January

We returned to Wellington late on December 26. The next day, Cici and I took the bus out to the Katherine Mansfield birthplace in Thorndon on the other side of town. It is a well preserved and well presented example of a businessman's house at the end of the nineteenth century. They tie the rooms in nicely with Mansfield's stories, which are quite autobiographical. They also had a lot of information about her life and works in general, including an hour long DVD; she was quite a pioneering author. Afterwards, we walked back through this old section of town and through the Botanical Gardens to home.

Daughter Catharine arrived mid-day on the 28th with only a few delays due to new security measures. The next day we rented a car to drive out to the Wairarapa to the bird sanctuary at Mount Bruce. We caught a number of good ranger talks including one by an aviary containing a kokako female who was raised by humans, so she is more attached to human males than kokako males, some of whom fly around trying to catch her attention. She is beginning to make kokako calls - a lovely melodic ko-ko-ko sound - but she also, like a parrot, makes human speech sounds. They are not exactly words, but do have all the rhythm and intonation of speech. We got fairly good at spotting some kakarikis, a pretty parakeet, in other aviaries, and could watch a pair of takahes (sort of like geese) while eating lunch in the café. We even saw free flying tui and a wood pigeon while walking on the trails. We went to the eel feeding and talk. The eel were at least a meter long. Eventually, when they mature, they head out to sea and a long swim with their compatriots to an area around Tonga where they mate and die. The babies drift back to New Zealand (and Australia) and swim up rivers. I was interested to observe that some brown trout also snuck in for the free food. The kiwis were active in their house. They are nocturnal, so it always takes awhile to find them in their dim interiors. They also have a pair of tuataras, a kind of primitive reptile which are extinct everywhere else. We almost never see them move, but Ron said one moved a good foot when he wasn't looking, so perhaps they are more perceptive then I was giving them credit for. I didn't even notice the second one for a few minutes because it was so still. We ended up with the kaka feeding. Kakas are a large parrot, which have become well established again in the region thanks to the bird sanctuary.

Cici left the next day by train for Auckland. Catharine and I decided to do a day tripper bus tour of the south coast Wellington beaches. We were waiting at the nearby bus stop and started talking to the other people there, who turned out to be a Quaker couple from Palmerston North in for the day. We caught the first bus that came by, which took us to Lyall Bay, which is a large bay near the airport where people surf. When walking around to the end of the bay we discovered a small Easter Island style sculpture facing eastward which had been donated to Wellington a few years ago. Catharine had been hoping to be able to swim, but although it was sunny, it was also cool and windy, so we just walked and enjoyed the sea views, ending up after a few kilometers at Island Bay, which is a nice sheltered beach because of the island guarding its entrance.


January 3, Catharine and I rented a car to take a quick trip up to Rotorua and Napier. We had hoped to have three nights away, but there were no cars available to rent on the 2nd. We got a good view of Mt. Ruapehu, but the other volcanoes were shrouded in cloud. The wind was picking up a lot of dust on the Desert Road, but the driving conditions were ok.


Lake Taupo:
We stopped along the shores of Lake Taupo and picked up some pumice rocks, and then took a nice walk around the park and lake in the town of Taupo.

We got into Rotorua just before 6 pm. Our hotel was right next to one of the geyser parks and our "geyser-view room" really was, with both a geyser and a large mud pool bubbling away. We drove into town to look at the lake and walk around the city park which also has steam vents and hot water and mud pools. After dinner we enjoyed a soak in one of the hotel's natural hot pools.


In the morning we went to Te Puia, the park nearby which contained the geysers we could see from the hotel. In addition to the thermal area, they also had a good Maori cultural show with songs and dances, a haka (a warrior display), and a poi dance by the women. Poi are 2 balls on either end of a long cord which are swung around the body in various ways. I was particularly happy that they did a stick dance. 4 men and 4 women stand in a circle with a stick in each hand creating rhythms by whacking their own sticks together or with the people on either side and then tossing sticks back and forth. It is quite intricate and exciting. There was a pleasant small museum and then two workshops for teaching the arts of wood carving and weaving.

