We arrived home yesterday evening, very tired and seriously disoriented.
We'll write more, and post pictures, once everything stops spinning.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
Earth and Wind
We decided to spend our last full weekend in New Zealand in Wellington, in part because there are things around here we wanted to see, and in part because we're getting sick of traveling. Last weekend's adventures around Dunedin and the Otago Peninsula (including the best beach walk ever) left us exhausted and cranky.
Yesterday, we took the Dominon Post Ferry from Wellington out to Matiu/Somes Island in the middle of the Harbour. It's a predator-free wildlife sanctuary managed by the Department of Conservation, home to feathered green rockets known as kakariki (dubbed red-crowned parakeets by pakeha naturalists). It was sunny and a bit windy when we started out, but quickly turned cloudy and drizzly. It was a fine adventure in spite of that, though Corwyn refused to wear her rain jacket.
As we rode the last ferry back to Wellington, the wind was starting to pick up.
By last night, Wellington was once again being treated to a howling gale, which is supposed to continue until mid-afternoon today. (Despite the time-stamp on this post, I'm writing this at 10:30am on Saturday.)
I woke up around 2 o'clock this morning and was unable to get back to sleep, in part because of the roaring and whistling of the wind, in part because of the random slamming noises from outside. (There's a shed for rubbish bins down below our rooms here, and the doors had not been secured. I went out this morning to deal with them.)
After tossing and turning for a while, I went into the living room to read. I sat down on the couch . . . and felt the couch jump. I looked around: nothing else in the room seems to have moved; the clothes hanging on the hook were not swaying. I shrugged it off, read for a bit, and went to bed. I was able to get back to sleep, in spite of the howling, whistling, and slamming.
I checked online this morning and, sure enough, there was a magnitude 5.0 earthquake at 2:41am, centered about 40km from here, near Paraparaumu.
It was just another night in Wellington.
Yesterday, we took the Dominon Post Ferry from Wellington out to Matiu/Somes Island in the middle of the Harbour. It's a predator-free wildlife sanctuary managed by the Department of Conservation, home to feathered green rockets known as kakariki (dubbed red-crowned parakeets by pakeha naturalists). It was sunny and a bit windy when we started out, but quickly turned cloudy and drizzly. It was a fine adventure in spite of that, though Corwyn refused to wear her rain jacket.
As we rode the last ferry back to Wellington, the wind was starting to pick up.
By last night, Wellington was once again being treated to a howling gale, which is supposed to continue until mid-afternoon today. (Despite the time-stamp on this post, I'm writing this at 10:30am on Saturday.)
I woke up around 2 o'clock this morning and was unable to get back to sleep, in part because of the roaring and whistling of the wind, in part because of the random slamming noises from outside. (There's a shed for rubbish bins down below our rooms here, and the doors had not been secured. I went out this morning to deal with them.)
After tossing and turning for a while, I went into the living room to read. I sat down on the couch . . . and felt the couch jump. I looked around: nothing else in the room seems to have moved; the clothes hanging on the hook were not swaying. I shrugged it off, read for a bit, and went to bed. I was able to get back to sleep, in spite of the howling, whistling, and slamming.
I checked online this morning and, sure enough, there was a magnitude 5.0 earthquake at 2:41am, centered about 40km from here, near Paraparaumu.
It was just another night in Wellington.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
The Short Version
Here's a quick overview of our weekend adventures in New Zealand, starting with the missing pieces of our weekend in the Northland. Sorry to be so perfunctory about this, but it will have to do until we have time to post more detailed stories and pictures.
14-17 January was our weekend in the Northland, starting on the Kauri Coast, then moving over to the Bay of Islands.
After our morning of exploring the kauri forests and (for one of us, at least) getting very, very wet, we made our way down to the Tasman Sea for a first look. The beaches on that side of the Northland are not very good for swimming, with holes, rips, and rough surf, but excellent for beach walking, shell collecting, and bird watching.
That night, we took a guided night walk in the kauri forest, which was eerily quiet. Among all of us in the group, we saw two small brown kiwis! We also saw wetas (large insects endemic to New Zealand), glow worms (in the roots of fallen kauris), and even a brush-tailed possum (an introduced species that wreaks havoc on native vegetation). We discovered that the stream pool into which I had fallen is home to a meter-long eel. We saw more stars than any of us could remember seeing in years, including the Southern Cross.
21-24 January we traveled down to Christchurch on the South Island, where were stayed in the home of Bill and Liz Baritompa. Bill is the organizer and caller for the local contra dance in Christchurch and, when I contacted him to ask whether there would be a dance in January or February, he invited us to spend a weekend with them. They invited other friends over - some from the west coast of the island, some from down in Dunedin - and we had a dance on Saturday night.
Bill and Liz have a number of acres on a hillside overlooking Lyttleton Harbour, with a wild profusion of flowers, fruit trees, and other plants. Corwyn and Dorothea enjoyed picking cherry plums and helping to feed the llamas. (Yes, llamas.)
On Friday, we drove up to Arthur's pass in the Southern Alps, and walked through southern beech forest to Devil's Punchbowl Falls, where we were joined by a busload of Japanese tourists who spent a delightful 15 minutes taking pictures of one another. We saw keas up in the mountains, large alpine parrots renowned for their curiosity and playfulness. The ones we saw around Arthur's Pass struck me as kind of sad: too much contact with tourists has turned them into beggar birds, who pose for pictures, then follow people around waiting for handouts.
On the way back to Christchurch, we stopped to explore the limestone outcrops at Castle Hill, which are great for climbing . . . though Dorothea was angry and disappointed that we wouldn't let her climb the really tall ones.
Saturday, we relaxed a bit in the morning, then spent the afternoon in Christchurch. The Buskers' Festival had just begun there, and we stopped for an hour at the Cathedral Square to watch a very funny performance by a British busker named - if memory serves - Harvey Treehead.
Sunday, we made our way out to Akaroa on the Banks Penninsula - another great drive with steep, twisting roads without guard rails - just in time for the wind to switch around to the south, bringing low clouds and driving, misty rain into the harbor there.
(This has been an odd summer for New Zealand. The wind is too often out of the south or southeast . . . and the only thing to the south of here is Antarctica. So, it's tended to be wet and cool. We've had some very fine days, but a number of rotten ones as well.)
We retreated to Birdlings Flat, which is on a spit that connects the south end of Banks Penninsula to the rest of the mainland, enclosing Lake Ellesmere. We strolled on the shingle beach, collecting a few extrarordinary stones, and drove a little along the spit on a gravel road through a sheep station. From there, we made our way to the airport for an unproblematic flight home.
28-31 January was unusual. A centerpiece of the study abroad program that brought me here is a group field trip to the area around Lake Taupo to study the geology and biology of the area. So, on Thursday morning, all of us - students, faculty, families of faculty - boarded a bus at 8am for the drive up. In the mid-afternoon, we stopped in Whakapapa Village, an odd little ski town perched on the flanks of Mt. Ruapehu, the largest active volcano in New Zealand. We rode two ski lifts up to a spot with especially interesting geological features. The girls were delighted with the ski lifts. I enjoyed the lifts because, after a day spent on a bus with thirty-or-so college students, they were quiet.
