Napier

We began the day in Napier. Napier was pretty well destroyed by an earthquake in 1931, and rebuilt itself in the then-popular art-deco style. Since then, while there have been some more modern (i.e. uglier) buildings put in, much of its downtown has an art-deco look.


Napier also has a wonderful ocean-front park with one of the best playgrounds we have seen. We are thinking of renaming the blog "Mickey visits the playgrounds of New Zealand". Here again, though, we had a crisis. Mickey was lost (for the second time this year!). Fortunately, he was picked up by a park cleaner, and he was recovered.


That afternoon, we drove to Wellington, where we had dinner at a Chinese "steamboat" restaurant. This consists of a pot of boiling water (half plain, half with spices) and more food than a family of 20 could eat. You put food in the water, and boil it yourself. We turned out to have a few "cook it yourself: where do you think you are, a restaurant?" type of meals this trip.

Time for a long trip!

While we have been in New Zealand for more than six months, we haven't really gotten out to see the country. Partially this is due to living on Waiheke (when you live right next to a beach surrounded by vineyards, it is tough to force yourself out to see... a beach with vineyards, which is a lot of what New Zealand has to offer). Partially it is the inertia brought on by traveling with a little guy. But Mike has arranged to give talks in Wellington and Christchurch (he is the Operational Research Society's Visiting Lecturer, so he has to go out to give talks in various places), so it is time to see more of New Zealand.


We start off by ferry (where Alexander met a friend), on a rainy day. It is typical New Zealand rain: a cloudburst, followed by sun, followed by rain, followed by sun. Today, we had a pool on how often it would rain (rain for at least one minute, followed by at least five minutes of sun). The correct guess was ten times.



Our destination today was Napier, with a lunch stop at Taupo. Taupo is a neat little town not far from Matamata (where we visited Hobbiton on the last trip out). Their "schtick" is corrugated sheet metal. It seems that every shop in town has a sign made out of this. The exception is the tourist information office which made entire out of sheet metal, in the form of a sheepdog, with an attached cafe/souvenir shop in the form of a sheep.

I'm sure the drive to Napier (about 420 km) is quite nice, but the weather didn't let us enjoy much of the scenery.

Big Day at the Museum

Ilona has been increasingly active at the Historical Museum. Most days, the museum is lucky to get four visitors, but today a school group of forty six-year-olds visited (new teacher trying to find reasonable school trips on the island). Ilona was out with two of her colleagues to help. The kids seemed to have a great outing: let's hope they tell their parents and a few more locals come out to the museum.

Meanwhile, Alexander was at the Steiner Kindy, painting with his girlfriend Livvy.

Winter pictures

Since the end of July corresponds to the end of January "up north", I guess this is the middle of winter. Except for the odd storm, there is not much bad about winter here. It is a little cool, but we can still sit and have a drink on the porch overlooking the bay most days. Sweater weather. The water is too cool to enjoy wading, but it is still pretty pleasant.

Meanwhile, Alexander has gained a hat that makes him look like either a strange French artist or a hallucinogenic mushroom.

Strange going-ons on Waiheke

I (Mike) am away in Atlanta during this period, so Alexander is in the care of Ilona and Karin. Based on the pictures, there is some pretty strange stuff going on (along with the normal things).

Causeway

There is an area on the island called the Causeway. It is a shallow, tidal area bisected by the main island road. At high tide, it is lovely, with boats swaying in the breeze. At low tide, it turns into mud flats with the boats laying on their sides. It is where "normal" people dock their boats (rather than the rich folk with deep water moorings). The area also has a wonderful playground, with the highest swings on the island. Mickey as well as the Pooh ship enjoyed our outing a lot.

Busy day for Alexander

Another busy day for Alexander, who seems to be pretty occupied! He spent the morning walking around the neighborhood, including paying a visit to some local miniature horses.



The afternoon was spent at the Steiner Kindergarten at Play Center, baking bread, playing with the other kids (including getting the girls to drag him around in a wagon) an feeding the various animals around.


During the evening, he (along with Ilona) built a pretty extensive zoo. Note the ice packs the penguins are sitting in.

Mystery in the sand

Ilona came across these patterns in the sand at the beach while walking with Alexander down to a large carved chair.

Sing Waiheke

This evening, we (Ilona and Mike) went to the local community hall for Sing Waiheke's performance of "Horrortorio", a mixture of songs from P.D.Q Bach and Tom Lehrer. The choir was primarily Waihekians, while the soloists came all the way from Auckland. Waiheke is very much like a small town in many ways, and the evening was great fun. (photo from Gulf News)

Looking at a church, and Daddy is home!

While most of the time, Ilona's museum collects old vacuums and typewriters and plows and the like, sometimes larger things are on offer. With the tremendous rise in land prices here (you really can't get on the island now for less than NZ$500,000), some of the older community buildings are being sold, and the owners are only interested in the lot. The Anglican Church is one building that has had its land sold out from underneath, so the museum is looking into whether they would like to acquire it as part of their "village". Unfortunately, the museum works on a shoestring (a too short one at that) and they are already saddled with a couple of buildings they cannot afford to install, so it is not clear this is a good idea.


Meanwhile, Mike is back home. And note how nice the weather has become again.

Biggest storm so far

The biggest storm of the year went through over the last day or so (note that the picture is from the local paper: that is not ours!). The winds went over 160km/hour. Power was cut on the island for most of the day, and for the first time in about five years, ferry service to the island was canceled, stranding about 1000 people on the mainland (and perhaps 3 tourists on the island). It reminds you how isolated we can get here. Normally medical emergencies are whisked to the mainland in a 15 minute helicopter ride, so there is no hospital on the island. But for about 12 hours overnight, there was no helicopter and no ferry: all emergencies had to be handled on the island. Alexander, Ilona, and Karin were fine, and enjoyed watching the storm from the safety of the house. Mike's building at the university was shut down when glass in the atrium started shattering.

Meanwhile, Mike was in Prague, enjoying a beer or two, and complaining that it was a little drizzly.

Wine caps

New Zealand is very proud of their wines, and Waiheke is known as a special wine island. One unusual aspect of New Zealand wine is that almost every wine here is a screw-top, even wines costing hundreds of dollars. It is very strange here indeed to have a wine with a cork.


Here is Alexander playing with a few days of wine tops.

Island entertainment

Well, we finally found "our bar": the Island Queen, just across the street from our house. Friendly people, good bar food, perfect location. So of course, the owner decides to shut it down for three months while he heads off to England. That is so Island!

But we have found other places. Charly Farly's is a tapas place that opened (ironically) right by our old house on the island. They have music and bands: today Alexander regaled the crowd with his rendition of A-B-C.

Winter sets in

Now that it is July, it is clearly winter here. The temperatures are not bad (in the 50s F) but there is much more rain. Rain here is gusty: it can be a nice, sunny day when a squall quickly passes through, dumping a good part of an inch of rain in a short period. Then nice again. The island has its own attractions now. There are fewer (but still some) tourists, but the island community is a lot more visible. Ilona is even getting people to come to the members evenings at the Island Museum. And the scenery is still stunning.





Mike is off to Prague for a conference. Before the year, he promised not to travel very much. He already took one "unauthorized" trip by going to Miami earlier, but Prague is an authorized trip. It is a lot easier to go with Karin here to help out.