Wellington

We spent three nights in Wellington; this gave us two whole days to see the city with no traveling. We spent the first day wandering around getting our bearings and shopping for cold weather and outdoor gear that we hadn’t brought with us. We both got long johns and I got some water sandals. Whoop ti do.

Our hotel was just a block away from Cuba Street. Cuba street is a narrow street, mostly closed off from vehicle traffic, that has a lot of older brick and stone buildings with restaurants and little shops.

We ate twice at Tulsi, which serves nouvelle cuisine, East Indian style. We ate there the first time because it was one of the few things open, and the second time because the first time was good.

The second day, Sunday, we spent mostly at Te Papa, the national museum of NZ. We were there from about 10:30 am until 2:00 pm looking at the natural history and Maori culture exhibits, went out to finish our shopping, and came back for another hour or so to see the post-European-contact art collection.

We are finding that traveling is a great opportunity for us to learn about ourselves. Cities, for us, are merely “nice” and not “great.” It’s beginning to look like we can’t get to great unless we are out in bush/outback/country/mountains without crowds of people around us. We didn’t take a single picture in Wellington until we were leaving and waiting for the ferry.

And we are very glad we did Te Papa, but, frankly, we have already seen the Maori meeting house at the Waitangi treaty center, and a slew of Maori artifacts already, so going to Te Papa didn’t blow us away the way it might have if we hadn’t already seen and done what we have seen and done.

Te Papa made me think about the differences I saw between the Australian Aboriginals and the Maori. In some ways there are great similarities with Native Americans; all three cultures suffered dramatically from European settlement and subsequent expansion (wars, disease, and discrimination), and lost most of their valuable land. All three cultures are striving to regain lost pride and wealth.

But the Aboriginal people came to Australia perhaps 50,000 years ago, and lived there without much change (as far as anyone could tell) for most of that time. They were hunter-gatherers who had to roam from place to place to find enough food, and they existed in small groups that made decision mostly by consensus, and that warred relatively infrequently among themselves. This was probably because they had to work too hard to feed themselves in a very hostile environment that was full of animals that would happily kill them. They didn’t have domestic animals, agriculture (most of the land was not suited for it), buildings or other permanent structures, no trees big enough for canoes or other boats, and no common language. Yet they lived successfully in a hostile environment for a vast amount of time; archeologists estimate from excavated skeletons that the average longevity of an Aboriginal before European contact was about 40 years.

The Maori, on the other hand, only came to NZ within the last 1000 years; they brought with them a complex Neolithic culture called “competitive tribalism,” domestic animals and domesticated plants. They lived in a bountiful land with huge trees, cultivatable soil, and fish and other animals that could be eaten.

The Maori developed a kind of art and music that is easy for us to understand. They also spent a lot of time fighting with each other for territory and status. Defeated Maori warriors and their families were made slaves by the victorious Maori, if they were not killed. Although the Maori lived in a much more hospitable place than the Aborigines, archeologists estimate from excavated skeletons that the average longevity of a Maori before European contact was about 30 years.

We caught the ferry from Wellington to Picton Monday morning. We waited in a queue of cars for about an hour to get on the ferry, and watched locals successfully fishing.
The ferry is huge, and carries passengers, cars and large trucks. The crossing takes about three hours and the travel guides all mention sea-sickness as a possibility. We had a calm crossing.

Picton is quite pretty, but we are getting a bit jaded. We drove on to Nelson, the major town nearest Abel Tasman National Park and Golden Bay, found a nice unit, had a good dinner at the Stingray Café, I blogged and practiced dobro, and Miriam read travel books and plotted our next move.

Rotorua to Wellington

We got up, packed and checked out. We weren’t sure which route to Wellington would be best. One goes inland for a while, then goes down near the Western shore. The other is longer, may not be as big a road, and goes to the East coast at Napier and then back inland. Paul, our host in Rotorua, strongly recommended the route through Napier so we chose it.

We drove to Taupo for breakfast. Taupo is on Lake Taupo, and we could see beautiful, snow-capped mountains across the huge lake. The wind off the lake was very cold.

South of Taupo we took a cutoff that was simply marked “Scenic overlook.” It went a surprising way off the road and dead-ended above a lovely waterfall out in the middle of nowhere.

We drove on to Napier. Napier shows up as a nifty place in the guidebooks because it is on a bay facing the Pacific Ocean, and because it was destroyed by an earthquake in the 1930s and rebuilt all at once in Art Deco style. We walked along the bayfront, which has a nicely tended park.

Napier is a tourist town, and every Art Deco façade covers some sort of tourist peddling activity. I did talk to a very nice man in a craft co-op who turns beautiful wooden bowls and sells them at reasonable prices. Since I have done a bit of turning we talked technique and tools; I think he appreciated talking to someone who understood a bit of his craft. Also lunch was good. But that was about it for us and Napier. 1930’s Art Deco city buildings hold our attention for maybe 20 minutes on a good day. But some folks really crave its ice cream.
We left Napier and drove to Auckland, stopping for a flat white in Carterton, a small town that somehow has a nifty, atmospheric wine bar with a hammered copper espresso machine. Since it was the only place in town that was open at that time (we walked by three cafes, all closed, before we found this one), we were particularly grateful the coffee was delicious.

And then on to Wellington. To get to Wellington from Upper Hutt we had to drive about 20 K of very sharply curved, windy road that is cut into the mountains between Wellington and the East coast. The cut was almost vertical, the shoulder was no more than a foot wide, and the other side of the road was a sheer drop off. The road switched back and forth, sometimes almost doubling over on itself. It was really fun to drive, and would have been particularly excellent on a motorcycle.

We found our way to our hotel without trouble. Again Miriam picked a good one. No view, but the weather is crummy so that doesn’t matter. It has a big living area, a separate bedroom, is quite clean, airy and reasonably priced, and is located just a block from good restaurants and shopping.

We ate at an Indian restaurant that got high ratings in the Lonely Planet; the food was delicious. We watched a bit of TV and crashed.

In Rotorua

Rotorua is noted for its volcanic activity. The city has a large lake and lots of tourists; it has oodles of fee-to-see-it Maori cultural experiences, and one can also zorb, bungy jump, mountain bike and do other vigorous things.

With these possibilities to inspire us, we got up and walked into town to eat. We found an organic restaurant called “NBs.” It was their first morning open and we got super attention and delicious food. I had French toast, which bore little resemblance to what I had experienced under that label before. It included fried, caramelized banana, and was yummy.

We walked back to our motel and drove up into the hills to partake of one of the nearby volcanic and Maori cultural experiences. Our map showed a large area that was marked both “Whakarewarewa” and “Te Puia.” We turned into Whakarewarewa since it came first. Whakarewarewa turned out to be a small Maori village located among the hot springs. The area was used by Maori before European contact, and has been continuously occupied since at least 1904, when a tiny Catholic church was built there.

The Maori in this place now live in small European style houses, but we saw an example of the kinds of houses that the Maori used to use in this area. They were very small, low roofed, and built from the trunks of tree ferns. Our guide said that the tree fern trunks have insulating properties, and that several people survived in them for ten days when they were buried in ash and mud after an eruption late last century.