From the slopes of Ruapehu, we could see Mt. Tongariro and Mt. Ngauruhoe . . . the latter of which served as Mt. Doom in The Return of the King. When we arrived, they were shrouded by thunderstorms, but those moved off by the time we rode the lifts back down again.
We all stayed in Taupo itself, a tourist town that seems to be on the edge of a tranquil lake, but which is in fact in the very mouth of what may well be the largest and most destructive supervolcano ever . . . now classified as dormant. We learned from the geologist traveling with us that the Oronui eruption of Taupo, 26,000 years ago, ejected 1000 cubic kilometers of material. (Think about that for a minute.)
Friday was the day of the big hike. The bus took us to the Mangetepopo trailhead of the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. Some of the group - those students not taking the biogeography course for which the field trip was a required activity - set off right away to do the entire crossing, which goes up the Mangetepopo Valley, up onto the Mangetepopo Saddle between Mt. Tongariro and Mt. Ngauruhoe, across the South Crater, up onto the Red Crater of Mt. Tongariro, then down the other side. The rest of us would just go up to the Saddle, with stops along the way so the students could learn about and sometimes sketch what they were seeing.
That makes it sound easy, but it's a 12 km round trip and, while the hike up the valley was mostly a gentle slope up with occasional scrambling over more recent lava flows, the last 2 km involved a climb of several hundred meters, on a steep trail with countless stairs ascending the flanks of Mt. Doom . . . er . . . Ngauruhoe, then across the face of the Saddle to it's lowest point on the other side.
The girls - especially Corwyn - needed some cajoling, but we all made it to the top of the Saddle and safely back. (There's more to that particular story, but it won't be told here.)
Saturday morning, we joined the biogeography class for a field trip to sites around Taupo, including Craters of the Moon (a geothermal steam field, complete with fumeroles, bubbling mud pots and, of course, craters), the collection field of a geothermal electric power station, and the surprisingly impressive Huka Falls (it's not the height of the falls, it's the volume of very blue water that impresses.)
In the afternoon, many of the students went off to jump out of airplanes. Taupo bills itself as the skydiving capital of the world, which seems to impose almost a moral obligation on college students to try skydiving, even if they had no prior interest in doing so. Oddly, though, on Thursday we passed through a town that bills itself as the gumboot capital of the world, and another that bills itself as the carrot capital of the world (with lots of rich volcanic ash in which the carrots can grow), but I didn't see any of the students pitching gumboots (a local sport in Taihape) or munching carrots.
The four of us went instead to a thermal spa, where we could soak in pools fed by a hot spring or ride the water slide to our hearts content. Then, after dinner in Taupo, we walked the 2 km back to the hotel along the lake front while the sun set.
The next day, everyone boarded the bus for the trip home, with only a few stops along the way. One notable stop was the site of the Tongawai train disaster. On Christmas Even 1953, a volcanic mudflow (called a lahar) from the crater lake of Mt. Ruapehu rushed down that particular valley, weakening the structure of the train trestle just half an hour before the express train from Wellington to Auckland passed through. 151 people were killed when the trestle collapsed into the still-raging lahar.
The most recent lahar to come down through that valley was just two years ago, a few weeks after the Georgia Tech study abroad program had visited the site.
Anyway, we got home safely, and are now preparing for our next venture out. This time, we're going down to Dunedin, where there are rumors of contra dance . . .
14-17 January was our weekend in the Northland, starting on the Kauri Coast, then moving over to the Bay of Islands.
After our morning of exploring the kauri forests and (for one of us, at least) getting very, very wet, we made our way down to the Tasman Sea for a first look. The beaches on that side of the Northland are not very good for swimming, with holes, rips, and rough surf, but excellent for beach walking, shell collecting, and bird watching.
That night, we took a guided night walk in the kauri forest, which was eerily quiet. Among all of us in the group, we saw two small brown kiwis! We also saw wetas (large insects endemic to New Zealand), glow worms (in the roots of fallen kauris), and even a brush-tailed possum (an introduced species that wreaks havoc on native vegetation). We discovered that the stream pool into which I had fallen is home to a meter-long eel. We saw more stars than any of us could remember seeing in years, including the Southern Cross.
21-24 January we traveled down to Christchurch on the South Island, where were stayed in the home of Bill and Liz Baritompa. Bill is the organizer and caller for the local contra dance in Christchurch and, when I contacted him to ask whether there would be a dance in January or February, he invited us to spend a weekend with them. They invited other friends over - some from the west coast of the island, some from down in Dunedin - and we had a dance on Saturday night.
Bill and Liz have a number of acres on a hillside overlooking Lyttleton Harbour, with a wild profusion of flowers, fruit trees, and other plants. Corwyn and Dorothea enjoyed picking cherry plums and helping to feed the llamas. (Yes, llamas.)
On Friday, we drove up to Arthur's pass in the Southern Alps, and walked through southern beech forest to Devil's Punchbowl Falls, where we were joined by a busload of Japanese tourists who spent a delightful 15 minutes taking pictures of one another. We saw keas up in the mountains, large alpine parrots renowned for their curiosity and playfulness. The ones we saw around Arthur's Pass struck me as kind of sad: too much contact with tourists has turned them into beggar birds, who pose for pictures, then follow people around waiting for handouts.
On the way back to Christchurch, we stopped to explore the limestone outcrops at Castle Hill, which are great for climbing . . . though Dorothea was angry and disappointed that we wouldn't let her climb the really tall ones.
Saturday, we relaxed a bit in the morning, then spent the afternoon in Christchurch. The Buskers' Festival had just begun there, and we stopped for an hour at the Cathedral Square to watch a very funny performance by a British busker named - if memory serves - Harvey Treehead.
Sunday, we made our way out to Akaroa on the Banks Penninsula - another great drive with steep, twisting roads without guard rails - just in time for the wind to switch around to the south, bringing low clouds and driving, misty rain into the harbor there.
(This has been an odd summer for New Zealand. The wind is too often out of the south or southeast . . . and the only thing to the south of here is Antarctica. So, it's tended to be wet and cool. We've had some very fine days, but a number of rotten ones as well.)
We retreated to Birdlings Flat, which is on a spit that connects the south end of Banks Penninsula to the rest of the mainland, enclosing Lake Ellesmere. We strolled on the shingle beach, collecting a few extrarordinary stones, and drove a little along the spit on a gravel road through a sheep station. From there, we made our way to the airport for an unproblematic flight home.
28-31 January was unusual. A centerpiece of the study abroad program that brought me here is a group field trip to the area around Lake Taupo to study the geology and biology of the area. So, on Thursday morning, all of us - students, faculty, families of faculty - boarded a bus at 8am for the drive up. In the mid-afternoon, we stopped in Whakapapa Village, an odd little ski town perched on the flanks of Mt. Ruapehu, the largest active volcano in New Zealand. We rode two ski lifts up to a spot with especially interesting geological features. The girls were delighted with the ski lifts. I enjoyed the lifts because, after a day spent on a bus with thirty-or-so college students, they were quiet.
From the slopes of Ruapehu, we could see Mt. Tongariro and Mt. Ngauruhoe . . . the latter of which served as Mt. Doom in The Return of the King. When we arrived, they were shrouded by thunderstorms, but those moved off by the time we rode the lifts back down again.
