Author: Rudy

Sunday. No pancakes and sausages for breakfast. Man, when we get home next month we are gonna have to re-establish a sensible routine to our weekly menu! Enough with this yoghurt and fruit and sort-of-okay-but-not-really-all-that-good coffee in the motel room.

And if I could get brownie points for good intentions, I’d have made some real headway if I’d followed through on my plan to go to CHURCH this morning. From our balcony we can see the cool roofline and steeple of the St Joseph’s Church a block away. It looked so good I thought maybe we would go check it out this morning — maybe they’d have a good choir singing with a New Zealand ‘excent’ (that’s how Kiwi’s would say ‘accent’). But this morning (just like most of yesterday and all of last night) the rain was POURING. And besides, I looked at the website for the church and it didn’t look very welcoming at all — maybe the Catholics don’t have much of a thing going here in this Anglican (but mostly secular) country. (Oops, I just checked with Wikipedia, and I see that although over half the population is not religious, the Catholics outnumber the Anglicans by a percentage point!)

Well, all that and STILL I will have disappointed my mother — I woke up and heard the pouring rain and was quite happy to turn over and get another bit of shut-eye. And THEN came the aforementioned breakfast.

We sat around and read and wasted time until we had a FaceTime call from Max and Alex. Man, that little guy is growing up so fast — almost time to register for kindergarten! And it may be hard to believe, but I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone that is ALWAYS happy like Max is. Even when he’s sick, or tired, or even sad — he’s STILL happy. He just wants so badly to be happy! I sure hope some of those genetics in there are from me!

After another ‘in-house’ lunch by Sue, I amended her suggestion that we go for a walk by adding a “while carrying our golf clubs and chasing a white ball around” clause. And because Sue loves me, she acquiesced, and off we went to the Fitzroy Golf Club for another 18 holes. Why not? The rain had abated. In fact the sun came out and I had to schtritz some sunscreen onto my nose before we hit our first tee shot. There was a bit of water standing on the eighteenth green, but by the time we’d finished the first seventeen holes, the hot sun (yes, HOT! we were both wearing black golf shirts and for the first nine holes the sun was BAKING us!) had dried up that green nicely! It was a great afternoon. The rain stayed away, even though the clouds rolled in from the sea and it FELT like it might rain any minute for the last hour. Only a handful of golfers out on the course. In fact, no one working the clubhouse — we paid by ‘the honour system’, leaving our cash in an envelope that we popped into the slot in the clubhouse door. We both played well, and while how well we play doesn’t usually determine how much fun we have, today I played very well — probably my best round in nearly a year! And because Sue loves me, and even though she’s quite competitive, she too was happy for me, suggesting that maybe (finally!) all the money I spent on golf last year was starting to pay off! (Always about the money — that’s my Sue!)

We stopped to checkout the Sunday afternoon concert in the park on the way home — but, sure enough, it was cancelled. Too much rain and I guess they had to make the call so even though it was NOT raining at 3 o’clock, it got cancelled.

We went home and had happy hour and showered and cleaned up. Time to go out for a nice meal.

Tonight we went to Arborio, a nice restaurant near the waterfront. Spicy fried calamari with chipotle aioli and lemon as a starter and prawns, peas, and spicy chorizo risotto as a main. Yum.  

Back at the motel we were just settling in for a night of Netflix but our internet had ‘expired’. Oh shoot! I called the front desk (big sign on the door, it’s a long weekend here and looks like everything will be in ‘holiday mode’ until Tuesday). I didn’t expect an answer, but a minute later I got a call back and all was good again. So here we go: the final three episodes of ‘Fargo’, Season One, on Netflix. Looks to be a great way to end a great Sunday. Goodnight, everyone.

Saturday. Woke up to the sound of pouring rain. And that was our soundtrack for most of the day. So we were stuck in our motel room for the day. We were okay with that — the forecast has been for rain for the past number of days, and today it proved correct. (It may well be the same for tomorrow and the beginning of next week.)

After lunch we drove into town to get some groceries. Later in the afternoon we cued up a few more episodes of “Fargo” on Netflix and that entertained us through the evening. At 9:30 we watched the news while the sound of pouring rain outside our open (and screen-free, as is the way here in New Zealand) windows. No golf today. No long walk today. No photos today. 

We doddled all morning in our motel room. No hurry. We’re going to sit tight here for a week. No reason to rush. But wait! I thought we were going to go to the Len Lye museum (across the road from our motel) to see a ‘show’ at 11. Oh, oh, we’d better hurry.