Most of the village cooking is done by putting food into steam vents, or by lowering it into the hot water pools. It's supposed to be tasty, but doesn't always sit well with everyone.

There are a number of pools with different temperatures that the residents use for different purposes. The community also has built rectangular cement bath tubs; water is diverted into them from one of the hot natural pools and allowed to cool to tolerable levels in time for evening baths.

We saw a delightful show with traditional dances and singing. The leader was a short, attractive Maori woman of indeterminate age who spoke quite articulately with what seemed, to my ear, to be an English storekeeper’s accent. The others in the troupe were interesting, but she was a delight; full of energy and personality, with a good voice and good dancing and poi skills.
Most of the audience was children from a nearby city. At the end of the normal performance they all got on stage and sang and danced a Maori song. It was really fun to watch. Kids singing are fun anyway, but it was especially neat, in view of the demonstration we saw later and the tension between Maori and Pakeha that is evident in the news, to see this large, diverse group of Maori and Pakeha kids, happily singing and dancing a Maori song, with the professional performers tapping their feet and singing along quietly.

According to our guide all the people in the community act like family, and refer to each other as aunties, uncles and cousins. They apparently make their livings on tourism. Besides participating in the show, people in the community carve, make clothing and souvenirs, do tattoos, or operate shops for tourists.

We also saw the old cemetery next to the Catholic church. Because hot water or hot mud lie just a few feet underground bodies were buried in cement sepulchers above ground.
Off at one end there is a geyser that erupts frequently. Our guide pointed out people sitting on benches on the opposite side of the geyser. She said they were at Te Puia, the rival tourist stop that costs twice as much, and that owns the land on the other side of the geyser.

We passed Te Puia on our way out. It has a gigantic parking lot, fancy modern buildings and elaborate pathways, but no village. We felt pleased that we had accidentally picked the one we did.

We drove further South to another volcanic tourist attraction. On the way in we stopped at a free mud pit and watched it belch grey mud. When we got to the not-free tourist attraction we decided that one grey, belching mud pit is probably pretty much like another and drove back to Rotorua for late lunch.
We had trouble finding a spot because the restaurants close at 2 or 2:30 pm and don’t reopen until dinner. We did eventually find one, but not until we wandered quite a few blocks. Our wandering took us by a Maori political demonstration. Apparently the NZ police targeted some Maori for an anti-terrorist raid and many people (certainly including the demonstrators) are concerned that the raids were racially motivated.

After lunch we drove back to our motel, tried the motel’s spa (nice and warm), and talked about where to go next. I went out for groceries (NZ cheese and crackers, avocado, “tiger sticks” (small, flavorful loaves of bread) and a pineapple). Miriam did laundry and found us a place to stay in Wellington. We watched the Maori TV channel and an Auzzie outback serial called McLeod’s Daughters and crashed.

Raglan to Rotorua – The Waitomo Caves

We awoke to good weather. We took a short walk along the edge of the bay, pronounced Raglan insufficiently spectacular to consume a whole day when the weather was good, and decided to drive on to see the Waitomo caves.

The drive to the Waitomo caves took about two hours, all through lovely pastoral scenery, and all on windy, two lane roads.

We couldn’t make up our minds from the guidebooks which cave tours to do, so we went into the “i site.” Most NZ towns have a government sponsored information center with brochures, books and helpful people who know a lot about the area, but are not allowed to make recommendations.
We selected the 45 minute glowworm cave tour (the basic, everybody-does-it, tour) and a two hour walk through Ruakuri cave.

The standard 45 minute tour was fine. We saw limestone stalactites and stalagmites, and rode in a boat with a dozen other folk in the darkness under the glowworms. The guide pulls the boat slowly through the cave using ropes. The glowworms do look like stars in the night sky.

The Ruakuri walk was much better. First, there were only five of us on the tour, so we could take our time and ask questions; second, the guide reminded us a bit of our younger son who worked for a while as a whitewater rafting guide, and third, we could take pictures (which is not allowed on the basic tour).

The company that runs the Ruakuri walk apparently spent about $4.5 million on the walkways and paths. The tour begins by walking down on metal walkways that switch back and forth, descending us by about 60 feet into the earth. We walked through cracks in the limestone, along a subterranean river, saw “tomo” (deep holes in the limestone that sometimes run from the surface to the bottom-most caves), and actually got to see a glowworm up close as it began eating a fly.

As the guide said, glowworms look a lot better with the lights out. With the lights out they are small points of coldfire blue light. With the lights on they look like horizontal strands of brown snot, with delicate strands of clear mucous hanging down.
Glowworms live in caves above underground streams and rivers. Flies and other insects that feed on things in the water are attracted by the blue lights in the dark, and are ensnared in the mucous strands. When that happens the glowworm hauls up the mucous strands, bites the head off the ensnared insect, injects something to dissolve the hapless victim’s innards, and sucks the resulting muck out.

Glowworms are the larval form of a fly, and live in worm form for about nine months. When they turn into flies they live for only four days, and, since they are born in caves, are often caught and eaten by other glowworms. It doesn’t seem to be an enviable life.

NZ had large flightless birds called “moa;” they were extinct at the time of European contact. The largest stood about nine feet tall. The guide said that many moa skeletons were found in the caves at the bottoms of the tomos. The moa apparently would be walking along, not watching where they put their feet, and step into a tomo and fall down to their deaths.

We left Waitomo and drove to Rotorua, an area noted for its volcanic activity and for opportunities to see presentations on Maori culture. The drive took a couple of hours. We stopped at a town called Te Awamutu at about 4:00 pm. Most of the restaurants were closed (too late for lunch, too early for dinner) but we found a small place that served roasted meats. We had chicken and kumara, and thus fortified, drove the rest of the way to Rotorua. We found a nice motel with a spa pool; our unit had a kitchen, living area, bathroom and separate bedroom. After our nights in backpackers and on the sailboat, the space seems extravagantly excessive, but nice. The operator even presented us with a free bottle of NZ chardonnay, as well as a pint bottle of milk. Presentation of a bottle of milk seems to be customary at some NZ motels.

Omapere to Raglan – the Kauri Museum and the Gum Fields

We left Omapere and drove down the West coast. We didn’t stop to revist the Kauri forest because our night views had been really special and we didn’t want to spoil them.

We had breakfast at a small town called Pirongia. Next door was a butchery that illustrated one of the things I enjoy about travelling in Australia and New Zealand. Folks and signs say things you understand, but in a slightly different way than they would at home.
We did stop at the Kauri museum about an hour South of Omapere. It is quite large, and has exhibits of old furniture made of Kauri wood, huge slabs of Kauri wood, an extensive collection of Kauri gum, lots of Kauri logging equipment, and dioramas of life during the time Kauri was logged and the gum fields were in operation.

The sap of the Kauri tree is clear and golden brown. Once it is out of the tree it hardens into a lightweight, solid material that resembles amber. The Mauri used Kauri gum to make torches and lights, to make a form of chewing gum, and they used the ash as the dye in their distinctive tattoos. Europeans used it for varnish, for linoleum, and for carving.