We all stayed in Taupo itself, a tourist town that seems to be on the edge of a tranquil lake, but which is in fact in the very mouth of what may well be the largest and most destructive supervolcano ever . . . now classified as dormant. We learned from the geologist traveling with us that the Oronui eruption of Taupo, 26,000 years ago, ejected 1000 cubic kilometers of material. (Think about that for a minute.)
Friday was the day of the big hike. The bus took us to the Mangetepopo trailhead of the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. Some of the group - those students not taking the biogeography course for which the field trip was a required activity - set off right away to do the entire crossing, which goes up the Mangetepopo Valley, up onto the Mangetepopo Saddle between Mt. Tongariro and Mt. Ngauruhoe, across the South Crater, up onto the Red Crater of Mt. Tongariro, then down the other side. The rest of us would just go up to the Saddle, with stops along the way so the students could learn about and sometimes sketch what they were seeing.
That makes it sound easy, but it's a 12 km round trip and, while the hike up the valley was mostly a gentle slope up with occasional scrambling over more recent lava flows, the last 2 km involved a climb of several hundred meters, on a steep trail with countless stairs ascending the flanks of Mt. Doom . . . er . . . Ngauruhoe, then across the face of the Saddle to it's lowest point on the other side.
The girls - especially Corwyn - needed some cajoling, but we all made it to the top of the Saddle and safely back. (There's more to that particular story, but it won't be told here.)
Saturday morning, we joined the biogeography class for a field trip to sites around Taupo, including Craters of the Moon (a geothermal steam field, complete with fumeroles, bubbling mud pots and, of course, craters), the collection field of a geothermal electric power station, and the surprisingly impressive Huka Falls (it's not the height of the falls, it's the volume of very blue water that impresses.)
In the afternoon, many of the students went off to jump out of airplanes. Taupo bills itself as the skydiving capital of the world, which seems to impose almost a moral obligation on college students to try skydiving, even if they had no prior interest in doing so. Oddly, though, on Thursday we passed through a town that bills itself as the gumboot capital of the world, and another that bills itself as the carrot capital of the world (with lots of rich volcanic ash in which the carrots can grow), but I didn't see any of the students pitching gumboots (a local sport in Taihape) or munching carrots.
The four of us went instead to a thermal spa, where we could soak in pools fed by a hot spring or ride the water slide to our hearts content. Then, after dinner in Taupo, we walked the 2 km back to the hotel along the lake front while the sun set.
The next day, everyone boarded the bus for the trip home, with only a few stops along the way. One notable stop was the site of the Tongawai train disaster. On Christmas Even 1953, a volcanic mudflow (called a lahar) from the crater lake of Mt. Ruapehu rushed down that particular valley, weakening the structure of the train trestle just half an hour before the express train from Wellington to Auckland passed through. 151 people were killed when the trestle collapsed into the still-raging lahar.
The most recent lahar to come down through that valley was just two years ago, a few weeks after the Georgia Tech study abroad program had visited the site.
Anyway, we got home safely, and are now preparing for our next venture out. This time, we're going down to Dunedin, where there are rumors of contra dance . . .
Out of Time
I have three reasons for the title of this post.
First, we keep meaning to post stories and pictures to the blog, but we keep running out of time. After we've gone through our daily routine here in Wellington, which often enough includes an after-dinner walk up to the Botanic Garden so the kids can play on the playground, we suddenly find it's 10 or 11 and time to go to sleep. Then, we keep running off on our long weekends, on which we seldom even look at our computers.
There are additional obstacles to posting, especially the odd arrangement we have for internet access. We're working through the Victoria University system, with fairly restricted accounts that include proxy settings that don't work with email clients or convenient tools like Picasa. So, it's difficult to upload the many pictures we've taken. And who has time to sort through the pictures? We may be posting them for weeks after our return.
The second reason for the title is that we have now passed the half-way point of our sojourn in New Zealand, and have the growing sense that our time is running out. Coming up is our last full weekend away from Wellington. The following weekend we plan to stay around Wellington, though we may take the ferry across Cook Strait for an overnight in the city of Nelson. The weekend after that we fly back to Atlanta, and we know we'll feel a tug of regret for all the things we didn't get to do and see.
The third reason - speaking for myself here - is that I have the sense of having stepped outside of ordinary time. We've been here for nearly four weeks now, but it seems much, much longer than that. There's an intensity and fullness of our experience here - traveling so much, seeing and doing so many different things - that time seems to dilate. A three-day weekend feels more like three weeks . . . though there still isn't enough time to do everything. Ordinary life in Atlanta seems like a dream we once had.
What's all this we hear about winter? In January? Ridiculous! Here, it's always been high summer.
First, we keep meaning to post stories and pictures to the blog, but we keep running out of time. After we've gone through our daily routine here in Wellington, which often enough includes an after-dinner walk up to the Botanic Garden so the kids can play on the playground, we suddenly find it's 10 or 11 and time to go to sleep. Then, we keep running off on our long weekends, on which we seldom even look at our computers.
There are additional obstacles to posting, especially the odd arrangement we have for internet access. We're working through the Victoria University system, with fairly restricted accounts that include proxy settings that don't work with email clients or convenient tools like Picasa. So, it's difficult to upload the many pictures we've taken. And who has time to sort through the pictures? We may be posting them for weeks after our return.
The second reason for the title is that we have now passed the half-way point of our sojourn in New Zealand, and have the growing sense that our time is running out. Coming up is our last full weekend away from Wellington. The following weekend we plan to stay around Wellington, though we may take the ferry across Cook Strait for an overnight in the city of Nelson. The weekend after that we fly back to Atlanta, and we know we'll feel a tug of regret for all the things we didn't get to do and see.
The third reason - speaking for myself here - is that I have the sense of having stepped outside of ordinary time. We've been here for nearly four weeks now, but it seems much, much longer than that. There's an intensity and fullness of our experience here - traveling so much, seeing and doing so many different things - that time seems to dilate. A three-day weekend feels more like three weeks . . . though there still isn't enough time to do everything. Ordinary life in Atlanta seems like a dream we once had.
What's all this we hear about winter? In January? Ridiculous! Here, it's always been high summer.
Monday, January 25, 2010
to the left to the left to the left . . .
That's my mantra to myself when driving in New Zealand . . . though I need it less now than I did at first.
Really, I've been pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to adjust to driving on the left-hand side of the road. Last weekend - to bring this at last to the beginning of the story of last weekend - we arrived at Auckland airport early on Thursday evening, picked up our rental car, and headed for the Northland.
I had to do a lot of thinking as we left the parking lot (to the left to the left to the left), and we got lost trying to get from the airport to the main route out of the city, but soon enough we were safely on the motorway, heading north at a comfortable 100kph. Okay, I thought, this will be easy enough. It just took a little practice to keep the car centered in the lane.
Then, all too soon, we came to the end of the motorway. Just outside the Auckland suburbs, State Highway 1 becomes a two-lane rural road, but one with a good surface, fairly wide lanes, and something of a shoulder. Then the road got narrower and started to wind and twist through the hills, past signs warning of a high crash rate. Then the sun went down. Then it started to rain.
It took us at least four hours to get to our destination, a "holiday park" on the Kauri Coast. I was shaken and exhausted, but fully initiated into New Zealand driving.
