasphemous description of cricket that I have ever read. But also lots of good photos that Joan has taken of sporting activities.
And speaking of photos, we are totally puzzled why some photos do not enlarge when you click on them whereas most of them do. Positioning of text and photos also gives us problems. Please bear with us--we are still learning.
And remember, once you have enlarged a photo by clicking on it, you can return to the blog by clicking on the back button in the top left hand corner of the screen.

A correction and more about the piglets...

To respond to those readers who have rightly asked, "just what WAS David doing with those piglets?" (see "Wandering through Wairarapa"), the answer is that when a little piglet ran through the wine tasting area at the Wee Red Barn (no, I am not making this up), Joan went squealing off after him to take a photo. Lo and behold, there was a litter of piglets who were both curious and fearless, and immediately approached us. David decided to entertain them with our new bottle of Pinot Noir, and they seemed quite fascinated. That's the story.

The sow had thirteen piglets and all of them survived: even the runt of the litter, although that one did have to be bottle-fed for a time.

Now, as a correction to my prior posting, it is the Martinborough wine region, NOT Marlborough (which is on the South Island). Leading wineries are Murdoch James, Alana, Palliser, and Vynfields.

Finally, Joan tells me that every day in the North Island appears to be a bad hair day. Note the effect of "fresh" northerlies producing this asymmetrical effect on her hair.

Posted by David after the managing editor had pointed out his error about Malborough and Martinborough.

Wairarapa footnotes

I thought I might add a few words to Joan's account of our few days away from Wellington. This is a photo of Joan enjoying the complimentary bottle of champagne we had in our room on arrival at the White Swan. The room was palatial, reproduction antique furniture, strange pictures on the walls, cooking facility, balcony--all in a sort of pseudo Georgian style. We were happy to arrive and find it so very agreeable after a rather frustrating day when we had found our way to the coast to a place called Tora, which our landlady had described as her favourite place in the whole world. It did not quite live up to this billing. It was a remote, bleak stretch of coast--stunning in its way, but with nothing else to recommend it unless loneliness and bleakness was what you were seeking. And the last six miles into it were on what in NZ is called unsealed road. The signs say "Gravel Road" but that is a misnomer--rocky road, or corrugated rocky road, would be more accurate--and the surface was such that sometimes the rental car seemed likely to shatter into a thousand pieces.
Maybe I should digress about NZ roads. There are a lot of unsealed, rocky roads, especially if you are going to places like national parks or to places where hiking trails start. We did have a pamphlet with hikes in national parks and most of them contained a warning that the trailhead was reached by an unsealed road of so and so many kilometers. In one case, 22 kilometres--that distance on a rocky road in a rental car would just rule it out. A few kilometres--OK: but not much more than that. On regular country roads there is very little traffic. For example, in the 60 odd kilometres from Masterton to Castlepoint, I doubt if we saw more than ten or so other vehicles. And on Friday, on a 30 km stretch we saw one other car--the passengers waved to us: they must have been surprised to see us.
Where was I? Oh yes, we were happy to get to the hotel, as our next venture after the bleak and lonely coast were Malborough wineries--all of which were closed.


In our bedroom at the hotel was this picture, and I am offering a prize to anyone who can tell me who this family is. I first thought Victoria and Albert--but count the girls: surely Al and Vic did not have that many. Is that building in the background Osborne on the Isle of Wight. Anyway--any suggestions?

And this imposing portrait was in the living room of our hotel suite. You will also note the top of the reproduction Chippendale dining room chair, of which we had four set around the reproduction Chippendale dining table.

Joan in jovial mood on the balcony of the hotel.

Now this is Deliverance Cove at Castlepoint, and I think that Joan has given it a bum rap. It is scenically quite stunning. The beach is sandy and gently sloping, mostly protected from the ocean by a rock formation with one gap through which the surf rolls . True, the wind was so ferocious that we had to abandon the walk around the cliff and down the track you can just make out coming down to the beach in the centre of the picture. True--the sand blown on the beach filled our ears and noses and hair. But the New Zealanders are a tough crowd: like British holiday makers cowering behind their windbreaks on Cornish beaches, the beach-goers were battling it out. Freezing in the sea, struggling with their picnics--lots of cars on the beach, drawn up in circles like wagons within which stoves and barbeques were operating, kids shivering in the surf...people enjoying themselves--always a pleasant sight. I liked it there. Even took my shoes off and wandered along in the water.

On our way to Palliser Point, the most southerly point on the North Island, we passed through a small settlement called Ngawi, which some guidebook described as a picturesque fishing village and, we were told that, if we were lucky, we might see the fishing boats launched. We did not actually see a picturesque fishing boat being launched, but what we did see was the world's largest collection of picturesque rusty and dilapidated bull-dozers and tractors and huge trailers with boats on them. Above is only one of the bull-dozers--a small one. Most of them were twice as large. Don't ask me why they had to be bulldozers: I don't know. To move sand on the beach, perhaps. I liked the notice on this one, and here it is in close-up.