Actually, the ‘show’ (called “Flip and Two Twisters”) is an exhibition that plays daily at 12 noon. We were an hour early, just in time to sit in the beautiful theatre inside the museum and watch a 45-minute film about the life and art of Len Lye. The film was very helpful. We’d never heard of this New Zealand artist before. We’d seen his “Wind Wand” here on the Coastal Walk in New Plymouth. Now we were introduced to more of his art.

At noon we all lined up in front of the large space where the feature exhibition was on display. Two 20 foot bands of stainless steel hang from the ceiling. Between them is another length of steel in the shape of a loop. Motors ‘twirl’ the ribbons of steel so they jump around and make loud clanging sounds. It’s too bad I didn’t keep some of my old broken Lufkin measuring tapes — the bending and twisting steel reminded me of that.

The museum itself is an incredible building; the exterior is all wavy mirrors. Like our first B&B host said to us, it’s a beautiful building, probably more interesting on the exterior than any of the exhibitions inside.

After a morning of art lessons, I was starving. We stopped by a busy sushi shop and got a carton of sushi to take back to our motel. After lunch Sue tried to catch up on the sleep she didn’t get last night. I listened to music on my phone and had a short snooze as well.

Later in the afternoon we went out for a walk. We walked all the way along the fantastic Coastal Walkway, past the Fitzroy Golf Course where we golfed yesterday, and turned around when we reached the Te Rewa Rewa bridge.

The walkway continues but we’d walked for just over an hour one way and decided that was enough for this afternoon. Good thing too — on our walk back it started to rain lightly. It actually stopped raining when we got back to New Plymouth but only momentarily. We got home and Sue looked through the menus in our motel room. She sent me out (across the street) to pick it up. By the time the pizza was ready and I came back to the room, it was raining quite a bit harder. And then, while we ate it, it POURED. Apparently the forecast is for rain everyday for the next 5 or 6 days. Too bad; we saw an outdoor concert advertised about 2km from us here, out in a park on the coast. It looked like a fun time, but not if it’s raining!

We watched a couple more episodes of Fargo on Netflix tonight, and then the CBC National before going to bed at around 10:30.

Scrambled eggs for breakfast. We sat in the sunroom of our AirBnB apartment and enjoyed the sunshine and watched a couple of carpenters putting up rafters on a ‘garage’ across the street. By 10 o’clock we were packed up and out of there. We drove around the block to the motel we’d booked for the coming week and checked in. Then we drove about 5kms to one of the many golf courses around New Plymouth. Today we went to the Fitzroy Golf Course. Can we golf here? No problem! Twenty bucks for 18 holes. We took the clubs out of the trunk and headed to the first tee.

The game was great. The sun shone, the wind didn’t blow, and our shots were straight and far. Mostly. The course was next to the sea and quite hilly — and that made it interesting but challenging. Sue didn’t quite enjoy it as much as I did but she looked pretty good in her new golf shirt.

After the golf game we stopped by a grocery store to stock up on some supplies before heading back to our motel. We took our suitcases and stuff up to our room. Sue made sandwiches and we had lunch. It was after 2 o’clock. We spent the rest of the afternoon reading and organizing our stuff. Once again I had to ‘trick’ our AppleTV to login to the hotel wifi network, just like I’d done in Nelson.

After a little happy hour we headed into town. We found a Thai restaurant and ordered take-out. We walked around the block and then took our food back to the motel. Had supper. Watched some CBC News and some of the late night shows on TV. In bed by eleven.

Not a lot to say today. We woke up and sure enough, the day was less than what we’ve come to expect here. Cloudy, a little cool, and VERY windy. Too windy to go golfing. 

After breakfast we put on our rain jackets (to block the wind) and went for a walk. We’d been planning on heading up to Hamilton tomorrow, and possibly stay there a week if we could find a suitable apartment. But our search hadn’t been very successful. So today, after we’d had a nice coffee in a cool little cafe a couple of blocks from our place, we decided to check out the motel across the street from the cafe. The sign said ‘No Vacancy’ but we went to the office to ask just in case. And after a little back-and-forth, we (well actually, Sue) negotiated a deal with them for a week’s stay starting tomorrow. 

We continued our walk around town and were very pleased to find that the city centre has tons of cool restaurants and cafes and shopping places. That, and the fact that there are at least 5 golf courses within half an hour from here, PLUS the great coastal walkway we discovered yesterday, means we’ll have lots to see and do here for the next little while — so in spite of the weather, we felt good about our morning.

Sue bought bread and eggs at the grocery store and made lunch when we got back to our apartment. We ‘wasted’ the afternoon holed up in our place. Sue read, I watched TV. We Skyped with my parents. We watched another episode of ‘Fargo’ on Netflix. Sue made supper and we ate it in our ‘sunroom’ overlooking the ocean. 