(The Kauri Coast is on the western side of the Northland, bordered by the Tasman Sea. It's home to the largest remnants of the native bush of the region, dominated by massive and ancient kauri trees. A holiday park is a distinctive institution in New Zealand that combines various kinds of accommodation - from unpowered campsites to self-contained tourist flats - on a single property.)
The hardest thing about New Zealand driving has nothing to do with driving on the left. That has come to seem almost normal, though I do have to think a little when approaching a roundabout (keep left, look for traffic coming from the right), or when making a right-hand turn (aim for the far lane), or when maneuvering in a parking lot (to the left to the left to the left). I also have to put up with my own annoyingly persistent habit of turning on the windshield wipers when I want to signal a turn.
No, the hardest thing about driving in New Zealand is driving in New Zealand. Almost none of the land is flat, almost none of the roads are straight, and very few of the roads are more than narrow ribbons of asphalt with two lanes and no shoulder . . .with hairpin turns and absurdly steep grades and oncoming traffic which, in the Northland, might include logging trucks, milk tankers, and foreign tourists in rented camper vans hauling boats.
In most places, under most conditions, the nationwide top speed limit of 100kph (around 60mph) is but a distant dream. Among other things, this makes it very difficult to estimate the driving time from one point to another, as it has no fixed relationship with the distance involved.
As an added bonus, the infrastructure of New Zealand embodies either a cavalier attitude toward safety, the absence of a large population of trial lawyers, or both: use at your own risk. Guard rails are few and far between, regardless of slope or altitude. So, imagine a narrow, shoulderless road on the side of a mountain, with a cliff rising up on one side, a steep drop on the other, twisting through hairpin turns at some absurdly steep grade with logging trucks coming the other way . . . and no rail.
The absence of rails also applies to footpaths, which brings me around to the most embarassing (and possibly funniest, though I might not be the one to ask about that) story from last weekend. It's the answer to the mystery of why my shoes were so wet on that particular Friday.
We spent Friday morning exploring the kauri forest at Trounson Reserve, just a few kilometers from the holiday park. There's an easy loop path around the reserve, and all manner of interesting things to see. Andrea, with her new camera, was practicing microphotobotany (about which more later). I had my binoculars, and was working to revive my skills at birding.
We stopped at one point to listen to a couple of tui (native honeyeaters) calling to each other. I had my binoculars to my face, trying to spot one of them. I moved a bit to get a better angle: first to the right, then to the left, then back.
I was very surprised at that moment to find myself falling, having stepped back onto nothing at all. I was then utterly astonished to find myself falling backward into in a two-foot-deep pool of water. I had been standing on a narrow dirt path that was set down on a wooden bridge, with a rail only on one side.
I recovered quickly and stood up - which is how my shoes got wet - and somehow managed to keep dry the cell phone in my pocket, the books in my day bag, and the binoculars around my neck. My wallet was only slightly damp.
To her credit, Andrea waited until she knew I was unhurt before she started laughing.
For my part, I recalled an important lesson from my youth (taught to me by a stinging nettle when I was fifteen or sixteen) about walking while using binoculars. I also learned the value of wool socks.
But I never did see either of the tui.
Really, I've been pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to adjust to driving on the left-hand side of the road. Last weekend - to bring this at last to the beginning of the story of last weekend - we arrived at Auckland airport early on Thursday evening, picked up our rental car, and headed for the Northland.
I had to do a lot of thinking as we left the parking lot (to the left to the left to the left), and we got lost trying to get from the airport to the main route out of the city, but soon enough we were safely on the motorway, heading north at a comfortable 100kph. Okay, I thought, this will be easy enough. It just took a little practice to keep the car centered in the lane.
Then, all too soon, we came to the end of the motorway. Just outside the Auckland suburbs, State Highway 1 becomes a two-lane rural road, but one with a good surface, fairly wide lanes, and something of a shoulder. Then the road got narrower and started to wind and twist through the hills, past signs warning of a high crash rate. Then the sun went down. Then it started to rain.
It took us at least four hours to get to our destination, a "holiday park" on the Kauri Coast. I was shaken and exhausted, but fully initiated into New Zealand driving.
(The Kauri Coast is on the western side of the Northland, bordered by the Tasman Sea. It's home to the largest remnants of the native bush of the region, dominated by massive and ancient kauri trees. A holiday park is a distinctive institution in New Zealand that combines various kinds of accommodation - from unpowered campsites to self-contained tourist flats - on a single property.)
The hardest thing about New Zealand driving has nothing to do with driving on the left. That has come to seem almost normal, though I do have to think a little when approaching a roundabout (keep left, look for traffic coming from the right), or when making a right-hand turn (aim for the far lane), or when maneuvering in a parking lot (to the left to the left to the left). I also have to put up with my own annoyingly persistent habit of turning on the windshield wipers when I want to signal a turn.
No, the hardest thing about driving in New Zealand is driving in New Zealand. Almost none of the land is flat, almost none of the roads are straight, and very few of the roads are more than narrow ribbons of asphalt with two lanes and no shoulder . . .with hairpin turns and absurdly steep grades and oncoming traffic which, in the Northland, might include logging trucks, milk tankers, and foreign tourists in rented camper vans hauling boats.
In most places, under most conditions, the nationwide top speed limit of 100kph (around 60mph) is but a distant dream. Among other things, this makes it very difficult to estimate the driving time from one point to another, as it has no fixed relationship with the distance involved.
As an added bonus, the infrastructure of New Zealand embodies either a cavalier attitude toward safety, the absence of a large population of trial lawyers, or both: use at your own risk. Guard rails are few and far between, regardless of slope or altitude. So, imagine a narrow, shoulderless road on the side of a mountain, with a cliff rising up on one side, a steep drop on the other, twisting through hairpin turns at some absurdly steep grade with logging trucks coming the other way . . . and no rail.
The absence of rails also applies to footpaths, which brings me around to the most embarassing (and possibly funniest, though I might not be the one to ask about that) story from last weekend. It's the answer to the mystery of why my shoes were so wet on that particular Friday.
We spent Friday morning exploring the kauri forest at Trounson Reserve, just a few kilometers from the holiday park. There's an easy loop path around the reserve, and all manner of interesting things to see. Andrea, with her new camera, was practicing microphotobotany (about which more later). I had my binoculars, and was working to revive my skills at birding.
We stopped at one point to listen to a couple of tui (native honeyeaters) calling to each other. I had my binoculars to my face, trying to spot one of them. I moved a bit to get a better angle: first to the right, then to the left, then back.
I was very surprised at that moment to find myself falling, having stepped back onto nothing at all. I was then utterly astonished to find myself falling backward into in a two-foot-deep pool of water. I had been standing on a narrow dirt path that was set down on a wooden bridge, with a rail only on one side.
I recovered quickly and stood up - which is how my shoes got wet - and somehow managed to keep dry the cell phone in my pocket, the books in my day bag, and the binoculars around my neck. My wallet was only slightly damp.
To her credit, Andrea waited until she knew I was unhurt before she started laughing.
For my part, I recalled an important lesson from my youth (taught to me by a stinging nettle when I was fifteen or sixteen) about walking while using binoculars. I also learned the value of wool socks.