The gum was very durable, and it could be recovered by digging into the remains of ancient Kauri forests that had long disappeared.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s there was a good market in Europe for Kauri gum, and many New Zealanders worked in the gum fields, digging up buried Kauri gum.

The exhibits in the Kauri museum made it clear that this was a very, very difficult way to make a living. The diggers (almost all Pakeha (non-Mauri) from the pictures and exhibits) would poke long iron rods into the wet ground and identify potential lumps of gum by the feel against the rod. They would then dig down in the rocky, wet soil as much as thirty feet in some places, and pull out the gum. The gum was in lumps ranging from a few inches in diameter to hunks about 3 or 4 feet long and a foot to two feet wide. The diggers would then wash the dirt off the gum, take it back to their shacks, spend the evening using knives to remove gravel and dirt from the gum, put their clothes to dry over the fire, collapse, wake up, and do it all over again. About once a week a buyer would ride by and buy the bagged, graded gum. There were several pictures of old men who spent their lives working in the gum fields, and who lived and died in small corrugated iron shacks after they were too old to dig. There also was a picture of a 93 year old man digging gum. He worked all his life in the gum fields, and was still working at 93.

After the museum we drove to Raglan, a pretty little town on a bay in the Tasman Sea. We found a backpackers recommended by the Lonely Planet and got a room. The rooms all surrounded a central courtyard with grass. The other people at the backpackers were all at least 25 years (and maybe more) younger than us, and mostly surfers. We do, however, bump into the young German lady who is studying to be a travel agent. We feel like old friends.
The rooms at this backpackers are quite small. There was not much room on either side of the double bed, and there was about four feet between the foot of the bed and the French doors that ran the width of the room and opened into the courtyard. With our mountain of luggage we barely fit. But the room was clean and neat, and had a window over the head of the bed that looked out onto the bay and allowed a sea breeze in.

This backpackers has its bathrooms were in one corner of the courtyard, and has separate bathrooms for separate sexes – a more complex arrangement than at Cap’n Bob’s. It also has surfboards, kayaks and a small sailing pram available for guests. It sits right on the edge of the picturesque bay, and has limestone formations across the bay that apparently make an interesting kayaking destination.

It was grey and cold when we arrived, so we were not tempted to do anything wet that evening. We had a good dinner at the only place that was open, and planned to stay the next night to check Raglan out.

Paihia to Omapere - the Kauri Forest at Night

We drove from Paihia, Bay of Islands, on the Pacific Ocean (the East side of the North Island), to Omapere on the Tasman Sea (the West side of the North Island), stopping at Kerikeri to visit the candy shop that the Lonely Planet highly recommends. I got macadamia nut caramel corn and Miriam picked chocolate covered caramels with walnuts.

For those readers who visit NZ in the future, I recommend the Kerikeri candy shop, but I also recommend that you not consume an entire bag of macadamia nut caramel corn on the trip from Kerikeri to Omapere, as we did.

We got to Omapere midafternoon and checked into a very nice room Miriam booked for us that overlooked the bay. It had its own veranda, a separate bedroom and bathroom, and was pretty new. A big change from Cap’n Bob’s, it almost felt too opulent.

Miriam had booked us on a night tour of the nearby Kauri forest, which is the largest remaining Kauri forest in NZ. Kauri trees are very large hardwood trees with massive girth. They were used extensively for furniture and ship building because the wood was easy to work, resisted the weather, and was available in incredibly massive timbers. It was so good that it was almost completely logged off. The Kauri forests that once covered a large portion of the North Island are no more, and it is now against NZ law to cut down a living Kauri tree.

Our tour guides picked us up in a passenger van at about 6:00 pm. Again we were lucky, and only one other couple had booked the walk that evening: Matt and Angela. They were from Australia and on their honeymoon.

Our guides were two Mauri men. Joe, the older one who developed the night tour, was taller than me and slender with a hawk’s nose and a long black ponytail. He used to work for the NZ “DOC” (the Department of Conservation). His duties, among other things, included finding and killing brush tailed possums. The possums are not a native species, have no significant predators, and are decimating NZ indigenous animals, including the kiwi.

Dane, the younger guide, was much taller than me with a round face and a round body. He seemed quite shy, and had a very nice singing voice.

This tour was fun, in part because it was many miles away from what you might call “slick.” Joe was a bit hard to understand, and Dane, who spoke very rapidly, even harder. Joe clearly had worked up a set spiel for the trip, and was at pains to stay on track and not to omit anything. Dane would occasionally lose his place or forget something and look embarrassed. They carried pictures of the local birds (including kiwi), played us a tape of different bird calls on our drive to the forest, and talked a bit about the area and their lives.

We went on two different trails. We went on the first before the sun had set, and passed by an area that the Maori had cleared of trees to help them hunt kiwi. The Maori used kiwi feathers for cloaks; the cloaks were a sign of status. We could clearly see the three different heights of forest plants; the underbrush, the middle, or shorter trees, and the tall trees. But from that place could not see any kauri trees.

We walked deeper into the forest and it got darker. We each carried headlamps, and I had an umbrella in case the mist turned to rain. The guides had more powerful lamps with reddish filters. At one point they had us drop our heads and look only at our feet while we walked about 50 yards. They then instructed us to turn to our left and look up. We beheld a truly massive Kauri tree, and oohed and aahed about it.

They the guides told us to turn around; behind us was a giant Kauri tree that dwarfed then one that had just so impressed us. The giant tree is reckoned to be the oldest living Kauri. Its age is guestimated in our books to be over 2000 years. Because of the semitropical climate without distinct seasons, Kauri and other trees in this part of NZ do not reliably develop growth rings the way trees to in the Pacific NW, so determining the age of these trees is more of an art than it is at home. Our guides told us the giant was almost 5000 years old.

We walked back to the van and drove to another trail. This time it was dark when we walked into the forest, and we had to use lights to see where we place our feet. This time the guides led us to within about 50 yards of the largest living Kauri. The forest was quite dense, and it was dark, so we had no idea we were approaching this tree, called Tane Mahuta. The guides then began a chant in Mauri, announcing our visit to the king of the forest. We walked to the tree, listening to the chant. Although the sky was dark and cloudy there was plenty of moonlight, and when we got to Tane Mahuta it was magnificent. It almost seemed to glow, and it was huge. Our guides then talked and chanted in Maori, and then Dane played a native flute and swung a bullroarer rhythmically while Joe chanted and told us about the tree.

We were given hot chocolate and then walked back. Joe pointed out a very large nocturnal spider that weaves a blanket-like web, and a kind of forest cricket with 3 inch antennae.

We understood that we were supposed to be looking for wildlife (maybe even kiwis, which are nocturnal) on our way back, so we thought we should be walking quietly and keeping our lights off or dimmed.

Evidently we misunderstood because Joe and Angela took the lead, merrily swinging their lights, crunching the gravel, and talking in loud voices about the increase in housing prices in Perth, where Angela is from.

Miriam and I dropped back and tried to imagine we were alone in the forest.

At the end Joe gave us each a piece of Kauri gum and reminded us of the preciousness of life. It was a really good tour and I highly recommend it. However, I do note that the Mauri were a very warlike people who did their share of damage to themselves, other people and their environment, not unlike the English who later settled/invaded NZ, so the “be peaceful and one with nature” message seemed a bit incongruous to us.