It appeared that the wind had calmed down a bit and we decided to go for a quick walk out along the Coastal Walkway. Tonight we headed north, past the Wind Wand, a 48-metre kinetic sculpture designed by artist Len Lye. (We plan to visit the Len Lye museum here in town tomorrow.) We only walked for about an hour — one of these days we’ll walk to the end of the 12km walkway, which goes right up to a couple of golf courses along the coast.

We were back home in our apartment by 8pm. Time for a bit of internetting and then some more Netflix.

Woke up early this morning. It wasn’t raining. That meant we could have a leisurely breakfast and then go for our walk along the lagoon, and then get in the car and drive the 3 hours to New Plymouth, a little farther north on the west coast. And that’s what we did.

We said goodbye to our host lady. She told us that vandals had smashed car windows of the vehicles parked on their quiet street — very unusual. Her husband’s van had the rear window broken right out. Our car was parked just in front of the van but had no damage. That was a relief.

We drove a few blocks to the university and parked on the road in front of it. From there we followed the walking path along the ‘ox-bow’ lagoon. Lots of ducks were on both sides of the path, sleeping in a bit this morning. Across the water were GORGEOUS homes along the shoreline. Most also had beautiful landscaping and park-like gardens. We quit trying to avoid the duck turds on the sidewalk and just walked and looked at the properties.

Eventually the path led us to the Manawatu Golf Club, the oldest golf course in New Zealand. The course hosted a PGA Championship tournament this past weekend (the 2017 Lawnmaster Horizon Golf NZ PGA Championship) and all the signage and stages were still set up. We went into the clubhouse cafe and ordered a couple of cappuccinos. We took our coffees out on the patio and watched as several groups finished up on the 18th green. The course was in tiptop shape and looked incredible.

After our walk we got back in the car and headed out of town. It was eleven o’clock. 

We stopped for lunch in the town of Whanganui. I’d been hankering for a KFC dinner for at least 2 months — today was my lucky day. Of course, Sue wasn’t NEARLY as excited as I was about the lunch. So while I enthused about how delicious my big juicy crispy chicken keel was, Sue was making faces and pulling that nice shaked and baked coating off of her little drumstick and gnawing at the dark meat underneath with tiny little bites. And of course the french fries were MUCH too salty and she wouldn’t eat any of those. I was sure happy that old Colonel Sanders was licking his fingers up in that big KFC in the sky and didn’t have to see or hear the ingratitude and complaining that I was subjected to. 

We continued on our drive. We took the ‘coastal’ route, although we rarely saw the sea. Most of the country here was farmland — dairy and beef. The waters along the coast here are excellent for surfing. On our right was Mount Taranaki, whose 2518m peak poked through the low grey clouds every once in a while.

We arrived at our AirBnB place at 3pm. Our host showed up 10 minutes later. We parked in the secure parking lot and walked up to the 3rd floor apartment. Very nice. Our ‘sunroom’ in front of our bedrooms looked out over the ocean to the western sky. We got settled and then FaceTimed with Alex for a bit. 

At 5:30 we grabbed our rain jackets and walked across the road to the Coastal Walkway, a ten kilometre path along the sea edge that stretches the length of the city. It was drizzling very lightly, not enough to warrant wearing the rain jackets. We walked about 2 kms to the port and found a seafood restaurant that our host had recommended. Tonight’s special: pan-fried scallops. We added grilled prawns and a greek salad. A fine meal. The rain was a little more significant on the walk back — let’s hope we don’t have rain all day tomorrow (as is forecasted). Back in the apartment I had hooked up the AppleTV and we started a new series, Designated Survivor.

Whoa! Another lazy day here in New Zealand.

We’re quite comfortable here in our studio apartment above a detached garage in Palmerston North. We have big rooms, a pretty nice kitchen, a new Sony TV on the wall, and fast internet. If the forecast wasn’t for a string of rainy days, we’d be happy to stay here a week. Palmerston North is actually a very nice town. It’s a university town. That means there is a large young educated population, and all that goes with that. Lots of cool restaurants, bicycle paths and walking paths everywhere, cinemas and art galleries, big expensive homes along the riverbanks. We decided that we shouldn’t let our first impression (that first bad night in a hotel) taint our view of the place.

So this morning after breakfast Sue and I sat and gazed into our devices. Sue, presumably, was looking for a studio apartment that would be suitable for us to stay in for a week. I was watching online videos of all the Sunday morning talk shows, checking out the latest Trump idiotic tweets, etc. (I can’t help myself! It’s like watching one of those ‘slow-motion’ car pile-ups on an icy 401 highway near Toronto.) Finally, it was time for lunch (the highlight of every day!).