But I never did see either of the tui.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Bay of Islands
I seem to have started telling the story of our weekend backward, starting with the strange circumstances of our homecoming. Let me continue that by backing up one step.
Before we found ourselves in lovely Palmerston North, we drove from the town of Paihia on the Bay of Islands down to the airport in Auckland. We'd spent only one night in the Bay of Islands, with a short afternoon and a long morning on either side. As with everything we did over the weekend, we were sorry not to have had more time . . . there were a dozen things we would like to have done or seen there that we just couldn't get to, and we were hard pressed to do what we did.
The Bay of Islands is where modern New Zealand started. It was already a center of Maori settlement before the James Cook arrived there in the eighteenth century. I'd have to check, but it may even have been the point at which the first Maori canoes (called waka) arrived six hundred or so years before that.
Paihia was the site of one of the first successful missionary settlements on New Zealand. It's now become a slightly trashy tourist town, really the center of activity for anyone wanting to explore the Bay and its surroundings. Here's the view from our motel room in Paihia:
When the HMS Beagle put in at the Bay of Islands in 1835, Darwin first stayed at Paihia (which he called Pahia). He met James Busby (or Bushby, as Darwin has it), the British Resident who represented the Crown in New Zealand and who was charged with bringing some measure of law and order to the area. Busby would accompany Darwin on some of his explorations.
Just over four years later, in February 1840, Busby's home on the hill just across the Waitangi River from Paihia was the setting for the Treaty of Waitangi, in which the Maori may or may not have agreed to place themselves under British rule and the British may or may not have agreed to respect Maori land claims. The treaty has been much abused and is still much contested - in part because the Maori and English versions are substantially different from one another on a number of crucial points, including the meaning of "sovereingty"! - but it is considered the founding document of modern New Zealand.
We visited the Waitangi site, in something of a rush (pictures forthcoming, from Andrea's camera). We then hurried back into Paihia to catch a passenger ferry to the village of Russell, across the bay. There, we settled in for dinner at what was the first licensed pub in New Zealand, the Duke of Marlborough (seen here in a picture I took the next day).
Russell was once dubbed "the hell-hole of the South Pacific" because, in its hey-day, it served as the headquarters for the whaling and sealing fleets of the entire South Pacific. That means lots of sailors on shore leave, which means lots of men behaving very, very badly.
Part of Darwin's bad impression of New Zealand probably comes from the predominance of such conduct among the English inhabitants of the Bay. It also may have come from his encounters with Maori already degraded and demoralized by the various consequences of their interaction with Europeans, including alcohol abuse, European venereal and other diseases, and a completely irrational enthusiasm for European muskets. I've read elsewhere that prominent Maori men would press their slaves - and then their family members - into prostitution in order to have the means to acquire more muskets, which would in turn serve as the means to acquire mana (power and prestige).
(Another part of Darwin's bad impression may come from the fact that, to people used to European or North American landscapes, the native kauri forest really is uncanny, even alien. But that comes earlier in the story of our weekend.)
On Sunday, we took one of the tourist cruises through the bay and out into the open Pacific, finally reaching the famous Hole in the Rock before turning back. Along the way, as tourist cruises inevitably do, we looked for dolphins.
We came across a pod right away. Taking pictures in such circumstances is a compulsory exercise, and here are my two best contributions to that genre:
And, of course, there is the compulsory image of the Hole in the Rock, out past Brett Point:
And one last picture, of my three sweeties on the return trip to the Bay:
When we arrived back in Paihia, we had time for a quick lunch before the long, winding drive to the airport. Driving in New Zealand is a story in itself, but one that also comes earlier in the tale of our weekend . . . so I'll write about it later.
As I said, there were many other things we could have done in and around the Bay. From Waitangi, there's a boardwalk through a mangrove swamp, leading to a waterfall . . . likely the same one to which James Busby conducted Darwin back in 1835. We could have spent several more hours at Waitangi itself, and several days over in Russell which, despite its past, now has a relaxed kind of historic charm about it.
Also, rather than the short, three-hour cruise, Andrea would have liked to have gone out for a day-long sail on one of the big catamarans that take more adventurous tourists out on the Bay. A day sail would include stopovers on small islands, a chance to swim in the bay, and perhaps even a chance to swim with dolphins. Who knows: we might all have had a chance to learn dolphinish.
Before we found ourselves in lovely Palmerston North, we drove from the town of Paihia on the Bay of Islands down to the airport in Auckland. We'd spent only one night in the Bay of Islands, with a short afternoon and a long morning on either side. As with everything we did over the weekend, we were sorry not to have had more time . . . there were a dozen things we would like to have done or seen there that we just couldn't get to, and we were hard pressed to do what we did.
The Bay of Islands is where modern New Zealand started. It was already a center of Maori settlement before the James Cook arrived there in the eighteenth century. I'd have to check, but it may even have been the point at which the first Maori canoes (called waka) arrived six hundred or so years before that.
Paihia was the site of one of the first successful missionary settlements on New Zealand. It's now become a slightly trashy tourist town, really the center of activity for anyone wanting to explore the Bay and its surroundings. Here's the view from our motel room in Paihia:
When the HMS Beagle put in at the Bay of Islands in 1835, Darwin first stayed at Paihia (which he called Pahia). He met James Busby (or Bushby, as Darwin has it), the British Resident who represented the Crown in New Zealand and who was charged with bringing some measure of law and order to the area. Busby would accompany Darwin on some of his explorations.
Just over four years later, in February 1840, Busby's home on the hill just across the Waitangi River from Paihia was the setting for the Treaty of Waitangi, in which the Maori may or may not have agreed to place themselves under British rule and the British may or may not have agreed to respect Maori land claims. The treaty has been much abused and is still much contested - in part because the Maori and English versions are substantially different from one another on a number of crucial points, including the meaning of "sovereingty"! - but it is considered the founding document of modern New Zealand.
We visited the Waitangi site, in something of a rush (pictures forthcoming, from Andrea's camera). We then hurried back into Paihia to catch a passenger ferry to the village of Russell, across the bay. There, we settled in for dinner at what was the first licensed pub in New Zealand, the Duke of Marlborough (seen here in a picture I took the next day).
Russell was once dubbed "the hell-hole of the South Pacific" because, in its hey-day, it served as the headquarters for the whaling and sealing fleets of the entire South Pacific. That means lots of sailors on shore leave, which means lots of men behaving very, very badly.
Part of Darwin's bad impression of New Zealand probably comes from the predominance of such conduct among the English inhabitants of the Bay. It also may have come from his encounters with Maori already degraded and demoralized by the various consequences of their interaction with Europeans, including alcohol abuse, European venereal and other diseases, and a completely irrational enthusiasm for European muskets. I've read elsewhere that prominent Maori men would press their slaves - and then their family members - into prostitution in order to have the means to acquire more muskets, which would in turn serve as the means to acquire mana (power and prestige).
(Another part of Darwin's bad impression may come from the fact that, to people used to European or North American landscapes, the native kauri forest really is uncanny, even alien. But that comes earlier in the story of our weekend.)
On Sunday, we took one of the tourist cruises through the bay and out into the open Pacific, finally reaching the famous Hole in the Rock before turning back. Along the way, as tourist cruises inevitably do, we looked for dolphins.