Whakarewarewa:















After lunch we went to a different place called Whakarewarewa, which is a small Maori village in a thermal area. It is not a reconstruction like Plymouth or Williamsburg, but just a village where people are living fairly normal lives. We did enjoy eating some corn which was boiled in one of the hot pools. They also have some hangi, traditionally an earth oven, but in their case built over a steam vent. Folks place there dinner in there around lunch time and pull it out cooked in the evening - a natural crock pot. They also had a cultural show, and I thought they had the better poi dance, but my camera's battery wore out, so I didn't get pictures.

Finally, the best part of the day was when we left in the afternoon and went to a hot water creek bating area recommended in Lonely Planet. The place reminded me of Oregon because we drove through a clear cut pine tree plantation to reach the parking area. Hurricane Creek itself had a buffer strip of about 20 meters on either side. A fairly short walk down a trail gets you to a number of swimming holes, including one nice deep one. There were about 30 people there. The stream seemed uniformly hot rather than having areas where you could tell hot springs were bubbling up. It was possible to sit under little waterfalls to get a nice hydrotherapy massage. Quite a magical place. Even with that break, we were able to get to Napier just before 9 pm to check into our hostel.

The next morning we ended up on an Art Deco tour all by ourselves with a guide, which was quite nice. Even though I had done the tour before, I managed to shut up and let the guide do all the talking! We did a little walking around on our own afterwards, but left for the long drive back to Wellington right after lunch. We did stop on the way to pick up some apricots, avocados and corn from a farm truck. The next day Catharine flew down for five days in Dunedin and Queenstown, busing back through the South Island and taking the ferry back. She met up with an internet friend from Invercargill who came up to meet her in Queenstown.

Meanwhile, my sister Chartis and her husband Ned arrived for a two day visit while touring NZ. Besides walking about with them through town and along the waterfronts, we mostly let them explore Wellington on their own. We also went to the old and new St. Paul's Cathedral, and, of course, some of Wellington's nice restaurants. Then they were off on the ferry for their tour of the South Island.

Catharine returned on the ferry the same afternoon Chartis and Ned left. With one full day left together, we went to an exhibit at the newly reopened City Gallery for the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama called Mirrored Years. (check out www.citygallery.org.nz/mainsite/) Kusama particularly likes room sized installations full of large soft form sculptures where everything is covered in large polka dots. They also decorated the outside of the building with dots. There was a room full of mirrored steel balls, and a hallway lined with convex mirrors. Two of the neatest installations were two small mirror-paneled rooms filled with little lights, so everything is seen in infinite regressions. I liked it all more than I expected. It was fun, but also left room for contemplation. The next day Catharine flew up to Auckland for a couple of days before heading back to the States. I promptly came down with a sore throat and cough and stayed in bed for the next week.

Since about January 20, we have actually begun to have mostly summer weather instead of just the occasional day or two. Summer here means the temperature may get into the mid 70s with only a light breeze. So, one of the first days when I was well enough to get out and about, we took the bus over to Petone (pronounced pe-to-ne since it comes from Maori), which is on the north side of Wellington Harbour. The main street is about 3 blocks in from the beach and lined with a nice variety of older buildings. After lunch we walked down to the pier, which juts far into the bay because the shore is very shallow. A pleasant walk around the bay brought us to the small Settlers Museum. Petone was actually the first area settled, since it looked like a good, rich river valley. Unfortunately, they discovered after a few months that the river had a strong disposition towards flooding, so the settlement moved around to the hills of present day Wellington. The small museum had some models of the early settlement, which had a cooperative relationship with the local Maoris, and also some interesting information on the industrial history of the area. New Zealand used to manufacture a lot of its own goods, including automobiles, that now it imports. Petone also had a very large meat packing plant, which gave the whole area a distinctive odor.

January 25 was a local holiday in honor of Wellington's founding, so we went to the Colonial Cottage Museum, thereby getting in all our local history in one week. This small (4 downstairs rooms) house was built in 1858, and what with fires and earthquakes, it is the oldest original cottage still standing. Its furnishing are also mostly original or from the family, and we had a nice docent tour, as well as time to wander through the house and garden by ourselves. It actually reminded us of the log cabin in which we lived in Ashton ten years ago.