We came back on the Friday afternoon through Featherston, hoping to see the museum with the Fell Locomotive in it. Fascinating subject--Fell locomotives (read Wikipedia on the amazing drive mechanism) They were needed to climb the steep Rimutaka Grade...before they built the 6 mile tunnel under the Rimutaka Range. Museum Closed. Well--how about the Heritage Museum? Closed. So off we went over the Rimutaka mountains. The sign at the start of the climb on each side does show a squiggle and the information "next 13.2 km." That doesn't seem very far, but with a blind curve about every fifty yards, and an enormous drop-off on one side (real men don't need guard rails), and huge trucks descending round every corner, it seemed like an eternity getting to the top and down the other side.

But we made it, although when slow-coach Cutler had acquired more than three cars behind him breathing down his neck, he usually managed to pull into the odd space offered at the side of the road and let them pass. I drive within my comfort level--and the rental car is not exactly Formula One.

There was one interesting sidelight on NZ cultural life on which I feel I should comment. We ate a meal in a bar/cafe and we had three other people drinking and talking loudly near us--and the accent was so thick that I could hardly understand a word. And the woman kept using a word I had never heard before--FACKING. Every third word was facking this and facking that. I must see if there is a Kiwi dictionary where I can find the word. I don't think it was Maori.

Posted by David--Saturday January 9 2010

Wandering Through Wairarapa

We spent the last 3 days in the Wairarapa region, the southeast area of the North Island, which had its ups and downs-- quite literally, starting with the hair-raising drive over the Rimutaka mountain range to get there. The area is known primarily for its rugged coastline, assorted local wineries (notably the Pinot Noirs), and little towns, with traces of their Victorian-era origins.

The guidebook states that "the wild, virtually empty coastline draws swimmers, surfers, divers and fishermen" --true, assuming they aren't faint-hearted and don't mind being battered with wind, surf and sandstorms. Above is a fisherman at Lake Ferry, a rather bleak destination (although ads for the local hotel entice visitors to "wine and dine and watch the waves break"). Fishing in these conditions simply CANNOT be the next best thing to doing nothing.

The guidebook also enticed us to visit Castlepoint, on the Pacific coast, proclaiming it "the Wairarapa's most spectacular beach", and that "no trip to Castlepoint would be complete without a walk across the boardwalk to the lighthouse and the reef."

What it failed to mention is that the high winds that surround the gap leading to the peninsula with the lighthouse create a constant sand storm straight out of "Lawrence of Arabia" and left enough grit in our scalps, ears and skin to fill a sandbox. However, the beach was very picturesque, and the conditions didn't seem to bother the Kiwis one bit, as this is normal summertime fun to them.

The Wairarapa is also known for its little towns, established in the second half of the 19th century, where Victorian-era buildings have been converted into artsy shops, wine purveyors, and a surprisingly large number of coffee bars along the few blocks that comprise the main street. We stayed at The White Swan Hotel in Greytown, which offers 6 suites of entirely different styles and decor, ranging from ultra modern to Mughal empire. The main street also featured the ubiquitous Chinese takeaway/fish & chips:

The region has many fine examples of vernacular or traditional New Zealand architecture, from the prototypical country church (Presbyterian, of course, given the Scots influence) to the Victorian-era house.

One of the more unusual sites was Papawai, a historic Maori center and the site of the first Maori parliament, featuring many wood carvings.

Although Martinborough is known for its wines, we found the wineries a bit underwhelming, both in terms of presentation and variety. Most were quite small (known euphemistically as "boutique") and were rather unprepossessing. I did like the label "Paper Road", named for the fact that the British made elaborate maps and plans for roads that were never actually built and simply existed on paper. Other name choices seemed a bit off the mark. Can you imagine a sommelier gushing to a customer: "Sir, may I recommend the 2008 Wee Red Barn Pinot Noir? One of Wee Red's best vintages." But the wine did have its attractions, particularly in the hands of David (a/k/a "the Pig Whisperer"), teaching the finer points of wine to his young porcine friends:

Indeed, the fauna of Wairarapa know no fear of man and were quite friendly. E.g., cows sharing the road with our vehicle without any concern for their (or our) wellbeing:

Even more relaxed were the fur seals along Cape Palliser, the southern-most point in the North Island (and an incredibly beautiful drive, right along the sea):

This coastal route also allows a walk to "the Pinnacles", where exposure of an ancient layer of gravel to erosion left more resistent silts or rocks underneath in the form of individual pinnacles or "hoodoos". (Lord of the Rings afficionados may recognize this as the locale for the Valley of Death scene).

(Posted by Joan on Jan. 8)