After noodle soup and sandwiches (it was grey and cloudy outside and I was feeling a little chilled inside), we got ourselves ready to venture outdoors and see if we could get in a golf game. Sue actually wanted to do the river walk, but my research showed that the Palmerston Golf Course had a 2:30 twilight special on for $20, so we’ll leave the walk for tomorrow morning. So off we went to the golf course, about a 10-minute drive.

We parked the car and went into the clubhouse to check things out. No problem. The pro at the desk has a brother in Toronto, so right off the bat we were buddies! Sue found a golf shirt on sale — and bought it. I got the clubs all set up on a ‘trundler’ for Sue. And off we were.

No, the score was nothing I’d care to put in my journal for posterity. But the day turned out to be a great day! The sun came out, the temperature was about 21, the couple ahead of us let us play through after they witnessed our great approach shots on hole number 1😜, and so we had no one ahead and no one behind for the rest of the afternoon. And the course, which was a LONG par 72 for me (74 for Sue), was green and a bit hilly, and interesting, and fun. And the greens were fast and true. We finished just before 6pm.

We drove back to our apartment. Our host met us as we walked up the driveway and offered to pick some nice fresh juicy grapefruits from one of his trees in the front yard for us. Nice! A few minutes later we had a bag with half a dozen fresh-off-the-tree grapefruits sitting next to our entry door. Really, it’s too bad we can’t stay here a week!

We went upstairs to our apartment and had a little happy hour and read a bit. Then Sue got the hot-plate out and started on supper. Man, she can dress up wieners and beans so it looks and tastes as good as a steak dinner! Corn on the cob. Lots of onions and sliced wieners in the ‘organic’ beans she bought at the Countdown last night. Piled high over a couple of fresh buns from the bakery. Mmmm. And of course, the whole deal is fancied up considerably with a bottle of 2016 Wolf Blass Cabernet Merlot — $10 NZ at the supermarket! Pretty high-class camping we’re practicing here!

The sun was peeking through the clouds, giving it one last effort before sinking into the western sky. It was 7:30 and we had the WHOLE evening ahead of us. Time to finish a sudoku and see what’s on Netflix. SteinbachOnline says there’s another winter storm heading towards southeastern Manitoba. Well… Maybe a cloudy day in New Zealand isn’t so bad after all.

p.s. I may have said this previously, but just in case, I don’t want to forget it. Here are a couple of observations based on our two months here:

1. New Zealand is green and clean. There is almost NO litter anywhere. Not having snow that sticks around for a while, and requires salt and sand on the road, probably helps. But we’ve seen orange-vested road workers cleaning up the roadsides many times as we’ve driven along the highways. And the towns and cities too — no ugly papers and plastic bags and garbage littering up the country. Quite impressive, considering so much of the area is along the coast, and it’s often quite windy, and that makes it harder to keep it clean.
2. Traffic circles are the most efficient way to deal with intersections. I finally get it. The make so much sense! No sitting and waiting for a red light when there’s no traffic crossing. No stop signs! Just slow down into the roundabout, yield to traffic (on the right, in this case), and then zip on through! It’s fantastic. I often drive through several towns in a row without having to stop. And it’s got to be cheaper than putting up traffic lights.

 

We checked out of our hotel first thing this morning. Sue let the hotel know about all the things they did wrong before we left. We’d already found another place on AirBnb and booked it for the next two nights. But check-in time there would be at 2pm, so we had a bit of time to kill. So we drove to the town square and parked the car. We walked over to the i-site (information kiosk at the centre of every New Zealand community) and asked about what there was to do in Palmerston North. We picked up brochures for some of the golf courses around here. And another featuring some of the walks (or ‘tramps’, as they’re called here) in the region. There is a museum just around the corner. And lots of restaurants and cafes and shops. Well, since it was very cloudy, a bit cool, and felt like it might rain any minute, we opted for the Manawatu Gorge Walk, a 90-minute tramp on one of the hills not too far from here. After driving out about 20kms, we found the roadside parking lot. There were already quite a few other vehicles parked there. We put on our walking shoes, Sue took her hiking pole, and we put our rain jackets on ‘just in case’. And we started on our ‘tramp’.

The day improved a bit as we hiked. By the time we emerged from under the highway and returned to the car park, the sun was shining brightly. No need for rain jackets. 