Our hotel arranged for hot dinner to be waiting for us. I had a “bacon shank” (kind of like a ham hock) and kumara, the local sweet potato that was a staple of the Maori and is still grown and eaten in NZ. Yummy.

On the Manawanui in the Bay of Islands

We got up early Thursday morning, loaded our pile of gear into the car and drove down to the wharf at Paihia. I deposited Miriam and the gear at the wharf, drove the car back to Cap’n Bob’s, parked on the grass just in front (with Mervin’s blessing), and walked back to the wharf to find Miriam talking with a fellow connected to our sailing tour.

We had booked a three day, two night “ecocruz” on the Manawanui, a 72 foot, steel hulled, cutter rigged ketch. The Manawanui will hold ten, but there were just two more signed up for this trip: “Sam” and “Lynn.” Sam and Lynn are a Belgian couple who have been working in New Zealand. Sam’s education is in entomology and related areas, and he has been working for a company that breeds bugs to eat other bugs. Lynn is a social worker, and she has been working with disabled folks. They converse among themselves in Dutch, but speak quite good English.

Our hosts are Joachen (“John”), Lilly and Moby. John was born in Germany, spent a bunch of time working in the U.K., moved to NZ and used an advance on his inheritance to purchase the Manawanui. He bought it about eight years ago at an excellent price from folks who had spent their money fixing its basics, ran out of money, and had to sell. He spent about a year and a half fixing it up, and has been running tours ever since. He is 6’4” tall, bearded, and pushing 40.

Lilly is from England, probably in her 20’s and quite a bit shorter; she has to stand on a box to steer. She has a smaller boat she sailed here from England; in the off season she sails North to Tonga and dives.

Moby is a seagoing mutt. Short haired, mostly brown and tan, and fun. He spends a lot of time resting his elbown on a bench and his head on the railing, looking out at the ocean. He gets excited at the words “fish” or “dolphins.”

They are both delightful, as is the Manawanui. Because of our mound of luggage and the dobro we are given a cabin on the port side with a double bunk running across the room and a single running at right angles to it on the left. There is plenty of room to store our luggage under the double bunk. I keep mentioning the luggage because normally we would have left most of it in the car, but the guide books all say that anything left in the car is likely to be stolen. The cabin has a porthole; this satisfies both our need for romance and our need for fresh air.
The Bay of Islands is closer to the equator than most of New Zealand, and is often described as “hot” or “semitropical.” I’m sure it is, but not right now, in the Spring, during our visit. We have to bundle up with most of our warmer clothes to stand on deck. But we love to stand on deck, so a bit of chill is worth it.
We sail out in search of dolphins. There are two kinds commonly found here, and a lot of the service providers here advertise the opportunity to “swim with dolphins.” Our hosts are of an ecological orientation, and don’t offer dolphin swimming except in the unlikely case where the dolphins want to swim with us. John has a great cartoon posted in the cabin. It shows two dolphins swimming along chatting. One says to the other “If I could do just one more thing in life it would be to swim with a middle-aged human couple from Connecticut.”
We do find a pod of oceanic dolphins, but the wind and seas are a bit high (6 foot seas). The trip out apparently reminds Miriam and Lynn of how some birds feed their young by ingesting, partially digesting, and then regurgitating their food. They decide to try this with the local fish, but there was no lasting evidence it worked. Lynn even had aiming problems, and hit a lot more of the boat than the ocean.
They both were done by the time we sighted the dolphin pod, and the experience was a lot of fun. The dolphins are amazingly fast swimmers; they easily catch up to, and keep up with, the boat. We see them surfing swells and riding along with the bow. We all wish we could swim like that.

We have a very late lunch (about 3:00 pm), which is tasty. We then sail to a sheltered cove because higher winds are predicted. We ride the dinghy in for a short hike up one of the steep islands for a beautiful view of the islands in the glowering, grey twilight.
We go out fishing with Lilly in the dinghy until the sun sets, while John cooks dinner. We get nibbles, but the only catch is mine. It’s snapper with pretty blue spots. Everyone in the boat agrees that it is larger than the piece of squid I was using as bait. Lilly unhooks and releases it so it can return to kindergarten.
Amazingly, we are hungry again by the time dinner is ready, and dinner is awesome. Deliciously barbecued steaks (mine is about 12 inches long and 7 inches wide), new potatoes, scrumptious cabbage salad, garlic bread and fruit. The cruise is BYOB and, having been warned, we pull out a bottle of NZ Chardonnay and share it round.
We fall asleep easily, the boat rocking in the swells, cool air flowing in through the porthole, and under a quilt that really actually almost gets us completely warm.
The next day we wake up, have a good breakfast, and sail out to a spot where we can kayak about the shore and into sea caves. We don wetsuits, which are delightfully warm. We have not used the “sit on top” style of kayaks before, but find them easily maneuverable and fun. There is an algae bloom in the water this time of year, so underwater visibility is not great, but it is great to be paddling about the rocky, craggy shoreline.
After kayaking we have lunch. Lunch is an amazing, thick, delicious quiche. We are sure this cruise was not billed as a gourmet experience, but it could have been. And the quantities are huge!

After lunch we sail to our evening mooring, and dinghy over to the island for a short but almost vertical hike to the top of the island where we get great views in all directions and see a Maori cemetery.

We climb back down, dinghy over to the boat and sit down while dinner is prepared. It being a sea cruise I have followed the British naval tradition and brought along a bottle of rum. We share with Sam, Lynn and Lilly (John doesn’t drink, at least on duty) and get to know each other better.

Dinner is amazing. Huge pieces of chicken cooked with ham and cheese inside and spices on the out, assorted accompaniments, and home-made apple strudel for dessert. Sam and Lynn share a bottle of Chardonnay. We consume it all with gusto, but Miriam begins to fret that she must have a tapeworm because she can not otherwise understand how she can eat so much.

We fall asleep, again to the rocking of the waves, again warm enough – but not toasty warm.

Our final day begins with a leisurely breakfast, a trip in the dinghy to the beach so Moby can have a pee, and a short trip to beds of green-lipped mussels. We don wetsuits and are given brief instructions on snorkeling, and are given permission to swear loudly in the language of our choice when we enter the water (or, more precisely, when the water enters our wetsuits). The water is COLD! But it is fun.

It is near low tide, so the mussel beds are only about 8 feet down. The water is murky, but it is exciting to be so near the rocks and moved back and forth by the waves that break on them. At first none of us see mussels, and then we see them everywhere. I discover the wetsuit actually is working, and my breathing rate slows to only about 150% of normal. The larger mussles are about 9-10 inches long. It takes some strength to pull them off the rocks, and we scrape a bunch of skin off our hands, but feel inordinately proud of ourselves.
We harvest a little over a dozen, flipper back to the dinghy, haul ourselves in, and return to the Manawanui. We get out and I discover that it’s a lot warmer on the deck in the wetsuit than it was in the water in the wetsuit. I hang out with Miriam (who wisely decided to pass on mussel gathering and remains wrapped in dry clothing) while Sam and Lynn use the shower, then I take my turn. There is something truly glorious about a warm shower.

