we’re getting closer to home

Inside Sydney Opera House Lobby(no picture allowed inside performance halls)

Our last two days in Sydney we very rainy so the last few stops we had planned, mostly beaches, did not happen. So when raining why not go to the SydneyOpera House and take a tour. It was great, got the whole story of the architect and the trials and tribulations of such an undertaking. And for a mere $20,000 you can rent the 2700 seat opera hall. We were lucky to see ballet dancers practicing for that evening’s performance. Since it was Easter Sunday and a good old fashioned ham dinner was nowhere to be found we settled for the next best thing–a chocolate waffle with chocolate ice cream and chocolate sauce. This all happened at the Lindt Chocolate Cafe–who needs sweet potatoes? When we got back to our hotel we were greeted with a group of bagpipers marching out of the hotel (the end of Anzac Day–similar to our Veterans Day). Up and out early the next morning to catch our 9:30am flight out of Sydney to Seoul, S. Korea. Yes that’s right folks thanks to Star Alliance we had to travel to Los Angeles via Seoul. That’s an extra 10 hours of air time. Joe must have told them how much I like to fly!!!!! But we were flying business class and that along with my happy pills made the entire 22 hours of flying time not too bad—-from what I can remember. The crazy thing is we left Sydney on Tuesday at 9:30am and arrived in LA on Tuesday at 3:30 pm. I don’t know how many time changes and time zones and twilight zones we went through to accomplish that but now we are in Los Angeles spending a couple of days with Matthew and Ngoc. And, of course, Tuesday night Ngoc had a wonderful home cooked meal for us–much appreciated. We’ve never been to LA this time of year but it’s beautiful. The lawns are green and everything is blooming. Today, Thursday, we went to an open house, right next door to where Matthew lives. The house is 1100 square feet and a “steal” at $659,000. Location is everything and that is the only thing this house has going for it. Even at $300,000 you would have to gut the whole house–gotta love LA!!!!! Well one more plane trip and we will be back to Clayton on Saturday. I hope all that rain has stopped.
Timed out Deb

Easter Dinner

Bag Pipers in our hotel lobby on ANZAC Day

Sunset over Sydney Harbor Bridge( and our down under time)

Kiwi closure

We are now back in Sydney for a few final days of this unbelievable adventure. I thought I would recap a little of our New Zealand finale. The last couple of days there we travelled down the east side of the North Island back to Auckland. We were both surprised at the number of ring-necked pheasants we saw, both roosters and hens, which tells me they have a great natural population. At our below standard cabin on the cape there were pictures of pheasant hunters from the 40′s so the population has been good at least for that long. We also have seen a large number of wild turkeys, which has gotten me excited as spring turkey season starts May 1st. The turkeys in NZ were the Merriam subspecies, which differ from our Eastern subspecies because they have a white band along there tail feathers. Unfortunately we never got any photos of either of these beautiful birds. we did pass through the Kumara(sweet potato) capital of NZ and it was quite amusing to see the types of advertising to promote eating more kumaras. They come in several colors and were just being harvested. We have seen some nice color change in the trees as fall is here. Although we are tired of hanging upside down in the southern hemisphere and look forward to being able to stand upright in the northern hemisphere in a few days.
We both agreed that the South Island was prettier than the North. Of course every turn and view point tried to convince us otherwise. The Bay of Islands, near our Russell stay, had the most boat activity of anywhere in NZ, including two car ferry trips for us, but it was Easter break time. Which reminds me it is Easter Sunday here in Sydney so Happy Easter to all.
Our last night in NZ was pretty boring as we travelled close to the Auckland AP to a typical Best Western. The road signs to the AP took us a way we did not expect and when we tanked up the car the teller said we had another 20 minutes to the AP. But after a number of twists and turns, we got the hertz car back in time and walked the neighborhood around the hotel. Deb fretted the trip back to Australia as several people warned her that they are strict about bringing shells into the country. A lite supper, a short night sleep and we were at the airport at 5:30am. The flight was smooth and the immigration officer was impressed when Deb told him she had boiled all her shells. “it is the critters inside we worry about and I guess you have taken care of them” he said and welcomed us to Australia!
Crossing over Joe