We drove back into town. I filled the car with gas and we parked back near the town square. We went into what turned out to be a big modern shopping mall and ended up eating at the food court. And then we headed to our new AirBnb, a ‘private’ loft over a garage in a residential area of town. The owners lived in the house next door and welcomed us with some freshly baked ‘pancake’ kind of things with butter and jam. Much better than last night’s hotel. Good wifi, a basked of fresh fruit on the kitchen table, and lots of room. We spent the afternoon in our place, scouting out a place for when we leave here on Tuesday. Our next stop will be New Plymouth, a city of about 80,000 on the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand. We finally found something on AirBnb and booked it. So now we’ve got accommodations for the rest of our week.

At around 7pm we headed back into the town centre, looking for lamb shanks for dinner. We ended up at a ‘Lone Star’ restaurant (yes, it’s a cowboy-themed chain of restaurants here in New Zealand) and did indeed have the lamb shanks. Not bad, either.

We stopped at the Countdown grocery store on the way home to buy yogurt and sandwich supplies for tomorrow. We got home at around 9pm. I hooked up my AppleTV to the Sony in our bedroom and we concluded our evening by watching (what else!) the CBC National news.

We checked out of our hotel in Nelson by ten o’clock this morning. We met Phil, the owner-manager, walking by as we were carrying our suitcases out to the car. I was going to return the book I’d borrowed from the front desk — I wasn’t quite half-finished it — but he said to just keep it. Great. That will give me something to do on the over 3-hour ferry ride this afternoon.

We drove to Picton via the picturesque winding road across the northern part of the South Island. It was Saturday morning and there was a huge cycling event going on — we passed hundreds of cyclists along the way. There is an awareness and a respect for cyclists here in New Zealand — so even when the roads are quite narrow two-lane highways, with lots of trucks and camper vans winding their way up and down around the hills, everyone gives cyclists room, even when it’s a peloton of a dozen or more in a group. Once we got closer to Picton we were once again in wine country — beautiful rolling hills with rows upon rows of grapes stretching as far as we could see in all directions. 

Once in Picton, the road led us straight down to the harbour and the ferries. We parked beside the road for an hour — we were too early to load yet — and went to a small bakery to buy some lunch. Pastry and meat pies. Sunny and warm on the picnic table outside. Surrounded by backpacker hotels and backpackers waiting for the next ferry.

At 1 o’clock we lined up to drive onto our ferry. It’s all very efficient. We parked and took our books and extra sandwiches up to the 8th level and found a table next to one of the big windows. And sat and read while we sailed across Cook Strait up to Wellington.

The journey was smooth and seemed shorter than the trip the other way a couple of weeks ago. We drove off the ferry at around 6pm. In no time we were on the #1 highway that leads from here all the way to the northern tip of the island. The drive to Palmerston North took us just under 2 hours. It was cloudy and looked like it might rain, but it didn’t. The first half of the trip followed the western shoreline and the views were spectacular, with the sun setting in the sea and lighting up the hills on our right. There was a brand new 4-lane highway for the first hour — so new that our google maps thought we were in the middle of nowhere and kept spinning around and suggesting places for us to turn left or right in order to find a road for us!

We found the hotel we’d booked for 2 nights and checked in. We were surprised and disappointed to learn that this 6- or 8-storey hotel didn’t include free wifi! Why is wifi free everywhere except in “better” (more expensive) hotels? We’ll be looking for an alternate hotel tomorrow.

So instead of gazing into our devices all evening, we had crackers and cheese and sausage and a glass of wine while we scanned through the TV channels. And I read a few more chapters in my book! And now it’s 11:30 and it’s time to close up my laptop and go to sleep.

No golf today. It was supposed to be a reading day. Sue finished reading her book club book, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. I didn’t read at all. Instead I wasted the whole day trying to figure out how to program a rotating header background image based on the post category. Yeah, I know, that doesn’t make any sense — it didn’t to me either. And I didn’t manage to figure it out. Waste.

By late afternoon, after we’d FaceTimed with our kids again for a bit, Sue thought it was time to go for a walk. So we did — a little over an hour’s worth, around the perimeter of the airport, next to our golf course. Not as warm out today, and quite windy. 

Then we drove into Richmond, about 10kms away, and found a Pak’n Save grocery store where we restocked our happy hour supplies. Then across the road to the pizza place to order take away. 

After we’d eaten supper back in our place, it was time to do a bit of reading before it got too dark. Summer ‘officially’ ended here in New Zealand at the end of February. And we can sure notice that now the days are getting shorter. People here say autumn is a fine time of year — and we do look forward to seeing some fall colours in the vineyards and forests as we make our way north.

Eight o’clock and it’s time for Netflix again. Tomorrow we’re heading back to Picton (2 hours away) from where we’ll take the ferry back across Cook’s Strait to the North Island. Here’s hoping for calm seas for the crossing.