We then motor over to “hole in the rock” and then have a late lunch. We help Lilly cut the mussels open. About half their meat clings to one shell and about half to the other. John puts them on the barby, shell down, and dollops them with garlic and butter. We stand around and eat them as they come off, using our first shell as a scoop to assist in eating subsequent ones.
If it weren’t for the sea air and the need to maintain body temperature I’m sure we would have been full just eating the mussels. However, John also puts on large lamb rib chops, and Lilly makes a yummy potato salad, and stir fried veggies with cashews. I am ashamed to admit we ate it all.
Then John heads us back to Paihia. It’s about a two and a half our trip. Here's a picture of the cabin on the way back with Lilly steering, with John on the right and Sam and Lynn on the left.

We arrive about 6:00 pm, unload, say goodbye, I walk over and get the car, pick up Miriam and the mountain of luggage, and we check back in to Cap’n Bob’s. Miriam and I both proclaim we have eaten so much that we will simply skip dinner. We open a bottle of wine, have a cracker, look at each other, and head off to town in search of dinner. We each at a pleasant place off the beach, have seafood chowder and garlic pizza bread, and walk back to Cap’n Bob’s. I transfer our pictures from the cameras to the computer while Miriam starts the laundry, we look at the pictures, and I fall asleep. Miriam, bless her heart, finishes the laundry before she crashes.

Bay of Islands Day Two

Today we slept in late (about 7:30). I got up and got us flat whites and fresh rolls from the bakery down the block. We took them upstairs to the kitchen/veranda, toasted the rolls and ate them with peanut butter and marmalade.

Two young German women asked Miriam if they could have a ride North with us. We welcomed them and left for Cape Reinga (the Northernmost tip of NZ) about 10:30 am.

This part of NZ is quite lovely. There are farm and sheep stations (ranches), and the grass this time of year is an extraordinarily vivid green. It reminds us of how lucky we are to live in the Pacific NW. The scenery here is full of tropical plants that we would never see at home, but that are not different in kind from what we see at home. To make us feel completely at home, it rained on us several times, we passed by a number of clear cuts, and we had to be very careful of the logging trucks barreling down the narrow roads.

The trip to the cape took over two hours and the last part was on gravel roads. It was worth the time and effort. The Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean meet at the cape, where there is a lighthouse, surrounded on both sides by steep cliffs, with surfy, sandy beaches in the distance.

We drove back part way and dropped the two women at their backpackers at Ngataki. The road to where they were staying was graveled, and did not look auspicious. After about 15 minutes, however, we got to a building in the middle of nowhere that looked like a small church or a convent. It was their backpackers. They were very grateful for the lift and wanted to pay us or do something for us. I told them to “pay it forward.”

We hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and at 2:30 pm when we left the young women the hunger demon struck Miriam really hard. We decided to stop at the next place, regardless. It turned out to be a tavern at Houhou, which was fun. The tavern was right on the bay, had high ceilings and a big indoor room, as well as a big veranda. Only three customers were there, out on the veranda drinking beer. I couldn’t hear what they were saying clearly, but I infer from what I did hear that “shooting the bull” is an international tradition.

We ordered “steak burgers” which were quite good, and flat whites. While we ate we looked at the stuff on the tavern walls. There were a number of pictures of a 1350 Kg great white shark that was caught nearby, mostly toothy mouth views with lots of blood. There were trophies for the heaviest duck brace shot in a year, and advertisements for fishing contests. There was a smaller picture of the result of a freak storm that blew scallops onto the beach. The scallop shells appeared to be 8 to 12 inches long, and there were thousands of them on the beach. And finally, we noticed three warnings printed on large, bluish paper. All threatened a 24 month ban from the tavern. One was for brawling, one was for excessively drunken behavior, and one was for being rude to the service staff.

Houhou is a very small community a long way from anywhere. I suspect there isn’t much to do here except fish, hunt and drink, and that these warnings were written of necessity, and that bans have been imposed with some frequency.

We got back to Paihia about 6:30 pm and went to the grocery store. Just inside the door was a large Plexiglas container full of live, green-lipped mussels. They were $1.00 a Kg (really cheap). I picked out about a dozen, Miriam got some pastrami, avocados and crackers, and we went back to Cap’n Bob’s.

I steamed the mussels with a bit of salt and garlic. Miriam nobly ate one, I shared one with a German backpacker who was curious, and happily consumed the rest.

I washed up dishes while Miriam went down to check emails and get the laundry ready. She did laundry, I blogged, and we went to bed.

Bay of Islands Day One

I’m writing this at about 7:30 am sitting on the veranda of Cap’n Bob’s Beach Front Backpacker in Paihia, Bay of Islands, New Zealand.

Cap’n Bob’s is listed in the Lonely Planet and is delightful, but a big change for us. All our time in Australia was booked through travel agents who have a number of incentives to make sure you stay in upscale places. Cap’n Bob’s is definitely not upscale, but definitely delightful. It’s a “bathroom down the hall” structure apparently built to do what it does: house backpackers and others who don’t need a fancy place to sleep or don’t want to pay for one.

Miriam and I have a “double” which is a small room with a double and single bed, right on the ground floor corner, with big windows overlooking the Bay of Islands. Granted, the view is better if you stand up tall so you can see over the motel in front, but we get the sea air and we really can see the bay and the night sky. There is a common area with a kitchen and big veranda above us. We went up there last night after we walked along the waterfront and munched a pizza in town. Met two very nice young women; one from Germany and one from Ireland, who are taking extended, working vacations over here. The German lady has been apprenticing in Germany as a travel agent and she is truly suited for it. She LOVES her travels in New Zealand, and talking with her is like having an animated, excited tour book.

Miriam was still asleep, so I strolled down about a block to the little bakery. We peered in its darkened window the night before and couldn’t tell whether it could cater to our now firmly established addiction: flat whites. But it does! So I’m writing this sitting on the veranda, feeling the cool sea breezes, listening to the birds, eating a freshly baked multi-grain roll, and sipping a flat white. Ahhhh, life is good.

After Miriam got up we went to the Waitangi treaty grounds. Waitangi is where the treaty was signed between England and many of the Maori chiefs. The treaty is a very interesting for lawyers. It was drafted by a representative of the Queen, and very clearly says (I read the document) that the chiefs transfer all their sovereign powers to the Queen.

However, the Maori chiefs could not read English, so a version was prepared in Maori by a missionary working near Waitangi. That version (which I can not read) apparently says something about shared power. The English version was signed by only a few chiefs. The Maori version was signed by a majority of Maori chiefs.

Not surprisingly, there is an active dispute today about what the treaty means, and the most difficult issues relate to ownership of land. With my level of ignorance, it is very easy to see parallels between NZ’s issues with Maori and the U.S.’s issues with Native Americans.

The treaty grounds were donated to NZ by two Brits who once were representatives of the Queen here. The treaty grounds has a 20 minute video describing the signing of the treaty, and it seemed to us that it was carefully worded to give offense to no one.