We covered all the way from south to north

We saw the meeting place of two seas

The leaves are changing so it is time to leave

Fats up with wh

Sand surfers at Te Paki

We have not spent any time talking about the native culture of New Zealand, and since this is our next to last night here I thought I would give you the skinny, as I know it. The Maori’s are considered the NZ natives, although some will say that they came to NZ from some Polynesian island and ate the real indigenous people out of existence. Yes I said ate, they were supposedly cannibals! Maori’s(pronounced like hay”mow” with an r and a long e) seem a lot like Hawaiians and use a lot of vowels in there names. We were finally informed that since there is no F in their language wh takes the place of F and that places such as Whatuphiphi were pronounced Fatufifi. Little did we know. So the past few days we have been traveling north along the PCH. For those of you from or familiar with California, the PCH is the Pacific Coast Highway, BUT here it is on the east coast! We followed it as far as we could and the last 60 miles it is State Highway 1 and just like US 1 through the Florida Keys, it is a dead end road. Here it ends at Cape Reinga at the north end of the North Island, somewhere about Latitude 34 degrees S. As we approached the Cape, we began to notice hugh sand dunes on both coasts, with the dunes on the west coast being brown sand and the dunes on the east coast being white sand. Now when I say hugh I mean gigantic! These are not dunes but sand mountains, they are big enough that people ride surfboards down them and use bogie boards to toboggan down. We walked them and toyed with riding but common sense overcame our adventurous side and we just watched. We noticed that a lot of the adults were literally dragging their feet so that their speed was controlled. At Cape Reinga the South Pacific Ocean meets the Tasman Sea, in a turmoltuous mixing viewed from the lighthouse that keeps the sailors from messing with this area. The Maoris believe that all spirits travel to this northernmost point to pass on to the underworld. The Tasman Sea side of this peninsula is called 90 mile Beach( although actually less than 90 kilometers or 60 miles), which we visited in several places. We decided to stay at a holiday park on the Cape which was not a Top Ten Park, and we found out why we enjoyed the Top Ten so much, oh well at least our last Top 10 is very nice and has a nice stream running through it. On our way here we stopped at several spots with absolutely gorgeous views and also at a very sacred Maori site which has the largest Kauri Tree in NZ. The Maoris feel this tree is the connection between the earth and the sky. We followed the map and we took some gravel roads to get to this park, probably our most remote park, but also one of the top 3 we have been to. The zip line made Debbie giggle and I even gave it a try, but no picture to document either of us. Tomorrow it is about 3 hrs to the Auckland airport Best Western where we will spend our last night in New Zealand, before our 7:30am flight to Sydney.
Sad to go Joe

Deb overlooking the meeting of the Pacific and the Tasman

Another scenic viewpoint

Mother natures swimming pool in a rock

Giant Kauri Tree

More beautiful shells

Pompas grass in pine tree plantation

Yes it’s true I could spend hours walking the beach looking for shells but I controlled myself when our next stay at Waihi had yet another wonderful shell collecting beach. As much as I would like to bring a whole suitcase of shells home that would mean I couldn’t bring all the nice gifts I have bought for friends and family. I need one of those “blinders”(?) like they put on horses! So instead I watched the surfers until the clouds started rolling in and rain threatened. we’ve had a couple of rainy days but have managed to make a few stops between raindrops. One of them was the hot water beach where 2 hours before and after low tide you can dig yourself a pool in the sand and it fills up with nice warm water. This is a result of hot springs in this particular part of the beach and people either bring their own shovel or you can rent one and dig to your hearts content. We didn’t do any digging just watched and stuck our feet in a few abandoned pools. I know I’ve mentioned how much I love the tree ferns but also on my list is pompas(don’t know the spelling) grass. Here it is everywhere and in shades of white, tan and pink. it just seem strange to see it among ferns, evergreens, and palm trees. The pictures just don’t do it justice. Our next stop, Shelley Beach was a two nighter so Joe could do some mussel barge fishing. He had a nice weather day, although pretty rough (and he wonders why I never want to go!!!) and he caught snapper. We had enough to grill for dinner (very yummy) and some to freeze. we are headed to the most northern point on the north island before we fly out of Auckland on Saturday. Can’t believe our trip is coming to an end but we’ve still got lots to see.
Shell lady Deb