We came across a pod right away. Taking pictures in such circumstances is a compulsory exercise, and here are my two best contributions to that genre:
Dorothea set her little-kid camera to video mode and shot about eight minutes of continuous, low-resolution footage of the dolphins, some of which turned out fairly well. I may help her post some of that later - thought it may have to wait until I have the means to pick out the good parts.
Dorothea later told me that seeing the dolphins was the best part of the trip, though she was sorry she couldn't meet one.
I asked her, "Can you meet a dolphin?"
"Of course!" she replied. "They come out of the water and I say 'hi', then they tell me their name."
"How do they tell you their name?" I asked.
"They say it to me, and I can understand because I speak dolphinish."
We encountered a second pod of dolphins out on the Pacific, near a little outcrop called Bird Rock. I was more interested in the Australasian gannets sitting up on top than in the dolphins swimming down below.
And, of course, there is the compulsory image of the Hole in the Rock, out past Brett Point:
And one last picture, of my three sweeties on the return trip to the Bay:
When we arrived back in Paihia, we had time for a quick lunch before the long, winding drive to the airport. Driving in New Zealand is a story in itself, but one that also comes earlier in the tale of our weekend . . . so I'll write about it later.
As I said, there were many other things we could have done in and around the Bay. From Waitangi, there's a boardwalk through a mangrove swamp, leading to a waterfall . . . likely the same one to which James Busby conducted Darwin back in 1835. We could have spent several more hours at Waitangi itself, and several days over in Russell which, despite its past, now has a relaxed kind of historic charm about it.
Also, rather than the short, three-hour cruise, Andrea would have liked to have gone out for a day-long sail on one of the big catamarans that take more adventurous tourists out on the Bay. A day sail would include stopovers on small islands, a chance to swim in the bay, and perhaps even a chance to swim with dolphins. Who knows: we might all have had a chance to learn dolphinish.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Visit Lovely Palmerston North!
I wrote the following late last night:
As I write this, we’ve just passed through the seaside town of Paraparaumu, on our way by coach from Palmerston North to Wellington. It’s approaching 11pm.
Where is Palmerston North? Nowhere in particular. In fact, I hadn’t even heard of it until our flight from Auckland was diverted there when dense fog in Wellington made it impossible for us to land as scheduled.
(This was the first time I'd ever experienced an aborted landing. We must have been within 100m of the runway when the plane picked up speed and started to ascend again. As for our landing at Palmerston North, I'm not altogether certain the airport there is really equipped to handle a Boeing 737: it seemed to me the pilot had to slam on the breaks in order to stop before the end of the runway.)
Palmerston is a small city in the middle of a large, relatively flat farming area – the largest expanse of flat land we’ve yet seen in New Zealand. It would have reminded me of rural Ohio, but for the hedgerows and the predominance of sheep.
(Last week, one of my colleagues joked that the one bit of flat land in Wellington is the cricket pitch in Kelburn Park, near Weir House. It’s very nearly true, if you don’t count the waterfront.)
Anyway, to make a long story short, this is a very strange end to a very good and eventful weekend. We flew up to Auckland on Thursday evening, then drove up into the Northland. We spent a day and a half exploring the kauri forests and the Tasman Sea beaches on one side of the penninsula, then crossed over to spend a little time in Paihia and Russell on the Bay of Islands.
There are many stories to tell, many, many pictures to upload, and many questions to answer. Why were my shoes so wet on Friday? Why was Russell once called "the hell-hole of the South Pacific?" . . . but that will have to wait until we’re back in Wellington and have had a chance to sleep.
Incidentally, there’s really only one road into Wellington, which is at the southernmost tip of the North Island. The highway and the railroad line both skirt the harbor on a narrow shelf of land that did not exist before the great Wellington quake of 1855.
As I write this, we’ve just passed through the seaside town of Paraparaumu, on our way by coach from Palmerston North to Wellington. It’s approaching 11pm.
Where is Palmerston North? Nowhere in particular. In fact, I hadn’t even heard of it until our flight from Auckland was diverted there when dense fog in Wellington made it impossible for us to land as scheduled.
(This was the first time I'd ever experienced an aborted landing. We must have been within 100m of the runway when the plane picked up speed and started to ascend again. As for our landing at Palmerston North, I'm not altogether certain the airport there is really equipped to handle a Boeing 737: it seemed to me the pilot had to slam on the breaks in order to stop before the end of the runway.)
Palmerston is a small city in the middle of a large, relatively flat farming area – the largest expanse of flat land we’ve yet seen in New Zealand. It would have reminded me of rural Ohio, but for the hedgerows and the predominance of sheep.
(Last week, one of my colleagues joked that the one bit of flat land in Wellington is the cricket pitch in Kelburn Park, near Weir House. It’s very nearly true, if you don’t count the waterfront.)
Anyway, to make a long story short, this is a very strange end to a very good and eventful weekend. We flew up to Auckland on Thursday evening, then drove up into the Northland. We spent a day and a half exploring the kauri forests and the Tasman Sea beaches on one side of the penninsula, then crossed over to spend a little time in Paihia and Russell on the Bay of Islands.
There are many stories to tell, many, many pictures to upload, and many questions to answer. Why were my shoes so wet on Friday? Why was Russell once called "the hell-hole of the South Pacific?" . . . but that will have to wait until we’re back in Wellington and have had a chance to sleep.
Incidentally, there’s really only one road into Wellington, which is at the southernmost tip of the North Island. The highway and the railroad line both skirt the harbor on a narrow shelf of land that did not exist before the great Wellington quake of 1855.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Pictures from the Plane
I made some pictures on the plane on the way to Los Angeles. I also made a couple other pictures.
Here are some of the pictures.
Daddy wasn't in the same row as me, so I went to visit him. I showed him some pictures on my camera, and he took these two pictures:
When we got to New Zealand, Mommy and Daddy drank tea. Here's a picture of them drinking it.
(Daddy helped type this.)
Here are some of the pictures.
Daddy wasn't in the same row as me, so I went to visit him. I showed him some pictures on my camera, and he took these two pictures:
When we got to New Zealand, Mommy and Daddy drank tea. Here's a picture of them drinking it.
(Daddy helped type this.)
Friday, January 8, 2010
Tidbits and a trip to the Botanic Gardens
Life is good on a very fundamental level. The air smells delicious, not only because the wind sweeps what little pollution there is away, but because everything is blooming and so many plants smell sweet and good. The water is also really good. It has no chemical taste whatsoever, just good clean water. I love that our space is small simple and adequate. There are lots of windows, which are single pane, so we can see the view unobstructed. We leave them tilted open so we can hear the lovely, but unfamiliar bird calls all around and let in the sweet floral scented air. It is wonderfully windy here, which makes a loud whooshing in the trees and an even louder whistling past the windows.
There are so few bugs that there are no screens on the windows, although today something got in. I tried to shoo it back out but wound up swatting it instead. It was the strangest smooshed bug I ever saw. At home it would have been a house fly, but this thing was brown and fuzzy and I think it was pregnant, if a fly could be that, because there appeared to be a bunch of eggs.
Yesterday we visited the Botanic Gardens, spending most of the day there. Like many botanical gardens, there were many plants that are not native to the area. We did begin by walking through a native stable gully forest where we saw tree sized ferns and other extraordinary plants.