We signed up for a tour of the treaty grounds. Our tour was led by a youngish (26) Maori man who was quite engaging. He speaks, of course, with a NZ accent. As nearly as I can tell, the NZ accent isn’t nearly as dramatic as the Auzzie accent, and, to my ear at least, sounds quite British. He spoke very quickly, and it was interesting to hear a recounting of Maori history by a Maori tribal member in a British accent, all at a word rate of about 150% of American standard.

The carvings in the Maori meeting house on the treaty grounds are amazing. It is much larger than a traditional house would be, and the carved wall supports come from different tribes. It was built for the centennial of the signing of the Waitangi treaty in 1940.

There is also a huge Maori war canoe on the treaty grounds.

We drove back to Cap’n Bob’s, walked over to the grocery store, walked back, and caught the shuttle to the treaty grounds for the evening for a “cultural performance.” It presents a visit by one tribe (us, the visitors) to another tribe who are assumed to live in the large meeting house on the treaty grounds.

It was quite interesting. Apparently visitors to a traditional Maori tribe went through a ritual in which they were threatened by the warriors of the tribe they visited, and only welcomed if they behaved appropriately.

At this point I should mention that the average Maori male appears to be larger than me and heavier than me (but not nearly as chubby).

So seeing several healthy young Maori posture and threaten with weapons at close range is quite intimidating. Miraculously we passed the ritual test and were invited in to the show.

The show consisted of a welcoming greeting sung by women, and then a “play” about an older man talking to his grandson. It was well done. The child was alternately bored and interested, and the grandfather (I’d say “old man” but he looked younger than me) often got lost in his memories and left his grandson behind. His memories were mostly acted out, danced and sung by a group of young Maori people.

I have no way of evaluating the authenticity of any of this. All I know is that it was written by a Maori man, but the dancing and singing were delightful. Some of it was warlike, and some of it just for amusement. The women did nifty rhythmic dances with white puffy things on strings called “poi” that they swung about in very complex ways. I have seen jam band hippy types do similar things in the U.S. and I suspect they originated with the Polynesian/Maori poi.

Auckland to the Bay of Islands

New Zealand time is currently three hours later than Australian time (NZ has daylight saving time), so we actually slept until about 8:00 am today – I think that is the latest we slept since we arrived in Australia.

Had the “full” breakfast at our hotel, which was quite full. Ham (or maybe bacon – in this part of the world I’m not sure when I’m getting which), sausage, eggs, these triangular pieces of chopped, fried potato that I would call hash browns for lack of another term, a grilled tomato, toast and fruit, all laid out on a single plate without options. Good and definitely filling. At $12.50 NZ its about half the price of the hotel breakfasts we have had in Australia.

We pack up, load the car, and head out for our first real drive on the left hand side of the road. Every time we come to an intersection or have a choice to make I chant “stay left, stay left, stay left” and so far it seems to be working. I have learned to recognize the speed limit signs, but am still confused about the directional signs. They use big white signs with diagrams of the intersection, but the diagrams don’t seem to exactly match the streets themselves, so there must be some convention for interpreting them that I do not know. NZ does not allow left turns on red, but there is some more complex rule I don’t understand for intersections that means we wait a lot.

When I am driving over here and I say “sh%t” it means I have activated the windshield wiper rather than the turnsignal. Miriam is getting rather tired of hearing me say that.

Miriam’s walking shoes are giving her problems so we use the yellow pages to find a shoe store that caters to active folks. All the store names are different, and the yellow pages for Auckland generally lack the big advertising sections that tell more about the stores, so picking a store is a bit of a guess. We select “Shoe Science,” Miriam calls, and they say they have what we need.

We find our way there with only a few wrong turns and pullovers to read the map. It’s kind of a neat store with all kinds of running and walking shoes, and two long, store-length, black paths on the right side of the store. You take off your shoes and socks, walk down one of the paths and back, while the salesperson operates this computer controlled camera that films your feet as you walk. It apparently allows the store to detect walking problems that they can help correct. However, Miriam and I have normal feet, which means we are beyond help.

The salesperson brings out a pair of New Balance shoes, which are exactly what Miriam buys at home. But they are a good fit, and much more comfortable than what she has. They are also $250 NZ, but we gasp and buy them because we plan to do a lot of walking. They are also really cute.

We then drive from Auckland to the Bay of Islands, a distance of about 250 kilometers. It takes us until about 4:30, but we stop at a small park and at a small town for lunch.

The park is about 7 K off the road on a beach. Only two other cars are there and the ocean is beautiful, with rocky points or islands in the distance. The park also has these huge, gnarled trees with very rough bark and epiphyte ferns, that look like they were designed by J.R.R. Tolkien.

In the town we search for lunch. Most places sell fish and chips or pizza, and we are pretty tired of that. There is a Chinese restaurant the sign on which gives Chinese fooed and fish and chips equal billing, and we decide to pass on that. We end up at a combination bakery and food shop that has “the best pies in town” and hamburgers. We realize, after examining the display case, that “pies” are meat pies: steak and kidney, lamb and mint, curry chicken, etc. We go for the burgers.

The proper name of a “burger” is “hamburger” and there is no ham in it. So I don’t know why we should have had beefly expectations about the meat in these burgers that lack the word ham. Whatever the pink, grayish stuff was, it didn’t seem to be beef. I ordered the Hawaiian burger, than comes with a slice of pineapple, grated carrot and catsup. Miriam had the regular burger, that comes with a slice of beet, and had more trouble getting it down. This may be due to her habit of removing half the bun, which forces her to view the interior of the burger before she eats it. Some things are better left hidden.

We then drive the rest of the way to the Bay of Islands. The road is two-lane, with frequent passing lanes. It is quite curvy and heads mostly inland through beautiful, green country, occasionally passing close to the coast. I don’t see much of it because I am busy trying to stay on the road, and because I am busy chanting my mantra: “stay left, stay left, stay left.”

We arrive at the Bay of Islands a little after 4 pm, look around briefly at the town center, and find our way to Cap’n Bob’s Beach Front Backpacker.

Sydney to Auckland

We find the days we have to make plane connections the most stressful. Today we fly from Sydney, Australia to Auckland, New Zealand. Our travel agent has arranged for a shuttle to pick us up at the hotel at 8:35 am for an 11:35 am flight. This is rush hour, but the trip to the airport is supposed to take just half an hour. It’s an international flight, so we are supposed to be at the airport two hours early.

We get down to the lobby and check out at about 8:25 am. We check with the concierge to find out where the shuttle stops. He tells us that the shuttle operator will come into the lobby and announce the shuttle. We build a small mountain out of our luggage in the lobby and sit down to wait. I pull out my book on Aboriginal Australians. It’s great for these occasions because it is written by an anthropologist and focuses a lot on things I don’t much care about, so I don’t mind being distracted when I read it.

My wonderful wife, however, does not wait well. She keeps looking up at shuttle like vehicles she can see through the glass doors in the lobby. Then she gets up to investigate.

After a couple of minutes she calls my name excitedly and tells me our shuttle is here, early. We grab our stuff and hurry out to the curb to be greeted by confusion. When the confusion subsides we learn that the shuttle causing the confusion is not our shuttle.