HotWater Beach

Tasty snapper

Mussel farm

Sunrise over Ohope Beach

Double rainbow after successful snapper fishing trip

Lifes a Beach

Beach combing Deb

We came to the proverbial( Yogi Berra ) fork in the road, and we took it. The choice from Gisbourne was to drive around what is called the East Cape, or cut cross lots and end up in the same place in about 3 hrs. Instead of 7 hrs. Now we knew both roads would be windy so we took the lesser of two evils. We have heard there is no place in NZ that is more than 75 miles from the ocean. But that 75 mile could take 6 hrs to drive. NZ is a mountain range in the middle of the ocean. We started out in ag land growing citrus, grapes, and broccoli and soon climbed into the mountains with sheep, cattle and logging. On the downhill side we began to follow a gorgeous turquoise blue stream. At one parking area bwana Deb said ” look, pheasants”, and sure enough there were two roosters in the deep grass. At a historical marker we took a short hike to a harp suspension footbridge. We also spotted a fish in the crystal clear water that we at first thought was a trout, but he gave us a good look and as of now I do not know what it was. As we reached the bottom of the mountain we knew Ohope Beach could not be far. This park is literally on the beach and faces the Bay of Plenty( Debs question, plenty of what?) with White Island( active volcano) visible in the distance. We got here about 12:30 and it was 12:31 when Deb was on the beach. I used to think that Deb’s favorite thing in life was making me happy( yeah right ), but now I’ m pretty sure her favorite thing in the world is beach combing. Shells, sea glass, rocks, driftwood, and gold doubloons someday hopefully. Luckily we have to face weight limitations and possibly import restrictions on our trip home, so she had to cull some really nice shells and only save the cream of the crop. After an hour on her own I joined in for a two and a half hour walk to one end of a 6.6 mile beach. After cocktail hour and as the sunset we went to a little take away(what Kiwis say for take out) place just down the road and were unexpectedly rewarded with a great burger and an awesome teriyaki chicken sandwich for our evening repast. We have casually talked about watching the sunrise over the South Pacific, but with the recent change to standard time it might be too early for us. And it might be cloudy.
Beach combing assistant
Joe

Harp suspension bridge over Waioeka River

Ohope Beach facing the Bay of Plenty with White Island in the distance

Unknown shore birds maybe Lou Currin can help here

Mountain stream, wish I had that fly rod

A little bit of this and that

Deb cooking her feet

Joe lost his last blog that’s why he just sent pictures last time. So hopefully I won’t have a problem–after Joe’s fishing adventure we cooked the trout for dinner. Not my most favorite fish and with the basic tools to use for cooking on a grill it turned out o.k.–still not my most favorite fish. we’ve been heading along the eastern coastline on the north island. A few things we’ve done in the last couple of days. stopped to look at some hot springs, pools and mud boils. (I had such a craving for chocolate pudding after watching that mud boil!!). Actually walked in a little hot pool–may have lost a layer of skin. we pass a lot of scenic lookouts and don’t always stop but you never know what you may be missing. with that in mind we pulled into one for a lunch break and there was this amazing triple waterfall–an unexpected surprise. On my quest for that perfect Riesling we’ve checked out a few wineries—it’s a nasty job but someone has to do it! More sampling is necessary. Last night we stayed in Napier right on the coast. This town’s claim to fame is their art deco downtown area. Sometime in the 20s this area was destroyed by an earthquake and fire and was rebuilt in the 30s. I guess I was expecting the art deco style of South Beach Miami–this just didn’t come close-nice but not the same. we went to dinner at a place called Pacifica, a contemporary type of restaurant that serves kind of tapa style meals. Needless to say the menu was interesting. I had blue nose fish with prawns and veal rib (I know that’s really bad but I haven’t had veal in a long time) with vegetables. Both were wonderful. Now for Joe….first he had groper fish with squid and paua (black lipped abalone) and his second dish was ostrich (yes that’s right ostrich) in a cheese sauce. First of all I didn’t know abalone had lips and as for ostrich…I’m not eating a bird that’s bigger than I am!! But he loved every mouthful. Today we are in Gisborne, again along the coast, and we can hear the ocean from where we are staying. The beach has a lovely dark brown sand and the waves are perfect for the suffers. we watched them as well as a kayaker take on the waves. Off tomorrow further up the coast.
Beach walker Deb

Unexpected surprise

Out on a limb watching surfers

Volcanos, Hot springs, and Rainbows

Volcano, Mt Ngauruhoe in Tangariro National Park

Mt. Ruapehu, highest on the North Island

Tokannu Hot springs

Tokannu mud boils- near Taupo

My first Rainbow Trout on a fly rod
Three more caught two released
Rainbow Joe