We then passed through the Tree House visitors center and on to the magnificent planted gardens. One interesting thing we saw was a pine nut pine cone with some pine nuts still in it. There was a succulent garden with aloes as tall as Dorothea and other indescribably weird looking plants.
There was an herb garden with herbs both familiar and exotic. One of the nicest places was the scented garden, where every plant was selected because either the blooms or the foliage smell good. We spent a long time sniffing the many flowers. Dorothea came away with her nose smeared yellow with pollen!
There was an enormous rose garden, where everything was in bloom, of course. There were single roses and ones with so many petals they looked like peonies, and though you might think all roses smell like, well, roses, they are not the same at all. They range from classic rose to citrus, musky spice to delicate apple.
We lunched in the Begonia House at one end of the garden. The only legacy British colonialism seems to have left in the cuisine here is a taste for cheese, beer, and curry. Our sandwiches were very tasty with lots of fresh things in them. After lunch we went back out to the rose garden which has a shallow fountain in the middle. Floating on the water were hundreds of rose petals and leaves, and a duck with a half dozen ducklings still fuzzy and tiny. They were so, soooo cute! They mama swam them over to a ramp and they waddled out and across the street to the proper duck pond where the other ducks were. Make way for ducklings!
The kids were ready for something more kid oriented, so we walked over to the large play park in the gardens. There they played for a couple of hours, met some other kids, and rode a zip line over and over again.
We then walked home to Weir House, our residence, for tea and a rest.
From our window we can see the Swiss engineered funicular cable car which makes the 20% grade trip between Kelburn district, where Victoria U. is situated, and downtown Wellington tolerable to travel. (See Bob's last post for pictures.) You can hardly take a step here without going up or down a steep hill, with or without stairs. The whole city is perched on a hillside overlooking the enormous harbor and bay. The University stop for the cable car is just a hop and a skip from Weir House, so we took the easy ride into downtown Wellington and walked to the main shopping and night life district for dinner. It is a pleasantly quiet ride compared to most commuter transit.
After we got back and put the kids to bed, Bob wrestled with the computer and internet trying to post pictures, but there seem to be some blocks. Here is a sample. The birds are rather quick, so as soon as they're framed up and I'm about to click, they hop or fly off, so no birds yet. The other photographic challenge comes from the wind which makes all the plants wave and flutter. I will have to practice!
This morning the other professors and the students arrived. There goes tranquility. I am missing dance already, but there are so many compensations, and no lack of physical activity.
There are so few bugs that there are no screens on the windows, although today something got in. I tried to shoo it back out but wound up swatting it instead. It was the strangest smooshed bug I ever saw. At home it would have been a house fly, but this thing was brown and fuzzy and I think it was pregnant, if a fly could be that, because there appeared to be a bunch of eggs.
Yesterday we visited the Botanic Gardens, spending most of the day there. Like many botanical gardens, there were many plants that are not native to the area. We did begin by walking through a native stable gully forest where we saw tree sized ferns and other extraordinary plants.
We then passed through the Tree House visitors center and on to the magnificent planted gardens. One interesting thing we saw was a pine nut pine cone with some pine nuts still in it. There was a succulent garden with aloes as tall as Dorothea and other indescribably weird looking plants.
There was an herb garden with herbs both familiar and exotic. One of the nicest places was the scented garden, where every plant was selected because either the blooms or the foliage smell good. We spent a long time sniffing the many flowers. Dorothea came away with her nose smeared yellow with pollen!
There was an enormous rose garden, where everything was in bloom, of course. There were single roses and ones with so many petals they looked like peonies, and though you might think all roses smell like, well, roses, they are not the same at all. They range from classic rose to citrus, musky spice to delicate apple.
We lunched in the Begonia House at one end of the garden. The only legacy British colonialism seems to have left in the cuisine here is a taste for cheese, beer, and curry. Our sandwiches were very tasty with lots of fresh things in them. After lunch we went back out to the rose garden which has a shallow fountain in the middle. Floating on the water were hundreds of rose petals and leaves, and a duck with a half dozen ducklings still fuzzy and tiny. They were so, soooo cute! They mama swam them over to a ramp and they waddled out and across the street to the proper duck pond where the other ducks were. Make way for ducklings!
The kids were ready for something more kid oriented, so we walked over to the large play park in the gardens. There they played for a couple of hours, met some other kids, and rode a zip line over and over again.
We then walked home to Weir House, our residence, for tea and a rest.
From our window we can see the Swiss engineered funicular cable car which makes the 20% grade trip between Kelburn district, where Victoria U. is situated, and downtown Wellington tolerable to travel. (See Bob's last post for pictures.) You can hardly take a step here without going up or down a steep hill, with or without stairs. The whole city is perched on a hillside overlooking the enormous harbor and bay. The University stop for the cable car is just a hop and a skip from Weir House, so we took the easy ride into downtown Wellington and walked to the main shopping and night life district for dinner. It is a pleasantly quiet ride compared to most commuter transit.
After we got back and put the kids to bed, Bob wrestled with the computer and internet trying to post pictures, but there seem to be some blocks. Here is a sample. The birds are rather quick, so as soon as they're framed up and I'm about to click, they hop or fly off, so no birds yet. The other photographic challenge comes from the wind which makes all the plants wave and flutter. I will have to practice!
This morning the other professors and the students arrived. There goes tranquility. I am missing dance already, but there are so many compensations, and no lack of physical activity.
First Day
Our first day in Wellington seemed endless, partly because of jet lag, partly because of what I've been calling "season lag". Although we arrived early in the morning, it felt like early afternoon . . . and then the sun stayed up well into the evening.
The four of us barely managed to stay awake until bedtime.
Here are a few pictures of the day.
First, the view (through a dirty window) from our bedroom in Weir House, looking up the hill toward the top of the Wellington Cable Car line.
The tree with the red flowers is a pohutukawa, sometimes called the New Zealand Christmas Tree. We were lucky to have arrived just as these were in full bloom. The tree is native to these islands, but not to the Wellington area. It's now common here, thanks to the efforts of an overenthusiastic gardener . . .
Just through the back door of Weir House is a small corner of Kelburn Park, cut off from the main body of the park by the cable car track. The playground isn't much, but the girls enjoyed it.
The four of us barely managed to stay awake until bedtime.
Here are a few pictures of the day.
First, the view (through a dirty window) from our bedroom in Weir House, looking up the hill toward the top of the Wellington Cable Car line.
The tree with the red flowers is a pohutukawa, sometimes called the New Zealand Christmas Tree. We were lucky to have arrived just as these were in full bloom. The tree is native to these islands, but not to the Wellington area. It's now common here, thanks to the efforts of an overenthusiastic gardener . . .
Just through the back door of Weir House is a small corner of Kelburn Park, cut off from the main body of the park by the cable car track. The playground isn't much, but the girls enjoyed it.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
On The Ground
We arrived in Wellington just after 9am on Thursday, local time, having skipped over Wednesday altogether. The the long process of getting here was relatively uneventful: the usual stretches of sitting-around-and-waiting punctuated by shorter stretches of standing-around-and-waiting for this bit of airline protocol or that bit of security protocol. But, all things considered, uneventful is good. Tedium often gets the job done.