But we, and our mountain of luggage, are already at the curb. The concierge who told Miriam to come out is abashed, but we tell him “no worries” (proper Auzzies us) and start waiting at the curb for what we think will be about five minutes.

All of our shuttles and buses so far have come early or been on time except the one that picked us up at the Sydney airport.

We wait. And wait. And wait. At about 8:38 Miriam, who by that point is spinning around on the curb like a dust devil, goes back to talk to the concierge. He calls the shuttle and tells Miriam it is on its way. She comes back out, still nervous. At about 8:42 she can stand it no longer and goes back in. The concierge then tells her that the shuttle is actually on time, it’s just our confirmation that is in error. In fact, the concierge says, the shuttle isn’t due until 8:45.

So we wait on the curb. Have I mentioned that we walked a lot yesterday, there is something wrong with my shoes, and my feet hurt?

8:45 comes. 8:45 goes. The shuttle does neither.

Miriam is wearing a small depression into the sidewalk. I tell her to give the shuttle a few minutes after its adjusted arrival time; that we would not be worried if a U.S. shuttle was a few minutes late. It is about this time that we realize the shuttle company that picked us up way late at the Sydney airport is the same shuttle company that is supposed to pick us up and take us to the Sydney airport. This realization does not cheer us.

At 8:55, give or take a few seconds, I give Miriam a short briefing on the desirability of avoiding injury to the concierge during initial negotiations, and Miriam goes back in, armed with our itinerary and voucher. I wait on the curb, watch our mountain of luggage, and contemplate my feet.

A little after 9:00 she comes back out. The concierge has assured her that the shuttle is just around the corner, that our hotel is its last stop, and that we should still make it to the airport on time. She asked about just calling a cab, but the concierge said that the shuttle operator should arrive before a cab could.

At 9:05 I go in. The concierge informs me that the shuttle is still just around the corner, but traffic is still heavy. I enlist the concierge’s sympathy, and explain that, in my country, we would assume that the shuttle operator is lying and trying to cover up his tardiness. I tell him I think we should call a cab. He agrees that we can do that, but asks me to walk outside for just one more look. We do.

He looks down the trafficky street, spies the shuttle, tells us it is just in the next block, smiles and goes back inside. Miriam and I look hopefully down the street. We do not see the shuttle.

The shuttle does arrive, however, after a couple of light changes. There is barely room for our luggage and I need to take the dobro into the van. The van is nearly full and there is barely room to twist into our seats, but we are relieved and happy. The van pulls out and heads… to its next stop. People from the airport get off there. Thei luggage is, of course, at the bottom of the pile, so unloading takes a while.

By this time we have actually relaxed and are starting to laugh. We are in the hands of a higher power, and couldn’t get out of the shuttle without a pry bar anyway.

The trip only takes about 20 minutes, which means we arrive outside the airport about 1:50 before our flight. Ten minutes late; shouldn’t be a problem.

We walk inside the airport and see an enormous queue to get to the ticket counter. It has at least five switchbacks, and each is 2/3rds the length of the large building. I count over 80 people in front of us, and there are only four airline people working from the 16 counters. For the first half hour of our wait in the queue only three people are behind us. They are the other passengers in our shuttle.

It takes a little over an hour to get to the ticket counter. When we finally do they no longer have seats for us together, but the nice lady suggests we check at the gate. I haul my dobro to oversize check in, we grab our boarding passes, walk down a hall and face: another large queue for customs.

We get through it, then walk quickly through the truly huge set of stores, mostly duty-free shops, that are inside the Sydney airport between the check-in counters and the gates. We arrive with almost ten minutes to spare and breath a sigh of relief. I check at the gate and we are given seats together.

The flight itself is pleasant and uneventful. We arrive in Auckland, go through a large queue for immigration, collect our bags from the baggage counter, and go through customs. We are diverted to a special screening queue for biological hazards because I have marked “yes” on the customs form after the question that asks whether I am carrying hiking boots.

The biological hazards queue is the slowest moving we have encountered. We are directly behind a NZ couple returning from a golfing vacation. They are in the queue because the husband is carrying golf shoes. He is visibly impatient and upset. Apparently the queue usually moves very quickly. I wonder if it is the “Rogers Magic”

We finally get to the inspection point. My boots are at the bottom of my bag, which is on the bottom of our cart. I unbury my bag and fish one boot out. The lady looks at it and asks if the other boot is similar. I say, truthfully, “yes” and she tells us to go on ahead. I repack and we go off in search of the shuttle to our rent-a-car.

Our itinerary tells us that the shuttle for our rent-a-car operator comes every 20 minutes outside gate 8. However, we see a bunch of signs for shuttles pointing to places other than gate 8, and I make the mistake of asking at the information desk about our shuttle. The nice but befuddled older lady at the information desk has never heard of our rental car company, and sends me over to a section of the airport that has phones to call shuttles for hotels and rental cars.

As I probably should have expected, our rental company is not listed. I go back to Miriam, who is waiting outside near gate 8. By this time it is raining and blowing so hard that she needs to hold on to our bags to keep them from blowing away. When I first see her she looks like a sailor in a gale, struggling to keep from being blown overboard.

I tell her that I couldn’t find anything out, and we decide to wait through a 20 minute cycle. We begin to think dark thoughts about how tiny and crummy our rental car company must be that there is no mention of them in the airport. But a few minutes later a huge bus, with our rental car company’s name emblazoned on the side, pulls up.

The driver tells us the rental car center is closed, but it won’t be a problem. He is right. We are taken to a conference center that has all our information ready. It’s less trouble than renting a car in the States. We get a silver Mitsubishi somethingorother, a sedan about the size of a Toyota Corolla. We load our baggage.

We have directions to our hotel. It is simple. We turn right outside the conference center, then take the first left. When we are in the car, however, Miriam recalls that we take the first left, then the first right. She may have been right.

Anyway, with me chanting “stay left, stay left, stay left” we head out into the darkness. We drive for about 20 minutes through largely uninhabited areas, then stop and try to read the map. The map does not appear to list the streets we are on. We drive further, stop and ask for directions, and eventually get to our hotel.

The hotel makes us realize what fancy places we have been staying in. Still, it is clean, even if we do have to haul our baggage up a flight of stairs.

We have dinner at the hotel. The food is ordinary and overcooked, but we are ravenous and don’t care. The wait staff are all Maori women, and this makes us feel like we really are in New Zealand. Then we collapse.

Sydney Day Two

This is our last day in Sydney. We have all day tickets on a ferry that makes five or six stops around Sydney harbor. We go to the zoo, stop by a pretty beach that is mobbed with other tourists, and then go back to Darling Harbor.

Miriam lobbies for a visit to the Sydney acquarium. I am reluctant. The zoo was much ballyhooed, and was fine but not extraordinary. We have heard nothing about the acquarium. I reluctantly agree, we go it, and it is delightful!

First Day in Sydney

We have a tour of the “Rocks:” the area where the first convicts lived and worked when Merry Oulde England started exporting convicts to Australia. Our tour guide thanks us folks from the US, because England only started shipping convicts to Australia after the American Revolution, when England couldn’t dump convicts in the U.S. anymore.


We then take a bus tour of Sydney and suburbs. One stop is at Bondi beach, a surf spot in an area of luxury homes.

I note an Asian couple on the beach. The young woman is struggling to dress herself under a bright orange towel while her young fellow stands by waiting. It looks like she is trying to wrestle two small children she does not want the world to see.

After a while she discards the towel (she is wearing diaphanous underpants and a top) and starts using both hands to try to pull up her very tight jeans. She is not up to the task, and is forced to ask for help from her companion.

He put both hands on the waistband and starts to pull. Her bum starts to bulge above her jeans, but the jeans fail to gain altitude. She says something to him and he pulls her panties back about a foot and reaches in, in full view of everyone on the beach, and brushes off her cheeks.

He then puts both hands on her waistband and starts to pull. Miriam and I walk on as he continues to pull without apparent success. No pictures are, alas, available.

Yulara to Sydney

We take a dawn camel ride. The shuttle picks us up in darkness and we go just a few K to the camels. It’s really fun. We learn a bit about camels, and are assigned to “Clancy;” a gentle, medium sized beast. The 45 minute walk actually takes us out on a trail and we feel, for the first time, what it might have felt like to be in this part of the world before buses and asphalt.

We get back to the hotel and have some time, so we take our first unescorted walk in the Red Center. It’s just down the way from the hotel, but fun. The desert sand is very red, and quite fine. We get to touch the prickly spinefex grass and imagine we are wandering alone.

We fly from Uluru to Sydney. The queue to check our luggage is fairly long, but it moves. We think we have time for a bite and a beer when we arrive at our gate, but we don’t. We buy the beer and end up chugging half in the queue to board. The flight is uneventful. We are amazed to see our luggage come off the belt in Sydney airport first, and all together. We think we will get out of the airport and to our hotel promptly. Silly us. Our shuttle driver, who is supposed to be standing their holding a card with our name on it, is missing. I finally call the shuttle operator and he tells me the shuttle is “almost there.” We wait some more. The shuttle eventually comes. As we leave the airport building I look back and observe that we are the last people from our flight to leave the airport.

Uluru

Today we take a tour of Uluru, and go to the “sounds of silence” dinner. Uluru is amazing.

The sounds of silence dinner is a very nice dinner out in the bush at a site where we can see the sun set on both Uluru and Kata Tjuta.

I’ll post some pictures when I have a better internet connection.

Alice Springs to Yulara

We wake up, eat, pack our luggage, and I ceremonially destroy the "World's Worst Hat."

We then take a bus tour from Alice Springs to Yulara, the resort town near Uluru and Kata Tjuta. We switch buses and take a tour of Kata Tjuta (also called the Olgas). We walk in with heards of other people. We can not leave the walkways and the experience is very controlled.

We then drive to where we can watch the sun set on Kata Tjuta. We are initially nonplussed, but our attitude changes as the sun sets. It is beautiful.

We opt to have an Auzzie barbecue. We are driven from the sunset site to another place where we can still see Kata Tjuta, but also eat and drink. Although the sun has set, the rocks are even prettier.

We enjoy the people at our table, eat and drink too much, and go to bed.

I'll post photos and add some detail when I have a better internet connection.

Darwin to Alice Springs

We flew from Darwin the Alice Springs.

The flight was uneventful.

We have always wanted to visit Alice Springs because of the PBS series "A Town Like Alice."

Although its quite hot and deserty, its much less humid than Kakadu. It seems really comfortable. We walk over the Todd river; it looks like a sandy riverbed with no water. Apparently there is hardly ever any water in the Todd river, at least on the surface, but water flows underground.

We have dinner and buy Australian hats. We return to the hotel and I fall asleep, happily dreaming of the destruction of the "Worlds Worst Hat,"

Kakadu

I’m writing this from the Bay of Islands in New Zealand; we have been having a reliably enjoyable time, but Kakadu, so far, has been the most extraordinary.

We spent three days and two nights touring Kakadu in a Toyota Landcruiser with a guide and a swiss family. We saw amazing wildlife, slept two nights in tents in all but crippling heat and humidity, saw aboriginal rock paintings, got to spend some time with an aboriginal matriarch, swam in waterfall pools, and loved talking with our guide. Miriam even ate an ant.

I’ll post pictures and details when I have a better internet connection.

Day 13 – From Cairns to Darwin

Today we leave Cairns for Darwin, the “Top End” of Australia. Our flight is in the afternoon, so we take the morning to stroll around Cairns. We are up early, but its already getting hot.

The hot climate around Cairns is great for sugar cane; this is a picture of one of the many cane fields that surround Cairns.
Our hotel in Cairns was very nice, set just across from the Esplanade, and with lots of tourists from many countries. But our early morning tour schedule has prevented us from eating breakfast anyplace except at the hotel. The hotel serves a very nice breakfast buffet, with everything from miso soup, to eggs and bacon, to breads and tropical fruits. However, it’s way more than we can eat, and, at $25 each, more than we care to spend.

We find a very nice, hole-in-the-wall type restaurant that has delicious, non-hotel style food and caters to our growing addiction to flat whites.

Then we walk on down to the central area. Cairns is on Trinity Bay; a bay named by Lieutenant Cook. Trinity Bay is a muddy bay and it also has saltwater crocodiles.
But the bayside part of the town is quite pretty. This is a picture of a kid’s free playground with fountains that sits right on the Esplanade.
We wander long enough to justify lunch, and eat facing the bay at the “Rattle and Hum.” It’s a delightful tavern with two emus in its logo and a most unusual urinal.
For lady readers who are not familiar with urinals, a urinal is a fixture in a men’s restroom into which men urinate. In the U.S. they are mostly individual porcelain fixtures that hang on the wall.

In Australia it is fairly common for the urinal to be a multi-person wall and trench affair, in which blokes stand shoulder to shoulder and direct their streams against the wall, so that the liquid runs down the wall, into the trench and away. Most of the ones I have encountered have been stainless steel.

But the Rattle and Hum urinal was unique. Instead of a trench and wall covered with stainless steel, there was a trench and a window. A perfectly transparent window looking out into a restaurant courtyard with tables and… people.

That meant that use of the device requires one to face the window, unzip, aim at the tables and people, and, well you get the picture.

I assume it was one-way glass, but I couldn’t be sure. I hesitated for a moment and then made the obvious decision: p*ss on it.

We walked back to the hotel, caught the shuttle to the airport, and had an uneventful flight to Darwin.

Day 12 – Cape Tribulation

This is our first thing that is not done with a massive group of dragon boaters and other people. Dragon boaters are nifty people, but we are realizing that we are not massive group types. This picture is of the 4 wheel drive vehicle in which we toured.
Cape Tribulation was named by Lieutenant James Cook (later made Captain) because he tore the bottom out of his ship in this neighborhood. It is wild but beautiful country.
Our first event is a trip down a river. We see our first wild crododile!
We also see Azure Kingfishers,
a tree snake and a frog.






















We walk through another rainforest,

We swim in this stream:
And go to a beautiful beach,
And prowl through the mangroves.
Then we go back to our room and, like always, go to bed way too early.