A few highlights:
I realize now how much I miss wind, when we're in the doldrums of Atlanta. How often, living there, do we get to use any form of the verb "to scud"?
There's more to come, later. I'll help Dorothea upload some pictures she took from the plane as we flew from Atlanta to LA, and I'll upload a few pictures of the girls at play in the Newer-Than-New World.
A few highlights:
- I saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time on Tuesday afternoon, as we decended into LA. I was not in a window seat, so I had to crane my neck to look out someone else's window to see a little corner of water like bronze in the light of sunset.
- Later, in the middle of the night, I waked to the back of the plane, just to stretch my legs, and took the time to look through the windows in the rear doors. Looking north, I could see only clouds over a dark ocean, with a single point of light in all that immensity. Looking south, I could see the light of the half moon reflected in the water and in the clouds.
- Our descent into Wellington, at the end of a 1-hour hop from Auckland, was the most exciting part of any of our three flights. There was, as there often is, a strong wind blowing across the south end of the North Island, and the plane was buffeted this way and that is as we came in low over the water, seeming to reach land just in time for a landing smoother than we had any right to expect.
I realize now how much I miss wind, when we're in the doldrums of Atlanta. How often, living there, do we get to use any form of the verb "to scud"?
There's more to come, later. I'll help Dorothea upload some pictures she took from the plane as we flew from Atlanta to LA, and I'll upload a few pictures of the girls at play in the Newer-Than-New World.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Some Perspective on What's About to Happen
I can't embed the video, but you can see it here. Kinda puts it all in perspective.
Almost Ready
I've now done about as many loads of laundry a person can reasonably be expected to do in a two-week period. Andrea's done just about as much shopping for children's clothes a person can reasonably be expected to do in a two-week period.
We've made the thousands of little decisions there are to be made about what to take, what to leave, what to put in which bag, until we just can't bring ourselves to make any more decisions . . . even though there are decisions yet to be made.
(This sets up a very strange dynamic, by the way, in which Andrea asks for help as she agonizes over a decision concerning, say, a pair of socks, and I am simply unable to give any advice at all. We each deal with these things in our own way, I guess.)
In any case, we've decided, we've packed, we've stowed; tempers have flared, nerves have been rubbed raw; we're both exhausted. The children - whom I just this evening dubbed The Entropy Sisters - have been by turns helpful and obstinate, civilized and wild, excited and anxious . . . and even now I'm not sure Corwyn has managed to fall asleep.
But then, I just took the last load of laundry out of the dryer - the last load of laundry I will do in the Western hemisphere this January, no less - and I've almost got the kitchen looking presentable; the fridge is empty, and a box of produce is ready for some friends who will be checking on the house. I've vacuumed some of the floors, and should have time to tend to other cleaning in the morning. (Merry Maids indeed!) Andrea is making the last few (agonizing) decisions and stowing the last few items in this bag or that (or should it be that bag or this?)
Pretty soon, the only thing left will be the going.
We've made the thousands of little decisions there are to be made about what to take, what to leave, what to put in which bag, until we just can't bring ourselves to make any more decisions . . . even though there are decisions yet to be made.
(This sets up a very strange dynamic, by the way, in which Andrea asks for help as she agonizes over a decision concerning, say, a pair of socks, and I am simply unable to give any advice at all. We each deal with these things in our own way, I guess.)
In any case, we've decided, we've packed, we've stowed; tempers have flared, nerves have been rubbed raw; we're both exhausted. The children - whom I just this evening dubbed The Entropy Sisters - have been by turns helpful and obstinate, civilized and wild, excited and anxious . . . and even now I'm not sure Corwyn has managed to fall asleep.
But then, I just took the last load of laundry out of the dryer - the last load of laundry I will do in the Western hemisphere this January, no less - and I've almost got the kitchen looking presentable; the fridge is empty, and a box of produce is ready for some friends who will be checking on the house. I've vacuumed some of the floors, and should have time to tend to other cleaning in the morning. (Merry Maids indeed!) Andrea is making the last few (agonizing) decisions and stowing the last few items in this bag or that (or should it be that bag or this?)
Pretty soon, the only thing left will be the going.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Ready? Set? Noooo!
Packing for myself has never been easy, but at least I can narrow things down and shop once for the things I need. Kids are another story altogether. Why do they have to grow two weeks before it's time to go? Today I was sure we were done, but nooooo. Dorothea informs me as I am trying to help her select underwear that 90% don't fit. Why she couldn't say something a week ago when I was about to go to Target and was discussing things that didn't fit, I don't know. So, I went out, scored some undies and a few other tidbits. We packed all the kids things and I go to pull Corwyn's brown sweater out, the one she was planning to wear on the flight over, and I notice as I'm folding it that it's a size L. L.... I just had to buy all new tops because she just became an XL. So now I have to waste MORE time finding a brown sweater. I always thought learning was fun and easy, but this lesson does not seem to be penetrating and it is being taught the hard way. All the time I expected to be packing got eaten up shopping, and now the time for cleaning is being spent packing. If Bob would let me, I'd hire the Merry Maids to come clean so I wouldn't have to. So now I must go back to it. Wish me luck!
Sunday, January 3, 2010
An Authoritative Voice
Charles Darwin visited New Zealand in December 1835 when the HMS Beagle dropped anchor in the Bay of Islands. Getting ready to teach my environmental ethics class in New Zealand, I recently read the relevant chapter from Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle.
He ends the chapter on a sour note, in his entry for December 30th:
We'll go to New Zealand with a different outlook, I think. But then, New Zealand itself has changed since 1835, through decades of enthusiastic (and sometimes accidental) transformation of the landscape. I understand that New Zealand looks a lot more like England now than it did then . . .
He ends the chapter on a sour note, in his entry for December 30th:
In the afternoon we stood out of the Bay of Islands, on our course to Sydney. I believe we were all glad to leave New Zealand. It is not a pleasant place. Amongst the natives there is absent that charming simplicity which is found in Tahiti; and the greater part of the English are the very refuse of society. Neither is the country itself attractive. I look back but to one bright spot, and that is Waimate, with its Christian inhabitants.The problem may have been more with Darwin's perception and his judgment than with New Zealand itself: he looked at it through the eyes of a young English gentleman of the era, and what he saw was not enough like the pastoral English countryside to please him. Even later in his life, when he had good reason to know better, he could never quite shake his European chauvinism, and his condescension toward "savages."
We'll go to New Zealand with a different outlook, I think. But then, New Zealand itself has changed since 1835, through decades of enthusiastic (and sometimes accidental) transformation of the landscape. I understand that New Zealand looks a lot more like England now than it did then . . .
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Four To Get Ready
We've started this blog to let friends and family know what we're up to.
We don't have much time to write just now, though, because we're packing for six weeks in New Zealand, where I'll be teaching in Georgia Tech's Pacific Study Abroad Program. We leave for Wellington (via Los Angeles and Auckland) Tuesday morning.
We'll post tales of dread and wonder here . . . and pictures, too!
We don't have much time to write just now, though, because we're packing for six weeks in New Zealand, where I'll be teaching in Georgia Tech's Pacific Study Abroad Program. We leave for Wellington (via Los Angeles and Auckland) Tuesday morning.
We'll post tales of dread and wonder here . . . and pictures, too!
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